To the many good folks in Conch-L:  Thank you all for these expressions
of outrage and sympathy over yesterday's mass murder of Americans.  But
please remember:  this nation was involuntarily subjected to war
starting yesterday morning.  This war, unlike the small-scale
antiterrorist campaign underway the last few years, is real.  The U.S.
is not going to respond with an air strike or two from a sanitized 15000
foot height, nor with a few missiles lobbed at offending terrorist
camps, nor with a Kosovo-styled plan that has as its foremost concern
the preservation of the lives of the occupying peacekeeper force.  This
is quite different.  There will be a lengthy and nasty campaign of
extermination against these people using the concerted military and
economic power of the U.S. and its allies.  The president made a
crystal-clear statement that any state that harbors these people is an
enemy under wartime rules of engagement.  The object in war is to
destroy the organizations that did this, and that includes those states
that might harbor or abet them.  If an Arab or other middle eastern
government should fall from power in the process, so be it.

So we appreciate your condolences, but even more, we'll appreciate and
be measuring the changes of policy that civil societies must take to rid
themselves of this plague.

Yours, Russell Renka

--
Russell D. Renka
Department of Political Science
Mail Stop 2920, Carnahan 211-L
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701-4799
office:  573/651-2692
Home:  573/334-0039
FAX:  573/651-2695
URL:  http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/renka