I don't know about you all, but I completely missed this, an editorial in the Washington Post by Burton Lee III on July 1:

It's precisely because of my devotion to country, respect for our military and commitment to the ethics of the medical profession that I speak out against systematic, government-sanctioned torture and excessive abuse of prisoners during our war on terrorism. I am also deeply disturbed by the reported complicity in these abuses of military medical personnel. This extraordinary shift in policy and values is alien to my concept of modern-day America and of my government and profession.

[...]

America cannot continue down this road. Torture demonstrates weakness, not strength. It does not show understanding, power or magnanimity. It is not leadership. It is a reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb to conduct unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States.

(via Red Rabbit at Musings & Migraines)

Swerve Left has six ways we can reduce terrorism right now.

Check them out.

Robert Pape has an interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times today about terrorist attacks since 9/11. No surprise; the vast majority of attackers were from Saudi Arabia. Make sure to check out the graphic.

Here it is, two days after another incomprehensible day. The count goes up, as we expected it would. Statistics have a grimness about them.

Hurricane Dennis has killed dozens in our south waters and it's headed toward the gulf coast. My friends in New Orleans are boarding up their windows, packing up their things, watching the weather channel and waiting for another tropical storm, which often damage the city as much as hurricanes because of all the water they release. The ocean's waters have warmed along with everything else, so here it is, early July, and a category four storm, the earliest occurrence on record, has pillaged Haiti and Cuba. I drove down Lake Shore Drive yesterday, passed two double-buses, and I thought of those passengers in London and the violence that came to them -- orchestrated chaos, controlled randomness; so completely different than the violence brought upon by nature, though destruction results from both of them.

Last fall we fled two hurricanes, went up to our friends' house in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Checking the news and weather every hour or so to see the storm's trajectory, we both felt a certain amount of dread mixed with excitement. What would happen if it really hit? My god! The awesomeness of it all! In between we hung out with our friends and their two daughters, talking about suicidal poets and the military (somehow it made sense). It was during our second visit that Miranda, the youngest daughter, drew the picture of Casey and me that I have above my navigator links.

Passing those buses and thinking about our brothers and sisters in London, I remembered my initial reaction to 9/11: it was an act of criminals, not a state, who had no goals outside of killing and destruction. I thought of the suicidal hijackers as having the same mindset as some fighters I'd run across over the years who had an insatiable appetite for fighting and violence. Some were in law enforcement and prided themselves on being as sociopathic as the criminals they arrested. As one told me, "You roll with the dogs long enough you're bound to get fleas." What an excuse for bad behavior, I thought. And given the stories he told me, he behaved very, very badly. I assumed that the 9-11 killers and their leader, bin Laden, loved the fight for the fight's sake and had no real political goals.

My first bare-knuckle competition was in Costa Rica. I was a brown belt and in order to get my black, I had to compete. I had an aversion to it from the get go because I'd found I was quick to anger and thought I had enough aggression in me already. I didn't need to encourage it by fighting. And then, of course, there was the whole idea of hurting someone on purpose, and possibly getting hurt myself, though in all honesty that was the least of my worries. I'd had to spar against men significantly larger than me for four years. I was tough and that kind of toughness can make you foolishly fearless.

The climactic rise of aggression that you feel when you fight or even spar hard is addictive. It is based in instinct and reflex, both cultivated through training and practice, and made sacred through ritual. The uniform, the ring, the timed rounds. All make you feel as if you are rising above mere human existence and entering into something holy and extraordinary. The training is essential; if you can't let your body take over, if your mind muddles your perceptions and distracts you, you find yourself hurt, or worse, humiliated. It's a lesson everyone who has ever trained to fight learns. I can imagine it wouldn't be hard to train people to do what you want them to do if you understand the addictive nature of rising above yourself and unleashing that fear of mortality.

In Costa Rica, I fought after a close friend of mine, a determined fighter who was so slight she seemed delicate, though of course she wasn't. As the tournament was like most others, she was forced to fight the largest, most experienced fighter at the tournament, a woman who happened to be the student of the tournament's sponsor. I watched her fight and grew more angry with every kick, punch. My friend lost on decision after two grueling rounds. When I got into the ring next, I unfurled my anger on my opponent. I kicked and punched and chased her around the ring. She gave up in about a minute.

The curious thing was how little I slept that night. My dreams were riddled with violence -- I imagined fighting the larger girl the next day, taking her down on the mat and choking her. I imagined grabbing her head and kneeing her until she was broken. I imagined all of this out of revenge for my friend, and, I think, out of the aggression that had grown in me by fighting that day. I was afraid of myself. This is probably what separated me from some of the people I trained with, who were made more hungry by this feeling. The next day I told my trainer about it and he reminded me that this was sport, not reality, and that the girl I had beaten the day before trained just like me and knew what she was getting into. This made me feel better, but I was still relieved when the girl I was supposed to fight dropped out of the tournament because of an injury she'd received fighting my friend. I was afraid of what I might have done to her, what we might have done to each other, had we fought that afternoon.

There is something alluring about violence and destruction, at least in the abstract. Remember Chris Hedges' book, "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning"? Even he, a journalist and a man of reason, was seduced by the adrenaline flood brought upon by constant danger. Our fear of death is so overwhelming that to combat it some people embrace death and glorify it. They feel they must confront their own mortality every moment in order to feel their lives have any worth at all. Some find even more worth in death. They perverse death into something that can be divided into honorable/dishonorable, though this contrasts with the observable world where death is inevitable for every one of us, regardless of the myths we have chosen to live by. I think you can live honorably by working toward creating a world that is better than the one you inherited, but die honorably? It is as absurd to me as the idea of dying dishonorably. We die and there's nothing more to it. It is what it is.

But the myths are strong, those myths of death made honorable through destruction and violence. They are made worse by religious dogma. All religions require faith in the unknowable, just as they all demand unquestioning belief. Fundamentalists, however, add to this a rigid structure of "good" and "bad" people, with the "bad" people being non-believers and the "good" being everyone who agrees with their dogma.

I think bin Laden and his ideological brothers have a sociopathic love of violence and destruction, not unlike that which can come from being around war too long, as Hedges discusses. I have found in my own experience that it is easy to be seduced by aggression and the feelings it produces in you. In fact, they can be overwhelming and lead you to be unrecognizable to yourself. Add to this love of violence an absolutism based on religious "faith" and suddenly the destructive nature of a few men is amplified to inhuman proportions. This is where the natural disaster and  man-made destruction become fraternal twins of sorts. Except, of course, one just is. The other, in theory, is preventable because unlike stormclouds, human beings have minds and the ability to reason. They can question themselves, their motives, their reactions. The problem is, how can you argue with "faith" and "belief"? I'm still trying to figure out if there's answer to that one.

Matt at Tattered Coat wrote an excellent post about the attacks on London and what he sees are the options for how to respond. No doubt Bush's supporters see this attack as vindication for the war in Iraq, just as Bush's detractors see it as proof of the overwhelming destruction brought upon by our unjustified war. I still worry that my initial assessment of the 9/11 hijackers is true. If they have no goals outside of creating chaos then there is no stopping them. We can try to discourage others from joining the cause by working toward peace and ending poverty, therefore giving people the opportunity to live dignified lives. And we can try to capture them and convict them (of actual crimes -- go listen to This American Life if you haven't yet). But ultimately, we need to learn to live with our fear of random violence. Our fear can be as dangerous as a religious dogma dripping with self-righteous anger. It can make us act irrationally and irresponsibly. Every fighter is taught that you can't control how well prepared your opponent will be, only how prepared you will be. You have to concentrate on your own training. Our fear is the same way. We have to recognize it, confront it, and accept it so we aren't led by it. If not, we will unleash our own destruction on the world, even more so than we have already. There are enough bloody streets. We don't need any more.