Why I don't support the actions of the USA

Firstly I am pretty much a pacifist, the events of Septamber 11th and since then has only strengthened my resolve in this.


Septamber 11th was horrendous. The people that committed those crimes were evil beyond belief. Those who planned and funded this crime are obviously just as cupable as those who committed it and deserve to be punished heavily for it.


But, the country of Afghanistan DID NOT commit this act of war. Al Qaeda did. The civillians of Afghanistan do not deserve to be killed for the actions of the terrorists who inhabit their country. The richest country in the world has bombed seven bells out of one of the poorest. No doubt many thousands of innocent people have died in retribution for September 11th.


When one innocent Afghan dies, that is not collateral damge. That is murder. You are not at war with Afghanistan. The USA has no right to act like a crazed sherriff storming in whereever he pleases, killing whoever he pleases.


Look at it this way. My country has suffered decades of terrorism from the IRA. Many hundred of innocent people have died. Does this give the UK the right to go into Catholic areas of Ireland bombing and shooting innocent civillians in pursuit of the IRA terrorists? Of course it doesn't. Please enlighten me of the difference of the attacks on mainland UK (supported by Irish/American money by the way) and those horrendous attacks on September 11th.

being a pacifist is a fine idea but there is limit. September 11 went beyond a mere crime, it was an act of war by any definition of the word. of course this presented difficulties becuse the group responsible was just that, a group, not a contry. fine. so we go to where that group is located and demand that they be handed over to be punished for the crimes they have commited. the taliban goverment said no. not fine. withholding of the most wanted criminals in the history of the USA IS AN ACT OF WAR. both Al Qaeda AND the taliban commited to seperate acts of war against the usa, we COULD NOT sit idlely by while the terrorists calm cliamed asylum in afganistan only to plan their next assualt. The only way we were going to get Al Qaeda out of afganistan was war, a last and certinly not best option. We are faced with a difficult situation, there is no such thing as a clean war. people who you never intended to hurt will die or be injured, always. and this is certainly no small thing to overlook when considering going to war with a country. But our other option was to wait until our own civilins were brutaly murdered with MALICE aforethought. we had incidental casualties while ridding the world of a great evil on one side, and innocent AMERICANS (why do people only mention innocent afgans?) being DELIBERATELY KILLED. this was not a tough choice to make, there was no option for peace here, there was no good solution, by safe harboring terrorists a COUNTRY commited a deliberate act of war against us. and that is all the reason we need to make sure that goverment is wiped from existance with extreme predujuice.

for the second part i think there are a couple of fundimental differances between the afganistan situation and the IRA. the most important is that there is not an armed goverment safe harboring them. there is no body that says that you can't arrest them, or extridite them to your courts. simply put with the IRA a better peacefull solution may exist and you do not have to go to war to solve it, which is a far better in everyone's book. if there were such a way to deal with afganistan i would be all for it, but there simply wasn't any other way.

I hate to turn the tables on you, but look at it this way. Your country didn't exactly get very far with appeasement say, oh, 65 years ago, did it? Doesn't your country owe its existence to American (and Soviet) help in the all-out war which most certainly included the killing of "innocent" German civilians? England was not up to the task in WWII and would have been wiped out but for powerful allies. I don't want to be insulting or an ugly American, but the lessons of your own history should make you question your position here.


Likewise, the government of Afghanistan absolutely allowed the terrorists to operate. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were bound up in activity together. So we had every right to go to war with Afghanistan, and I hope we take care of other countries who sponsor terrorism with similar aplomb. So we were at war with Afghanistan and they deserved it.


Gotta watch the State of the Union.

the terrorists in afgan were under the support of the govt. so all involved were basically at war with the country, although not with the individual people. in any war innocent people get caught in the way. you dont think england or the usa killed random people in ww11 .

yes your country has the right to go into any area that supports a faction that is trying to kill you. and you better do it before they susceed.

'you dont think england or the usa killed random people in ww11'


no i dont think the allies killed people at random. however, it is an historical fact that the only reason dresden was bombed was that churchill demanded revenge for the bombing of london.


brad

Your country militarily occupies N.Ireland. They aren't terrorists. They are freedom fighters.

'ut, the country of Afghanistan DID NOT commit this act of war. Al Qaeda did.' - by the way, i think the most common logical error is the inability to distinguish between fact and opinion. (but i wont go into that here).


i just wanted thought you might want to check out how britian tortured (tortures) the ira.


http://www.mcguffin.freeserve.co.uk/guineapigs/guineapigs.htm


interestingly, this looks like exactly what is going on in cuba.


brad

You don't think the allies randomly killed Germans? Have you seen any WWII footage of Berlin after several weeks of bombing missions by the allies? The allies basically carpet bombed the city, killing thousands indiscriminately, in an effort to weaken the resolve of the German people. Fly over and drop the "dumb bombs". Who cares what they hit, just as long as they demolish the city and demoralize the people.

i amend my statement.


no i dont think the allies killed people at random; i think they killed german civilians by design.(dresden, etc.)


brad

"September 11 went beyond a mere crime, it was an act of war by any definition of the word."


I'm interested in reading your definition. According to Merriam-Webster, "war" is "a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations." How were the 9/11 attacks a conflict between states or nations?


"The only way we were going to get Al Qaeda out of afganistan was war, a last and certinly not best option."


If the press reports are accurate -- and I suspect they are, as they accord with U.S. actions in the past -- the very first efforts at pursuing justice for the 9/11 attacks amounted to discussions on whether to immediately bomb Afghanistan, an option that was rejected for reasons of logistics and effectiveness. In his first major address after the attacks, President Bush emphasized that U.S. demands on Afghanistan were "non-negotiable," and failure to meet them would be punished by military force. In short, instead of pursuing established legal avenues for bringing the perpetrators (and their supporters) of this awful crime to justice, the United States immediately resorted, as usual, to the iron fist. So where are you getting this "last option" jazz?

I couldn't agree more.


Another solid analogy between fighting the IRA and the U.S. targets of "antiterrorism" would be if the U.K. became fed up, after decades of complaining, about the constant flow of cash from Boston and New York used to support Irish nationalism, including the buying of arms for the IRA, and as a result began bombing and "collaterally" killing civilians in the U.S.


The International Court of Justice (World Court) concluded ruled in June 1986 that the U.S. violated international law by the recruiting, funding, arming, training and, in some cases, leading terrorist forces operating in Nicaragua, and deamanded that the U.S. pay reparations for the destruction it caused (estimated at $17 billion). The U.S. responded by refusing to accept the court's jurisdiction. It takes no imagination to predict the response of the Aghan war supporters on this forum and elsewhere if Nicaraguans, frustrated by U.S. refusal to resolve disputes peacefully, responded by blowing up civilians in the this country. We'd call it terrorism: using or materially supporting violence against non-combatants in order to inflict terror to accomplish a political objective, when the other guy does it.


I must admit that, had the established venues for extradition and negotiation failed, this might have been the first of the dozens of cases where the U.S. has used military force in a foreign country since WWII that I might have supported. It's all academic, however, because the U.S. showed no interest, as usual, in pursuing legal avenues of justice, but instead turned immediately to violent means.

I have been opposed to every U.S. resort to military force that has taken place in my lifetime, except for this one. Every other time, the U.S. government was either woefully misinformed about conditions in the countries where they took military action, was lying to the American people about what was happening and why, or was the aggressor, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.


This situation is different. On September 11, we were attacked. Several missiles, in the form of commercial airliners, were aimed at civilians and our seat of government, with the aim of killing as many people as possible, most of them civilians.


I believe that our government should have tried negotiation for extradition rather than have said "no negotiation." I think it is a grave mistake to cast things in such manichean terms of goodness vs. evil. I agree with Colin Powell that it is wrong to treat the detainees as something less than prinsoners of war. And I have other problems with the details of the prosecution of the war. But the crime of September 11 superseeds these misgivings. In other words, I have misgivings about the tactics, but none about the basic course of action.


The United States was tragically wrong in Vietnam; it was wrong in Guatemala (overthrowing Arbenz in 1954); it was wrong in Iran (overthrowing the government in 1953); it was wrong in Nicaragua (supporting the contras); it was wrong in El Salvador (supporting the neo-Nazis); it was wrong in the Dominican Republic (invading in 1964); is was wrong in Indonesia (subverting the government in the lat 1950s); it was wrong in Chile (subverting Allende); and it has been wrong in a host of other places.


But it is not wrong here. The facts are clear and undeniable. We were attacked. A military response was called for.

'Every other time, the U.S. government was either woefully misinformed about conditions in the countries where they took military action, was lying to the American people about what was happening and why, or was the aggressor

...

The facts are clear and undeniable.'


perhaps. perhaps not. if you consider this deeply you will see the fuzzylogic.


brad

Unfortunately this is correct. The fire bombing of Dresden was clearly designed to kill civilians , it served no other purpose even though it was clear at this point that Germany was losing the war.

Whatever...every war has some collateral damage associated with it; it's just a tragic but unavoidable aspect of war.

Chris,


You don't really think al Qaeda and the Taliban could have been brought down, and those terrorist training camps closed in Afghanistan, entirely through legal means, do you? It looks to me as though it is going to take a long-term concerted effort of legal, political AND military means to accomplish this...and even then it's not a foregone conclusion. What's more, the longer it

takes, the more chance we have to get attacked again--years of legal wrangling isn't going to do a whole lot to stop that, either.


Also, can't you see just a few important differences between the IRA/al Qaeda analogies, etc.?

I don't see the fuzzy logic; perhaps you would care to explain it.


One other thing:It's not a "perhaps" that we were gravely attacked, and it's not a "perhaps" that those responsible intend to do it again as soon as they have the chance. They've even said as much themselves.

To rephrase a bit, the questions Hawk raised, which are very good, fundamental questions, were (1) whether we should tolerate the killing of innocents instead of demanding that the U.S. pursue other means to bring the perpetrators of these acts to justice; and (2) whether the U.S. has the right to persue a course of action -- armed violence -- that it would not tolerate if applied to itself (or the UK).


If I understand your response, you're saying that the former is justfied if the crimes against the U.S. are really, really bad, where "we were attacked [by] "[s]everal missiles ... aimed at civilians and our seat of government, with the aim of killing as many people as possible, most of them civilians." Other than the means of delivery and the body count, how is this distinguishable from the Oklahoma City bombing? If McVeigh had killed more people by slightly different means, would the U.S. have been justified in turning his capture over to the Pentagon instead of the Dept. of Justice? If he had fled to Cananda, would we have been justified in bombing Canadian citizens and government to the exclusion of other means of justice if we felt that it was not sufficiently cooperative -- if it failed to comply immediately with our "non-negotiable" demands -- in helping us retrieve him?


If so, what if the 9/11 attacks had been launched by Kurds in retalliation for the U.S.'s provision of 80% of the weapons Turkey has used in it's savage war against them, in which tens of thousands have been killed a millions displaced? Would you find the 9/11 attacks justifiable even if the terrorists had exhausted all other means of seeking redress, or would the issue of non-negotiable demands have sufficed? If not, aren't you then be applying a standard to them that you refuse to apply to the U.S., making your argument, essentially, one of "when it happens to my country, we can go straight to the bombs, but when it happens to someone else, they shouldn't." How could tat be satisfactory from an elementary moral standpoint?


One problem that makes us struggle with otherwise very simple issues, I think, is that there was almost no discussion of alternatives to immediate war anywhere in the mainstream media.

"You don't really think al Qaeda and the Taliban could have been brought down, and those terrorist training camps closed in Afghanistan, entirely through legal means, do you?"


1. It doesn't make any difference unless our moral position is that the U.S. can kill innocents in other countries to accomplish it's objectives but others cannot do the same here. Be objective for a second. What if India took the position that Pakistinian-backed terrorism justified its killing of innocent civilians to the exlusion of non-violent avenues of justice, but that Indian-backed terrorism against Pakistan did not? You wouldn't take a side here, you'd dismiss it as hypocrisy. We can't you apply the same standard to your own country? Is the hallmark of patriotism the inability to act with a minimum of moral consistency? If so, doesn't that make patriotism a bad thing?


2. No one can know what non-violent (or less violent or more discriminate but slower) alternatives would have accomplished because none were pursued. I haven't seen evidence suggesting that they were even contemplated. Your point might have some merit had there been some national debate, a provision and discussion of alternatives, time tables, and so forth. What we received instead was an immediate declaration, of sorts, of war.


"It looks to me as though it is going to take a long-term concerted effort of legal, political AND military means to accomplish this...and even then it's not a foregone conclusion."


I'd take it further and contend that U.S. objectives that have been placed in the penumbra of the "war against terrorism" are infinite, and can never be accomplished. Indeed, just what to you mean by "this" when you point out the need for overwhelming resources "to accomplish this?" The displacement of the Taliban and destruction of bin Laden's network in Afghanistan? The destruction of all those who would use terrorist violence as a means of combatting U.S. policy? The imposition of such collossal U.S. power that the resevoir of hatred against the U.S. throughout the world would be unable to manifest itself in the killing of innocent Americans? I've seen variations of all these themes discussed. Note that there's no logical end to the broadest ones. So we agree, but I would deny that, apart from the attempts to eliminate bin Laden's network, that there's much connection between all proclaimed U.S. efforts and the events of 9/11.


"What's more, the longer it takes, the more chance we have to get attacked again--years of legal wrangling isn't going to do a whole lot to stop that, either."


This is a reasonable point and could have inspired something like a timetable or standown period with the Taliban or something to, in effect, freeze time to reduce the chance of another attack. Since there was no attempt to bargain for it, however, I disagree. Further, in my experience, the most likely effect of violence is a violent response. "Legal wrangling" doesn't inspire people to throw bombs, but mass killings, military invasion and creating refugees does.


"Also, can't you see just a few important differences between the IRA/al Qaeda analogies, etc.?"


Uh, no. What are they?

Chris,


Your examples are, quite simply, "stretching it"...a very long way. I'm rather amazed that I have to spell out a few of these differences.


1. Even if the IRA receives some financial support from persons in the US, that is a far cry from the US providing terrorist training camps for the IRA on our soil. Besides that, the IRA almost surely receives financial support from persons in other countries as well.


2. If McVeigh had fled to Canada, and Canada refused to extradite him, we are talking about something entirely different than if McVeigh was the leader of a bunch of terrorists operating terrorist training camps based in Canada, with the blessing and protection of the Canadian government. C'mon.


3. Since when is it just the body count that matters? Don't nations which are attacked have the right to defend themselves? Perhaps not, in Chris Alger's (and Cyrus') worlds, if the cost in number of lives and/or collateral damage is greater than the cost in lives due to the initial attack.


4. As I posted elsewhere, can't you see a difference in approach? Terrorists regard innocent civilians as EQUALLY desirable targets, while non-terrorists usually seek to minimize collateral damage. Do non-terrorists murder Olympic athletes? Do they deliberately attack a girl's bas mitzvah party? WTF.


By the way, I think England should STAMP OUT the IRA as long as the IRA remains committed to terroristic attacks. And I do mean stamp out.

If the terrorists want to fight then let them fight those who they have the issues with--the lawmakers and the military--not some innocent vacationing family, selected as the next terrorist target.


The world needs to WIPE OUT terrorism...period. Terrorism ISN'T just a matter of which side one is on--it's a method, a mindset, and a complete disregard for innocent people. Please don't obfuscate the issue with claims of equivalent or greater collateral damage...here it is INTENT we are talking about, and terroristic intent is to kill uninvolved innocents. Non-terrorists prefer to avoid unecessary collateral damage while terrorists aim to inflict just this.

as Chris.


Well put.

1. "Even if the IRA receives some financial support from persons in the US, that is a far cry from the US providing terrorist training camps for the IRA on our soil."


This isn't a distinction that our government recognizes, as the we've made clear that any support for and from terrorists constitutes "support for terrorism." Bush on the justification for attacking the Taliban, for example: "Al Qaeda has provided the Taliban with training, weapons, soldiers, and money -- lots of it." If this is the standard, then all sorts of people from all over the world have the right to inflict "collateral damage" on the U.S., the standard euphamism for the slaughter of innocents when they're the inevitable but technically not intended targets of attack.


But if training camps are the key (putting aside the fact that the 9/11 terroists received their training in Florida), look no further than The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, which


"trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians."


(From the School of the Americas Watch website). If this is true, then I take it you would believe that the victims of such terrorism have the right to do "collaterl" violence against U.S. civilians if they thought that's what it would take to shut down the SOA. I would disagree.


"Besides that, the IRA almost surely receives financial support from persons in other countries as well."


So what? Applied to Afghanistan, it would mean that the U.S. has no right to bomb it if the terrorists received support from "persons in other countries as well," which of course they did.


2. "If McVeigh had fled to Canada, and Canada refused to extradite him, we are talking about something entirely different than if McVeigh was the leader of a bunch of terrorists operating terrorist training camps based in Canada, with the blessing and protection of the Canadian government."


Then crystalize the principles at work by assuming more similar facts. What if the latter were true, that the Canadian government allowed terrorists and their camps to exist on it's soil and refused to comply with U.S. to shut them down immediately, round them up and extradite them? Would the U.S. be justified in resorting to the immediate use of force likely to inflict collateral damage, or should people demand that it exhaust non-violent alternatives first? I think the latter. You'd have to argue for a special exemption for Canada that doesn't apply to Afghanistan, or you'd have to agree with me.


3. Since when is it just the body count that matters? Don't nations which are attacked have the right to defend themselves? Perhaps not, in Chris Alger's (and Cyrus') worlds, if the cost in number of lives and/or collateral damage is greater than the cost in lives due to the initial attack.


I didn't suggest the body count was determinative, it simply measures some degree of the atrocity. Regarding the right to self-defense, there was no attack by Afghanistan on the U.S., its government was an obstacle to the capture of criminals, so there was no "self-defense" involved. By the same token, however, unless you think that attacks such as the one on 9/11 can be justified if the perpetrators had been attacked (or came from a country that was attacked) by the U.S., then the answer to your question is a resounding no, the fact that a country was attacked ir horrrible, terroristic fashion does not automatically justify attacks on innocent others. If you think otherwise, then you'd have to conclude that there are circumstances by which attacks like the 9/11 can be justified. Again, I would disagree.


4. As I posted elsewhere, can't you see a difference in approach? Terrorists regard innocent civilians as EQUALLY desirable targets, while non-terrorists usually seek to minimize collateral damage. Do non-terrorists murder Olympic athletes? Do they deliberately attack a girl's bas mitzvah party? WTF.


Regarding the last two questions, of course they do, if they get in the way. The difference in intent in the difference between someone that sprays a crowded public market with gunfire intending to kill who ever might be there, and someone who does the same thing to kill a specific person who is guilty of murder. The potential difference in moral degree -- and I agree that it can exist -- hardly amounts to an automatic justification for the latter. If, of course, the killing of civilians wasn't necessary to capture or kill the intended victim, then there is no difference at all, it's all unjustified slaughter.


Since it hardly makes a difference to the victims and their relatives, I'm not sure why you insist on treating it as somehow less tragic. Should Afghani civilians that suffered as a result of U.S. actions feel less aggrieved, more responsible, more at fault because they have the misfortune to be Afghani? If they don't, why should I?


Besides, this emphasis on deliberately killed and collaterally killed civilians is mostly a rhetorical device for creating support for policies that are morally indistinguishable. No one claims that the attack on the USS Cole wasn't terrorism because the targets weren't civilian. Israel routinely regards all attacks against it's occupying army as terrorism, and so does the U.S. I think you can morally distinguish between resistance against an occupying army and utteral innocent civilians, but much of these arguments are irrlevant, apologist hairsplitting, such as the pubs blown up by the IRA because they were hangouts for soldiers, or the King David Hotel being used for military headquarters, or the Berlin disco bombing because the likely targets would be off-duty U.S. servicemen, and so forth.

Chris,


One can ALWAYS find further examples and stretch things further.


You are trying to make things equivalent which AREN'T. This is a theme which runs through almost all of your arguments. If I counter one "stretched" example, you simply provide another or take it a step further.


The essence of these matters is that collateral damage is NOT equivalent to terrorism; that US actions in self-defense are NOT equivalent to terrorism; and I'll go even a step further and say that Israeli actions, while at times certainly questionable, are NOT the equivalent of sending out suicide bombers every two weeks for a year, specifically for the purpose of inflicting harm on innocents.


Finally your argument about the Afghani people fails to even take into consideration that most of them are also overjoyed to be rid of al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Eastern and Northern Alliances existed for a reason...the Taliban had evolved over the years from its original folk-hero status into a feared and oppressive internal force.


There is also another point I'd like to make. I think the US should make it crystal clear to the world that any attacks upon us will produce grave consequences. If we have to kill 1000 foreign soldiers for every US soldier they take, so be it: the bastards didn't have to attack us in the first place. In other words, as a potential target, we should be like the poison toad or the porcupine...try to bite us and it will at least hurt a great deal and maybe get you killed. At a certain point moral equivalents be damned, too: if you attack us, you die...it doesn't have to be as complicated as you make it out to be all the time. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, but we do have the right to self-defense, no matter what.

'every war has some collateral damage'


well, i challenge you to name the military target in dresden that provoked the so called collateral damage.


by the way, so far youve defended killing of women and children (sharon and his indictment in belgium) and bombing non military targets.


can support of death camps (say, for terrorists) be far behind.


brad


p.s. good job if youre just bringing these issues up as opposed to actually (say) supporting death camps

the day of "911" should be all proff needed that there are SERIOUS efforts to KILL americans


thus we should stop at NOTHING to prevent this

''The facts are clear and undeniable.'


perhaps. perhaps not.''


on the one hand you correctly state that the US government has lied lied lied, and then your evidence of who is responsible is , govmt told me so. (the lies im talking about are mostly truth though)


brad

'thus we should stop at NOTHING to prevent this '


i guess you would agree that stopping illegal immigration would be included in NOTHING. of course, states are now giving illegal aliens drivers licenses.


oh well, screw it, lets just confiscate the guns.


brad

"The essence of these matters is that collateral damage is NOT equivalent to terrorism"


That's not the essence or even the issue. The issue is whether military force that kills civilians in Afghanistan is justified. The fact that it's something other than indiscriminate, pointless terrorism doesn't begin to answer the question of whether it can be justified under some principle that wouldn't also justify inflicting similar "collateral damage" -- which you would no doubt label terrorism -- on U.S. civilians.


"I think the US should make it crystal clear to the world that any attacks upon us will produce grave consequences. If we have to kill 1000 foreign soldiers for every US soldier they take, so be it: the bastards didn't have to attack us in the first place. In other words, as a potential target, we should be like the poison toad or the porcupine...try to bite us and it will at least hurt a great deal and maybe get you killed. At a certain point moral equivalents be damned, too: if you attack us, you die..."


Switch the country labels and substitute "civilians" for "soldiers" and you've got the essence of the way terrorists justify themselves. So while I'd agree that the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan is qualitatively different from the bombing of the WTC, your arguments in favor of it aren't any better than those of the terrorists, and are strikingly similar.

ok to answer in two parts:


1. The dictionary definition is right on in my veiw, except for the small point that it did not include large groups not nessacarily a country or state. it was easy to overlook this point in a pre 9/11 world, no one thought it was possible. no one thought it was possible to use hijacked airliners with such devistating results ethier, just a few of the way things have changed. Second we consider a conflict with a large group of people a war all the time. what do you call the civil war or the revolutionary war or anything else that has a large group participating in open conflict without the clear definition of a state or nation? as to the armed and declared hostilites part i think that is painfully clear that Al Qeada's intentions were to hurt innocent americans, and to keep doing it till they got there way (and most likely after even if they did get there way). Afganistan refuse to turn over these criminals TO LEGALY RESOLVE THIS WITHOUT RESORTING TO WAR. Afagnistan refused, they were safeharboring people who wished to hurt us, and by not helping to stop the agression they let it continue and flourish. Indirect hostilites is just as bad as direct thus there act of war. there i hope i have made my definition clear.

2. the second and much shorter answer is simply we DID TRY LEGAL RECOURSE, AFGANISTAN REFUSED, THEY WERE ACTIVELY SUPPORTING THE CRIMINALS WHO COMMITED THESE ACTS AND DID NOTHING IN A VERY VERY VERY LONG TIME SPAN THAT THEY HAD AVAILBLE. and if you think i'm just think the month after the act your wrong afganistan knew about AL Qeada and it's crimes FOR YEARS ON END AND YET IT DID NOTHING AT ALL, instead the HELPED AL QEADA. the fact was that legal recourse had been reduced to trying to convince Al Qeada to give itself up.


now a question for you since i have supplied ample answer to yours. What is this legal recourse that solves anything? i don't care weather or not you have proof that it would work or anything like that i'm just currious as to what this legal action would be? i await your reply.

1. I don't support that issue involving Sharon, I never said I did, and in fact I know almost nothing about it from a factual standpoint except what little I read from that link in the other thread.


2. I don't know about Dresden; however, in an all-out war cities have occasionally been chosen as targets...look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact I raised the question on this forum last year of whether or not the US had to bomb Japanese cities in order to end the war. It sickens me and I would hope there was another alternative but according to the answers by some notable posters on this forum, there really wasn't another good alternative. I don't know enough about WWII to judge for myself at this point. However there may be something to the argument that that immense and horrific loss of life may have saved many other lives which would have been inevitably lost had the war dragged out much longer.


3. Death camps for terrorists? No, I think they should be eliminated even faster than that if possible.

No, my arguments are not similar to the arguments of the terrorists and here's why: al Qaeda has specific grievances against us none of which are grievances of deadly force used against them. bin Laden wants the US troops out of Saudi Arabia. What exactly are the troops doing there, 5000 of them, tucked away in a remote corner of the country? Not much to bother bin Laden except that the presence of "infidels" on Saudi soil happens to irk him. He is willing to kill innocent Americans over this. We didn't kill a bunch of his countrymen; that's not his gripe. It is however OUR gripe that he killed a bunch of our innocent countrymen. bin Laden is not attacking us because we took the lives of Arabs; he is attacking us for fanatical religious reasons. Quite a different story.

...with regards to 3. above: I don't think we can just consider terrorists as dissidents, frredom fighters, etc....it goes much deeper than that. If all they were was dissidents I would say live and let live. In fact, if they chose to wage war upon the political parties or military machines of those they hate, I would say, well...hmmm. But the sad fact is these guys choose to delibeately wage deadly war against the most helpless and innocent members of society...these are their targets of choice. So I cannot place them in my mind as being merely didssidents or freedom fighters. And when they choose to wage deadly attacks against you, me and every other uninvolved American or Brit, I say they've really gone too far and they should be eliminated. Their rights to dissidence and rights to life ends when they try to kill us,...we, the uninvolved, innocent civilians. That is why I say terrorists should be eliminated. If they merely held the most outlandish views imaginable, contrary to our interests even, I would say, OK, well, hmmm...but when they try to kill us, we who have done absolutely NOTHING to them (I speak for you and I personally, as well as for the American and UK civilian publics), as far as I'm concerned, they just gave up their right to life---and the sooner they die, the better. Just as a savage dog intent on killing you must be destroyed, so too must these deadly fanatics be stopped...in their tracks, preferably, and ASAP.

what about US terrorists? i mean Waco like groups. (although they were taken care of swiftly, perhaps in a style that you admire).


since publicly US troops are going to patrol our streets, should (suspected) US terrorists be summarily executed?


brad

They are that you support the wholesale slaughter of Jews and the destuction of Israel. What a nice Germanic name you have.

I thought you would argue that the U.S. had exhausted peaceful alternatives to capturing bin Laden and dismantling his network. I surprised that you don't seem to think it makes a difference.


You can't justify the right of countries to kill innocent civilians "collaterally" simply because their intended targets struck the first blow. If this made sense, then any country against whom the U.S. has initially used deadly force -- Iraq, for example, and unquestionably Nicaragua and Vietnam, -- would have the right to kill U.S. civilians on our soil as long as their "intended" targets were objects of some military or strategic value such as CIA headquarters or the Pentagon. India would have the right to immediately bomb Pakistan, rather than an obligation to pursue what you dismiss as "legal wrangling," which both countries have undertaken to the great relief of people everywhere.


Since I doubt that you accept that principle, then you're stuck with the following: alone among the community of nations, the U.S. has the right to use military force as a first option in response to horrific attacks against it, even if it means the inevitable killing of people who are no less innocent than the U.S. victims. We would reject this idea if advanced by other countries, and we should reject its advancement by ours.

No, of course US citizens who are suspected of being terrorist should not be sumarily executed.


I don't think Waco was even about terrorists, for that matter. If David Koresh had stated his aims as being to kill civilians to prove a point, then yes, it would have been about terrorists. But as far as I know, he and his followers were not terrorists and therefore are not relevant to this discussion. On the other hand, bin Laden and his followers are not suspected terrorists; they are avowed terrorists. I know this is an emotionally charged issue, but it is in everyone's interest to keep our facts straight if possible.

See Ray Zee's point in a thread above; we didn't have time to exhaust political and legal first in this matter--even as we post, al Qaeda is planning more major attacks. C'mon, get real here. And let's get real about Iraq too---yes we attacked them but they first rolled into Kuwait.


You are quite good at obfuscating the issues and invoking principles that apply in certain situations to other situations where they don't apply. It isn't all relative; we're right, Kuwait is right, and the 'Butcher of Bagdad' is wrong, although if you work hard enough at it, I'm sure you can come up with some reasons why this isn't so.

In the past, our government's military actions overseas were based on lies. To take perhaps the most famous example, we were told that the country of South Vietnam was invaded by North Vietnam, imperiling democracy. We therefore had to come to the defense of this "free world" country.


Well, I read the Geneva accords. I read Bernard Fall and Jean Lacouture and I knew the truth. There was no such country of South Vietnam. There was no democracy in the south under Diem. There was no invasion from the north until after the United States invaded the country. The facts were clear to all who chose to see them.


I know we were attacked on September 11. This was not like Tonikin Gulf when the facts about what happened were deliberately distorted by the government. I saw this with my own eyes. I am convinced by the evidence that Bin Laden's gang is responsible.

'I am convinced by the evidence that Bin Laden's gang is responsible. '


state your evidence. by the way, i agree with you, but your definition of 'gang' is a little narrower than mine.


brad

well, they were (more or less) executed. in any event army special forces, delta force, and foreign troops were there laying seige to americans.


as the war on terrorism intensifies, im sure this model will be used more (ie, military involvement in police matters).


the idea that we need to do whatever we have to without bounds is sure to spill over.


i read an online newspaper (maybe foxnews or something i dont know) where (in relation to airport security maybe) national guard troops were quoted as saying 'were ready to shoot grandmothers (if we have to)' . this really cant be good.


brad

I share some of your concerns, and we do need to keep vigilant so that we don't risk becoming some sort of police state ourselves. I'm convinced, however, that at least for the moment, the greatest threat comes from without, not from within.

M,


I've been following your exchange with Chris closely, and I have refrained from entering into the discussion--perhaps because I agree with both of you at times. The instance of Iraq and Kuwait, though, hardly makes for a good example. We invaded Iraq because it suited our purposes. We stood by and watched near genocide occur in Rwanda because intervention did not suit our purposes. In fact, our representatives, especially the UN ambassador, were forbidden to use the term "genocide" because we would have been bound by our international agreements to intercede. We all know what happened in Rwanda, but why did we sit back and watch it happen?


John

Ray Zee posted something interesting regarding this in a thread above.


Our interests weren't threatened in Rwanda...does that make us bad guys for not stepping in? I really don't know much about Rwanda. I agree it "looks" bad to intervene only whee our interests are threatened, but who says the USA is here to right every wrong in the world? Righting a few, especially those which also happen to threaten our interests, is still a good thing.


I don't think Iraq and Kuwait fit well into this discussion either, for purposes of illustration, but I'm afraid I'm also beginning to think that this is a bit of a theme to Chris Alger's style of argument--a lot of it may seem relevant at first glance, but the analogies, and carry-over uses of principles and ideas, aren't really all that accurate or pertinent, except that they serve his purposes of trying to establish equivalencies where none exist.

The video tape, for one. The documentation that he has been responsible for past actions for another. The connections of the terrorists with Al Qaeda.


I use the word "gang" to mean a group of persons associated for some criminal or other antisocial purpose, e.g., a gang of thieves.

think video holds up in court?


gang im talking about has more members.

John,


I'm not saying we shouldn't have stepped in and acted in Rwanda...I just know very little about it, that's all. Ray Zee posted that it was a bloody internal conflict we had no business in, and after the world finally did step in to aid the losing side, the losing side became the winning side and turned around hacked 500K of the other (previously winning side) to death.


I'm not saying we should only step in where it suits our interests, and I have almost no factual knowledge to go on about Rwanda. However, even if we should have stepped in and didn't in Rwanda, that does not lessen the fact that it was right (and in our interests) to stop the Butcher of Baghdad in Kuwait. It would leave a bad taste in my mouth and represent a great tragedy if this were the case in Rwanda, but there may have been other forces beyond our control at work too...maybe these peoples were determined to hack each other to bits one way or the other, whichever side was 'winning,' and to stop it we would have had to commit an enormous military police presence on a long-term basis...I really don't know.

Is that why some people with your philosophy financially contribute to radical Islamist groups?

See my reply above to come (it'll take a while).