Dear Friends,



	I write to you again out of concern that I might be
	misread as "nuke 'em Dan." While I indeed sought to
	bring us all to consider our REAL power, our nuclear
	power, as a factor in the equasion, delivered by our
	irresistable ICBMs, it was in the full expectation
	that the credible threat that we present to end our
	vulnerability to destruction by suicidal terror would
	bring the terror to an end.

	Medicine asks all physicians before acting to ask
	themselves: am I improving the situation with my
	intervention or might I be doing harm? As a medical
	student one gets the illusion that medicine is a great
	battle between doctor and disease. But the practice of
	medicine puts before the physician another dimension:
	the limitless suffering that is inflicted on man by
	disease. Most of the time, pathology is beyond our
	control; paliative treatment of suffering is all we
	can do. Once that is appreciated, one from then on
	forward invariable asks if his/her intervention will
	ameliorate or enhance that botomless suffering. Hence,
	the dictum: above all do no harm. This dictum puts the
	physician before a most vexing dilema, as often the
	prolongation of life is a tradeoff with enhancement of
	suffering. To avoid this disabling dilema, physicians
	follow standard process algorithms and leave the rest
	to the patient's will.

	President Bush would have been well served to consider
	that dilema. As the voice of the people, he must meet
	the common man's three post-Sept 11th demands: (a) get
	even; (b) end the insecurity; (c) return things to
	where they were on Sept. 10th. In essence, the
	President is asked by the people to "cure" them of
	this disease, of A SENSE OF TERROR, from which they
	suffer and under whose influence they cannot function.
	This means that he must act. 

	My first correspondence to you came last Saturday when
	I was made aware that the President had chosen to act.
	I felt that no action on his part could achieve his
	people's three demands. To these plebian
	considerations, he also had to integrate the demands
	of all the patrician interests that characterize the
	Republican Party. While the paralyzing impact of
	terror makes action necessary, the target is
	ultimately the lands from which eminates the bulk of
	the feul that runs the West. And, so the President
	must consider the three demands of the freightened and
	angered masses along with the limitations imposed by
	grander practical factors.

	Mr. Bush must also face the fact that none of our
	"allies" were hit as we were. Therefore, to join our
	coalition is to invite a threat that is not only
	unmanagable but would not exist for them if these
	nation broke with the Americans. Bin Laden has passsed
	the word that those Western states that keep clear of
	our Grand Alliance will be spared. How could a
	government, therefore, justify to its citizens that it
	has brought on them terrorism with which it cannot
	cope only in order to assist the only target of the
	terrorism, America.

	Then there are the Moslem states. Fragmented most
	skillfully by the European colonialists for about a
	century, so that they were powerless, subserviance to
	the West has now come to be seen as the greatest sin
	to illegitamizes a regime. Besides that, this terror
	campaign has been declared a "Jihad," a holy war. On
	would thus be betraying God and man by joining the
	Grand Alliance. As a result, Moslem states have
	followed a comical process of being in and out at the
	same time, actively assisting one side and then the
	other, so that, in sum, their contribution has to be
	counterproductive from our point of view, lest they be
	seen as-- more than traitors-- vile sinners.

	In sum then, the United States is alone. And-- until
	failure mixes with the cost in treasure and blood--
	united. But as costs rise-- Vietnam is an example--
	the finger of guilt will point every-which-way and
	domestic squables will dictate military policy. One
	cannot help but wonder, in light of the forboding
	precedence of defeat, if Mr. Bush has considered the
	dictum: above all do no harm. In other words, has he
	weighed the advantages and disadvantages of action as
	opposed to inaction?

	Please consider as the essential element of my
	position the view that if we do NOTHING about Sept
	11th; that, I believe, will enhance the credibility of
	our threat that should another major terrorist
	incident occur we will pulverize with nucleat-tipped
	ICBMs the locations where the Mullahs can be found.
	Our threat should be limited to incidents in the
	United States. All other acts against US instalations
	abroad should be met through the action of an
	international consortium whose objective it is to
	cut-off the Mullahs' "hands" with which they commit
	terror (such as bin Laden's organization-- one of
	several). Thus, bin Laden's fate is sealed, no matter
	what else happens. But there are better ways of
	getting this desert rat than with the top of the line
	of our forces. We cannot let others think that the
	best of what we have was needed to destroy the best of
	what they have. Better defence of our installations in
	coordination with our Grand Alliance would serve
	better the elimination of terrorism's "middle
	management." Failled efforts may school them well for
	the next time. But if we turn these into major
	embarassments as our superior covert operations
	achieve a high standard of competence under diplomatic
	support, success will be assured and the number of
	willing "martyrs" will decrease. But in such cases we
	must work slowly, steadily and quietly.

	Unfortunately, a very important secret is out. We can
	ONLY function as an open society and, therefore,
	cannot do for our instalations in-country what we can
	do for those abroad. Our vulnerability assures that
	dramatic assaults on our foreign instalations will
	serve as training tools rather than ultimate goals. So
	long as the Muslim War against the "Great Satan"
	continues, if we do nothing, America is the prime
	target. Our defencelessness insures that. It is almost
	comical how the sending of antrhax by mail can so
	disrupt American society. One can only imagine what
	awaits us when we are under viral attack. It takes
	many bacteria (which are living organisms and
	therefore tend to perish before they infect) to make
	people deathly sick. It only takes one virus (and
	since it is not a living organism it can survive under
	harsh circumstances) and for viruses there are no
	antibiotics. I also cringe in shame at how the turning
	of civilian aircraft into guided misilles is
	considered such a sohisticated operation-- just so as
	not to expose how wrecklessly unprepared were, AND
	ARE, the airlines. Stupid mistakes on the terrorists'
	part have been eiminated by on the job learning. We
	can only expect truly more sophisticated operations
	from here on in.

	This raises the question of whether Mr. Bushe's
	neither/nor response, above all, does no harm. We as a
	nation have suffered enough. If we deem whatever comes
	next to be terrorism's response to our air assault on
	Afghanistan, Mr. Bush will be held personally
	responsible. What then befalls him is nothing compared
	to the weakness that befalls the nation once this all
	becomes a political football. With mid-term elections
	one year away, one can easily forsee a terror-politics
	coordination to render America even more helpless than
	now, possibly pleading with the terrorists for
	"negotiations," as was done in 1968 after a major
	offensive in Vietnam.

	Time is NOT on our side. So what can we do?

	Let us recall that some two decades ago Khomeini
	sought to unite the Moslem World in a religious purge
	of itself. From our point of view, that meant to learn
	to live not wanting the global modernity we were
	offering. Previously, secular Pan-Arabism had its
	heroes. And their demise did cause some aggitation.
	But secular nationalism suffered from a
	self-limitation that never created a problem in the
	Middle East which we could not manage. Our
	insurmountable troubles began when the Moslem Youth
	was sought after in a religious crusade. I strongly
	recommend reading Ofira Seliktar's FAILING THE CRYSTAL
	BALL TEST (2000) for an analysis of America's
	inability to confront the two steps assault of  the
	Mullahs: redemtion of the faithful and attack on the
	Great Satan.

	Had any in our Government been less cynical, they
	would have seen the parallel between the moblization
	of Moslem youths, irrespective of sects or
	nationality, into a sort of Moslems sans frontieres,
	and the moblilization of Polish youth against the
	Soviets. Pope Paul, like Khomeini, called on them to
	sacrifice for faith instead of material things. Yet,
	we honored one and besmerched the other. In both cases
	secular states were helpless. The symbols of faith
	came to mean more than the sufffering inflicted by the
	state. Concequently, the resistance could not be
	quelled. As we go after bin Laden, we refuse to recall
	the Polish CP's lack of sucess killing by his Catholic
	counterparts. The more such priests died, the more
	youths came to sacrifice security and to face
	sufffering.

	The trouble with action is that if you undershoot, you
	lose miserably. It is very much like trying to kill a
	snake by stomping on its middle; you leave yourself
	vulnerable to its poisonous fangs. That is why I feel
	that we have no choise but to threaten the head. And,
	should our threat succeed, we have no choise but to
	co-exist with the Mullahs in the Muslim world. Just as
	JFK threatened the Soviets in the past (I thank Dolf
	Droge for the very interesting case-example)we must
	make clear that we hold them, the Mullahs, responsible
	should another major incident occur and will "nuke"
	them. In that way, we live under the threat of their
	irresistable power to terrorize the United States and
	they live under the threat of our irresistable power
	to wipe them and all their "holy sites" (I thank Mr.
	Phillip Karber for that consideration as an
	alternative to Teharan and Baggdad) off the face of
	the earth. We then live back in the MAD-- mutually
	assured destruction-- of the Cold War, as we did with
	the Soviets. And, we can hope that the Moslem peoples
	will, like the peoples of the Red Bloc, reverse this
	system, moving history backwards to Medieval times.

	The Taliban and the Mullahs are a Moslem World
	solution to Moslem World problems. It is their world
	and we must not interfere. Economic need on both sides
	will insure state-to-state accords and diplomacy. We
	have prevailed over Communism while dealing with them
	both in terms of cooperation and MAD; we must now
	prevail over the "martyrs for Allah" and the Mullahs;
	until then we must coexist in the same way. This can
	only be done, as in the Cold War, through credible
	deterrence. And yet, we cannot forget that our Cold
	War credibility would not have existed without our
	demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We might,
	therefore-- and by God I pray we don't-- be forced to
	demonstrate the power and feasability of our unique
	nuclear capablility. That may also serve to educate
	other potential threats.

	Our goal should be to insure the impenetrability of
	the continental United States. That's as much as we
	have been able to hope for since WWII. For the rest,
	it will continue to be a complex mix of diplomacy,
	trade and force for the forseable future. Above all we
	must recognize that in defending our shores we have no
	allies. We can only have allies on common interests.

	Our enemy is not drawable on organizational charts as
	was the Communist Bloc. The cells are loosesly bound
	and unbound and rebound based on the fascilitations of
	the Mullahs. We cannot change that now. That takes
	time and effort and lots of ups and downs. All we can
	do now is deter by convincing that to AGAIN attack the
	US means death. The rest, well, that's what we've got
	generals and diplomats for.