GROUND ZERO, New York City, Mar. 26--John is a big burly young man.  He’s about my size, nearly six-foot four, weighing in around 250 to 270.    He has an infectious smile, similar to Winnie the Poo expecting a bowl of sweet honey from his buddy Piglet.   John also could be mistaken for a World Wrestling Federation poster boy but for one small challenge--he has no hands.

        John was born with wrist stumps.  At first glance, it looks like someone cut off his hands at the wrists.  But on closer inspection, there are no scars, no signs of amputation.   His affliction is congenital.
           On the sides of the wrist stumps sprout two appendages, one growing on each stump.   They look like eyes wiggling out of his flesh, but they are tiny thumbs.  They move about in periscope fashion, seeming to surveying the world from a perspective only a man with no hands and two thumbs can imagine.
         A child might think the appendages were the antenna of Martians, keeping a close eye on us earthlings.
        John stood next to me at Starbucks in the East Village, one of the largest in New York City.   It is a study haven for NYU students.  The main campus is located just a few blocks away, across from Washington Square Park.
        I use Starbucks as my editorial office.  The rent is reasonable.  It costs me the price of a regular grande, plus my monthly fee to hook up to Starbuck’s T-Mobile wireless connection service.  While sipping coffee and writing, I can go online and upload and download information to my website
         Real estate is at a premium around 4p.m. at Starbucks.   A glut of humanity pours out of the bowels of the 6-Train subway orifice just outside Starbuck's door.  Starbucks sits like a giant green crocodile with its jaws open facing upstream, letting the coffee addicts flow between its hungry teeth.    Besides the madding crowd of New Yorkers heading home, there’s a plethora of NYU students hammering on computers and jamming each other’s brains in gaggles of study groups.
         Around fourish in the afternoon, it’s a madhouse.   And it’s not uncommon for   one Star buckaroo to hover next to another Star buckaroo about to vacate a table.   John spotted me packing up my gear and leaned against the wrought iron railing separating my section from the rest of tables.   It was his a flagrant signal to all table poachers that he had first crack at the spot I was about to empty.
       "Hi!"  I acknowledged John's presence.
       "Hi," he replied, leaning his right arm on the rail.  
       I looked at John's stumps.   He clutched a small computer briefcase against his chest with his left forearm and used his right to shift some weight off his feet as he waited for me to exit.
       "I'm Cliff, you're welcome to the spot.   It's prime."
       "I'm John.  I know.  My favorite too."
       John lifted his arm slightly, a movement intended to suggest a handshake.  He didn't extend his stump.  I nodded.  Our movements were handshakes.
        We were both big men, he much younger than I, but both of us human battleships on the streets of New York City.   There is a Big Guy Club, a recognition of two oil tankers who pass each other in the night, each knowing that size conquers most fears.   Nature, it can be said, gives bears and elephants the advantage over the land.
         I was running late for a meeting with some friends.  Otherwise, I would have engaged John in a conversation, leading off with:  "How does a man with no hands and only two thumbs fight the Terrorism of life and keep jovial?"
        I knew part of his confidence and aplomb had something to do with his height and girth.

          I'd known others like John, born with congenital deformities.   One young woman I knew was born without any arms.  She had tiny hands dangling from her shoulders.   She was quite beautiful, vivacious and roller bladed most everywhere.   When asked about her attitude toward her handicap, she tossed her head and replied, "What handicap?  I was born without arms.  I never missed what I didn't have.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm as normal as anyone.  Remember, Cliff, you can’t miss what you never had."
        I forgot about my high horse.  I often think that those who don’t have what I have are handicapped, underprivileged, disabled. That isn't necessarily true.   John was just as able and capable as I with all my digits.  He too had his computer and papers.  He just didn't have the eight fingers to go along with his two thumbs, but he could pound out the words as well as anyone.
        As I headed to my meeting, I thought of the people of Iraq.  I thought of the reasons why they weren’t throwing flowers at us when our tanks roared through their cities, or why they weren’t dancing in the streets in jubilation as so many expected.
        John helped remind me of the facts: “They can’t miss what they didn’t have.”
         For countless decades, Iraqi citizens have lived under the rule of tyranny and despotism.   Freedom and Liberty are foreign idols.  Iraq’s petrol-state has created a dictatorship of authority, not unlike most of the Middle East where the rich and powerful are divided from the poor with no middle ground.  
         Saddam Hussein has kept the Iraqi people far distanced from the fruits of democracy.   To leap for joy as American and British troops enter Iraqi towns and villages requires them to remember how sweet Freedom was.  But the people of Iraq were born with the deformity of tyranny and oppression.  The hand of Liberty had been cut off at birth, as well as the hand of Freedom.   Only the thumbs of tyranny and oppression were left.
        Liberation implies knowledge of Liberty.  In World War II, allied troops gave back the liberty Hitler had stolen when he occupied the land.
        But Iraq is a different world.

         Half its 25 million citizens are 15 or under.   And prior to Saddam’s 23 year Stalinesque rule, there was neither “liberty” nor “freedom” as we know it.   With the exception of Turkey, the Middle East (excluding Israel)  is fundamentally non-democratic.  
       How can, then, any nation’s people possibly understand the jubilation of liberation if they have nothing to compare it to?
        My TerrorHunter brain gnawed at the question.   Another question red flagged my thoughts:  “Why did so many Americans oppose the liberation of Iraq?  Didn’t they know how important Freedom was?   Weren’t they the ultimate benefactors of Liberty?  And if so, why would so many rail against America’s ultimate goal of freeing millions?”
       An odd answer came on the heels of he question.
       Child abuse!
       America’s social fabric has been torn apart in the last generation by a decay in family units.   Over half of American marriages result in divorce, and obvious emotional trauma for the children within those families.
       On top the cleavage of American family units has risen a national awareness of child abuse, ranging from psychological ills as seemingly mundane as “my mother or father were cold and indifferent emotionally,” to flagrant acts of violence against children.
       The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2000 that 5 million children were recorded as abused and brought under the wing of the Child Protection Services.
       These were the most egregious cases.
        Child abuse takes many forms.   At its simplistic level, it can be a parent so busy with his or her work that he or she misses a child’s school play or soccer game.   If repeated, the absences turn into neglect.  
        Many American children grow up in abusive homes, with one or more tyrannical parents who may beat and molest them, or emotionally torture them.    Most learn to adjust to their environment.  They find ways to accept the tyranny of their homes, saying nothing, accepting life on life's terms.   Some even exhibit love, however twisted it might appear to the outside world, to those who abuse them their fundamental human right of personal dignity and self respect.

               "I wish you were never born," is a statement many non-reported abused children hear from a mother or father.  The effect of this kind of Verbal Terrorism is that the child feels as alienated as one of Saddam's prisoners in a dank prison.   N      "Why are you always bothering me!  Leave me alone!"   Words such as these, angrily shot at a child seeking love and attention, can turn its heart cold.   In the child’s eyes, the parent becomes an enraged Beast of Terror.  Confusion sets in, for sometimes a parent opens his or her arms to the child, and then, just as suddenly, can snarl and hiss, driving the child into a cowering state of Fear, Intimidation and ultimately into a shell of Complacency.
        In my own childhood, I cowered in constant Fear of my step-father’s wrath, especially when he drank.   I crawled deep in the covers in hopes his rage would not find me, and used the darkness as camouflage.

          Abuse, leveled at children by intent or by default, is a form of Terrorism not unlike that in Iraq.   Worrying if one of your parents will lash at you with either tongue or hand, fearing what will await you when you open the door to your own home, is a chilling feeling.  It is not unlike walking into the Beast of Terror’s cave and hoping you don’t awaken him.    Many American children know these feelings, and as they grow into adults, they carry with them shells of Complacency.  They deny involvement in other’s lives because no one came to rescue them.  They were powerless, and so were their friends.  Then there was the issue of sovereignty.   Who had the right to come and tell someone how to treat their children?   No one wanted the neighbors to know what was happening.  No one wanted the police or state to start dictating how parents should act toward their children.   
        So, as the abused child grows into an adult, why attack Iraq?  Why try to change the lives of others when our own lives are screwed up?
        Iraqis can't jump for joys they never knew.  Neither can many Americans tout the values of liberation when they still live in caves of Terror, still suffer the pains of their own childhood tortures.
        Americans can't throw flowers for fruits they haven't tasted or smelt, just as Iraqi’s can’t.  
        I know, for example, a woman who was molested by her father for years.   She has lived in constant fear all her life of those dark days, and built shells around her that have taken more than six decades to crack.   It is hard for her to shake the Fear, Intimidation and Complacency of her past, for she still lives in the Shadow of the Beast of Terror.
        No one can march through her mind and liberate her.  She can't walk out of a psychological session and leap up in the air like an Irish Spring commercial and shout: "I'm Free!  I'm Free!"
        Freedom from abuse is a long, painful, and often impossible task to achieve, whether that abuse be political, social, ethnic, sexual, emotional or religious.
        Iraqi people face fears in all these areas.  Suspicious Iraqis may believe the Western "liberators" are trying to steal from them their culture and belief systems.   In the past, the West has abused their lands.  Many fingers on the hands of Iraqis have been cut off by foreigners.

          Leaping into the arms of the "infidels" may not be on the agenda, and Americans who expect that to happen need to think about their abusive neighbor down the street who beats his wife.   If someone were to rush in to "save" the woman being abused, she just might turn on them and attack the "rescuer."   Police report that most attacks upon them result from domestic disputes when one of the spouses turns on the police who are trying to arrest the abuser.  
        Children of abuse may not look upon their abuse as crimes against them, but rather accept them as a "way of life."    Society may view the abuse as cruel and indifferent, but a child or spouse may not.  The bond between the elements may be stronger than the abuse, and in so many cases it is.
         It is important that I remember this state of mind.  As a TerrorHunter I am inclined to think that Vigilance can overpower Terrorism with one swing of the Sword of Vigilance.
         There may be no single death blow that kills Terrorism.
         Terrorism is insidious by its nature.  It seeps into the souls of its victims, grafts itself to their being, clings like a frightened child to its host, more unsure what the world of Vigilance is like than the world of Terrorism it is has learned to coexist within.

     An abused child grows up never knowing what real love is like, and therefore shies from it, having no benchmarks for existing within its confines.   Sometimes, it refutes such love even when it is offered, and will retreat back to its levels of comfort.
         Vigilance may not be something Iraqis wish to swallow.   It is also something that Americans may shun.    For many years, Americans have wallowed in the Complacency of accepting their way of life as being the "best."    As the quality of life has been passed from one generation to another, more and more Complacency has grown.
          Part of that Complacency has been invincibility.
          Nine Eleven smashed that delusion.
          Shocked, America faces today the brutal truth that Terrorism is as much a part of its world as it is in Palestine, or Israel, or Iraq, or North Korea.   

           Fighting it is just as hard for Americans to accept as liberation is for Iraqis.
           Why do so many Americans, nearly half, not want America to unilaterally remove Saddam Hussein from power and liberate the people of Iraq?
            The answer is selfish.
            Many Americans don't want to share with the world their fingers, their hands.
            To do so, costs America its security, it costs America its prosperity, it costs America its stature in the world.

          It also means Americans will be forced to face their own degrees of Terrorism.  It means Americans will be asked to face their Beasts of Terror, to become Sentinels of Vigilance, to replace their own Complacency and sovereignty with Right Actions for the Children's Children's Children.
            America has many fingers and many hands.  Perhaps far too many for its own good.   It has ignored the defense of others who suffered under Terrorism for years.   Now, Americans are fighting against Terror, against the parental abuse of the children of a land who may not want to be liberated.
            Not because it isn't right, but because they don't know what it is like.
            Americans also need to be liberated.
            Their liberation needs to come from Complacency.
            Americans need to sign the Pledge of Vigilance and take a stand against their own abuse of themselves and their children.   They need to face the fact that Terrorism is an inside not an outside job.
            Only when Americans liberate their own children from the abuse of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency of their own children, will they truly be able to liberate other nations.
            You can start today.
            Take the Pledge of Vigilance.
            Liberate yourself from Complacency.  Forget all your fingers.   Just think of having only two thumbs.
           
       

Mar. 25--62 Million Friends Of American Warriors