Where has our humanity gone? Why do we link our ability to kill and destroy with leadership and greatness? Why am I even asking these two previous questions?

I ask because I get a lot of mail from Megillah family members expressing great pride in our capacity to make mince meat of our enemies. Just this week I received several pictures of a recently commissioned battleship, and images of bombing sites after a US aerial attack, illustrating our increasing ability to destroy. Clearly the message is that the US is strong enough to wipe out anybody and everybody that crosses its path.

I have no doubt that all of this and more is true, but the US also has an even greater capacity for doing tremendous good. Why don't I receive e-mails, letters and photos from people showing me all of the good the US does around the world? Sadly, we are attracted by the seductive power of destruction and we take great pride in our ability to be the strongest and the mightiest and the most fearsome nation on earth. Have we become so fearful of our neighbours and of the rest of the world that we must constantly prove that we can crush them all? Do we really need to paint our faces and do our war dance to deter our enemies? Wouldn't we much rather present a reasonable and loving face to the world, a face of friendship and trust, along with a reminder that we still retain the ability and desire to protect ourselves from harm?

It seems to me that since 9/11 we have been convinced that we can trust no one. We are told that unless we fight them “over there” we will have to fight them “here;” as if the terrorists are lurking right under our beds.

Fighting terrorism is an important effort because a terrorist threat will always exist in the world. And yes, we must protect ourselves against another terrorist attack on our home soil, but not to the extent that we forget that the good people in the world outnumber the terrorists over a hundred million to one.

People want to live their lives peacefully, and be able to work and support their families. We want to send our children off to school in the morning without having to worry whether or not they will return home to us safely at the end of the day. Most people want to start each day with a hope that this day will be better than the one before. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that only military might and the destruction of warfare is what will keep us safe. While we remain on the alert for our enemies we must also work toward the goal of not creating more of them.

It is my hope that in this new year of 2007 we can begin to find ways of defeating terrorism by creating better and stronger allies. We must start taking pride in the good our country has done in the past and can continue to do in the future. Rather then thumping our chests at pictures of our newest and best battleships and our strongest and greatest military, let us also take pride in the wonderful scientific and medical advances we've made to help wipe out disease in the poorer nations of the world. Let us work in our own country towards building a greater society, where we do not have our fellow Americans, starving and drowning in the streets as we did during hurricane Katrina. Yes, we are a great nation, but we can be even greater. And being greater does not mean just being militarily the strongest power on earth.

I wish our entire Megillah family and loved ones much peace love and good health in the New Year.