Threats locked in a cycle

Amy Goodman’s Jan. 25 column plainly illustrates the fatal flaw in the thinking behind our continuing war-and-attack strategies intent on stamping out worldwide terrorism. In the forthcoming movie she references, over the course of one evening a young boy is converted from happy family member to rage-filled readiness to “blow myself up among the Americans.”

Listen up! Failed efforts to eliminate a threat have increased them in a continuous cycle of human misery that we will all share if we never learn that war is failure except as a last-resort defensive movement. These new crops of terrorists will migrate …

Amy Goodman’s Jan. 25 column plainly illustrates the fatal flaw in the thinking behind our continuing war-and-attack strategies intent on stamping out worldwide terrorism. In the forthcoming movie she references, over the course of one evening a young boy is converted from happy family member to rage-filled readiness to “blow myself up among the Americans.”

Listen up! Failed efforts to eliminate a threat have increased them in a continuous cycle of human misery that we will all share if we never learn that war is failure except as a last-resort defensive movement. These new crops of terrorists will migrate to our own school buses. They will look like kids because they will be kids.

Oh wait. Is Newtown not a form of terrorism? Where do our own troubled kids learn that only radical terrorist acts get them any serious attention? Realign our defense to be a defense and not a war machine whose perpetuation profits international corporations with supply contracts to eternity. Maybe their hidden purposes are not to create more terrorists so their bottom line is maintained, but it does conveniently work that way anyway.

Frank Percy

Spokane Valley