VIOLENCE BEGETS MORE VIOLENCE

I do not wish to partake in a 'that disaster was more dramatic than this
disaster' competition, but to many victims of previous disasters the events
of September 11 would not seem the most dramatic disaster since World War
II [Peter Clack Canberra Sunday Times October 7 p17].

There are common threads connecting many of them. In too many of them
today's disaster grew naturally out of the reaction to yesterday's
disaster. Also, we have helped fund them by creating the world's biggest
black market - illicit drugs.

The Holocaust helped trigger the violent dispossession of Palestinians, who
reacted violently against Israel, whose present Prime Minister commanded a
force that massacred innocent and guilty alike in the Beirut refugee camps,
whose survivors triggered September 11, and so on.

Fear of communism triggered the Vietnam war, which engulfed Gambodia, which
unleashed Pol Pot. Waco triggered Timothy McVeigh's assault on Oklahoma,
and whereas he was executed the officials who were responsible for Waco
went free.

Violence triggers violent reaction which triggers more violence. And each
successive violence is more costly than the violence that preceded it.

If we spent a small portion of the future cost of the War on Terror on
enabling Afghanistan to become habitable again, and in clearing the refugee
camps of the Middle East and Pakistan, it just might break the fatal
thread, and might stop the flood of refugees from washing up on our shores.

PETER WATNEY, Holt