will be waitng..........................suggestion for the middle east crap----remake OUR compass
so that there is no middle east--the crap all started way before OUR time and it will
be here long after OUR time has passed.......

What all this has proven to me is that not only Iraq, but all the Middle East is in great need of a Democratic form of government.
Nowhere in the world is safe from fanatical fundamentalist who know only a tribal warlord culture.
Ignorance and Intolerance are the twin demons that plagued humanity.
A culture cannot be change overnight, or in a single year. Even without Ignorance and Intolerance eating at its foundations, cultures take generations to change.
My nephew is being sent to Iraq next month. I do not want him there! I do not want any of our children placed in harms way. I, like many others, wish there was a ‘magic button' we could push and make it all go away in a instant. Unfortunately none of our Magic Buttons work that way. All the magic buttons we have take time and sacrifice.
The twin demons feed off each other. If left unchecked, they will devour the world.
Ironically, Ignorance and Intolerance not only begin with ‘I,' they must also end with ‘I.'
It is everyone's responsibility to do what they can to cast out the twin demons; where ever we find them, before they destroy us all.
The twin demons of Ignorance and Intolerance have a brother; his name is Fear.

hi chef!

thanks for compliment and link. it was more a stream of thought there. i actually never intended for that post to become what it did...but it just grew and grew.

it's definitely not an easy-fix solution, but i get so tired and frustrated when i look around and see so many who are viewing it from their high tower of safety, without all the facts surrounding the issue. i see so many americans choosing sides and calling all palestinians terrorists or the other way around.

the vast majority of the people dying are not the ones making the decisions about their future.

there is wrong-doing on both sides, and most of that stems from the radicalists and fundamentalists on those two sides. neither is w/out innocent blood on their hands. their hatred (despite what either side would want us to believe) is passed down from generation to generation. so long as this continues, in all parts of the world, no one will see peace.

we do the same thing here in the states. it happens everywhere. i say both sides are guilty in this, because i've read and heard some pretty disturbing things. there are those palestinians, who refuse to recognize israel and want nothing more than them to be gone. most though, would love to be able to co-exist and get them out of the settlements. then, on the side from israel, i've read and heard some pretty alarming things. things that sound like genocide to me. i've read quotes where the palestinians are referred to as "animals", "cockroaches", etc. leaders in our own country have talked about moving them somewhere else, away from their land so as to give it all to israel...

it's disturbing, and i don't think we should be choosing the side of anyone but all the innocents on both sides who are dying...

"What's wrong with THOSE people?".............it's not the people, it's their culture and I don't know if it is "OK" to change one's culture to attain peace or any other "goal"--because whose culture is the right one? I always equate this to a "lost tribe" in a Amazon that has survived successfully for eons and is suddenly "found" and all hell breaks loose! Icon T-shirts---Mp3 players---and their eventual demise as a unique and ageless culture. There may never be a solution.......