Luis,
Thank you for bringing your views.
I certainly will not be arguing with either you or Peter over the way that terrorism has affected your lives and in turn your views. I FULLY understand.
I am not naive. I really don't pretend to be Ghandi or Mother Theresa etc. and I don't claim to have the answers. What I do have is hope.
The human race continues to make the same mistakes.
It fails to recognise that every empire has it's day and is ALWAYS eclipsed. It fails to remember that the war to end wars did not do that. It fails to act upon it's knowledge that corruption and greed always threaten the most stable of regimes or republics. On a personal scale I have seen business partnerships between family members and best friends split up because of greed, imbalance of input, deceit, and downright dishonesty, something that they would have assured me could never happen. So what hope for countries and groups of countries.?
Why do we always put the horse before the cart when we know that it doesn't work?
The European Union is a prime example. Britain joined this union because it had to accept that it's power and influence had changed and that with it's loss of empire it faced being sidelined. Our natural friends outside of the empire were countries where despite our past difficulties our shared cultural and ethnic similarities make a bond, however, even in times of easy travel etc. the USA, for example, is too far away for everyday trade on everything.
THE MISTAKE made upon joining most conglomerates of nations is that we join together and then try to stress our differences afterword's. There was a memorable example of this when, a few years ago, The European Union suddenly announced that Britain could not call Ice Cream "Ice Cream". They said that there was insufficient cream therefore it would have to be called something like "Iced confectionery".
We won but at stupid cost to our finances.
What should have happened generally, in the first place is this:
Nations should have sat down and said "What do we ALL agree upon?" Every country should have then said "We believe this or that" and then ask "Is that acceptable?" If not then the matter should have stayed outside of the union until some agreement could be made.
Over simplified? Yes of course, but an example .
MY POINT IS THIS. Teach children to celebrate differences but teach them that the future lies in knowing our sameness. Questions like "Do you believe in a God?" "Could this be the same God that I believe in?" If the answer is no then agree that on that matter and respect the other persons view but don't compromise eithers views unless more common ground occurs through integration.
I love change, not always, but usually and I accept it, but, to have fundamental change thrust upon you because you are the minority is no more right that saying you have to change to accomodate this minority or that.
Your paragraph:
Look, I am not saying that all of them are the same. Some may have been induced to those inhuman acts by the wrong, inhuman acts that they or their folk suffered first. Some may have not committed atrocities themselves but just collaborated with their beastly leaders in perpetrating the most horrible onslaughts against innocent people, even children. Some may in fact regret having collaborated.
This is important. Many of those bombers and murderers were first unhappy with what they had or hadn't and made easy targets of themselves for recruiting. We need to engage the ordinary man more in our samenesses, make friends on that basis and then find ways of drawing differences together.
I hope that this is not too long.
Roger