I saw another news report about a suicide bomber in Iraq killing a number of Iraqis. Another one in Afghanistan, too. I'm not sure they had the impact they were supposed to. Certainly, at least, not on me.

Lemme see if I get this straight. I think I've heard the message enough. Because your minions are fooled (harassed, forced, coerced, whatever) into strapping some bombs under their shirts and walking into some place (presumably significant) filled with people (presumably important to the cause). And because these bombs, uh, blow up, we're supposed to do something. Hold on...just making sure I get the point.

You blow someone up. Proves you've got a point to make.

Got it.

Now if I understand the point, you're trying to tell us that the infidels (invaders, occupying force, Americans, savages, whatever) should take the bombing as a message and leave. Or you'll do it again. Bigger, scarier, whatever. Again.

You blow something up, proving you want us to leave.

I think that's the general gist, right?

Dumbasses. It won't work. Stop blowing things up to try to make your point. It only works for small periods of times, in really localized areas.

Sit down, shut up, and learn the system.

Here's how to get the coalition forces out of there. First, build a machine that doesn't require oil in any form to function. Yeah, that's not going to happen, is it? Well, someday. Then it won't be the draw of oil, but the general injustice between humans that would be a concern--and that concern seems to be small enough that we won't kick your ass for it. We didn't go into South Africa to stop Apartheid, or really many of the other places where the leaders and warriors are causing havoc (i.e., Rwanda, Cuba, North Korea, Dubai, are just a few more).

Security is not a buzz word, it's an ideology. People want safety. When it's calm, and people can walk down the street with no more worry than the occasional idiot mugging them, then we'll leave. That's called peace.

It'd be better if no one got mugged, if no one broke into homes to steal, and if we all just got along. That's asking a bit much right now.

Here's how it works. You stop bombing things. People will get to the business of cleaning up their homes and streets, start making and selling things, buying things, visiting friends and places, raising children, and playing games. After a while that will be the normal, not what you're doing.

Once people start feeling safe, they won't need so many people around trying to help protect them. The military will drift into the background (for you this means that the intruders will

Sure, you don't play nice with others. I get it.

Really, no one is trying to rule your world. No one. Really. It's nothing personal, well, except for a few, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden, to name a notorious duo. You brought it on yourselves. For the rest of us, including myself, it's all about the day-to-day. We don't really care about you enough to try to take over your world.

I know it doesn't look like it when there's tanks and guns and airplanes and helicopters and missiles and rockets and explosions and blood and death and injury in your neighborhood.

Someone believes in a different higher power than you, or the same one, but with a different dialect, and you get all twisted up about it. Lighten up.

It certainly isn't the next coming of the Crusades. This is not Christain/Jew against Islam/Muslim. Yeah, on some level the averages of the countries involved can probably be divided into one or the other.

Here's my take on your religion: whatever.

Maybe mine is the same. Maybe mine is different. Until I try to discourage you from yours, or you try to hurt me because of mine, what difference does it make? I live in a city of a few million people where you can walk between the houses of worship of at least a dozen different religions and dialects of religions faster than you can drink a cup of coffee. On one street corner there might be three or four different religions; parking is the worst that comes of it. It may even be the case that as you glance across the street to the other guys' building you'll see that they wave at you. What's that about?

Maybe it's sad for "them" (those that believe other than you) that they'll end up in the wrong afterlife because you (and those that believe as you do) are right. Maybe they're right and you'll be in the wrong afterlife. Maybe you're both wrong, and you'll both end up in the wrong end of someone else's right idea. Maybe they're all wrong, and when you die, you're dead. No reincarnation, no heaven, no hell, no purgatory, no whatever else you might be able to do. Maybe we all are right, and whatever we want to happen next happens. Maybe it's something none of us is bright enough to know about. No one who's passed has come back to tell me, or anyone I really believe.