In the last 150 years, almost all of the large wars that have been fought have been escalated through polarization.

This is where everyone "polarizes" around a single issue, making everyone an enemy or a friend based on that issue.

The Civil War polarization issue was "state's rights" vs. a strong central government. In political science, we learned that when a country gets polarized around a single issue, evil, or ethnic group that armed conflict is inevitable. The Civil War was the deadliest war ever fought in the U.S. using deaths as a percentage of the total U.S. population. It is much easier to "get things done" when a single "evil" is identified. But, those "things" have consequences.

WW II sprung out of "evil England/France" and the "punishment" inflicted on Germany after WW I. The Germans became destined to rebuilt themselve into a great nation and destroy their enemies after the beating they took. Hitler was the right man for the time, getting the Germans to hate their enemy and think of them one dimensionally as the "true cause" of Germany's misery.

With Reagan, it was the commies. With us, if we don't stop ourselves, it will be those evil "Muslims". When we start talking about IWE and THEY as "US" and "THEM", then wars will be started. That is why I LOVE the name of this forum. It gets me thinking that we should be looking at IWETHEY and walking in another person's moccasins. I get to hear a lot of diverse points of view from the WE of this forum, and that makes the I (gdaustin) that much better.

The U.S. probably did help create this terrorism monster in the 1980's, and now we have to deal with it. How we deal with really does determine our character, and how many people we will kill in the next conflict.

In church on Sunday, the pastor quoted Luke 13, where the pharisees were asking Jesus if the people who were in the Tower of Siloam? when it fell were "evil". Jesus answered, "No more wicked than you are. Repent of your sins." Before we can beat our breasts in righteous anger over the death of 5000 Americans, perhaps we do need to find out how much Reagan helped Osama bin Laden come to power in our fight against communism. Maybe we really caused this problem.