Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 01:16:49 -0800 (PST) From: "f.johan.beisser" <jan@caustic.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <giffunip@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: WTC Payoff [11 september] (was Re: oh my god the nasa shuttle blewup) Message-ID: <20030204005427.Q63914-100000@pogo.caustic.org> In-Reply-To: <3E3F6B9F.CFC27B05@mindspring.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Terry Lambert wrote: > Well, a military/political discussion in -chat beats the other > topic of the day... seems to, yes. > The U.S. currently *chooses* to live with terrorism. The > terrorists exist solely on the sufferage of the U.S. being > willing to continue to trade individual lives for international > good will, which, for some unfathomable reason, it values highly. > But so far, the continued existance of the U.S. has not been > credibly threatened. uh. no. the US hasn't chosen to "live with terrorism." not any more than the Germans did in the 70s, or for that matter, how they did in the 40s, after taking over most of France. Terrorism is not a standup war. anyone who's lived with it at any point in their lives knows this. You can't drop bombs on terrorists. You handle them the same way you deal with any other extremist group: you arrest them, or you kill them. many european countries learned this lesson years and years ago, and have kept special anti-terrorist police forces since then. > Let me be blunt. > > Some people in the world don't seem to understand the concept > of "Total War". Israel does, and the incompletely occupied > nations that fought the Axis in World War II do, and most > certainly the former Soviet Republics do. Others do as well, > but those are the ones which are certain. "Total War" works only when all other options have been exausted. Inevitably, it leads to escalation. [snippage of atomic bomb history] > Let me also point out that we have had nearly 60 years, in the > interim, to improve our technology. true. > The problem with not understanding "Total War" is that you somehow > believe that there is no such thing as "sufficient provocation" for some > reactions, or that some scenarios are "unthinkable", just because you > yourself would never think them. Usually, these are younger people, who > never had to practice "duck and cover!" exercises in elementary school, > and who have never understood the doctorine behind the Cold War never > becoming a Hot War, MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction. Rather than lose > such a war, both sides were willing and able to destroy all life on > Earth. i learned those. i hate the fact that i grew up knowing "ABC", and what that ment. we don't use nukes in "this war" because they'd be inneffective. while we can be the 800lb gorilla for a while, we have other sub-super-powers to respect (china, for example), and we have to tip toe around them, like it or not. we're not the only 800lb gorilla annymore. we're just one, and there are a couple 600lb ones hanging out, watching what we'll do. > So these enemies of Israel rattle their sabres and bang their shields, > and threaten the U.S. to try to get it to "Withdraw support from Israel > so that we my destroy it!", not realizing the consequences, were they to > make the attempt, and not realizing the U.S. is *not* protecting Israel, > it is protecting them *from* Israel's inevitable reaction in such a > situation. no. if we were protecting them from isreal these days, we'd have a "peacekeeping" force in palestine. we don't. the only "protecting from isreal's reaction" was our work in keeping the isreali's out of the first Gulf War. this was more to keep support of the Saudis and the various other Muslim countries. we have more of a military presence in korea than we do near or in isreal, anymore. hell, we don't even have isreal's permission to use their airspace to attack/invade iraq. > If it comes down to "us or them", I have no doubt the U.S. *will* "solve > the problem"; perhaps by engineering an enthnicity specific class 5 > pneumo-virus, most likely targetting mitochondrial DNA, which is > inherited matrilineally, using information obtained from the human > genome project, to destroy its enemies utterly, down to the last living > cell, before letting them destroy the U.S.. Total War is serious > business. this is much to dangerous. even the germans wouldn't use gas warfare against Alied forces during the invasion of normandy due to the extreme risk for their own forces. claiming they weren't of the Total War mindset is really fairly foolish. while i don't doubt that the US will happily go about killing many enemies, i do seriously doubt they'll be that genocidal. we aren't, after all, monsters. > All I can say is God help the terrorists, if they ever succeed in > becoming a credible threat to the continued existance of the U.S., > because the U.S. believes in Total War. no, god help all of us if the US ever thrashes around that blindly. -------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+ http://caustic.org/~jan jan@caustic.org "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends." -- Tom Waits To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030204005427.Q63914-100000>