Mr. Blix clearly does not believe that the people in power here and in Britain were really interested in reviewing all of the facts before acting. Nothing he says is an indictment of the leadership of the USA and Britain in this war so much as a subtle nudge toward understanding a complex set of issues. In person Mr. Blix offers the assessment that this war has not made us all safer. He assesses that Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorism and hatred for the Western world. He accuses no one, but the information known before the war began accuses everyone in the chain of decision making. It accuses them of complicity in a profound failure to question adequately the possible outcomes of an unnecessary war.

Were there dirty tricks associated with this war and the effort to convince the people that it was necessary? While the evidence is not all in as yet; as we continue gathering it we should note that the preponderance of evidence coming out since the war began does not support this Administration's posturing about Iraq before the war. The blow struck by this fact has been softened by a complaisant press here and continuing defensive posturing by this Administration changing the point of the war from saving us at home from Saddam to saving Iraq from Saddam. Saddam is gone but neither Iraq nor the USA appear to be safer places for people to live now. If the point of this war was to make the world a safer place then you hardly have to look further than Spain to find out how untrue that premise has turned out to be. If we want to lead this world in a War on Terrorism, we have to expect that when the results of our failures are visited on them and their families, they will abandon our leadership for that of others. The vote in Spain is clearly a rejection of American Leadership in a war on terrorism by the Spanish People.

If you note that I am calling it a war on terrorism rather than a war on terror, it is because my mind rebels against the use of language that destroys understanding. Terror is an individual's emotional response to something unusually and immediately threatening. Terrorism is the use of violence to frighten people into capitulating with the aims of those perpetrating the violence. The people of Spain have not capitulated to the aims of Al Queda, to say so is to mock their pain and anger at this attack. They have chosen a leader that will not be so easily led by the goals of the USA and will be more aligned with those of the UN and other allies in the War against Terrorism. Terrorism cannot be ended by a war; it can only be ended by the resistance of brave and decent people everywhere to those who use it as a tactic. Those same people may also begin to resist those who wittingly or unwittingly cause terrorism by economic or political abuses of human beings. It is a mistake to ignore the part that those abuses play in empowering terrorism. That category of profound human abuse could easily turn out to include some of the policies we use in our dominant position in the world both economically and politically.

If anybody thinks people kill themselves in order to kill a few Israeli's or a few hundred Spaniards or a few thousand Americans without a reason then allow me to disabuse you of that idea. If you think that people who do those things to us hate us then you must reckon with the cause of that hatred. It would be convenient to base it on insanity or "bloody mindedness" as the Brits used to when they were the greatest world power. There is an equation of understanding that one must assemble of ones enemy in order to defeat them. We must understand our terrorist enemies in order to defeat them and win freedom from terrorism. Freedom from terror is another thing entirely and is derived from an exceptional acceptance of one's own mortality. It is far more important to understand ones enemies in the world than it is to be able to overpower them all at once. In fact it is always impossible to overpower all of your enemies at once without committing immense resources if you continually turn yourself into a target for hatred. Power is the means to an end only when it can be accurately applied to a process that can possibly succeed at attaining that end.

If you are trying to bend an iron bar it makes sense to heat it before you apply force unless you can move as much mass as it takes to bend that bar cold. One system requires some charcoal or coal, a hammer and anvil and a forge, some skill and some muscle. The other requires an expensive and massive machine to strike the bar with sufficient force to shape it to your purpose. Terrorism has succeeded in at least one way already, the terrorists have our attention. It is interesting that the only thing that everyone opposed to terrorism, which is everyone but the terrorists and a few supporters, agrees with is that we must not negotiate with terrorists. Wait, my brain is sending me a newsflash, negotiation is not appeasement! Killing terrorists is far more satisfying than talking with them; I can easily grant you that. Talking with them beats cleaning up the bodies their actions leave behind. Only if you are afraid of your inability to control your impulse to give in to terrorism should you prohibit negotiation as a means of defeating terrorists.

Time ticks away one precious second after another. When will we get it that the Saudi's who died in the World Trade Center attacks, and in the other planes were our enemies because they thought that they had a reason for hating us. Understanding that fact does not weaken us, it gives us added strength in the conflict. If your enemy knows you and you do not know them equally intimately you are weaker for that lack of knowledge. Terrorists are criminals, not holy warriors or insane irrational advocates for death and destruction without a cause. They believe that they are something more and that their goals are pure. Understanding those goals will not necessarily make them go away, but it will help us defeat them. Particularly it will help us where those goals of terrorists oppose the good of our efforts to create a better world. I am not giving up my faith in our desire to make this world a better place. We are one of the few nations in human history that has really worked to accomplish that high goal much of the time. We are not always clear on how to approach that goal of a better world; but our support for this President's attempt to establish democracy in Iraq is not divided at all. Where we are divided is on his ability to accomplish establishing a stable Democratic government in Iraq using the people and means that he is using today.

We are a nation of people who believe in living a life that uses effort to produce value. It is imperative that we turn our minds to the effort to understand these terrorists as our enemies and as criminals both. They are debasing the values of Islam in the eyes of the world by destroying the lives and property of innocents in their assault on our sensibilities and our way of life. They believe that we will not fight them effectively because they believe that we are weak. The lies of the members of the Bush Administration about Iraq that led us into war reinforced that belief about our weakness as a people. They do not fear our leaders because we can fire them any time we like. If they are to at the very least respect us as opponents in this conflict, we must treat our leaders with as little mercy when they fail us. We must demand a higher standard of leadership than the Bush Administration has reached if we want to succeed in our high goals for our nation and the world. We must demand truth from our leadership if we want these opponents to understand that the people here are strong. We must also expect that our leaders do not use any understandable fear we may exhibit in the face of terrorism to manipulate us politically in any way.

The reaction to 9/11 by this nation and the Bush Administration is their greatest joy. We are more afraid today than we need to be if we are to defeat these criminals. They can only confound an over reactive enemy that credits them with more power than they actually have. We reorganized our government and raised the potential for oppression here because of their one successful attack on our soil. We have now fought two wars behind that attack and neither has added to our security substantially even though we easily won them both. We gave Al Queda new power by using the amount of force to depose Saddam that we did. We eliminated their likely enemy, Saddam, and raised the ire of their potential recruits to a fever pitch. These are not victories in a war against terrorism, they are giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

If we want to win a world free of terrorism it will take exquisite international cooperation which cannot be attained by us loudly demanding the role of leader. It cannot promote cooperative efforts to run down these criminals, when we accuse our allies of weakness if they disagree with us; and the UN of irrelevance when it refuses to endorse a war when we demand it. It will not promote international cooperation when we mock the pain of the people of Spain in their time of anguish because they have rejected Bush's leadership in the war against terrorism.

It has not promoted international cooperation to ignore the interests of the South Korean people in peace with the North. We are not promoting stability in that region in the face of our failure to seriously attempt to negotiate a settlement with the North regarding their growing threat to peace and stability. We need to do that soon due to their possession and continuing production of nuclear weapons. We must solve these real and difficult problems if we seriously want the world to follow our lead. War will not solve them. Nor will our military power alone provide us with the means to resolve the issues before us in the world outside our borders. That is why changing your mind when it is appropriate is an asset as a leader of this great nation. Arguing with yourself is a prerequisite for having something in your mind to use when you are in need of changing it appropriately. God bless and keep you all safe in this world of terrorism and our apparent lack of interest in understanding our enemies as a means of defeating them.