As technology makes our world smaller, war becomes less and less of a viable solution to countries disagreements. Now that President Bush is playing the nuclear terror card, I think it is time that he realistically looks into why anyone would even think of using that on us.

~ James G.

Some years back a doctor who worked near here committed suicide. The incident would have passed largely without notice except for an additional unfortunate detail. Just before he died he murdered his three small children.

If we had applied to that situation the same logic we now apply to the situation involving Afghanistan, then although the perpetrator of the crime was already dead, we would have bombed his home and bombed the hospital where he worked. After all, that infrastructure enabled the doctor to commit his crime. If the heinous criminality of such insane response is plain to us in the situation involving the doctor, then how has it escaped us in the situation involving Afghanistan?

Although Americans fancy themselves members of a democracy in which the will of the people is the rudder of government, in their defense we can show that the reality is somewhat different. What we find in practice is that the motor of government is the will of special interests, and the will of the people, that was supposed to influence the rudder, is asleep at the helm.

For an extremely simple example that validates this premise, consider sugar. Americans for years have paid for sugar about double the price of that commodity on the world market. How can this be? Very simply, there exists a "sugar program" that sets strict quotas on foreign sugar. The program benefits American sugar producers by letting them charge more than the price the free market would set. Corn syrup is used by soft-drink producers because it is cheaper than sugar. As a result, corn producers and the food processor that makes the syrup, Archer Daniels Midland, also are beneficiaries of the sugar program and therefore have an interest in it. The lobbying operation that keeps the program in place was created by this confluence of special interests.

If, as most of us do, you buy only a few pounds of sugar per year, then probably it is not worth your while to support a lobbying operation to persuade the government to end the sugar program. In this mundane innocuous example we learn how an ostensibly democratic government actually works in practice. This tiny example exhibits beyond peradventure why those with special interest dominate government. Where Legislation and influence-peddling are for sale, holders of special interest will bid.

Alas, it gets worse. Government operations are not always innocuous, for the government can not only select quotas, it can select targets.

Consider oil. The Middle East is said to have vast reserves of untapped oil in the region around the Caspian Sea. Combine that observation with evidence long apparent that the long range goal of Israel is to dominate the Middle East. The confluence of special interests in this area has steered our government into a morass.

Fifty years ago, a two hundred mile by fifty mile wide strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea was stolen from some Palestinians and converted into the country now called Israel. That thorn in the side of the Arab world had nothing whatsoever to do with us. Yet, pitching to the wind the excellent advice of our first President, we sailed into this morass by sponsoring Israel, arming Israel, supporting Israel financially. If these matters had been taken care of by Americans acting as private citizens, we might have got away with it. But special interests involved our government in misguided support and intervention into affairs that in fact were none of its business. Now, add to this insult to the Arab world the meddling of the CIA, in Iran and then in Iraq, culminating in a splendid little "Gulf War" that became the pretext for permanently quartering American armed forces in Arabia and blockading and sporadically bombing Iraq for a decade, causing a death toll orders of magnitude greater than we suffered here on Sept. 11, half of whom, they say, are children. We needed Solomon. We got Rambo.

The so-called war on terrorism is now a convenient cover for what has actually been a decades-long campaign by which special interests seek to obtain control of Afghanistan. Those steering the campaign armed the Taliban when it was believed that once the Russians were ejected then the Taliban would become lap dogs. But the dog bites.

A U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon was blown up. A US Navy ship docked in Yemen was blown up. US Embassies have been blown up. How many warnings did we need? This is not rocket science. Anyone who can put his shoes on correctly should be able to figure out why it happened that we got smacked upside the jaw Sept. 11. Grandma used to say, "a cat don't sit on a stove lid twice," so when America wakes up to the smell of singed fur maybe we can start paddling out of this mess.

~ Jack D., Oregon