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Date Posted: 19:08:43 10/16/02 Wed
Author: Perceptor II
Subject: Bali
In reply to: Goktimus Prime 's message, "words cannot describe..." on 08:45:47 10/14/02 Mon

Wow, those words sound very familiar. Last September, I went through the same sort of feelings even though the attacks were about 1000 miles (roughly 1600 km) away. The attacks happened on Tuesday, and I didn't start feeling anything close to normal until Friday. And I didn't start feeling normal until I forced myself to get away from the 24-hour news coverage for a while. I switched the channel to watch cartoons. I got out and took a walk. This is not to say that 24-hour news channels are a bad thing--it's actually nice to be able to tune in and catch up with what's going on at any time--but watching it non-stop for days on end is not really healthy, especially when the news is dominated by one story.

Although the attacks happened on the other side of the world, they've still given me reason for fear. Apparently the primary suspected group, Jemaah Islamiah, has designs to create a new Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, southern Thailand, southern Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei...and Cambodia. I have a dear friend serving an internship as a missionary in Cambodia. Cambodia had seemed safe from this new wave of terrorism, as the country is neither Western nor Islamic, but hearing that this group would like to annexed Cambodia into this state of theirs just gives me chills. Still, it sounds like JI is probably not very active in that country, very much less than in Indonesia and the Philippines.

I am somewhat worried about some Australian reactions I've read about: ones that seem to think that Australians were specifically targetted, or that the Australian government's support of in anti-terrorism efforts have made them a target. Now, many of the dead and missing are Australian citizens so they're right to feel especially grieved, but this attack did occur in a different country and thus far it doesn't appear that Australians were singled out as a target. At this point, it appears that the main targets were Balinese, primarily Hindus who cater to Western tourists. It doesn't seem to me that any particular group of Westerners were singled out by these terrorists, or even that they care to differentiate between Australians, Americans, British, French, Germans or whatever. Still, I know that there were initially a lot of similar reactions here after September 11, 2001, so I'm not inclined to be very critical at this time.

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