A very good understanding of some reasoning of why terrorism and how to fight it.

From The Huffington Post

I recently wrote an article entitled "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" about Chopra's November 26th interview on CNN, which CNN had possibly edited. Within a week of the interview, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article entitled "Deepak Blames America," and Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View called him "Glitter glasses whatshisface" and mumbled "Go light a bowl of incense." On December 2nd, I interviewed Chopra by phone and gave him the opportunity to speak candidly about censorship in the media, the new patriotism, and latent anti-Muslim racism in the United States. The unedited podcast of the interview will soon be posted on MichelleHaimoff.com/Interviews.

Chopra started off by clarifying what happened in the CNN interview. "The interview actually went on for another ten minutes when I was doing it but it was a tape. So it wasn't a live interview. It was taped because I had just finished Larry King and I had to go somewhere. So the actual interview was ten minutes longer than what you saw. Even the online interview version that you saw did not have the total interview because in my interview I talked about -- I take the vow (of non-violence), etc, etc -- I talk about a lot of things which were not there on the transcript."

As far as what was cut, he says, "I spoke about how we are funding both sides of the conflict through our military industrial complex, which is a huge industry and we fund it through our petrol dollars, through the Saudis who then buy weapons from all over the world, but including from us. And these weapons end up in the hands of terrorists as well, so willy-nilly we are participating in the funding on both sides."

In the interview, he mentions petrol dollars going to Saudi Arabia through Pakistan. He explains: "Saudi Arabia funds, among other things, the Mujahidin, Taliban and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). So our dollars end up funding these terrorists. And if you are aware of the history, at one time we were funding these people directly -- you know, Taliban, ISI, Mujahidin. It started with the Mujahidin which became the Taliban, which are in turn supported by ISI, which is independent of the Pakistan government, even though it's part of the Pakistan body, you know, they don't have direct control over it. And ISI is well known to enlist the help of Taliban Mujahidin and also give them help. In fact, when we went to Afghanistan and wanted to go after the terrorists we would seek the help of Pakistan government who would pass on information to ISI, who then passes it on to the terrorist groups. So, in fact, instead of helping us, they were basically abetting and co-conspiring with the terrorists."

"It's a very complex situation." He says. "What I've discovered is that, if you start to tell the truth in that atmosphere that -- are you recording this?"

"Yes." I say.

"If you start to tell the truth or even want to know the truth, the atmosphere that has been created in the last eight years in the Bush administration and also with the patriot act and so on... if you start to even look in that direction in the last eight years it has become extremely dangerous because you, first of all, are accused of not being patriotic. You probably want to see the US government overthrown and you are a traitor. I've got some really good friends at CNN and other places... The good people are scared. They've been scared. It's very different to snap out of that mindset."

Chopra hopes that the Obama presidency will encourage freedom of speech, honesty and integrity, and that the media will no longer view critical citizenry as treasonous.

"I have lived more years in this country than I have lived in India. My children are born here. They're citizens of this country as much as Obama is. And I get hate mail from tons of people, hundreds of people everyday saying, 'You should go back to India. You're a traitor. You're this or that.' It's an atmosphere that has been created for eight years. It does a great disservice in the United States to have that atmosphere. And I'm just feeling right now that opportunity to really test if we can speak our truth and not be afraid. Otherwise we might as well live in the former USSR or in China or something. Even in India you can speak your truth and not have to be afraid of being accused of these things by the government or by special interest groups."

But why would a network like CNN censor itself for fear of seeming unpatriotic? What are they afraid of?

"Michelle, we have to be very careful that we don't assume that," he said. "That CNN is afraid. Then we'd be doing the same thing that other people do -- just making assumptions. My perception is that journalists at large are not comfortable by raising sensitive issues... News is sold as a commodity these days and the more sensational it is, the better it is."

He later continued: "I just want to clarify one thing. I don't want to imply that the reason that the interview was cut off suddenly was because of some policy decision. If anything, CNN is more open than anybody else." For example, he says, it could have been a segment time issue.

Does he really think that CNN is more open than anyone else?

"I think CNN definitely. FOX and the Wall Street Journal are cheerleaders for the old paradigm. They're cheerleaders for right wing extremism and right wing fundamentalism... in a sense two institutions that do more disservice to our country than anybody else."

Chopra's understanding of Islamic extremists provides a much-needed glimpse at where these fundamentalists are coming from, but does the violence stem from a culture war or are terrorists settling the score for a perceived crime?

"Here is my analysis of it." He said. "There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's about 25% of the world's population. By no means are the majority of these people violent or fundamentalists either."

Chopra, who is a senior scientist at Gallup, was part of a team that conducted a poll of 600 million Muslims (half to two-thirds of the Muslim population in the world). Countries polled included Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. What he concluded in the poll is that the vast majority (92-95%) of Muslims are moderates, and they admire the West for their entrepreneurship, business and modernism. A small minority (<5%) are extremists, and of that we don't know how many are actual terrorists. His guess is very few.

Based on the survey, the cause of terrorism is "a rage that comes from humiliation, lack of respect, and also from factors that we are unaware of, generally uneducated about."

He cites Wikipedia estimates of the number of people that have died in Iraq since the war, ranging from 400,000 to over a million. "When we initiated the war on Iraq we forget to remind ourselves that the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing to do with 9/11. We also know that the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. We now say that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer. That he used torture and that he needed to be out. We should remind ourselves that we knew this a long time ago and we have used him as our ally for a long time. He was in the senior Bush administration before the first war. You know, much before that... And then we decided to make him our enemy. Nothing changed. He was definitely a mass murderer. He was a torturer. When we did the 'Shock and Awe' campaign. The 'Shock and Awe.' Listen to the words. We're bombing Baghdad and many parts of the country we're calling it the 'Shock and Awe' campaign."

"FOX News actually produced the Shock and Awe campaign as a theatrical production. They hired a musical director. They had symphonic music. And when you saw it on TV it was a glorious, glorious attempt to liberate the people of Iraq. It's easy for a person sitting in a plane 32,000 feet above sea level to press a button. When he looks at the map he presses a button. And you know, we're seeing it on screens. We're calling it 'Shock and Awe' and we hear this beautiful music - sounds almost like Mozart - while this is happening, while on the ground there are grizzly scenes which we don't see in the media, of people being mutilated. People in the throes of death. Bodies all over the place. And gruesome scenes the American public is totally unaware of, but people in the Muslim world are very aware of... We are very self-absorbed."

The deaths that appear in our papers are Western deaths. The women, children and non-Jihadis that die are not part of our conversation.

"I think this kind of mentality that demeans the life of somebody who is perhaps brown, Muslim, inferior, is not that important, but it enlists huge amounts of rage. It takes some of the moderates and certainly makes them fundamentalists. It takes some of the fundamentalists and certainly makes them terrorists."

"Imagine you're on the streets of Baghdad you see planes going up in the sky. You hear in the news this is shock and awe and bombs are falling your relatives are killed. Your brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents are killed and it's called shock and awe. Would you not call that terrorism? Just because the person is in uniform and pressing a button and is calling it shock and awe and doing it to music, is that any worse than a beheading? It's worse because you're not aware of the damage that's being done."

Chopra and his son, Gotham, are involved in Shasta Planet, an organization that encouraged dialogue between New York-based American children and Iraqi children before the Iraq War about ways to prevent the war from taking place. After the US bombed Iraq, the Chopras couldn't find many of the kids who were involved in the project because some had died, while others had lost a parent, brother or sister. "This is the kind of thing that enlists rage in that world," Chopra said.

"Despite that, there are millions of Muslims that admire the US, that would love to have economic partnerships with the US. Would love to learn business leadership skills. Would love to know what makes an entrepreneur. You know, the vast majority of people in the world of any religion want a decent life want to send their kids to school and want to be at peace. And the terrorists are as much a threat to these people as to anyone else."

Chopra's deeper understanding of the reasons for terrorism has been misconstrued of late, most notably in the Wall Street Journal's "Deepak Blames America" article.

"I didn't blame America," Chopra says and then elaborates that placing blame is complex and that Pakistan is suffering because of the people that don't want Pakistan to have a relationship with a nuclear-armed India. "The worst thing India could have done is to have a nuclear deal and to be part of a nuclear club... Why are we selectively choosing to have nuclear deals and making the rest of the world feel unsafe?"

"We have a very self-righteous attitude towards the rest of the world. We have no understanding of how these violent ideologies are born. We want to just go to war and kill the terrorists. Well, the bad news is you can kill as many terrorists as you want, but you cannot kill terrorism. In order to kill terrorism it's gonna have to be a 50-year Marshall Plan to not build war torn cities, but to build ideas. To rebuild violence torn minds. To educate them, to help them, to cooperate with them, to create economic partnerships so that the rage disappears, and to understand them. There are very simple rules for having a dialogue. You respect your enemy. You talk to them with the attitude, 'Yes. We understand that you also have injustice and we also feel injustice. Can we have a room here for forgiveness on both sides? Can we refrain from belligerence?' The more belligerent we get, the more belligerent the radicals get."

Chopra says that, according to Rabinowitz, "I'm a purveyor of aromatherapy, enemas, I say happy thoughts make people happy." He touches on Elisabeth Hasselbeck's comment that he should "go light some incense." He takes personally when the media dismisses thousands of years of wisdom and traditions, and is patient in explaining that aromatherapy and incense work through neuro-associative conditioning. If anyone bothered to ask, he would mention that he is a neuro-endocrinologist and that everything he studies has a medical basis. "If you really examine this, this is racism. This is bigotry. This is hatred. This is prejudice. And this is total lack of knowledge of another person's culture." You can almost hear him rolling his eyes when he says, "The only time I've prescribed enemas is when somebody has constipation."

So what is the nature of his expertise?

"What's an expert? Who's an expert?" he asks. "I have not been indoctrinated by the US government to a particular point of view." But he has the unique perspective of someone with emotional ties to the East and the West. His inner circle includes a CIA agent, his son, Gotham, a former a war correspondent in war torn regions ("He sat across the table with Taliban leaders and had mangoes with them"), and the Muslims that comprise his world ("I come from a culture where Hindus and Muslims for the most part live peacefully").

Chopra wants us to understand about Muslims that which we don't yet understand -- that they have a value system but that it's different than ours. In the Gallup Poll Chopra helped design, Muslims talk about taking care of the elderly and the poor. Despite the terrorism, the crime rate of Saudi Arabia and most Arab countries is much lower than that of LA or DC. Perhaps taking care of the elderly and the poor helps keep crime rates so low.

After Rabinowitz's scathing Journal piece, he received a number of invitations from the conservative talk show circuit, but when he appeared on Hannity and Colmes, Hannity shot him down for comparing a recent Scientific American article about cancer to terrorism. Evidently, when we treat cancer too aggressively, cancer cells hijack normal cells and make them co-conspirators in spreading the cancer. "Do you see an analogy there?" he said. To him, the collateral damage of the war on terror has caused some people to get hijacked by terrorists to become co-conspirators in spreading the terrorism.

Bill O'Reilly asked him to come on The O'Reilly Factor too. "I will appear on your show on two conditions," he emailed O'Reilly. "Number one: You will not raise the volume of your voice. And number two: You will not interrupt me. And I will not raise the volume of my voice and I will not interrupt you." O'Reilly has yet to reply.

"A terrorist has an ideology." He says. "That ideology is savage. It's brutal. It's primitive. It is the worst ideology you can imagine because it's ancient. It's not relevant to our normal times. When you kill a terrorist you do not kill the ideology."

He repeats twice that on Hannity the other night, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen quoted Donald Rumsfeld as saying, "Are we creating more terrorists than we are killing?"

The US has the best weapons and intelligence in the world and yet we can't seem to eliminate terrorism. According to Chopra, this is because we have yet to understand it in its historical, economic and psychological contexts. Economically, the conditions in Pakistan are so abysmal that the poor flock to the Mujahid simply so they can eat. Psychologically, young boys in ghettos in Europe turn to terrorism because they have been marginalized by racism. When one has no sense of identity one may seek identity by joining a radical group.

"Marginalized people get radicalized." Chopra says. "When you have marginalized people living in ghettos who feel humiliated and enraged, when you have poor people living in third world countries and you have people who have no sense of identity, these marginalized people get radicalized by special interest groups which happen to be the terrorists. You cannot get rid of these terrorists without getting the help of the majority of the Muslims in the world who are peaceful people. They're like anybody else. We know that from our own surveys. You can't say that a quarter of the world's population is insane and Jihadist. The terrorists are insane and Jihadist. You can not get rid of an idea... The only way ideas can be given up is if you educate people, if you help people, if you have a conversation with people and if you recognize that other people have a sense of perceived injustice. We don't recognize even that there is a sense of injustice in these people. We also have an ally like Saudi Arabia, and we fund money to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is controlled by very few people who live a very opulent lifestyle. It is to their advantage to channel money to these terrorists and to divert it from the gross inequities that exist in their own countries. Spend a little money and divert and other people are killed and you're getting money from the US anyway, who's your ally. And they will be your ally as long as it is to the US's advantage."

"Why don't we remember? We have such short memories that Saddam Hussein was a CIA sponsored thug that our CIA brought out of exile, put into power after a coup in Iraq. Then George Bush Sr. flooded billions of dollars into Iraq in his support, all the while knowing full well about his torture chambers and rape rooms. It didn't bother us because the US policymakers thought they could use him to their advantage. When they found out not, now he suddenly becomes this evil person which he was all along."

"A state official was once asked, 'How do you abandon your friends so easily?' And he answered, 'We don't have friends. We have interests.'"

So where are all the Islamic moderates? They don't seem to be getting much airtime these days. Perhaps that's because their voices are too quiet, but perhaps it's because we don't want to hear them.

"One of the things we have to do now is ask the moderates to speak out," Chopra says. "I think one of the reasons the moderates don't speak too much is that they're defensive. They're defensive of things they did not do but they're being at least perceived as having participated in it. This is the attitude of people that feel attacked and judged against. And we do nothing to prevent that from happening. If we were actually to reach out to the moderates and say, 'You have nothing to be defensive about. You don't have anything to be guilty about. We are not judging or humiliating you. Or demeaning you.' When is the last time we said to the moderate Islamic world? 'We want your help?' We said it belligerently when we said, 'Either you're with us or you're against us.'"

One of the comments on "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" was the suggestion that, just as we wear red ribbons to support AIDS awareness and pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, we should wear a ribbon to show condemnation for acts of terrorism and see Muslims wear it openly. Would something like this be an effective way for Muslims to demonstrate their stance against terrorism?

"I think something like this would be symbolic for sure." Chopra said, but then quickly adds, "It would not get to the root cause that's contextual and relational. You're not gonna solve this the day after tomorrow. If you really want to solve this we have to work at it for 50 years."

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal is printing versions of letters from Deepak and Gotham Chopra responding to the Rabinowitz article. Here are advanced, unedited versions of the letters from Deepak


To the Editors,

I think it does a disservice to the Wall Street Journal's integrity to run personal attacks of the kind directed against me by Dorothy Rabinowitz. Since your newspaper whole-heartedly cheered on the disastrous war in Iraq, I can understand why you continue to mount a rear guard action in defense of the Bush administration's approach to militant Islam.


That approach involves unilateral militant aggression without the slightest care for the effect being made on the vast majority of peaceful Muslims. Now that the right wing can no longer continue this discredited policy overtly, Ms. Rabinowitz and her ilk have adopted a fall-back position. Attack anyone who suggests a new way.


I stand by my remarks and have full confidence that the Obama administration will adopt a "root cause" approach of the kind I endorsed. The very thing Ms. Rabinowitz derides is our best hope for peace.



Deepak Chopra


And From His Son:

As many already know, my father Deepak Chopra (along with thousands of others) has taken a vow of non-violence in all his actions and words. As a result, he's unable to respond that aggressively to an article written by Dorothy Rabinowitz in Monday's Wall Street Journal critical of his response on CNN and elsewhere to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Fortunately, I haven't taken the vow.

In her opinion piece, Ms. Rabinowitz charges that Deepak has over-simplified the issue of global terrorism. How ironic considering the profound over-simplification of her article (not to mention the recklessness of it) entitled DEEPAK BLAMES AMERICA.

The same way she questions Deepak's authority on the subject, I have no idea what qualifies Ms. Rabinowitz as an expert in this regard but she clearly appears to be no student of history. If she was, she would understand the context in which this latest terrorist attack appears to have occurred. To summarize: in the 80's the CIA financed the militarization of Afghan rebels to resist Soviet expansion in the region. At the same time, the US also subsidized Pakistan's intelligence agency the ISI to train and provide tactical support to those same Islamic militants.

Fast forward to the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet's pulling out of Afghanistan, and the United State's subsequent withdrawal of support from the region as well. The result: a vacuum filled with a lot of guns and rage. After 9/11, in an effort to once again re-establish control of the wild proliferation of fundamentalism in the region, the US returned to the Indian subcontinent with a bit of sound and fury only to find the mess they left behind and the deep ties between the ISI and the Mujahadeen turned Taliban. In other words, there is a distinct link between the rise of Islamic militancy in the Indian Subcontinent and the US activities there over the last few decades. Allegations that the group of terrorists that perpetrated the Mumbai attack has links to a Pakistani-based terror group and that they actually launched the attack from Karachi seems pretty solid. Is it too much to ask for a WSJ journalist to tie this all together?

Let's get to the heart of the matter, though, which is about constructing a solution for global terrorism, not just assigning blame for it. To hypothesize that this is simply a problem restricted to Arab and/or Islamic parts of the world is plainly naïve and reckless. To deny the inherent tangled hierarchy of ongoing conflicts in Israel, Iraq, and Kashmir that pit opposing ideals against one another with the supply of billions of dollars into the oil industry, ground zero for which is the American ally Saudi Arabia, and the even more profitable arms trade that subsidizes all sides of these wars showcases Ms. Rabinowitz's unprofessional lack of understanding.

Our collective inability to construct a well thought out creative solution that goes beyond declaring a "war on terrorism" or insanely cheering on continued "shock and awe" campaigns in Arab regions around the world is a complicit part of the ongoing problems we face. Yes - America for all the democratic ideals for freedom and liberty it declares to the rest of the world - does indeed have a fundamental responsibility to stay true to them and be held accountable when we fail to even give the appearance that we care for them, as unfortunately the Bush regime has shown the last 8 years. We can no longer afford the delusion that we have no part in a global community plagued by the sickness that is Islamic fundamentalism largely brought on by economic disparity and ideological hypocrisy, not to mention myopic policies, oil money, and arms sales that nurture it. To pretend otherwise is to perpetuate and encourage more brazen attacks. To think that this creative solution should not appeal in some way to the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, the vast majority of whom are not terrorists, is plain negligence.

The goal here is not to demonize the US and pin all of the world's problems - and certainly terrorism specifically - on the US and/or its foreign policy. But clearly as we enter a new era and Presidency, we have an opportunity to contemplate a new cohesive strategy for dealing with the plague of the 21st century - Islamic fundamentalism. Part of that is to examine our own recent political history. We need to look at CIA activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq specifically in the 70's and 80's to prop up the Mujahadeen who would become the Taliban and in Iraq. Let us recall that the CIA brought Saddam Hussein, who at the time was a thug in exile, back to Iraq and installed him as President. This was done to combat Soviet expansion in Asia and to guard against Iran's growing Ayatollah Khomeini steered fanaticism. Debate all you want the merit of these operations and what they would eventually lead to,... in fact that is what we must do.

Now let's get personal. In her piece, Ms. Rabinowitz cites Deepak's lack of compassion and empathy for the victims of the attacks in Mumbai. That's funny - I didn't notice her sitting at our Thanksgiving dinner table last week, a decidedly somber event that coincided with the attacks in the country where our family is from and many still live. We were downcast not only because of our cultural connection to India but our personal connections to several friends who were literally in the Taj, the Oberoi and some of the other sites when the attacks took place. For 48 hours straight, my mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and wife reached out to countless family members, friends, and colleagues, fearful each time that we were not able to connect with someone, assuming the worst. Fortunately for us, no one we know closely so far is amongst the dead.

The same can't be said for many of the devoted people and hotel staff who made our stays, business meetings, late night drinks and kebabs extravaganzas at the Taj and Oberoi so memorable and meaningful. Many of those that survived the attacks, even after they have lost so much - their colleagues and even families in some cases - are the same resilient people that are today pledging to rebuild these cultural and business epicenters to be stronger than ever. That, Ms. Rabinowitz, is also part of the re-construction and diplomacy plan, and my family plans to be there as soon as the doors open once more. Will you?

Or is it less troublesome for you to remain ensconced in your a priori knowingness and dispense judgment on those who bother to travel the world and engage in dialogue with people of all different perspectives?

As an entrepreneur with a business that employs several dozen in India, I travel to India at least once a quarter and feel like I have a pretty firm grasp of what's on the minds of the citizens of Mumbai right now. My father travels to India just as regularly, not to mention the over two-dozen other countries that he visited last year alone. As a journalist, I also happen to have spent considerable time in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Chechnya, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Kashmir, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, sometimes sitting across from some of these terrorists and engaging them in dialogue and debate. That's not to say that I empathize with them or their cause: I don't. But I do bother to acknowledge them, which may be the first step in trying to understand the warped psychology of their minds. Only then can one presumably start to refine a real plan for eliminating it, if even that requires deployment of precise military means to excise the cancer that are terrorist sleeper cells. But to think the solution ends there is naive.

Then again, that clearly is not Ms. Rabinowitz's intent because there is another complicit part to all of this - the media. Dorothy Rabinowitz, for example is an incredibly accomplished journalist and certainly someone with the intellectual capacity to understand the complexity of the issues if she wanted to. And yet instead of writing a thoughtful piece on the Mumbai attacks, she and the WSJ choose to publish a salacious article under the heading of DEEPAK BLAMES AMERICA which clearly is all about generating controversy and news. They were successful in creating publicity over this imaginary story-considering all the subsequent coverage, including my father's appearance Monday night on the Fox News show Hannity and Colmes in which the article was cited (both Fox News and the WSJ, of course, are owned by News Corp/Rupert Murdoch...another story for another day). Of course, ultimately the real goal of the media, news networks included, is more viewers, more readers, and more buzz. The consequence is that it fuels a public that wants simple three-word headlines and analysis that doesn't rely on understanding the history or context in which events occur. It's a brave new world for media everywhere because someone is always watching and blogging.

That's where the "Marshall Plan for the Muslim world," that Ms. Rabinowitz sarcastically cites in her article, comes in. That, by the way, was my idea that I lent my dad for his appearance on Larry King! I happen to think a long-term holistic and strategic plan that helps rebuild the blasted ghettos of the Arab world, where so much of this hatred festers, is the only reasonable solution to the militant trend that we see proliferating around globe now.

Here's the thing - and the final point - I'm a first generation American and proud to be so. I believe the US needs to take a strong leadership role in eradicating the planet of terrorism. I certainly don't think I have the knowledge or experience to shape that policy and never claimed to. But as concerned and proud citizens it's our responsibility to challenge our leaders to come up with new ideas, learn from the mistakes of our past, and be very conscious of the world they are shaping for our children.

It's not at all an easy solution and there will likely be mistakes in the future but it would behoove us as a nation to not learn from some of the ones we have made in the past. The war in Iraq comes to mind. It's a worthy debate whether or not the war can be qualified as a success. But part of the discussion has to be an acknowledgment of the facts - that somewhere between 400 thousand to 1 million Iraqi civilians have perished. Some may argue that that is the price of war and long-term peace and security in the region. Others will say that beyond the immediate cost of those lives is how that has galvanized another generation of Islamic militants.

It's a good and important debate to have as it will ultimately fuel new policy. Gitmo and Abu Ghraib also have to be part of that same discussion. As does the fact that Saddam Hussein, the late dictator we love to hate so much, as noted above, was originally a prop of the US after an American sponsored coup. For years, the US was well aware of his brutal tactics with his own people including the infamous torture chambers and rape rooms and yet tolerated them because of the so-called broader strategic security interests in the region. To pretend that that was the reason the US decided to "liberate the Iraqi" people is revisionist at best, but really just flat out wrong. That one's for you Sean Hannity - another accomplished and intelligent journalist who knows better than to lean on that false crutch for his ongoing cheerleading of the war.

I'm open to debate on all of the above but prefer to do so with those that are actually serious and solution-oriented, not just in search of more readers or a higher rating. Today, in the face of great danger around the world and more looming terrorist attacks, we all have to be willing to ask ourselves how we can actually contribute in a meaningful way to constructing a long term sustainable and peaceful planet. Maybe I am the naive one because I still believe in our spiritual patriarch Mahatma Gandhi who said if you want to see change in the world, start with yourself.

Maybe I will take that vow after all.