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Chicken Little's Fear of the Earth
NMB, Florida October 18, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
CHICKEN LITTLE'S FEAR OF THE EARTH
It seems to me that the sky is not falling. But to take a leaf from the
Chicken Little story and turning it over it seems that those of the Chicken
Little persuasion now fear what comes from the earth. Anthrax comes from
the earth but there is someone out there who has packaged the deadly stuff
in the form of a powder and sends it with fine discrimination to targets it
rarely reaches. In this instance it is not the deadly attack of commercial
airliners hijacked to fly into buildings. Not too strangely it is the United
States Postal Service that delivers the deadly disease.
The best imagination as to the origin and source of this biological weapon
is Iraq. The best thinking about our war against those who wage war against
us and also against those who harbor our enemies is that destroying the
Taliban would not complete the job. It would be best, the scenario says, to
destroy Saddam Hussein who, before Osama bin Laden, was the chief enemy of
his neighbors and of the United States.
What this means is that to accuse and attack Saddam Hussein would enlarge
the current delicate mission and thus involve a great many more of the
insecure neighbors in that region. Escalating the conflict would, perhaps,
be the beginning of World War III. The most important question that must be
asked is, are we ready for such a step?
My concern is that we do not have enough information. It was amazing to
see how quickly the Twin Towers and Pentagon attackers were identified. It
is no longer a secret that a single man, not a national power, was the
instigator and director of that attack. That man is unquestionably Osama
bin Laden. We have no information as to the source of the Anthrax weapon
its users and the ultimate objective besides making all of us quake with
fear. It is a poor choice of bio-weapons. The two or three it kills does
not threaten all of us although the knee jerk reaction is that of Chicken
Little whose fear of the Sky falling seems quite ridiculous. But there are
a lot of Chicken Littles and there is too little information to go running
amok scaring the rest of us. The question should be - where are the
laboratories that created the Anthrax? What do you think? Carol's
Evaluation: out of 10.
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