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To the Editor: 

President George W. Bush has decided to brand anyone who uses violence against the US or our allies as evil "terrorists," as if terrorism was somehow alien and un-American. The truth is the United States was founded on terrorism and genocide directed at the indigenous peoples who lived here before the European invasion. Our distant relatives even used germ warfare against native Americans by selling them smallpox infected blankets. 

In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln used terrorism to win the Civil War by unleashing General William Tecumseh Sherman to march across Georgia, burning everything in his path in his famous march to the sea to break the will of the Confederacy. During World War 11 Franklin Delano Roosevelt used terrorism by targeting civilian populations in the mass firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo. Later President Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In these premeditated attacks against civilian populations literally hundreds of thousand of "innocent civilians" were burned alive. In Vietnam American forces used napalm to destroy whole villages that were suspected of containing just a few Vietcong. Remember the American slogan that "sometimes you have to destroy a village in order to save it." American soldiers were given permission to shoot anyone who was running away from them, be they Vietcong or just innocent and justifiably scared farmers. 

Palestinians are using "terrorism" to fight the Israeli Jews who stole their land and homes because that is all they can afford. They do not have an army, tanks, or aircraft and they have tried everything else. Palestinians first tried letting their children throw stones at Israeli troops, who simply shot them by the hundreds, and the US still supported Israel. Israel started the 1967 war, not the Palestinians, as Israel launched the surprise attack against Egypt by destroying Egypt’s air force on the ground. Even Menachem Begin later admitted that Israel started the war with the aim of gaining new land for Jews to settle. The US has financially bankrolled the destruction of Palestine and the enslavement of the Palestinian people by our continued massive financial aid to Israel, which has over the years far exceeded 100 billion dollars. Japan only waged a hit and run attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor, yet we responded by purposefully burning alive massive numbers of Japanese civilians. What would Americans do if we were attacked, invaded, enslaved, and humiliated for over 35 years, with no end in sight to our suffering? 

The only way to end this conflict so for the United Stated to join with its European allies and Russia to force a peace agreement. Israel must be made to retreat to its original 1967 borders and not be allowed to destroy any improvements to the land (homes, buildings, etc.) as it has in the past when it gave back territory to Egypt. Acting legally through the United Nations we can threaten Israel with a full embargo of arms, oil, and consumer goods. 

Israel would not last a week under an embargo and they would be forced to agree to the UN sponsored peace settlement. The Palestinians would have to give up their hopes for the right of return to Israel itself, but Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to the new Palestinian State made up of the West Bank and Gaza. The US and all its allies should then donate billions to rebuild the new Palestine and to construct a wall between Palestine and Israel to keep the parties out of contact and conflict. Syrian would get back the Golan Heights and the Arab States would sign peace and trade agreements with Israel.  

This peace plan would be fully legal, moral, fair, and quick. The current Bush policy of keeping hands off while continuing to finance Israel’s theft of Palestinian territory is two faced and immoral. America has created the atmosphere for terrorism to flourish and only America can end this cycle of violence by doing the right thing. 

The Bush Administration is currently interested in more violence, more hypocrisy, and more actions that are guaranteed to make the rest of the world hate us.  

America deserves the world’s wrath because we are liars and hypocrites and we are proud of our own crimes. We have mixed up the cult of Zionism with the Christian Right Wing and the result is an unholy axis of arrogance that is destined to bring the world more acts of terror committed by both sides. We are fighting a racial and religious war against Moslems but we are too dishonest to admit the truth of our actions. Americans need to end all their self-serving talk about freedom and admit terrorism has been as much an American tradition as apple pie and baseball. 

Christopher Calder