Please don't let that deter you. You are right, of course. Many a time I have posted something here in innocence that was taken quite differently by somebody else. It happens in a public forum. Especially one as big as this. A thick skin is an absolute requirement around here! But please don't take my earlier comment as a repudiation of your post, I know it was well-intentioned.
Terrorism has plagued our society for decades now. Presidents other than Ronald Reagan have had to make tough choices, and in those choices, they are often damned if they do and damned if they don't. Maybe Reagan had good reason not to avenge the Beirut bombings that killed so many Marines. Only he and maybe a few close advisors can answer that. I sincerely hope that President Bush follows through with his war on terrorism. Even if it may cost him the presidency. This terrorism must be stopped. As Winston Churchill once said about the British government during the Nazi buildup in 1934:
We must face the storm. We will have to encounter every form of unfair attack. Our motives will be misrepresented. We will be calumniated and called warmongerers. Every kind of attack will be made upon us by many powerful, numerous, and extremely vocal forces in this country. We are going to get it anyway. Why, then, not fight for something that will give us safety? Why, then, not insist that the provision for the [military] should be adequate, and then, however severe may be the censure and however strident the abuse which we have to face, at any rate there will be the satifactory result - that His Majesty's Government will be able to feel that in this, of all matters the prime responsibility of a Government, we have done our duty.
Churchill said this during a time when the Allies (including Britain) stood by and watched as Hitler's Germany broke the Versailles Treaty and began assembling the war machine that would result in so many millions of needless deaths. We had the power in the mid-1930s to stop Hitler. But we did not do so. Instead, we sat around and talked of "Peace for our time." Pacifism and appeasement were the rule. And we suffered greatly.
Churchill did finally become Prime Minister of England, but only when it was too late to stop the war. By then, France, the "peace-loving pacifist" nation, had already fallen. And we had to expend the lives of hundreds of thousands of American and British soldiers to bail them out.
And how was Churchill rewarded by the good people of England when the war was won? He was bounced out of office. But it wasn't re-election that Churchill wanted. It was the saving of his country. We need more leaders like this today and I hope President Bush and even Prime Minister Blair are up to the task today.
Semper Fi!
WFTR
Bill