Letter and question to the Department of Defense: I heard a panel on CSpan discussing the American political landscape. One questioner at the end asked a very important and poignant question perhaps the most grave question of the entire discussion. He asked what the answer is to the eventual thought by some, that WWIII in the Middle East was unavoidable. One commentator said that truly this is the question that absolutely no one in the military or in our government or even outside of our government has any idea how to avoid or what to do.

I recently caught part of a segment done by Ted Koppel which centered on the role for our military OTHER than the role of warrior. That is instead of waging war, we are waging peace. His reporting centered on some rather remote villages in Africa and elsewhere where the US has made incredible humanitarian inroads by providing medical, schools, water development and other humanitarian assistance to poor people in various parts of the globe. This has given the US such a positive image in those places which it assists and even foils the attempts of terrorists to gain a foothold. It seems to me part of the problem in Middle East countries and elsewhere is the people's feeling that somehow they were left out of the success equation of the western world and used by the west for primarily the economic reason of oil. That probably I suspect has some truth. Obviously, other religious and historical issues are involved but do not you think that what I have just described is one crucially pivotal way we can avoid a doomsday scenario? There must be an answer. I believe 9/11 was avoidable and surprised even the perpetrators as to how devastating it was but, of course, hindsight is 20/20. I believe another, God forbid a million times, event could be avoided IF we can get people around the Globe not to hate us but to appreciate us. That is how we were viewed after WWII. Something after that, I think, went askew. We must get that back again and I think that humanitarian and other assistance while OF COURSE maintaining our own security is one simple rather inexpensive effective answer to the most complex and poignant question of our age.