Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 12:07:38 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <3BB0D5FA.D92CB292@mindspring.com> References: <20010925001027.A750@lpt.ens.fr> <3BAFD049.D47F0F66@duth.gr>
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Konstantinos Konstantinidis wrote:
> Certainly... striking the Pentagon is one thing - even though civilians
> do work there, it is a military installation, and war is war - but
Can you name the nation at which the U.S. is at war, such
that your "war is war" comment is meaningful at all? The
is a decided lack of a declared war under whose umbrella
you can reasonably state "striking the Pentagon is one thing".
I can agree that the Pentagon is a symbolic military target,
but can't agree that an attack was warranted without a state
of war existing.
[ ... Attack on World Trade Center ... ]
> I am not too sure though that this gives any God given right for any
> kind of retaliation or not, at least not without considering what
> results this would have. You see the problem is NOT that the terrorists
> did this, the problem is that they had the reason and will to do
> something like this.
No, the problem is the terrorists. Any insane moron can claim
to have a reason to do something violent without having had
something violent done to them.
> It is easy to dismiss a case of a lone terrorist as an act of lunacy or
> whatever, but it takes a cause (whether it is just or not is irrelevant
> and only history will be the judge of that) for so many people to team
> up and conspire and execute a plan as complex as that, especially one
> which involves the planned death of members of the team.
No, all it takes is a persuasive lunatic. That's true whether
we are talking about Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Adolph Hitler,
or self-mutilating Nike wearing comet hitch-hikers.
> Also, lets not forget that the desired outcome of any US action
> following those events is, or rather should be, not just to bring to
> justice those responsible, but to also ensure that such a tragedy
> doesn't happen again.
I think the desired outcome, as far as the U.S. public is concerned,
is "all terrorists dead or otherwise rendered harmless".
> Sure you can probably capture and kill all of those involved that
> weren't actually on the planes, but if you don't do anything about the
> root of the problem, you'll just get more of the same sooner or later,
> for the obvious reason that the obviously don't give a damn for their
> life anyway, and they aren't scared of the consequences of their
> actions.
So they kill thousands of us, and, like the rape of the Sabine
women, we are supposed to now care about their lives or what
happens to them.
In general, your statement indicates that you believe that it is
somehow the fault of the U.S. that these people have acted the
way they have. I'd like to know how you reached this conclusion.
> Preventing such attacks in the future is I believe obviously
> out of the question, even if freedom is severely sacrificed
> in the US. I mean come on, they did this with pocket knifes and
> paper cutters for crying out loud. That's all it took, along
> with careful planning and determination of course. You just
> can't ban all sharp objects and thought.
You're right; restricting freedoms for U.S. citizens is not
the answer.
> Even with all the money and technology in the world, the US,
> just like any other country, will never be immune to such, or
> entirely different kind of attacks.
Nonsense. With sufficient technology, we can change their
minds -- by actually changing their minds. Admittedly, a
campaign to do what amounts to involuntary brain surgery on
all terrorists is unlikely to be popular with the rest of the
world, but at some point, if you are correct, and there is
only escalation or capitualation to terrorist demands as the
options available, well, then, we'll escalate.
Unless you are suggesting that the U.S. should aide directly
or indirectly in the destruction of Israel to placate these
murderes, until the nest thing they decide they want badly
enough to blackmail out of the U.S. by holding its civilians
hostage to more mass murders?
> If the US goes ahead and attacks Afghanistan or any other
> country for that matter, this will just create hordes of new
> innocent orphans or fathers that watched their children die
> for no reason whatsoever, just the kind of people in other
> words that it takes for such attacks to go on in the future.
> Oh, it would also do absolutely nothing to bring to justice
> those involved.
So how would you wipe terrorism from the face of the Earth?
[ ... smart bombs and "surgical hits" ... ]
It is unlikely that this will be the primary method employed.
> You know, when I heard G. Bush say in his first speech that day that
> this was an act of cowards, I felt uneasy... it takes a lot of balls to
> die for a cause, no matter how just or not it is, and it certainly takes
> more balls than taking a decision in the oval office to bomb a country
> back to the stone age (again, if I might add) from 50,000 feet with no
> risk of allied casualties... I wouldn't be too quick to use the word
> "coward" if I was in his shoes so to say.
I believe he was referring to the attack on civilians, without
warning or declaration of war, by a group that has not even
declared itself a government in exile of a country. It is an
act of cowardice to not be willing to be responsible for your
own actions. It doesn't matter if the consequences are victory
for your side, or, as in this case, reaping the whirlwind.
> I think that the reason that the US public is unable to comprehend why
> would people do such a thing is that they have absolutely no idea
> whatsoever about what their government is doing worldwide. I'm not
> basing this on any stereotype or anything - I have friends, colleagues
> and relatives over in the US mind you. I believe that if they had a
> clue, perhaps they would realise that revenge might not be such a good
> idea, because it was such acts in the first place that fueled the hatred
> that was the root of the events of the 11th of September.
I'm well aware of most of what's public about what the U.S.
government is doing worldwide. I don't see a reason in most
of it for violent attacks on U.S. civilians.
> Just the other night I was watching a late night talk show which
> included well respected people and people from the government (greek)
> and there was a live telephone interview with Colin Powell. One of the
> questions that the host of the show had the balls to ask (believe me it
> wasn't one of those staged PR acts you see on CNN or other similar
> "news" networks over there in the US) was whether or not the US had
> noticed a trend and had fears that after having armed and trained UCK to
> cause havoc in Yugoslavia, just like they did with the Taliban in
> Afghanistan, they too might turn against the US. Arguably, this was
> bellow the belt, however it is THESE kind of questions that the American
> public should be asking. For the record, Mr. Powell denied any US
> connection with the UCK and the Taliban (BS, both are well documented)
> and having nothing else to say went on mumbling about the "awful" track
> record of terrorism in Greece, which is absolute BS, we're talking a few
> dozen dead in the last 30 years, nearly all military or secret service
> related... contrast that with Oklahoma City bombing for example, or
> organized terrorist groups in other Western countries (ETA in Spain, the
> IRA in the UK, I could go on etc).
For the record, the U.S. supported bin Laden and al Qaeda ("the base"),
and not the Taliban. If you could expand the acronym for U.C.K., I
could tell you whether or not I know anything about their position
with regards to the U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia (I
rather think the U.S. wants that region stabilized, since it has not
really been stable since it was a single country under Grand Marshall
Tito).
> He even went as far as to imply that the government wasn't doing
> a particularly good job at aprehending those responsible, quite
> clearly implying that the government might be supporting terrorism
> (!).
They made the claim that they didn't know where he was, yet
he issued faxes over their border phone lines to a newspaper
in Pakistan. Admittedly, the U.S. has better technology with
regard to tracking such communications, but the Afghanistan
telephone network is not so large, nor is it made up of stepper
relayas one would have to manually examine to perform a call
trace.
> This in my book is as close as it gets to a threat from a diplomat,
> particularly when it comes a few hours after the president of the
> US declared war on all states that provide a safe harbour to
> terrorists. I don't want to even think of what he might have said
> had Greece not been a US ally.
Realize that the President does not have the power to declare
war, and that it takes an act of Congress to declare war. This
was true even after the attack on Perl Harbor. The President
described the act as an acto of war, and he stated that we needed
to engage in a war on terrorism, and he stated that states that
provided safe harbor would not be distinguished from those
terrorists to whom the safe harbor was granted. But this is a
far cry from actually declaring a real war.
> Is this the new world order then? The US being the legislative, judicial
> and executing branch of a world government? I sincerely hope that the US
> citizens will wake up and start asking tough questions to those that
> govern them, because a crusade against such an ill defined enemy is
> merely a license to kill, and they, the innocent US citizens, might face
> the dire consequences again, just like the innocent citizens of other
> countries worldwide have been facing for years now.
Most U.S. citizens dislike the idea of the U.S. becoming an
unpaid police force for the world; this is one of the reasons
that Bill Clinton's party lost the election, following U.S.
military involvement in Somalia and other countries, with no
defined completion criteria for the missions there, which
would end up with the U.S. presence going home.
But a dislike is not the same thing as a refusal to bear the
burden, should it become necessary to protect the lives of U.S.
civilians.
-- Terry
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