The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 70

Page 40P I Sunday, May 30, 2010 State Edition Des Moines Sunday Register Commentary 19 Read more Register columnists and reader blogs at DesMoinesRegister.comopinion. Iowa View II i I II rT jjil pi i I 'D '1 1 1 law r-' JLJ iff ah Frohlich's first store in 1919. Edward Conrad Frohlich is The "new" store that was built in 1946 by Lewis and Nola A postcard of what the store looks like today. Standing in shown in front of the store. Frohlich.

front are JanelSporer, left, Jeff Frohlich and Janyce Frohlich. In the corner are Edward, Lewis and Jerome Frohlich. into simplicity in life Buying CHARLES CARPENTER is a beekeeper in Coon Rapids. Contact: sdcarpcrmu.net. UN.ER POULTRY ta individual), these choices no longer liberate, they tyrannize.

Often it is not only the sheer number of choices among brands, varieties, sizes, colors and scents, but also the types of choices that can bring this tyranny. Many are inconsequential. Others require specialized or technical knowledge. And every choice demands our time and attention from a few seconds, to days or weeks for a major purchase. Not so long ago, for example, my customary brand of toilet paper morphed into two varieties, ultra soft and ultra strong.

Suddenly a new and enigmatic choice appeared in my life. Did I want soft toilet paper or strong toilet paper? How was I to know? I decided that I wanted both qualities, which is what I thought I had originally. This choice overload has been designed and engineered by our modern competitive marketplace. It has perverted the inherent freedom in choosing into a mind-numbing array of options. We have been reduced to passive consumers, who are given nothing better to do than spend our time making frivolous choices.

So it is that Frolich's Super Valu with its limited but adequate, range of grocery choices suits me just fine. The store's limitations simplify my Instead of suffocating me with endless choices, I have a sense of freedom, even liberation, when I shop there. -m. A In 1919, Edward and Katherine Frohlich settled in Coon Rapids and began a grocery business. Their son, Lewis Frohlich, succeeded them, and in 1946 Lewis and his wife, Nola, had a new store built on the east end of Coon Rapids' Main Street.

Frolich's Super Valu was remodeled and enlarged by Lewis and Nola's son, Jerome, in 1986. Today the store is operated by Jerome's widow, Janyce, and their children, Jeff and Janel. So it is that four generations of the Frolich family have provided Coon Rapids with groceries, and the store continues to anchor the east end of Main Street. With a population of about 1,400, Coon Rapids is fortunate to have retained a grocery store. Like most small Iowa communities, the town's retail base has steadily eroded.

As late as the early 1960s, the community had three grocery stores as part of a busy Main Street. The enlarged store is all of 10,000 square feet and has about 22,000 different items (counting sizes and varieties). Newer chain and big box grocery stores are six to eight times this size, and some can PHOTOS SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER Inside Frohlich's in 1946. Since then, the store has increased its size and its number of items. small.

A customer can buy the family groceries for a week, or run in to pick up a loaf of bread, without having to walk miles of aisles. The size of the store limits the number of grocery items available. Not every brand, variety and size of cereal and cake mix, of frozen pizza and laundry detergent are available. Many specialty or gourmet items are simply not stocked. These limitations can sometimes be disadvantageous and inconvenient.

On occasion, it is necessary to shop elsewhere. In sum, however, it turns out that Frolich's size and its limited range of items and the resulting number of choices is wonderfully liberating. Having choices between products and services is certainly desirable. Choices can provide us with freedom and fulfillment. Our consumer marketplace and its culture are based on this promise.

But, beyond a certain point (which varies for each be 100,000 square feet. These megastores feature in the range of 47,000 different items. Frolich's Super Valu is a little worn around the edges, but, most of all, it is comfortable. There is a small deli and bakery, a full-service meat counter and a produce section. The employees are friendly and accommodating.

Among the characteristics that make the store comfortable, first and foremost, is its scale. In size, it is neither too large or too ASSOCIATED PRESS HLE PHOIO In this 1993 file photo, a New York City police officer leads a woman to safety following the underground bomb blast at the World Trade Center. There have been at least nine planned terror attacks in the city since the Sept. 1 1, 2001, attacks. such as torturing detainees and striking civilians in drone attacks, make that harder.

And, as Pratt observes, there is a bottom line: "Afghans hate anybody considered an invader." His advice? "Accelerate getting the job done, and get out." Here's an intelligence expert saying for tactical reasons what many of us have urged because of the high financial, military and civilian costs: End the war. Some other conclusions I drew from the seminar: Some of the naturalized American recruits we've heard about may be much like the fabled "postal worker" who loses his job, flips out and shows up with a grenade. Rather than profile all postal workers, we need to be alert to odd escalating behaviors that might precede an attack. Fighting terrorism isn't a U.S. burden alone.

We must collaborate with other countries and organizations, including the United Nations, to help rebuild fractured or "failed" states that can be breeding grounds. The goal should be to develop functioning civil institutions not nation-building, Enlisting the support of mainstream Muslims to create a backlash against what terrorists do in the name of Islam is critical to our success. Ironically, some valuable advice on that comes from an al-Qaida member, Abu Yahya al Libi, who in 2007 offered up six steps for how the United States could defeat al-Qaida. They include weakening its ideological appeal by emphasizing how jihadists kill innocent women, children and the elderly, and focusing on ex-jihadists who have renounced the use of force. The source may be tainted but the tactic makes sense.

In the fight for the hearts and minds of the average Muslim, it's about which side makes the more compelling case. That's why it's counterproductive when, in their outrage against terrorist attacks, some in the West want to provoke fights with Muslims, such as caricaturing their prophet. It just perpetuates the cycle. For all our sophisticated warfare and espionage tactics, unless we understand the cultural and psychological triggers and match them to the right kind of counterof-fensive, all the firepower in the world may not stop unprovoked attacks on innocent people. BASU FROM PAGE 1 OP comfort that the threat has abated.

Terrorists have targeted tourist sites, transport systems, hotels, embassies and consulates. They've taken hostages, including Muslims. Monday's Des Moines Register alone carried six terrorism-related stories, spanning Somalia, Yemen, Kandahar and Pakistan. Attacks on developing countries can foreshadow what's ahead for us, says terrorism expert Sajjan Gohel. Yet even as we wage two foreign wars launched in the name of stopping terrorism, we seem, oddly, to have stopped asking if we are winning the war on terror.

The good news is that our knowledge base has exploded since 9, 1 1 and we're more capable of disrupting and eliminating al-Qaida operations, says intelligence expert Col. Nick Pratt, who heads a program on terrorism and security studies in Germany. But we haven't eliminated the allure of its ideology. And with a decentralized command and control structure, al-Qaida can co-opt local insurgencies as far as Africa and South America. Likewise Gohel, of the Asian Pacific Foundation, says our drone strikes have gotten rid of senior al-Qaida members.

But the collateral damage may have aided terrorist recruitment. Target the mind-set Taking out one leader has little effect, given the wider range of actors. The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, among other groups, are on the rise. A new generation is being recruited over the Internet, using new technologies to inflict harm. To counter the propaganda, we have to first understand it.

But our government has been fearful of seeming to lend credibility to the terrorists' rhetoric "We've been obsessed with the stuff that blows up. not the ideology," says Sebastian Gorka, of the Department of Defense U.S. Special Operations Command. Some of the terrorists' impetus, say experts, can be traced to a single word: humiliation. They share a moral outrage, believing Muslims are being defiled or tar sonality shift, according to Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

Shahzad's $273,000 home was foreclosed. A powerful medium The disaffected needn't travel far to find someone to give their outrage a forum and a cause. On the Internet, they'll easily find geted in a war against them, says Hekmat Karzai, director of a Kabul agency, based on interviews with some. Their grievances may be linked to Kashmir, Afghanistan or Palestine, which Karzai (the Afghan president's cousin) calls "a bleeding wound on the heart of every Muslim." But increasingly, the catalysts are also personal: the killings of relatives; the torture and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay; even cartoons of the Proohet Mohammed "We ve been obsessed with the stuff that blows up, not the ideology." Sebastian Gorka, with the Department of Defense U.S. Special Operations Command sites that tell them they're being persecuted as Muslims, and it's their duty to fight back.

Some will go on to Pakistan or Afghanistan and knock on doors to enlist. Although Islam For recruits raised in the West, it may even stem from having felt discriminated against as an outsider, though they may be privileged and well-educated. Shahzad, he first BA bomber, is a U.S. citizen, family man and former financial analyst. British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh attended the London School of Economics before being sentenced to death for the kidnapping and execution of journalist Daniel PearL Typically some cataclysmic event, such as a job loss or death, may cause a per doesn't promote "offensive" jihad, says Karzai, every Muslim must be willing to practice "defensive" jihad if under attack.

Suicide too is anti-Islamic, yet suicide bombers are told there are exceptions. Arresting or killing terrorists helps suppress the problem, according to Gorka. But as Karzai says, a purely military solution won't work when people are recruited daily on the narrative of injustice. One goal, then, must be to rob them of that narrative. But mistakes we've made..