Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 12:56:42 +0100 From: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com> To: tlambert2@mindspring.com, Stephen Hurd <deuce@lordlegacy.org> Cc: Technical Information <tech_info@threespace.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Helping victims of terror Message-ID: <948140000.1001159802@lobster.originative.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <3BAC3644.1CB0C626@mindspring.com> References: <NFBBJPHLGLNJEEECOCHAGEDNCEAA.deuce@lordlegacy.org> <3BAC3644.1CB0C626@mindspring.com>
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--On Friday, September 21, 2001 23:57:08 -0700 Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> wrote: > You'll have to pick a different example; the U.S. and the U.K. > have extradition treaties which would preclude this happening; > it was, in fact, these treaties which allowed the U.S. to take > custody of the Osama bin Laden sponsored terrorist responsible > for the bombing of the Pan Am jetliner over Lacherby Scotland, > and who was scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. courts September > 12th -- the day after the attack on the U.S.. The two people tried for the Locherbie bombing were Libyan. It took ten years to harbour a deal with Libya to hand them over and last year they were tried in Holland under a complex arrangement where the court was actually Scottish. I think only one them was convicted in the end and that is currently being appealed. The two suspects were part of Libya's secret service and there has been no mention of any involvement of Bin Laden. >> the entire US public would be outraged, refuse to hand the >> refugee over and quite possibly be happy to go to war over it >> KNOWING they were right. Yet this is the position that the US >> has put the Afghanistan government into. > > This would be the same government who dynamited some of the > largest and oldest Buddhist statues in the world a month or > so ago, in an extreme demonstration of religious intolerance, > and an attempt to rewrite the history of their country. This > would be the same government which just assassinated their major > opposition leader via the auspices of a terrorist suicide bomber, > a short week before the attack on the U.S.. This would be the > same government which has permitted Osama bin Laden to operate > his international terrorist organization unchecked from within > their borders, turning a blind eye to his activities, such as > the bombing of civilian airliners in Scotland, U.S. embassies > in Nigeria and other African countries, and the recent attempt > to sink the U.S.S. Cole. Right? There are many statements in the above paragraph, they need separating out. Destroying Buddhist statues may outrage us but it is not a crime that justifies a war. The British destroyed or defaced many Egyptian artifacts because they were obscene by Victorian standards. The Spanish destroyed many artifacts in South America. The US have destroyed many native American artifacts in the past. The west has only recently seen the need to value ancient artifacts for scientific and historic purposes and has only recently overcome its own religious fanaticism in destroying "blasphemous" objects of other cultures. Afghanistan may, in our opinion, be behind us in that respect, but it is not an acceptable excuse for a war. You are showing a prejudice against a people that you do not have respect for because of their beliefs and actions. In your mind that makes it acceptable to carry out actions that you would find abhorrent if carried out against a nation you did respect. Harbouring terrorists is the other main issue. The Irish govt. had terrorists based within its borders for the whole time of the conflicts there (and it's not completely resolved yet). What the US is planning with respect to Afghanistan is akin to the UK waging war against Ireland for harbouring terrorists that were bombing London. This is not a war; a small number of individuals have committed a heinous crime and they should be tracked down and brought to justice. That is a far cry from invading a foreign power for not doing as they're told. From Afghanistan's perspective, they are not attempting to hide Bin Laden, they've made a diplomatically astute statement, that clearly shows, at least in my mind, that they do not want to fight this battle and that if the US wants him they can have him. However, the Taliban would be committing political suicide to do the US' dirty work. The social environment in that part of the world is such that most of the population hates the US and would rise up and overthrow a regime that supported it. This is a real danger for the Pakistan govt. who are seeing large demonstrations on its streets already. > They "publically expressed outrage"? Was this before or after > they stated that a religious court should judge him, and we > should accept the outcome, if the activist zealots of the same > stripe as Osama bin Laden found in his favor? Umm, the last statement I heard was that they would not hand him over, but requested that he leave their territory. That's not showing support for him, that's turning their back on him, but that's as strong a statement as they can make publically given their own internal political situation. They did publically express outrage in fact; the very first public statement they made was to express sympathy for the US. >> This sounds a lot like the traditional hostage situation... only >> now, the United States is holding an ENTIRE COUNTRY hostage. > > This is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. The U.S. > is in no way acting as terrorists: terrorists bomb first, and > claim credit afterwards -- assuming that they don't say to > themselves "Oh shit... I've stepped in it this time...". The IRA generally issued warnings before bombings so that casualties were minimised. Though they still killed plenty of innocent people it could have been a lot higher. The US approach isn't that different and the IRA would definitely be considered to be terrorists. While on the subject of the IRA, a lot of the finance came from the US, so if you accept the current US thinking then the UK should have invaded the US for aiding and abetting the IRA over all those years. The US, until Clinton got involved, turned a blind eye to the Irish situation because a lot of US Irish were sympathisers. That was apparently an "acceptable" struggle being waged. Terrorism is not some black or white issue. It's a manifestation of underlying politics. It's hypocritical of the US to wage war on terrorism at this point given that it has participated and supported it in the past, as long as it wasn't on their doorstep. Did the US express outrage and decide to wage a war on terrorism when the IRA blew up the hotel that the UK govt were staying in at the time, or when they killed a member of our royal family, or when they carried out a mortar attack on the MI5 HQ? Did the UK decide to wage war on innocent countries when faced with such provocation? There needs to be a reasoned response to this attack, and declaring war on countries because some of their residents are suspected of being involved is not a reasonable response. It's more a symptom of the foreign policy the US has had for many years which led to the terrorist attack in the first place. i.e. do what we want or we will send the boys around. Incidentally, the support in the west for US action is flimsy. The EU was very guarded in it's support yesterday. While the UK may be gung ho about supporting the US that is not reflected across the whole of Europe. No-one is going to stand up and not support US action, but there's growing feeling that the US will not be given open-ended support to do whatever it wishes. There are many countries on the fringes of the EU that will be very worried about US retaliation, countries like Turkey for example. Paul Richards To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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