More terror attacks in America, it seems. Since the 11 September attack there have been four cases of anthrax — three in Florida and another one at the NBC studios in New York. There was another mysterious package mailed to a New York Times writer, but so far it has tested negative. Still, like the envelop to the NBC worker, it contained a strange powder and a threatening letter. Stupid — we’re going to keep bombing Afghanistan, though. As if that will do any good.

I love the way everyone says, “This is a different kind of conflict,” but then they all go ahead and fight it the same way. “We bomb the hell out of people — that’s all we know how to do,” says the military. Of course we could do some covert CIA nonsense and perhaps create our next monster.

And that’s essentially what we’ve done. The shoulder-fired missiles that the Taliban will be firing at the helicopters that are bound to go into Afghanistan were supplied by the United States through the CIA when the Afghanis were doing something we liked: battling communism. Now they’re doing something we don’t like, so of course the logical thing is to bomb the hell out of them. And hope they don’t shoot us down with their own missiles.

I went for a walk today in the fields behind the house. I headed toward Kotcie Zamek but I didn’t make it all the way in the end. At any rate, I was sitting there, listening to the tractors working in the fields in the distance and the cows mowing at me incessantly and it struck me how utterly different my life is from the lives of those poor people in Afghanistan. They haven’t know a moment’s peace for at least twenty years, and we’re just guaranteeing even more chaos. I’m sure, since America’s “not into nation building,” we’ll just pull out and let the power vacuum that ensues engulf the nation. And then we’ll have to face a new batch of terrorists.