October 31, 2001
Dear you all,
Please pardon the form letter but it’s for a good reason. I’ve gotten more and more uncomfortable about the 9/11 thing and the direction we’re headed, and probably like you, am feeling fairly powerless. But, despite the fact we (you and I) have little to say and do to affect the way things are going in and outside the U.S. now, we’re not powerless to help each other sift through the media morass and political posturing to maintain a sense of sane circumspection, involvement and , to varying degrees, control.
Recently it occurred to me I have a lot of very smart and resourceful friends with access to the net, and it dawned on me that if we pooled our individual networks into an expanded network and unofficial clearing house/think tank, we could help keep each other much more in touch with important facts and ideas as they develop.
Soon after the 9/11 thing happened , several of you (thanks) started sending me great resource material on bin Laden (how the C.I.A. helped create him ,etc.) and this material came to me long before it got to the media. I ‘ve personally gotten fairly immersed , and even fascinated in a fear-driven sort of way, in Islamic terrorism and the challenge it presents to the U.S. military (and us). Have you noticed yet what a great “geography lesson” war turns out to be?
It’s very unsettling to think as I presently do that we may be headed in exactly the wrong direction if we are planing to attack the problem of Islamic terrorism primarily with aircraft carriers, smart bombs and the rest. Russians already tried that in the same place we’re headed and the same elements and weaponry that routed them are still in place; we put them there and we trained the lot we’re now resolved to destroy. We can easily eliminate their conventional war assets , but we’re being challenged (i.e , killed) by their non-conventional ones.
I’m going to attach to this letter, for flavor and incentive, a short allegory (titled “Matches and Haystacks”) concerning the attack on the twin towers and Islamic terrorism in general. It doesn’t teach or solve anything, but through it I can bring into focus and share with you some of what we are all currently feeling as we’re being told we may have anthrax and other unthinkable dangers in our midst for the first time since 1942.
If you’ve gotten this letter it’s because I know you’re well-informed , intelligent and likely keeping in touch these days with others of your ilk , all of which makes you desirable candidates for enlistment in the group I’m helping to form. This group would like to be better connected to your informational network and your thinking while this terror thing is pending . So, what I ask is that , after you’ve read this letter and the little “Persian Parable” attached, you correspond with me by e-mail on the following:
Would you be interested in being a member of a locally-based “think tank”, the purpose of which would be simply to provide for each other a sharing network (mostly through e-mail) and clearing-house for information and collective creative/ameliorative thinking (including hopefully reliable, collectively-gathered information on threats of and defenses to bioterrorism as it evolves)?
I can already tell you I’m in communication with some “heavies” in the U.S. and elsewhere, have chased down stories released by the foreign press, and have corresponded with Jessica Stern (author of the book on Islamic terrorism, “The Ultimate Terrorists”). She and many other of the real eggheads on the subject are swearing (very quietly) that Bush and Powell may be executing an ineffective , and possibly even counter-productive plan of attack at present. While the jury is still out, would you like to network with us (I’m volunteering to be your clearing-house) under the unofficial banner of “B.E.A.” ? A core group has already enlisted and agreed to adopt that moniker , and is constituted and defined as follows: “An a-political Society of trial lawyers and their lay and professional colleagues and friends who collectively embody a pro-bono think tank to provide for each other a clearing house for information and ideas intended to help the members contend with and think positively, constructively and perhaps eventually even remedially about Islamic-based terrorism in the U.S. and elsewhere.” (“B.E.A.”, of course , is “Barristers et. al”.)
The group will have no corporate charter, no board , no CEO or committee chairs. If we ever assemble outside cyber-space, our meeting table will be round. I have volunteered for the job of scribe, and as such will receive, collate and send information ad-hoc from those who join and contribute. I don’t intend to flood or be flooded with massive e-mail because both I and member contributors will conservatively screen out unreliable, redundant or otherwise superfluous material. All your contributions will be strictly voluntary , so you can send and/or receive information at the whim and motion of your mind and mouse.
The core group will include, inter alia, some creative fellow lawyers in the Triad and D.C., a few doctors, University professors (so far, including Harvard, Wake Forrest, U.N.C. , V.C.U. and Notre Dame) (and students), scientists (in private sector), community leaders, along with scholars learned in matters of Islamic/Middle Eastern culture and politics. When our group is full and in swing, we’ll ask Senators John Edwards and Dick Lugar (R. Ind.) to join our ranks as political adjuncts already immersed , respectively, in terrorist-related domestic and foreign policy positions. In turn , it is hoped that these core members will each bring into our clearing house base, information gleaned (and screened) from their individual nets, so that we develop a net which has the capacity to expand exponentially in function and at the same time remain static in its core size. To keep things manageable , I’m putting an arbitrary limit of 24 on our core membership, and will consider your early suggestions for individuals you think would be a willing asset to the core base. Keep in mind , when you enlist, you’ll be able to share B.E.A. communications and data with anyone in your e-mail bank, B.E.A. member or not (you could constitute them a “group” in your e-address books. ) There will be B.E.A.’s , then and “A-BEAS” , viz., a “friend” (amicus) of the BEA’s.
Anyone who gives me a “yes” will immediately begin getting (via e-mail) access options to anything I receive that’s novel among stuff that comes to me over the net either from you or through the web and other media. You’re never obligated to read or respond. You’ll simply be invited to express to and through me your select creative thinking about how you personally endorse or second-guess decisions being made by world leaders in the new war on terrorism (and/or the terrorists’ war on us). Your thoughts “outside the box” especially are sought.
At the least, membership in “the B.E.A.’s” (to be pronounced, appropriately, just like the “Bees” in “busy bees”) will keep you better informed with avante-guard aspects and angles of our war with the terrorists; and at best, we might collectively come up with some ideas that might somehow help out in the situation out …there. You can come in now with a “yes” reply and bail out anytime down the road for any reason. If you sign in, however, include in one short sentence the “bio” note we’ll be authorized to place beside your name in our (not-to-be-published, except intramurally ) membership roster..
I’ll serve , as I said , as clearing-house clerk, or group “Scribe” so that when you send me stuff, you will have screened it and you’ll have sent it to me with a preface giving a brief synopsis on content. I’ll make sure to evaluate whether the piece you send me is redundant in re: stuff previously sent. I’ll send (i.e. disseminate to other core members) , then, select of your “outside source” contributions, and all of your independent thinking and creations, uncensored and unedited.
Please join the B.E.A.’s and get back to me on it ASAP. E Pluribus Unum really is the truth, especially when you’re under attack, and as I ‘m presently feeling - a little jittery.
Best Regards,
D u s t y
(Robert R. Schoch)
“Matches and Haystacks”
( An Arabian Allegory )
Let’s consider two combatants contemplating war against one another and make a wager on which will be victorious before their war begins (“victorious” meaning : “to get the outcome the combatant wants in the war”.)
On one side are the “haystacks.” They are the common-variety haystacks, made of golden harvested grass, pitched high in a pile , shining in the sun. These haystacks want to endure , intact, until their destinies are fulfilled by deployment into the service of their makers. On the other side are the “matches” - all of them the self-igniting stick variety, having the general size , shape and aspect of large needles without eyes.
The ultimate purpose of all the matches is to set fire to all the haystacks. The easiest way to accomplish this is for the matches to imbed themselves deep inside the haystacks , where, because of their small size and the haystacks’ greater mass , it is easy for them to remain hidden until the call for ignition. When the call to ignite is given by the leaders of the matches, all the matches in all the haystacks will strike themselves and go up in flames along with their individual haystack hosts. Being thusly consumed , however, is no defeat or problem for the matches, who are all trained by masterful match mentors to believe that when they are immolated in a haystack fire they themselves start, they will be instantly transported - intact and unscathed into an after life where they’ll be safe and happy forever - that being , cushioned amidst the churlish labia and securely-clenched teeth of an aspiring cinema cowboy , sitting on a subservient bale of hay in the non-smoking section of a sushi bar in lower L.A. watching CNN and waiting for a Hollywood talent agent to phone.
Now for the wager: When all the matches in the world are safely and securely ensconced in all the haystacks in the world, and the haystacks declare war on the matches and threaten to seek them out and set them on fire, tell me , where are you going to place your bets?
