Let Go of the Hate

The words of Martin Luther King ring from the past to illuminate what has happened to America since 9/11:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…. The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
The solution to terrorism is to shine a light on their darkness by isolating them from their societies; not by dropping a bomb on where you think they might be and wiping out a city block.
We, as a people, drank a dark elixir of hate after 9/11; maybe we should turn off Fox News and Rush Limbaugh because misrepresenting the Arabs and Islam as “Islamofascists” is like misrepresenting Americans and Christianity as the KKK.
It is time we got over the hate and started addressing terrorism with an intelligent and effective policy. I don’t know exactly what that policy should be but I do know that if we handed out sweet Iowa corn on the cob and cheeseburgers and organized soccer matches, it would win us more friends than an iron fragmentation bomb.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.”