Author: JT Smith
The following comments come from members of our panel that are representing themselves. They do not speak for all at TLS as a whole.
To the population of the Linux community:
Many people we know are dead. Many more are going to die.
This is a time to help, to grieve, to open our hearts, our wallets,
our homes and our minds.
What happened today may have been an act of war, but it was also an
act of insanity. If Linux stands for anything, it is sanity about
building Stuff that Matters.
We all have work to do. Let’s do it.
Doc Searls
Greeting on this day of sadness:
Today the United States was rocked with the worst terrorist attack in our history. The wide-spread and well organized nature of this attack was on the scale of Perl Harbor in 1941 and the English attacking Washington during the war of 1812. The infamy of such cowardly attacks is appalling to the basic fair-minded nature of Americans, we just do not relate to such a degree of evil. Although many people from around the world who look at us a “Satan”, the truth of it is we are for the largest part a good and peace loving people. And, that is what makes this all so sad, but for all practical purposes, the United States is now at war, we just do not know yet with who.
It is my personal feeling that in times as these such issues as the merits of one technology versus another are trivial. Now is the time for concern and prayer for others. Therefore, I have asked the other members of our broadcast team that there be no broadcast tonight. I suggest that your time will be better spent giving attention to the dead, and the injured, and indeed too our national leaders.
The prayers of my family go out to the families of all those who died in the four hijacked aircraft, in the World Trade Center, and those police and fire personnel who were killed in the desperate struggle to respond to this situation.
My prayers also go to our country, our President and our national leaders, that they will put aside the petty bickering of partisan politics for a time, and address the situation of the moment.
IN MY OPINION, there is NO QUESTION that such a well-organized attack as this was a declaration of war on the innocent by parties yet to be identified. We urge our national leaders to find the party responsible and any country or countries that have aided the parties of this attack, and respond in a quick and decisive way.
This is a controversial opinion here at the rather liberal crew of folks here at The Linux Show. But, I am of the firm opinion that it is important that this response be strong and swift. We have a history of dealing with suicide attacks that we learned during the Second World War with Japan. When the military members of the society you are at war with is ready and willing to throw away their lives (as was the case with the hijackers), it is almost pointless to respond in small measured ways. During the Second World War, this lesson was learned so well at the battles for Okinawa and Iwojima that it forced our leaders to consider the use of and then deploy the only use of the atomic bomb during a war in human history.
BE CLEAR, I am NOT advocating the use of a nuclear weapon, on the contrary I would never advocate that. However, it is essential in my opinion that we give our full support to all of our national leaders, be they Democrat, Republican or Independent; and urge them to respond to this situation with the strongest conventional means at their disposal. The parties responsible for this have to be shown clearly that the price they will have to pay for this attack is too painful a price to sustain in the future.
I advocate that you all contact your senator and congressman (even if you voted for the other guys), and urge them to enforce our constitution to its full extent, and get to the job of providing for the defense of this country.
These comments are my own and not those of my fellow geeks here at The Linux Show.
Jeff Gerhardt
Category:
- Linux
