Just a quick note this evening. I observed on CNN.com that Israel has chosen to sever ties completely with Yassir Arafat. And in the meantime, two members of the Jewish Defense League in the United States have been (rightfully) arrested for plotting to bomb several Muslim temples and landmarks in Los Angeles.

The world is full of bright, intelligent people. And it’s a shame, I think — a God-damned, fucking shame — that people choose to waste their lives hating each other and doing terrible things to each other. Think of the things that humanity could achieve if we would put aside our hatreds for, say, just a year. If warlords in Africa could choose to put aside their hatred for each other and instead decide to feed the people of their countries. If Israel and the Palestinians could stop signing the "Screw Peace" accords and actually worked on bringing peace and prosperity to the region.

What makes people think that their petty nationalities and prejudices are important enough to kill and die for? So often it is not even the people who believe the lunacies that die for them — it is the innocents who get killed in the cross-fire. Only nineteen misguided idiots died in the plane crashes on September 11; the rest of the victims, including the Muslims who were in the towers of the World Trade Center, were innocents. But those who destroyed the towers, and those who are engaged in the bickering which is slaughtering innocent people around the world, from Northern Ireland to Africa to the poverty-stricken areas of the US inner cities, are truly the fools who allow their own intelligence and talents to be wasted on foolish ideologies and idiotic pursuits.

Imagine, for awhile, that the intelligence and talents that are currently being wasted on the craft of war were instead applied to bringing about a world of peace and prosperity for all humanity. I imagine that we’d be able to solve all of the physical problems of the world in less than a year. Usama bin Laden is not an ignorant man; he’s obviously intelligent and skilled at leading people. Too bad he has chosen to focus that intelligent and those skills on killing innocent people. If he worked for peace, if he applied his tremendous talents to creating an infrastructure for delivering food and medicine to the impovershed people of Afghanistan, then perhaps things would be different.

I’m not discriminating. I believe that there are intelligent and talented people within the U.S. who have chosen to waste their God-given talents and skills on hatred and killing. If we had devoted as much resources and time to rebuilding Afghanistan after the ousting of the Soviet Union in the mid-80’s as we had devoted to rebuilding Japan after the Second World War, then we wouldn’t be in the situation that we are now.

It’s a shame, and a terrible, terrible waste.