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Hi. Maybe some of you have seen this already, or something much like
it. But I think it and other messages like it are worth repeating
over
and over, especially now.

the following is a proposal put forward by Alex Levine and the End
the
Arms
Race.

=======================
Friends,
The following from Alex Levine would make much more sense and would
be
a
much more rational response accomplishing a great deal more than does
the
call for military retaliation and war. It would be heartening and
inspiring
to have such a proposal printed in newspapers around the world.

Yours in Peace,
Peter Coombes

++++++++++++++++++++++
RETALIATION--A MODEST PROPOSAL

For the past two days, since the fateful events of the morning of
September 11, we have been considering what should be done. It has
generally been assumed that when we discovered the identities of the
perpetrators, we would make some effort to bring them before our
courts,
and that when that failed, we would bring the full force of our
military
to bear on them, and on those who harbor them. If we, as a nation,
are
to show true leadership in the fight against terrorism, we must indeed
be forceful. But if our fight is to have any hope of success, we must
also be creative. We must think outside Hammurabi's box in our
pursuit
of justice, and peace.

Our tremendous ingenuity as a species seems strangely absent when it
comes to confronting threats from each other. Failed strategies are
repeated, and repeated, though history has demonstrated their
futility.
Athenian treatment of the Melians did not win them the Peloponnesian
War. The American Civil War was won before Sherman's torching of
Atlanta, not because of it. Our Israeli friends have gained nothing
from their policy of collective punishment--not only have they failed
to
make peace with their neighbors, or even to guarantee their own
safety,
they have implicated their allies. The efforts of Palestinian
militants
now seem less likely than ever to win for their families the safe and
secure hearths we all desire.

Our reactions to violence are repeated with such dismal regularity
because they are instinctive. But we are not, or not exclusively,
creatures of instinct. Can we do better? Perhaps. First we must ask
what we hope to gain from our response to Tuesday's attacks. What we
want, it seems, is to end the threat of terrorism, to restore our
feelings of safety, to assert our national self-confidence, and yes,
to
impress upon the world the extent of our wealth and power. The
following proposal has, I believe, a good chance of helping to achieve
all of these goals. It provides no guarantee of an end to the
violence--and the only such guarantee within our power is the complete
destruction of humanity--but it offers some hope of relief from the
cyclic destruction of the past.

Like other solutions now being contemplated, this proposal will be
massive, expensive, and dangerous for the service personnel whose task
it will be to implement it. It will involve harnessing the full
resources of our military, and the vast riches of our civilian
economy.
It will take some time to prepare.

Once preparations are complete, here is how I envision it working:
our
bombers fly low over Kabul, Qandahar, Gaza, Aman, Khartoum, Bagdad,
Beirut, over all the surrounding countryside, over villages and
refugee
camps. They will be in harm's way, but we will not ask them to
linger.

Their bomb bays open, jettisoning their cargo, and our planes return
swiftly to base for reloading. Below their fading contrails,
parachutes
appear, each supporting a crate. When these touch ground, there will
perhaps be some panic. But when the crates fail to explode, the
daring
and curious approach, ready to prize them open. Here is what they
will
find: water purifiers, iodine tablets, baby formula, portable
generators, machine tools, farm implements, olives, salt, shoes,
cloth,
school books, copies of the Koran, antibiotics, antimalarials,
antiseptics, rice, radios, kerosene heaters, power cable, sewing
machines, calculators, batteries, solar panels, diapers, safety pins,
hair pins, bicycles, candy, toothbrushes, sunscreen, saffron, dried
apricots, notebooks, ledgers, ball-point pens, refrigerators, baby
bottles, stoves, art supplies, soccer balls, tents, telescopes, and
blankets.

There will be some who, in anger or disdain, incite their neighbors to
gather our gifts and burn them. In the end, though, as wave after
wave
of cargo arrives, more practical voices will prevail. Consumables
will
not, of course, last forever. But the other things may make a
difference for years to come, especially if, like the Berlin Airlift,
they are followed with a Marshall Plan.

In recent years, in our strategic bombardments of Iraq or Serbia, we
have talked about "sending a message," to Saddam Hussein, or to
Milosevic. The truth is, a bomb casing is a poor housing for any
message worth listening to. We must tell those who despise us more
than
merely, if they cross us, we will destroy them. We must tell them
that,
if the world order from which we profit is oppressive to them, that
was
never our intention, that what we desire for them is nothing less than
the liberty and prosperity we ourselves enjoy.

It is also true that people with nothing left to lose will always,
inevitably behave like people with nothing left to lose. Force and
the
threat of force have no hold over them. It is within our power to do
with our largesse what can never be done with arms.

No political leader who follows this course of action will ever be
accused of weakness, or failure to act decisively. Indeed it strikes
me
as demanding courage of the highest order.

It is possible that, given the title of this proposal, or its
contents,
or the admitted and unabashed sentimentality of its tone, it will be
taken in the spirit of jest. If so, that is not a bad thing. In
times
like these, we all need something to laugh about. But if there are
those who find in this notion, or others like it, something more than
a
melancholy joke, then that is a better thing. To lose hope for a
better
world is to live in a worse one.

Peace and Love.
Alex Levine