Why were we surprised when terrorists attacked our homeland? For a very long time, our foreign policy has often supported the wrong people and policies, and in doing so, we have succeeded in alienating many people. We have intervened in the internal affairs of nations, we have supported coups and political assassinations. That is a matter of record.

For half a century, we have dragged our feet on helping Palestinian refugees achieve the justice and homeland they deserve. At the same time, we have supported Israel with money and weapons while they continue to ratchet up the violence in the Mideast.

The roots of what happened in New York and Washington this week go back many decades. We were determined to punish Germany after World War I, and that gave rise to Hitler.

In 1945, we dropped two atom bombs on Japan, reducing two cities to rubble and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

In Vietnam one general said, "We will bomb them back to the Stone Age." Tens of thousands of our finest youths died in an illegal, immoral war, and we rained death and destruction on a nation fighting for its way of life.

In the gulf war, we buried alive many Iraqi soldiers whose trenches were in the way of our advancing armies.

So who can say that "we" are good and "they" are evil? That's much too simplistic and does not allow us to look within ourselves and see the evil in us. As Pogo reminds us, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

We must be very careful in our response to terrorists, lest we become like them. Our military talk about "collateral damage" (that is Pentagonspeak for innocent civilians). If, in our attempt to avenge the deaths of thousands of our civilians, we kill innocent civilians in another part of the world, then we are no better than those who planned and perpetrated these terrible acts against our nation.

Violence begets more violence, and if we use indiscriminate violence in response to this terrorist attack, we will only invite more terrorist attacks, and the cycle of violence will continue. I realize there is no easy answer to this problem, but this is a time for patience, cool heads and rational thinking. Anything else would be utterly foolish and unworthy of us as a great nation committed to the highest moral values.

I am deeply disturbed by the president's division of the world into good and evil. I am also troubled by the administration's statement that we are at war. We were victims of a terrible terrorist attack, but I am not willing to accept that we are at war, because that would mean sacrifices and curtailed freedoms, which I doubt our nation is willing to accept.

Also, that would put the military in control of our destiny, and in the past we have seen far too often the result of irrational military decisions which have backfired, creating more problems than they have solved.

Let us not sink to the level of those who have committed these horrible acts. If we do, they will have succeeded.