M. Alrutian:

Thank you for your views. I am happy to receive "a massage from an Arab man" (Just don't try anything funny with those hands ! Or did you perhaps mean "a message" ?)

The spelling is a little wonky, and took a bit of deciphering. I would be interested in knowing who "Fokouyama" is (what did he write ?").

For the others I assume "Bros Wale s" = Bruce Willis; Mill Gibson = Mel Gibson; and the "Walls in The brave heart" = William Wallace the Scottish patriot, played in Brave Heart by Gibson.

Still, your spelling in English is better than my spelling in Arabic. In fact I don't even speak Arabic. The only words of Arabic I know are Koran, Hadith, Bint ... and Goulash. And I'm not even sure that the last word really is Arabic !

Still, I get your point: you are a person that loves his children, as many Americans also do, who lives in the same world, sees the same beauty, the same moon, has the same wishes for his children, friends and land (for happiness, success, peace, etc...) With so much in common, so much "humanity" in common, why can we not just live in peace ?

You are a man of peace -- or so it would seem from your message. And you are asking -- rhetorically of Bush, but really, of the U.S. in general -- why can't we also be Men of Peace ? I admire people like you. But not everyone is like you. There are men who are violent because they can be -- as a means to power, as a means to take, and so on. There are men who are violent because violence was done to them -- though these men usually pass the violence on, rather than returning it to those who did harm to them in the first place.

There are even those who do violence because they disagree with others over how much respect should be given to Mohammed's cousin ! (His cousin Ali, that is.)

To answer the question once asked by Rodney King ("Can't we all just get along?"). No. We can't. Only some of us can -- and those who can appear to be the minority. I agree with you that this is sad, tragic, terrible. But it is the way it is.

This is not to defend Bush, of course -- as a chowderheaded, incompetent war-mongerer with a fundamental disrespect for knowledge or dissenting views he will almost certainly go down in history as our worst president ever -- except for his great (and opportunistic) ability to manipulate public opinion, and to escape accountability.

Still, I would hardly recommend just "laying oneself down before the enemy and appealing to his mercy". Sure, we could have just surrendered to the japanese instead of using the atom bomb. Read sometime what they did to the chinese civilians when they took the city of Nanking. Or to the prisoners captured after the Battle of Bataan. Or how they treated war prisoners and native civilian slave labor throughout asia -- try looking up Sandakan in Wikipedia (2,500 prisoners in 1944 -1,800 Australian, 700 British -- only six survivors in the end, all Australians who escaped into the jungle)

Still, I value your perspective -- any perspective that works against just dismissively demonizing others...or especially entire groups of "others"

I do have a few concerns about Islam, however, that I don't think you really touch on -- or perhaps I should say I have a few questions or comments... for a future post, perhaps. But just looking at others as individuals, rather than as "Arabs' or "Westerners", or "Palestinians" (or "Israelis"!) is a strong step towards peace ... even if just peace at an individual level...