MY SEPTEMBER 11 POST

It's been 5 years. My September 11 reaction was very immature, how could it not be? It was on The Beacon, Florida International'University's newspaper. I told a very simple story about how my brother and I sat down to play chess and we weren't playing by the same rules, so there was chaos. Then I appended that if you wanted to win over the terrorists, all you had to do was kidnap Osama, give him a sex change operation, and trip their wires, because they can never respect a woman.
THAT stupid little comment was turned into an Internet forward and much merriment was had from it. I had people coming up to me telling me how funny my article was, and how they'd sent it to their friends. I had people come to me saying: "I just read the funniest thing, blah blah blah." "Yes, I know, I wrote it." Michiko quoted it in the New York Times saying something blindingly obvious like: "See? Humor isn't dead!" Bill Maher quoted it on Politically Incorrect. I never got credited for it. It didn't matter to me.
Guess what?
It's not funny.
Nothing's changed.
It's five years later and no one got the point. The point wasn't Osama in drag. The point was the chessboard.
There are no good guys and bad guys.
There are two teams playing two very different games.
I was playing chess and my brother was playing checkers.
Chaos.
Dear Mr. President: You can't peacefully win against your enemy until you UNDERTAND how your enemy thinks. And when you understand how your enemy thinks, you will be shocked to realize that your enemy is not the bad guy. He just THINKS DIFFERENT. To him YOU are the killer invading his land. Why is this hard to understand?

When there's a fight you have four basic choices: you can kill kill kill until the last man's left standing.
You can allow yourself to be hurt until your enemy is satiated.
You can run away.

Or you can talk and try to understand and try to create PEACE.

What do you think is the best choice?

I realize my political comments can seem naive and simplistic, but- darn it, what's simple tends to be very true.
If I, who am just some guy, can understand this, and the president can't, then there's a problem.