That tells me that you cannot appeal to some of these people on the basis of self interest. You can't buy them off, or try to offer them a better future. At some point, they're just mentally diseased, and the only thing you can do is put them down like rabid dogs. Hopefully they won't make US take too many other people down with them.

Thus, I supported the Iraq war - though I have some issues with the conduct and the aftermath. Those issues, however, are more often to the side that I don't think we've been harsh enough in some cases, notably Fallujah - which would pretty much be reduced to a parking lot now if I were in charge.

Likewise, I would be willing to strongly consider military actions in other near places to cut down Muslim terrorists and the rat's nest of infrastructure that supports them, most obviously in Iran and Syria. Besides those Muslim jihadists, North Korea may require some unpleasant and destructive action.

I'd prefer that these other regimes see what has happened to Hussein, and take a clue. I'd like to appeal to them in some way so as to avoid the necessity of killing them. War is indeed bad for children and other living things. Maybe North Korea could be appealed to with carrots, like Libya - though it doesn't seem to have done any good so far.

Further, I don't have any desire for revenge over 9/11, nor particularly even for "justice." If it were just those things, I'd say we should let it go. It's not worth us killing people (especially the inevitable innocent casualties), and it's especially not worth getting our own people killed.

That's not the situation, though. People are still coming here to kill us. Besides any deaths overseas, we're still looking at serious terrorist threats here. There are apparently big warning signs of impending attacks intended to screw up our elections. Also, it was just a month ago, in June '04, that Attorney General Ashcroft announced the arrest of an Al Qaeda operative from Somalia busted while plotting to blow up a mall in Columbus, Ohio.

I've got people in Columbus. I've got a three year old niece there. I want to be a nice guy, but I'd turn the entire Middle East into one big paved over parking lot before I'll accept that we're just going to get blown up and anthraxed and such what here and there. I'm far less patient than the Israelis.

Whether we like it or not, we're at war with people intent on leveraging their way up to WMDs to destroy our society. This is not paranoia, nor overstating the point. Under such circumstances, I will favor crushing them - as Brother Malcolm would say - by any means necessary. Or as my other hero Barry Goldwater said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."