Some odds and ends of observation from the last several days. Someone, after all, has to give a little balance to the Blog!

• 1. For those who mock the idea that this is a struggle for freedom, rather than a dispute over errors in American foreign policy, I'd submit the following quotation. It comes from John Updike's piece in the current New Yorker: "A Florida neighbor of one of the suspects remembers him saying he didn't like the United States: "He said it was too lax. He said, 'I can go anywhere I want to, and they can't stop me.' It is a weird complaint, a begging, perhaps, to be stopped." Isn't it also an expression of almost metaphysical truculence, as well as a brief manifesto of the terrorists' ultimate aims?
• 2. I think it totally appropriate that Osama Boy often lives in a cave. That is, after all, the level of civilization back to which he'd apparently like to drag the entire world.
• 3. Equally symbolic, though of far greater significance, is the behavior of the passengers on the jet that crashed in PA. Notice not only their heroism, but the way they conducted themselves. Once they learned what had happened to the WTC, and realized what a threat their plane represented, what did they do? They TOOK A VOTE. Could there have been a more perfect rebuke to their captors, or a more thorough vindication of democratic values?

It's an interesting time to be alive, ain't it?

Cheers, xx

(Recieved September 21 2001, 4:00 pm)