Your scare tactics are worthless

Bush: "We're not yet safe. Terrorists in foreign lands still hope to attack our country. They still hope to kill our citizens. The lesson of Sept. 11, 2001, is that we must confront threats before they fully materialize."

Tom Delay: "Why would you give your enemies a timetable? [Bush] doesn't fight the war on news articles or television or on polls."

My dad said that Bush also used some variation on the words "accomplish the mission" in a recent statement, which just begs for ridicule from way back on the U.S.S. Lincoln on May 1, 2003. But you know what? I'm not going to give these guys the benefit of my angry commentary.

For a voice of clarity among the deceptive madness, look no further than Mariane Pearl, the widow of Daniel Pearl, who you might recall was beheaded via videotape by Muslim extremists in Pakistan. I was listening to a NPR story about her the other day, and her bravery was something else. I felt the need to share my impression of her because we could all use a break from Cindy Sheehan.

No matter where we were or what we were doing at the time, we all felt something watching those towers fall. As Americans we all felt anger, resentment, and all sorts of bitter negative adjectives that can't do any justice. Just thinking about who could do such a thing to so many innocent people was beyond reasoning. But think about Mariane Pearl, the love of her life publically, brutally, symbolically murdered while she's pregnant with their first child. As a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and practicing Buddhist, this remarkable woman makes sense out of her personal loss in such a way that leaves me wondering what wisdom our world leaders, Cindy Sheehan's anti-war army, and everyone in between might be able to derive with a little compassion, because we can all learn something.

The powerful passages that she read from her memoir made me want to stop the car so I could stare off into space instead of on the road ahead. To paraphrase one such observation, there may not be hope for peace and a terror-free world without a more even wealth distribution. This simple yet infinitely complex sentiment was a slap in the face because I feel like a hypocrite going off to work for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, but still, my conscience always gets the better of me, and I could not agree more.

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