ATTACKS ON WORLD TRADE CENTER, PENTAGON SPARK COMMENT

I was not surprised by the Sept. 11 attacks, but, like others, I too can
only try to "write out" this madness.

Now I just feel more and more like Cassandra - ever since at least the late
'70s I could not understand why Americans did not believe that the
repeatedly declared terrorist jihad was for real.

Over and over we took direct hits with hundreds of lives lost and countless
others held hostage and tortured. Why did civilized nations wait until it
was too late to fight against this evil?

We now are killed by the weapons and other support that we gave to one
corrupt regime after another, while waging a farcical drug war that has
destroyed more civil liberties and harmless Americans than anything else in
our history.

This millennial Armageddon does indeed seem to be a war of biblical
proportions, as one commentator noted.

How awful that only unspeakable tragedy can unite us.

Can we truly defeat those who live only to slaughter us?

Why can't we turn the unconstitutional DEA into the T(errorism)EA,
especially since opium is one of Osama bin Laden's main exports?

That would be one way of proving that our leadership has finally sobered up
enough to face the real world, not some puritanical neverland that makes
silly fools and hypocritical liars out of everyone involved in it.

C.L. Maxwell
Madisonville, Tenn.