Yes. You can't force people to reason with you. That's pretty much a fact.
Some may want to, and with those you can. Some won't, and with them you
can't.
You don't ignore them, of course.
One of the problems that is going on is that they had been ignored while
they "entered your home" (I assume you meant the USA with "your home" and
you meant 911 when talking about "entering your home"). In part to
compensate for that, the administration is now trying to show hectic
activity, invading two countries and killing many people completely
unrelated to anything remotely connected to "entering your home".
This doesn't help anything, or prevent anything. The whole story about the
Afghanistan and Iraq wars being related to 911 is pretty strange.
Afghanistan in a way was still reasonable -- if catching OBL and destroying
Al Qaida had been the purpose of it. But the administration stopped short
of reaching that goal, and went on to another country, forgetting pretty
much about OBL and Al Qaida. At that point, things became really strange.
There is of course ample evidence that Saddam is not a nice person; there
is also ample evidence that the regime he lead, especially while supported
with military aid by GWB's father and Rumsfeld, was nothing I would want
for me; but there is really no useful evidence that he was a threat to
anybody but /maybe/ his immediate neighbors at the time of the invasion.
Definitely not to the USA or to the UK.
There is no good evidence that the Iraq war had anything to do with war
against terrorism. And, of course, there is no good evidence that war
against terrorism makes any sense at all. The "war against terrorism" is
just like the "war against drugs" a propaganda creation. These are not
wars, these are events to gather votes. Neither is a war and neither can be
won by running a war. (The war in Iraq, OTOH, was a war. But it wasn't
against terrorism; it was a war to unseat a dictator, for reasons we can
only speculate about -- like anything political.)
How did we get rid of terrorism on a smaller level, a few hundred years
ago, in most countries? By bringing the rule of law to the level of a
country, we got rid of the arbitrariness and terrorism of individual counts
and local bully bosses. That's exactly the way to bring an end to
international terrorism: bringing the rule of law, due process and what's
related to that, to the international sphere. Of course that would mean to
give up some of the illusion of "national sovereignty"; but how "sovereign"
can you be in a world where one suitcase bomb can bring down or seriously
hurt a country? (Think bio ...) Unluckily, the US government missed the
biggest opportunity any country had in my lifetime to become a worldwide
leader and further the cause of global rule of law. And with things going
as they are going now, I don't think such an opportunity comes along again
anytime soon, not for the US, not for anybody else.
And before anyone thinks of bashing the UN, think about the fact that this
institution (with all its defects) was mostly created by the USA...
One
failed attempt is also not really a good argument against the principle.
Gerhard
