Food for Thought by "Papi" Castellanos

Just some food for thought on the terrible events of this week in the USA. I want to believe that the  reason why President Bush said that we are facing "a new and very real 2001 war" is that the US Government has hopefully and finally realized (read traditional American naivete and misplaced self assurance) that the ONLY WAY to achieve an armed victory over this country is by taking terrorism in a grand scale and on a sustained basis to continental USA. What happened this week was the FIRST REAL large scale victory for today's worst enemies of this country and one they could have never achieved by conventional military means. Sadly, this means that "if at first you succeed, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DID THE FIRST TIME"  will in all likelihood apply on a long-term basis. These people actually look forward to dieing for their cause. They are GUARANTEED by their leaders (remember, religion is at the basis of all this as far as our enemies who call this endeavor vs the US their "holy war" are concerned ) that they are going straight to paradise when they sacrifice their lives for their country in the manner they did. I dearly hope that the leaders of this country are not just doing another demagogue act and mean it this time when they speak about eradicating this "cancer" by the roots. They said it but have not lived by their commitments since World War II. Not in Korea, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf. Every single time, things have been done half-way. In my humble opinion if they don't do it this time, they will indeed succeed in allowing our enemies to bring a real war targeting CIVILIANS not military personnel to this country. Let's also remember that no matter what additional and more stringent internal security measures are imposed, this country will continue to be ideally "open" (in comparison with other countries) to terrorism because of the inherent nature of our democratic system. The old saying of "we can run but we can't hide........" will apply. By the way, let's also remember that terrorism thrives where the most people congregate, namely, the big cities. For those of us that do not live in the suburbs, something to think about. Lots of love, Papi

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