I think you have misunderstood my intentions and maybe my comments shouldn't have been connected to Eric's. For that I apologize. Eric's paragraph seemed like a good reference to show how people on the other side of any conflict may view their situation.

My comment about it scaring me obviously didn't properly fit my thoughts in the rest of the post but I can't take that back at this point. But the responses that talk about responding with force and accepting the deaths of innocent people scare me.

Now for the point of my post. I was trying to show how that paragraph of thoughts, which I hear as an undercurrent in many news stories etc, can be applied to many other horrible situations in our world today (Iraq was used as an example but it could apply to people in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Israel and Palestine ...). The point is that horrendous acts are being committed all the time. Some of them happen over a longer time period than the events on Sept 11 but the end result is the same: Many innocent people die because of the beliefs and actions of some person or group. There is very little different in the innocence of the people in New York etc compared to those in many other places.

We have to get over the fact that it is now happening closer to home, and start doing everything we can to stop atrocities from happening in the future. If we can't respond in a civilized manner why should we expect others to respond to us in a civilized manner?

Rob J D