If most of the airplanes of one side in a war are destroyed as the war starts, bombed on the ground by the other side, that makes things difficult for the side that lost the planes.

We used to stop talkine around 11 in the morning when the SAC bombers flew over because they were so loud that it was impossible to hear.

Physically, the bombers were from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. I lived in Dayton. Strategically, they came from an idea about being able to strike back with nuclear boms even while being mass attacked with nuclear bombs. The idea was to have bombers with nuclear bombs in them always in the air at all times so that if the Soviet Union sent nuclear bombs exploding our way, Strategic Air Command bombers would be in the air already and hustle to the Soviet Union to destroy things and people there.

Sometimes, I feel like we the people are getting a little bit saner. Dayton is now known for where a treaty was signed that was important in stopping the fighting in the former Yugoslavia. The treaty was negotiated in Dayton, specifically at the secure location of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Abraham's Visions is a group for Israeli, Jews, Palestinians, and Moslems who live in the United States. They conducted a tour for those folks to the Balkans. The Balkans is a place which is not perfect. The Balkans is a place where people used to be shooting at each other on a daily basis and now they aren't. Abraham's Visions took some Israelis, Jews, Palestinians and Moslems to see that situation, the used to shoot, now not shooting situation.

Diane Di Prima wrote a poem that says, much more than once, "THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION." Responding strategically to that, you need the other thing, not a war, that favors the imagination, that favors many imaginations. Taking people to see, not Utopia, but improvement, could shift their imaginations.