Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Conflicted feelings about Mohammed Atta near his home in Egypt
``You still interested in all that?'' asked Hussein Maarouf, smoking a water pipe with his brother at a coffee house. ``So what!'' he retorted when reminded of America's black day. ``We've seen so many deaths in the 1967-1973 wars (with Israel). Death is normal.'' If Atta was really the lead hijacker in the attacks, Maarouf said, he deserves what he got. But if Atta did it, he continued, it was for money.
``Don't give me that garbage about jihad and Palestine and those slogans we hear in the mosque,'' he said. ``If someone goes and kills himself, it must be for something material in return.''
Like most of her customers, Sayyed doubts Atta led the attacks. ``Obviously, if it were proven that an Egyptian did it, the Americans would punish us terribly,'' she said. ``No good Egyptian would risk that.''
On Sept. 11, 14-year-old Mohamed Ashour sat with his father. The boy wants to be a soccer star and says he hates Osama bin Laden. ``Bin Laden was wrong,'' he said. ``But now it looks as if he and the United States are just like each other. Both go attacking anyone whose thinking is not like their own.''
His father said he didn't know Mohamed Atta. ``But if he was responsible,'' the father said, ``how can they call him a hero? He killed himself, damaged his nation, and goes down in history with a blackened name. This is a hero?''
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