Is anyone out there? Or am I whistling in the wind, typing words for their own sake, with no audience, no purpose? It certainly seems so. This is such a crowded blogosphere, and I am just one voice in millions. But I notice that some bloggers are invited on television – usually raging right-wingers but occasionally someone like FireDogLake‘s Jane Hamsher, who – I think, anyway – is usually on the side of the angels.

Someone must have noticed them. And sometimes a TV news anchor will report on trends in the blogosphere. Did my blogs get included in their surveys? Not likely. But who knows? These “journalists” rarely attribute anything or cite specifics. “Journalism” ain’t what it used to be.

So, I suppose you are wondering why I should care if anyone is noticing my blogs. Am I some kind of megalomaniac? Perhaps. But I was asked to write these blogs, and to do so I had to start paying closer attention to events outside my own life.

What I notice scares me.

It’s as if I am witnessing a crime in progress, and cannot resist the urge to sound the alarm. But – as sometimes happens in my nightmares – I am screaming yet no sound emerges from my throat.

I’ll try to scream again today, and hope it produces a sound. I will make this plea for sanity:

Someone, please, whoever is really in charge, rethink this mad “war on terror.”

How many people have died in this “war” so far? Hundreds of thousands at least. How many of them were “terrorists” or would-be terrorists? At least many thousands. And how many remain? According to reliable sources in the American CIA, more than there were back on Nov. 11, 2001, when it all began. Many, many more.

If my logic can be trusted, that means the killing of terrorists and potential terrorists is not reducing the threat of terrorism but increasing it. Perhaps, too, the cause of this mounting rage against the west has something to do with “collateral damage,” the killing of innocent men, women and children as eyeless bombs rain from the sky.

Surely, the leaders of western civilization must know by now that they are sowing the legendary “dragon’s teeth.” That for every “terrorist” they destroy, ten more will rise to take his place. Surely, they must realize that it does no good to use a bigger truck when you are buying watermelons at a dollar a piece and selling them for 99 cents. Yet that’s what they do when they pour good billions after bad in the futile campaign to stamp out Muslim extremism.

You can’t force people to stop hating you by bombing them. There must be a better way.