Obviously what causes war is the desire for power, position, prestige, money; also the disease called nationalism, the worship of a flag; and the disease of organized religion, the worship of a dogma. All these are the causes of war; if you as an individual belong to any of the organized religions, if you are greedy for power, if you are envious, you are bound to produce a society which will result in destruction. So again it depends upon you and not on the leaders – not on so-called statesmen and all the rest of them. It depends upon you and me but we do not seem to realize that. If once we really felt the responsibility of our own actions, how quickly we could bring to an end all these wars, this appalling misery! But you see, we are indifferent. We have three meals a day, we have our jobs, we have our bank account, big or little, and we say, “For God’s sake, don’t disturb us, leave us alone”. The higher up we are, the more we want security, permanency, tranquility, the more we want to be left alone, to maintain things fixed as they are; but they cannot be maintained as they are, because there is nothing to maintain. Everything is disintegrating. We do not want to face these things, we do not want to face the fact that you and I are responsible for wars. You and I may talk about peace, have conferences, sit round a table and discuss, but inwardly, psychologically, we want power, position, we are bound by beliefs, by dogmas, for which we are willing to die and destroy each other. Do you think such men, you and I, can have peace in the world? To have peace, we must be peaceful; to live peacefully means not to create antagonism. Peace is not an ideal. To me, an ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is - which we will go into presently, in another talk. [not on this website] But to have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin, not to live an ideal life, but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need – food, clothing and shelter – is destroyed. We are seeking psychological security, which does not exist; and we seek it, if we can, through power, through position, through titles, names – all of which is destroying physical security. This is an obvious fact, if you look at it.

I'm not saying that the United States is perfect -- by any stretch. However, there are evil rulers in this world. You can say what you want -- but the guy in Iraq was killing hundreds of thousands of people. It's funny -- when Hitler did it, it was a world autrocity --- but it appears that the world kinda turned their backs on Saddam doing it. I don't think for one minute that the United States wants to take over the middle east -- making it the 51st state.

What I DO believe is that our country believes in freedom for all. When the world needs someone to come to their aid, we're there. We constantly put together countries after disaster....yet we're still hated.

We can debate 'til the cows come home -- but I'll put it to you very simply:

THEY WANT YOU DEAD.

That's right -- Al Queda -- and a lot of Islamic Fundamentalists want YOU dead.

Now -- if that doesn't wake you -- or Jiddu up -- I don't know what will.

I know this post has gotten off-track -- probably my fault -- as I asked the question "where was Friedman on 9/11?" -- my meaning was "how can he forget what happened?" I dunno -- mebbe he believes it was "An American Conspiracy" like way too many people on the internet believe.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.