Dear Pops, 

First off I'm glad that we were able to end our previous discussion in a civil manner. I hope that you will print this out and read it carefully. I think it goes some distance to explain my feelings on the current crisis. Politically I am going to stand against violence as a solution to a problem every time. When I was a kid I remember that you had a book of poems titled: Peace. I thought this meant that you were an advocate of peace. You are a painter of landscapes, an artist. Someone who is supposed to see detail and not just observe. 

We must look for solutions to problems, rather than medicating the symptoms. The United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world. We did not achieve this by being nice. Nor fair. We did not even achieve this only by hard work. We achieved it on the sweat and blood of others, and we continue to use our own people, the world and its resources to assure our comfortable life. Our business and military have worked together to suppress freedom around the world so that we can enjoy it here. I enjoy my banana, coffee and tank of gas because somebody else got paid a bowl of rice a day to harvest it. Until we pay the real cost for things there can be no peace in the world.

This attack is a great tragedy. And of course our government responds with propaganda like "good versus evil" and "cowards" and like that. This is natural. It is a posture of defense. Fine. But what I cannot support is speculative violence. Bomb bomb bomb. Kill immigrants. (Angela saw a white supremacist dude (note: white power tattoo) driving around with FUCK ISLAM, Kill ‘em All” written on his car window.) "Flatten Kabul." Bomb defenseless peasants. This is the rhetoric spewing from the AM radio. This does not solve problems. We have been bombing Iraq for 11 years. We bombed Iraq every day this month. And it may turn out they are behind this terrorist act. How many 100,000’s of Iraquis have we killed in the last 11 years with our planes? How many children have we subjected to famine and disease? According to the UN and Amnesty International the numbers of children starved by the sanctions on Iraq are in the millions. “Saddam Hussein is evil.” He had a border dispute with Kuwait, he illegally invaded the country. We reversed that. Of course when Israel illegally invaded Lebanon, the US lent support. Of course we created and supported Saddam when we wanted to inflict terror on Iran.

In fact the US itself has illegally invaded numerous countries (Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Philippines...) and tried to overthrow elected governments all over the world. We have condoned torture and assassination. This creates animosity. And we do it for one reason-- corporate access to cheap labor. Greed.

In this case we may find that Germany harbored the terrorist cell. Or San Diego. Or maybe Pakistan. Pakistan is a nuclear power (albeit with limited missile delivery capability.) Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. All these countries hold political grudges against Western powers. The US supports a king in Saudi Arabia, even though the people cry out for democracy. Another reason this bin Laden hates the US. We may take out our anger on Afghanistan, a place whose people have been devastated by war for more than 20 years.

Senator Biden said we need to act sooner than later, “even if the evidence we have would not stand up in a court of law.” 66% of Americans in a CBS survey said we should attack someone even if it means killing innocent civilians. And you say, “well they killed our civilians.” In kindergarten we learned that 2 wrongs don't make a right. And in the complex world we learn that wrongs lead to other wrongs to other wrongs... (See Yugoslavia.)

I told my students when I was a teacher, don't retaliate. Their gang killed your brother, but the violence has to end. 

I don't understand why you say an American life is more valuable than any other life? You said 58,000 people were killed in the Vietnam War. This is what I’m talking about. Between one and three MILLION people were killed in the Vietnam War. I don't value race, creed or nationality, I value humanity. Human life. The world must take precedent. This kind of selfish thinking is what lead to the current tragedy. Americans think they can ignore the world. Sit in their jucuzzis sipping champagne. 

Now that the senators are debating starting a new ground war in the middle east it is relevant to ask “Why did those 58,000 Americans die in Vietnam?” The only physical reason we can see is so that we could protect the rights of our companies to have access to cheap labor and natural resources like rubber. We said we wanted to “stop communism.” Well why? Because communists tend to believe in kicking out foreign countries and taking control of their own resources. 58,000 impoverished Americans died. How many senators’ sons? George Bush like Clinton wormed out of it. Proving once again that there is no real difference between democrat and republican. The only difference on Capitol Hill this week is when to bomb. 

MSNBC and other news sources have reported that bin Laden was set up in the terror business by the CIA, when Afghanistan was fighting to repel the Soviet invasion. Senator Orin Hatch said he would do it again, because of his hate for communism. We create our own monsters. The CIA calls it “blowback.” Saddam Hussein was our ally, just like Panama's Norreiga was trained in the US by the CIA. During the Afghan war the US made peace with Russia and withdrew support for the Afghan rebels. Another reason why this bin Laden hates the US.

The United States has a lot to celebrate and share, but it has more to learn from the world. 
The smartest thing I heard on the commentary tonight came from author David Halberstam. He noted that the most important change the culture of the US can and should make concerns "rushing around." Americans are as impatient as they are greedy. We cannot wait. I hate waiting. When you hate waiting, when you rush that means you only have time for headlines and surface details and you never look at anything deeply. America is frivolous. We love frivolity. And we mistakenly call it freedom. 

We trust our leaders to make decisions regarding foreign policy, but their motivation is not-- what is best for the world. Only what is best for the bottom line. I think it’s idealistic to hope that America’s citizenry will make any real move to become more aware of the world. We are frivolous to the core.

Listen to the lyrics of popular music from the 40’s to the present-- frivolous. 
Look at presidential politics since Kennedy and Nixon-- frivolous. 
Look at American food-- McDonald’s? -- frivolous and self-destructive.
Our education system sucks because parents don't read. If parents don't read, kids won't read. They will watch tv, which is, and I know you know this -- frivolous. 

If we asked any American on the street to name the president of Brazil (a country nearly as large as the US) they couldn't do it. Last week if we asked that same American who Donald Rumsfeld was, he would look at us blankly. Three weeks from now if you ask who Donald Rumsfeld or John Ashcroft are you are likely to be answered with a dumbfounded expression.

Our frivolity is a product of our isolationist attitude. An attitude that came into being with the beginning of the country. Jefferson and Washington debated it. Yet there is a bright side. People in NYC are not looting, not killing Muslims (an Indian Sikh was mistakenly murdered in Phoenix). NYC is really the freest place in the world because of it's diversity. People of different languages and cultures live together every day.

The Jews in NYC should teach the Jews in Israel how to get along, rather than the Jews in Israel teaching us how to deal with terrorist threats. If you will recall Israel was set up in the middle of Palestine after W.W.II. We made a commitment to support them and we have. We should as the Jewish people have been persecuted throughout the history of the world. We have also used them as an excuse to keep a strong military presence in the Persian Gulf. Yes to protect access to the oil. We have bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. (Maybe Jordan too.)

The US has military bases in foreign countries.

Doesn't that sound odd to you? What if China had a military base in Chicago? We still have a military base in Cuba. We have had one there for 100 years. We helped them gain independence from Spain so that we could move in. So that US companies could take over the Cuban sugar industry. And we made slaves of them. The farmers in Cuba, like those in many South American countries, were forced only to grow sugar for export while they were starving. Rich Americans used Cuba as a whorehouse. Castro and Che Guevarra changed that. They set in motion a violent revolution that hadn’t been seen since 1776 and 1789. The Cuban people are poor but they work for themselves. But why do we still have a base there? It's only 90 miles from Florida.

Why not put the base in Miami? Oh because rich Americans live a comfortable life in Miami. It's the same reason that 17 and 18 year old Mexican army kids patrol Baja with M-16's. We could put the US army on the border, but we don't want to live that way. In fact we have laws against it. We want to preserve the illusion of freedom. 

I've heard predictions from the TV pundits that this is the end of America’s comfortable life. Right now it's hard to tell if these are the same doomsayers that called 800 dead in the pentagon when maybe it's only 100+. The ones who erroneously reported 30,000 dead in NYC when it may turn out to be around 6,000. Imagine the end of our comfortable life. Imagine paying the same price for gas that the rest of the world pays every day. Imagine paying the real price for a banana. A cost that would ensure whoever grew it a living wage. Soon we will pay the real price for air travel. Post-terror, it boggles the mind that we would pay an airport security worker $7hr. It boggles the mind that Dulles Airport has a 80-90% turnover rate in it’s employees. Of course if we had to break down the hourly rate for teachers... pennies.

We spent 30 billion dollars on defense last year. And the republicans in congress are calling for more. Not because they fear a missile attack from North Korea, a country where people don’t even eat every day, but because their old friends get rich off the defense industry. Cheney got rich off the gulf war. The Bush family was already rich. Bush II. The man is a baffoon and a puppet. He called the terrorists “those folks.” He is a symbol of the frivolity of America.

His presidency should force us to question the nature of our democracy. There are 270 million Americans. The American dream says that anyone of them could grow up to be president. What are the odds then that a father and son pulled it off. Even though the father wasn’t popular enough to get re-elected. Adams and Adams. Roosevelt and Roosevelt. Maybe it’s not a monarchy, but is definitely a plutocracy. Government by the rich and powerful. You would think that the rich people in America would have more foresight than to participate in a war. You would think that they would want to do everything to encourage access to all markets for American goods. You would think. We have heard their voices encourage us to return to “business as usual.” Well I will continue my business as usual as well, that means trying to live a life that doesn’t cause harm to others. It’s a life of a tight belt, conservation, compassion and expanding the constraints of freedom. 

In the end I think that The War on Terrorism, will mimic the War on Drugs and fail for the same reason. American people think that they can solve problems “out there” instead of dealing with them at home. We gave the Taliban something like 53 million dollars to “fight opium production.” The Taliban is a terrible fascist government that stones women to death in public squares for being outside of the house without their husbands. In Columbia we support a ruthless right-wing dictatorship. We give them money to stop the production of cocaine in the region. Of course they conveniently use the money to put down their opposition. To destroy debate. America supports this. We believe that the best control in the developing world is a strong hand. At the School of the Americas we train men that return to their countries to run death and torture squads. Yet at home we refuse to ask the question: why do so many people turn to these drugs? What is the empty spot in their lives that illegal drugs and legal ones like alcohol fill?

The hysteria for war seems as if it will lead to more alliances with disreputable characters. The first thing the CIA and the FBI asked for was a lifting of recent restrictions on working with known human rights abusers. We want to hire thugs and murderers to spy for us. This is more than a clear cut case of guilt by association. It is the same guilt accrued by the use of US helicopter gunships against Palestinians.

At home we are being asked to trade some liberty for security, ounce for ounce. At least until this crisis is over congress has given leeway to the FBI to listen to our cellular phone calls and monitor our email without due process. Conservative columnist and talkshow hosts have called for the silencing and arrest or left-wing intellectuals. Must we really disregard our most basic rights to protect them?

It is my job as a writer and a citizen to counteract the stupid propaganda that feeds rash action. CNN’s videotape of a Palestinian woman rejoicing at news of the terror has been questioned as a fabrication. Whether or not it is a stock video from 1991, is irrelevant. The same footage was shown over and over again in an attempt to dehumanize the enemy. If the footage is real, then maybe you can understand why. Perhaps that woman has seen entire generations of her family murdered by the West. Perhaps the AM radio talkshow hosts calling to level Kabul and “bomb Afghanistan back to the stone ages” can see that they are no better. Pain is released in many ways. A liberal writer makes an observation that if the terrorists wanted to punish Bush they missed the mark in attacking democratic strongholds of NY and DC; in the same token the AM radio host jokes that he wouldn’t take out any property or life insurance policies in Iraq this week. It’s the same pain being released.

It is also my job to counteract the voices of ignorance. Columnists like Ann Coulter saying we should “bomb Afghanistan and convert them all to Christianity” is one of the most heinous examples. It shows how even educated American citizens do not understand why this country was started in the first place. This is not a Christian country. The first amendment allows freedom of religion. It provides for the separation for church and state primarily because the church didn’t like being told how to run things by the monarchs in England. That separation is to protect religious autonomy. And we see Bush trying to give federal money to organizations that discriminate against people. The other idiocy of speech award goes the Rev. Falwell, who has since retracted his asinine statement blaming the terrorist attack on “abortions, homosexuals and the ACLU.” Coulter and Falwell are the religious counterparts of the Taliban. Their relationship to Islam and Christianity is equivalent. In fact both groups call themselves fundamentalists. And both groups inspire terror. The suicide bombers are no more examples of Islam than Timothy McVeigh is an example of Christianity. And they are no bigger demons than a fanatic who bombs an abortion clinic. Both have decided that violence is the only recourse.

Ghandi showed in India that non-violence can be effective to overcome an enemy. Martin Luther King showed that peaceful protest can change the mind of a nation. But the forces of capitalist greed are better armed and better entrenched than ever. It is more difficult to persuade than to blow something up. It is more difficult to resist killing when your sisters and brothers have been killed. It is my opinion that we must resist violent action. I don't think the kind of retaliation the President has proposed will prevent future terrorist attacks or assuage our anger regarding this one.

A better strategy for defense must include a reexamination of America's disregard of world opinion. I’m not just talking about ignoring decisions by the World Court that go against us, or even our odd combination of ruling over and non-participation at the UN, but sheer flouting of real attempts other countries are making to deal with hard problems. Kyoto, Durban, and our intention to break the antiballistic missile treaty are some recent examples of our utter disregard for humanity. 

sincerely,

your son
Jazz