GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--April 9, 2004 -- I felt time freeze as I read and reread the horror of the First Marine Division fighting in hand-to-hand combat through the streets of Fallujah's 300,000-populated city.

       In the weeks of fighting, 40 Marines have died and estimated 300 Iraqi civilians following the massacre of American contractors whose mutilated bodies were dragged through the city and hanged in a show of horror for the world to view.
       This death and destruction is the wine of Terrorism.  

       Guerrilla warfare is alive and well, just as it was when I fought the Viet Cong in Vietnam more than three decades ago.   Such wars are like dragging your finger through a bucket of water--no matter how hard you try to make a dent in the surface the gravity fills the trough so that nothing you do seems to have any impact.
       The current word for "guerrilla" is "insurgents," which is code for "Terrorists."

       These "insurgents" also recently captured a host of civilian prisoners, including three Japanese.   They broadcast pictures of the blindfolded and bound captives kneeling with guns to their heads and knives to their throats demanding that Japan remove its troops from Iraq or the prisoners will be mutilated and killed.
       The war in Iraq isn't going well.
       Terrorism seems to be gaining an upper hand.
       In America, the same is true.
       Politicians are dragging the dead body of Terrorism through the streets and hanging its corpse by the yardarm of public opinion in hopes the maggots crawling on the remains of the nearly 3,000 dead will bear the names of the current administration and cause people to lapidate their frustration at President Bush and his anti-Terror Team's credibility.
         Killing the Sentinel of Vigilance, and all the forces seeking to expunge Terrorism, is the goal of the Beast of Terror.   If Fear, Intimidation and Complacency can overpower Courage, Conviction and Right Actions that benefit the Children's Children's Children, then Terrorism wins.  It lives to haunt the world another day.   It roars and beats its chest in victory.

       The 9-11 Commission investigating the causes of the Terrorist attack in an attempt to find fault with the Administration is doing its best to undermine the credibility of the Bush Terror Team and to lay blame on the past so that the future efforts to fight Terrorism will be crippled, muddied and rendered lame.
         The intent isn't much different than the Iraqis taking hostages and pointing guns to their heads or placing knives at their throats.    One Terrorizes another by inflicting Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.   Blaming others for the past in an attempt to smear their present efforts to do the right thing is a form of proctology rather than therapy.    It examines the bile rather than manufacturing of new blood cells, and de-evolves rather than evolves the maturity of a people to stand up to Terrorism.
          The fragility of a public's understanding of Terrorism is based on a presumption that Terrorism exists outside the individual viewing it.    Only when the observer of Terrorism realizes that he or she can and is, in varying degrees, equal to or potentially similar to the most horrible of Terrorists, does the impact of how to fight Terrorism really come to focus.
         When one realizes he or she could put a gun to a kneeling person's head and threaten to blow it off, or, set a bomb under a vehicle filled with troops, or mutilate and hang the bodies of non-combatants in a public square does the worm turn and the mirror reflect the true power of Terrorism--that is a seed within that needs to be contained, quashed, bound and gagged.    

         The average person doesn't equate the neglect of a child's feelings as torture.  A harried mother or father far too busy to sit with a child and learn about the child's fears, intimidations and complacencies is similar to, yet in a lesser degree, a Terrorist "insurgent" holding a gun to a Japanese prisoner's head in Iraq.
           Parents who cannot recite their children's Fears, Intimidations and Complacencies are blind to the child's blindfolds, unaware of the scales that keep the child pretending to see when all the time there is nothing but a void.
         Of course there are more obvious signs of Terrorism by parents such as statements like:  "I wish you weren't born," or, "too bad you're not as pretty as, or as smart as..."   Or, "Don't bother me, don't you see I'm busy."  Or a host of other small barbs that shoot into a child's heart and eventually turn the child into "emotionally tortured victim" who pretends to be happy but inside is a prisoner seeking freedom from the bondage of parental emotional torture.   

        Only when we all understand and vow to fight our own Beasts of Terror can we truly appreciate the Beast of Terror we see outside of us.    Then we know what its real purpose it, and then we can fight it.
          Bullets and bombs won't kill Terrorism.
          Vigilance will.
          When Americans and other citizens of the world become Citizens and Parents of Vigilance, the world's battle against Terrorism will begin to be won.   Until that day, all that will be achieved is more lapidation--more hurling of rocks at one another in hopes blame will stick rather than mutual responsibility.
          Don't throw rocks.  Take the Pledge of Vigilance today.

April 7-8--100 Years of Vigilance Over Terrorism--Times Square

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