I echo what I said in the thread on Israel and coverage, but in milder language because of the rebuke I received from the host RuthW.
Islamic terrorism is the biggest long term threat to the freedoms of the western world. Whether it is the Palestinians behind this because of the US pro Israel stance, or it is the Afghan Taliban, or one of America's other Middle Eastern enemies Iran, Iraq or Libya you can be sure there is an Islamic motive in there somewhere.

As a citizen of the UK, I believe we should stand four square by the US which has been the guardian of western freedom for more than 50 years, as we did in the Gulf War and the Yugoslav crisis. I am against any knee jerk retaliation until we know more about what is going on, but a country such as the US can't allow itself to be a target for the jelousy of tin pot regimes.

It is obvious that Israel has nuclear weapons. IraQ may still be developing a nuclear capacity and if they ever do Saddam will have no hesitation in using it on Israel and exporting the technology to his neighbours. I have a genuine Christian abhorence of violence , but our freedon and very survival are at stake if we don't all stand side by side against this type of behaviour. And I still believe to support Israel is in our interest and right as Christians.
 

This is a time to mourn.
 

Any new threads on the terrorist attacks on this board will be locked.

RuthW
Purgatory host
 

Thank you all of you for respecting the moratorium on new threads on this topic. It is now lifted.

Before posting in Purgatory, please consider whether or not you are ready for reasoned discussion of the recent terrorism and issues surrounding it, and remember that Hell is the place to vent your emotions about this highly provocative topic. As there are a lot of different things we might talk about, feel free to start a new thread if you wish to discuss one particular aspect of the situation, taking care of course to define the topic in the opening post.

RuthW
Purgatory host
 

After a few days to reflect on it I fear terriblty the consequences of such action. The US has the whole world almost on its side at present, even the leaders of the Arab states. But to respond in a heavy handed way against individual Muslim countries could provoke an Islamic backlash with catastrophic consequences for world peace. I don't know the answer. A country such as the US can't allow itself to be trampled on in this way without responding, but who really wants more loss of life, perpetuating more hatred and bringing closer
Armageddan?
 

Many writers (secular, Christian and Muslim) seem to continue a belief, shared by many in the Middle East and elsewhere, that the West in general, and its more powerful members particularly, can "make peace" in any area "if they want to".

Clearly, this just isn't true (take N.I. for example - close but not there yet by a long chalk).

If the expectation of any of us is that in any conflict whatsoever a third party can manufacture peace between others, then our hopes and expectations are doomed to failure. I've seen pundits condemning Western latitude in Bosnia, whilst also citing the West for mass-murder of children in Iraq through overzealousness. They may or may not be right, but I think there seems to be a false belief in Western overlordship teetering nearly upon the Divine.

This should worry us, for some folks nearly expect the same in our reaction to the events at the WTC.

In none of these circumstances are we so powerful as to manufacture the outcome to everyones perfect satisfaction, nor is anyone (Western or otherwise) so perfectly wise as required.

One challenge seems to be how to commit ourselves to a just world and enact effective action towards it, whilst also communicating our ultimate lack of total power without being seen simply not to care. This challenge has ever been with us, but the mountain currently seems much higher than usual. There seems to me to be a number of particular challenges to us as Christians in the face of this.
 

Yet that is not a cause for despair. We need to do what we can but above all trust in the One who has the power to do *all things*.
 

quote:

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Islamic terrorism is the biggest long term threat to the freedoms of the western world. Whether it is the Palestinians behind this because of the US pro Israel stance, or it is the Afghan Taliban, or one of America's other Middle Eastern enemies Iran, Iraq or Libya you can be sure there is an Islamic motive in there somewhere.

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Unfortunately there is a fanattical and fundamentalist interprtation of the Koran which sanctions the destruction of what can't be converted. While it is no worse than the excesses of medievil Christianity with its inquisitions etc, in those days no-one had the means of mass destruction which are available to modern man.

I read a disturbing letter in the Daily Telegraph today. It spoke of a school in Slough where the 15tear olds are British born but mainly of Pakistani origins. They were all laughing and cheering as the news broke on Tuesday. That says a lt about the apalling state of race relations in Britain. One of our American friends can correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that although racial tensions and bigotry exist in the US, most Americans whether they are black, Irish, Hispanic or Jewish feel American and believe in America. As we have seen from the recent riots in Bradford and other cities, we have large communities in the UK which have no sense of belonging and no wish to belong in any way to our society. They despise our culture and want to plonk down a little statelet from Asia in the middle of Yorkshire of east London.

As Christians we need to develop a spirit of tolerance but many of the events of the last week demonstrate to us that some people, even if a tiny minority will go to any lengths to destroy our way of life. As I said vefore, I don't know the answer and I am unconvinced that military retaliation against the Taliban will do anything other than make the situation worse and raise an Islamic backlash. If the US government decides on a military response I would stand by the decision of the UK to offer total support.We have depended on the US as guardians of our freedom for 60 years and we should stand by them, but I fear the beast which may be unleashed.
 

Today as I walked in my Canadian city I saw a middle-eastern restaurant was closed. Right downtown on a Friday night. And wondered how many others fear exposure at this time when there is a lot of gut-reaction hatred and anger that's been stirred up...
 

When the Japanese Americans were interned, FDR, Hugo Black, and Earl Warren all agreed to trample on the civil rights of American citizens. These three leaders, who were otherwise great liberal (in the old-fashioned sense) democratic leaders, failed to uphold the ideals of democracy and betrayed their fellow citizens. And a terrible injustice was done to thousands of citizens and legal residents.

Today terrible things are happening to people in the US who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent. There have been death threats and hate mail, vandalism and beatings. This is appalling to every decent person everywhere. But it is not sanctioned by our leaders, and it is not silently condoned by the majority of the populace.

Racial inequities and prejudices persist in America. But we're better than we used to be, and we'll become better still. The internment of people of Japanese descent has been invoked again and again in the last few days as a cautionary tale: remember what we did, remember how wrong it was, and learn the lessons of tolerance, acceptance and brotherhood that history teaches.

That the US is criticized for failing to live up to its ideals shows not only how loudly we have proclaimed our ideals, and how far we have fallen short of achieving them, but also how valuable and sacred they truly are.
 

Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world and I have no idea how the US and its supporters could achieve that aim without the loss of innocent lives. As has already been said 90 per cent of the population of Afghanistan has probably never heard of the WTC. We should have learned from the Gulf War and its aftermath. After more than a decade of sanctions both military and economic against Iraq, Saddam is still there and I don't suppose he has ever gone hungry the way so many poor Iraqis have.

Of course every diplomatic pressure should be put on the countries which harbour these people in an attempt to get them to hand over the perpetrators but it is unlikely to be effective. To launch bombing raids against Afghanistan may have no effect in terms of flushing out bin Laden and a ground war is virtually unthinkable. As Britain in the 19th century and Russia in the 1980's discovered the Afghans aren't an easy people to beat in their own mountainous terrain.

All our prayers should be directed towards an outcome to this situation which will see justice done because the blood of thousands of people cries out from the ground for it, but without more bloodshed perpetrating more hatred and a downhill slide towards a world war.
 

And Ruth, you make a valid distinction between the racist reactions of today and the Japanese internment. I agree they are different. I would like to believe things are much better now and that we have learned our lessons. I hope in some ways we have. Yet it seems we have quite a ways to go as well.

Also, I am very disturbed by the blurring in many minds between the Taliban and the Afghan people. The latter are victims - a thoughtful letter I received this week from an Afghan American compared them to the Jews and the Taliban to the Nazis.

In this crisis, there remains the opportunity to do the right thing. What that is is not obvious, but the military route seems too "easy" and destructive to be right.

I continue to pray that we will find it and follow that right path, in spite of all the pressure to jump into violent alternatives.
 

I agree that we need to distinguish between the suffering Afghan people and the leaders in the Taliban. The horrible irony when all the lackwits are saying "Nuke them back to the Stone Age" is that so many Afghans are already living in deplorable and unconscionable conditions.

Along with the $20 billion for NY and the $20 billion for the military, I wonder how it would go if we offered the Afghans $20 billion for infrastructure and agricultural aid in exchange for Osama bin Ladin or whoever the CIA decides they want to finger for this ... If this seems unrealistic, think of it as a metaphor.
 

I will point out that on one of the news programs I saw yesterday (they're all blending together, so I can't remember which), a couple of US-based Islamic clerics said that in some regions of the world, Islam as a whole believes itself to be at war with the US. They felt that it was a wrong attitude to have, but they were quite adamant that it is real. Not sure what to make of that.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
PS -- I would be extremely surprised if the US decides that airbombing Afghanistan is a viable option. Anyone with an ounce of military strategy can see that the terrain renders this absolutely useless.

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nothing would suprise me at the moment...

Neil
 

I believe that retribution is justified in the circumstances but also think that it will be very difficult to convict Osama bin Laden if we adopt our own rules of evidence.

If we do not give the same degree of justice to the supporters of terrorism are we not using double standards and playing into their hands? The actual perpertators of these crimes have after all already perished in the holocaust of their own making. We must be absolutely sure that Osama bin Laden's regime was the main conspirator and is therefor culpable before we take action.

In my view we must also look carefully at the reasons why so many of the Arab peoples feel such animosity toward the West and toward the USA in particular. Do we adopt double standards when we speak about justice. Do the Palestinians, for example, get justice when their homeland is invaded by Israel?

Good can come of this only if we focus on the underlying causes of the hatred. If we consider ourselves to be truly Christian then we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us. That, practically speaking, means that we must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned and we must do it even if it is at the expense of our own comfort. If we show the compassion of Christ and give ourselves to others in His service we will conquer the hatred and fear in His name.

YIC

Bob R
 

I had to laugh when I read this one...It's real obvious, from their carefully-worded condemnation (of the terrorists' bombing attacks) and their statement of support that stops short of volunteering to join-in w/ the US-backers who intend to take military action...that Russia sure hasn't forgotten what happened to them in Afghanistan.

sw
 

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do you really think the US government learned nothing from the Russians' failure in Afghanistan?

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or from the British failure in the 19th century Headline "World super-power beaten in Khyber Pass, Afganistan"
 

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Originally posted by JohnW:
" Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us--who takes your babies & smashes them against a rock."
We can justify anything in the Bible.

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If you read the rest of the psalm, you'll find that it is a lament, written by a amn who has been taken by force from his home (Jerusalem) to a strange city (Babylon) and is expressing his grief and anger. The last verse can't be taken as an expression of God's will, or a justification for such a horrible act, but as a confirmation that even in our darkest moments, when our feelings towards others are full of hate, God is listening.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Amos:
I would be very surprised if O. bin L. had any bank accounts or investments of the conventional sort owing to the Islamic prohibition on usury. I recall reading somewhere that he used hundi--the Indian subcontinent's system of local money-lenders and notes-of-hand. These would be virtually impossible to trace.

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I have read somewhere this week that he is, in fact, invested in the U.S. and foreign stock markets. Moreover, he made a huge amount of money these last two weeks by selling insurance stock short before the hijackings. The insurance stocks went way down after the hijackings, of course.

I have no way of knowing whether this is true. If it is, it is horribly ingenious.

Moo
 

Seems to me a lot more hard, clear-eyed thinking, praying and utter miracles are in order. I haven't got answers, but many many questions about "solutions" I hear.
 

Considering that it took months to put together an international coalition to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait, I wouldn't be surprised if it took just as long if not longer to put together a coalition to fight terrorism. And I'm hoping that the intelligence people will be doing, well, intelligent things during this time, and that the US government will seek justice rather than revenge.
 

It seems that although people are using the word "War", it must be a different kind of struggle. A World War would be in no-one's interest. It might result in an earth with no living animal life whatever.

I think the word war is being used figuratively, in the same sort of way that we might talk about a war on drugs. The war on drugs does not include the invasion of or bombing of targets in drug growing countries; it is carried out more subtly.

I hope and pray that an emerging coalition against terrorism will proceed with wisdom and subtlety, and set out to cause the minimum amount of "colateral damage".

Pt
 

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What is often missing from these considerations, as far as I can see, is the acknowledgement that there is not one terrorist in the world.

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It is interesting that the one political party here that has not supported the condemnation of the terrorist act is Sinn Fenn the political wing of the IRA
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Moo:
I have read somewhere this week that he is, in fact, invested in the U.S. and foreign stock markets. Moreover, he made a huge amount of money these last two weeks by selling insurance stock short before the hijackings. The insurance stocks went way down after the hijackings, of course.

I have no way of knowing whether this is true. If it is, it is horribly ingenious.

Moo

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It seems clear that someone or some group has made a huge amount of money in the stock market as a result of the terrorism.

An unusual number of put options for insurance companies and airline stock were sold during the weeks preceding the terrorism. Now these options are worth much more than they were then, and the buyers have a very large profit.

Amos, you said that bin Laden probaably would not be invested in the stock market because that would be usury. I think this would apply to the bond market but not the stock market. When you buy stock, you do not lend money; you become a part-owner of the company.

Moo
 

Doctors, Nurses, a proper Health Service, teachers, money and resources for long term development, people who can build homes, plan communities, sit and listen, hear the cries of the dispossessed and poor for whom the vision of the Kingdom is for. Then, perhaps, young, passionate men would not burn so much with hatred that they become blind to their own humaniy or the humanity of others.

Did not others find it rather sick that the symbol of New York going back work was the re-opening of Wall Street which immediately started to trade on the disaster and plunge The USA into recession ? What values are we seeking to defend ?.
 

What is the cause of their hatred of the US?

I believe with my heart and my mind that those thousands of people did not deserve to die. But I also believe that with the world's desire for justice must go a severe self-examination.

Britiain and the US's foreign policy in the middle east needs to be examined and critiqued with more energy than it has up to now.

Now is a time to remember Vietnam and the Gulf War and to ask hard questions about how to resist violence.

I certainly believe that more people dying will not help.

God Bless the families and loved ones of those killed in NY and Washington.

May God also bless the mothers and children and wives of the men who committed this terrible act.

Ferg
 

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Originally posted by Arch-Deacon:
Let us take as many B52 bombers(or their contemporary equivalent) and bomb the hell(literally) out of Afghanistan with:

Doctors, Nurses, a proper Health Service, teachers, money and resources for long term development, people who can build homes, plan communities, sit and listen, hear the cries of the dispossessed and poor for whom the vision of the Kingdom is for.

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The problem with this is that the doctors, etc. we might send in would be at serious risk of being arrested as spies and sentenced to death.

Moo
 

Willy
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ferg:
I also believe that with the world's desire for justice must go a severe self-examination.

Britiain and the US's foreign policy in the middle east needs to be examined and critiqued with more energy than it has up to now.

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I could not possibly disagree more with this if I tried. ANY change in US, Britain or other Western foreign policy that is in any way prompted by the attack is nothing short of total capitulation to these terrorists. It is a clear and unambiguous message that if you kill enough Americans, you can get what you want. Last week's attack should have absolutely zero bearing on any change in foreign policy (other than, "now we're going to hunt your sorry ass down like the dog you are").
 

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Erin wrote: Last week's attack should have absolutely zero bearing on any change in foreign policy (other than, "now we're going to hunt your sorry ass down like the dog you are").

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Then they will have most certainly made the US into a vengeful, violence worshipping state that collectively views people as animals.

Anger, yes, justice yes! Dehumanising justification of violence No!

Ferg
 

Please, spare me the self-righteous attitude. We collectively view terrorists as animals because that is what they are. They are the ones who have decided that our way of life and theirs cannot coexist on this planet. They are the ones who have decided that the only course of action is to systematically destroy every American on the planet.

They are not madmen. But they are evil, and they must be destroyed.
 

Do you think that their jihad can be changed? If so, how? If not, what do we do with them?
 

And let's not call it a jihad - it is such a perversion of an already difficult word.

So how do we change their minds? I don't think there is any easy way. My question is, should that be the top priority? What of peace and world justice? What of the fact that already the innocent Afghans are more at risk than before?

I'd like to copy here something I read elsewhere from Christian Aid as well as part of someone else's response:

"The recent appalling terrorist attack on the United States has focussed the eyes of the world on Afghanistan as the hunt for the perpetrators continues. And yet the consequences of this attack on organisations working to alleviate the effects of the drought have gone largely unreported. With the increasing political tension, aid organisations (such as Christian Aid) have been forced to withdraw international workers from Afghanistan, inevitably scaling down operations. This includes the World Food Programme (WFP), which supplies most of the free grain distributed by aid organisations. With no free grain available, and with the price of food in Afghanistan already increasing dramatically, the cost of any relief we are able to deliver will soar.

"Regardless of all these factors Christian Aid WILL continue to operate in Afghanistan through ten local organisations. We are doing all in our power to get food and other essentials to as many people as possible."

A quarter of the population of that country, over five million people, are expected to be dependent on food aid by November. Many will die, especially women and children, of starvation and exposure if that aid does not get through. Christian Aid are determined not to turn their backs on innocent people who have already suffered so much. Against this background terrorism is irrelevant.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Nicole Smith:
I don't know how hunting down the known ones and killing them would improve their attitude. If anything, seems to me it would worsen it (my hydra analogy).

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I lost all interest in improving their attitudes the minute they steered two jets into the WTC. Their attitude means, in precise, technical terms, jackshit to me.

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And let's not call it a jihad - it is such a perversion of an already difficult word.

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Ummm... jihad is their word, not mine. How understanding is it to tell them what they really mean, Nicole?

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So how do we change their minds? I don't think there is any easy way.

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There is no way. Period. If they are prepared to steer civilian airplanes into civilian buildings, they are beyond reason.

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My question is, should that be the top priority?

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No, it shouldn't be a priority at all. The top priority should be to find them and dispatch them. The second priority is to publicize this so that the next person who thinks it's a good idea to recruit someone to steer a plane into a building will realize that all it does is bring dishonor to himself and his cause.

quote:

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What of peace and world justice?

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The highest priority, but I would rank justice above peace, as peace without justice is in fact neither.

quote:

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What of the fact that already the innocent Afghans are more at risk than before?

I'd like to copy here something I read elsewhere from Christian Aid as well as part of someone else's response:

"The recent appalling terrorist attack on the United States has focussed the eyes of the world on Afghanistan as the hunt for the perpetrators continues. And yet the consequences of this attack on organisations working to alleviate the effects of the drought have gone largely unreported. With the increasing political tension, aid organisations (such as Christian Aid) have been forced to withdraw international workers from Afghanistan, inevitably scaling down operations. This includes the World Food Programme (WFP), which supplies most of the free grain distributed by aid organisations. With no free grain available, and with the price of food in Afghanistan already increasing dramatically, the cost of any relief we are able to deliver will soar.

"Regardless of all these factors Christian Aid WILL continue to operate in Afghanistan through ten local organisations. We are doing all in our power to get food and other essentials to as many people as possible."

A quarter of the population of that country, over five million people, are expected to be dependent on food aid by November. Many will die, especially women and children, of starvation and exposure if that aid does not get through. Christian Aid are determined not to turn their backs on innocent people who have already suffered so much. Against this background terrorism is irrelevant.

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Would you please explain in 100 words or less what in the name of the IPU this has to do with finding and eliminating terrorism? The US and its allies have made it abso-freakin'-lutely clear that our war is with terrorists, not the Afghanistan people. Unless, of course, YOU are saying they are one and the same.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Nicole Smith:
So how do we change their minds? I don't think there is any easy way. My question is, should that be the top priority?

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Well, if they're trying to kill me, changing their mind is a pretty high priority for me. But I don't think I'll stand around long and say, "Hey, guys, couldn't we talk this over?"
 

Six hundred people were massacred at a Christian mission in Congo on 24 August 1998 and since then tens of thousands more Congolese have died in other atrocities. Europeans have not held a three minute silence for Congo. That event and the attack on New York were both premeditated and sudden acts of violence against civilians. So why, in the UK, were we outraged so little by one and so much by the other?

Our leaders prepare for war, and the TV advises us that we should be feeling an unparalleled level of moral outrage at this act of "unprecedented evil". And yet on a scale of human tragedy it is dwarfed by Congo's loss - and far more so by the 1994 Rwanda genocide when in a carefully planned operation 800,000 civilians were murdered over one hundred days (UN Report, 1999).

Less dramatically, many poor nations suffer from unfair trade and Christian relief agencies campaign to "Change the Rules!" - the world trade agreements that some believe transfer wealth from poor nations to multinational corporations. In recent years millions have been killed by man-made disasters and genocides - some dramatic, some subtle - almost all in the Third World.

The only explanation I can see for the disproportion in reactions to events in the Third World and the USA is that our primary emotion is fear. We ask, if chaos can touch the capital city of a fellow NATO-member, then perhaps the world's pain cannot be confined to poor countries? If disaster can strike even the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, structures central to US financial and military power, then perhaps we too are vulnerable.

regards,

John McKeownnull
 

Does this war on terrorism include Northern Ireland?
 

I'm not saying it will be easy to deal with terrorism. I'm just questioning the helpfulness of some obvious routes.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
I could not possibly disagree more with this if I tried. ANY change in US, Britain or other Western foreign policy that is in any way prompted by the attack is nothing short of total capitulation to these terrorists. It is a clear and unambiguous message that if you kill enough Americans, you can get what you want. Last week's attack should have absolutely zero bearing on any change in foreign policy (other than, "now we're going to hunt your sorry ass down like the dog you are").

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And, Erin, I could not possibly disagree more with you if I tried. Sorry if this is a roundabout way of explaining, but let me try a parable.

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Once, there were two great families, the Bloggs and the Smiths who had a long history of bickering and feuding. Each family was large and sprawling, with many cousins and second cousins and third cousins, some of whom had never even met one another, the families were so large. In the Blogg family there were a group of young men who would lie in wait for young women of the Smith family, and rape them. They did this repeatedly and frequently over a period of many years, without the knowledge of most members of the Blogg family, but – it is said- with full knowledge and even approval from the head of the family. Nothing that members of the Smith family did stopped this raping, or even convinced most of the Bloggs that the raping was going on.

So, one day, two brothers from the Smith family kidnapped two young Blogg girls – girls too young to know anything much about the feud between the families, let alone about the rapes. They tortured them horribly, killed them, and left their atrociously mutilated bodies in the middle of the town where the Bloggs lived, with a note pinned to the corpses which promised torture and death to all the Bloggs.

Jane, one of the Bloggs – one who knew little about the rapes that had been carried out by members of her own family – vowed, when she saw the corpses, to hunt down the dogs who did it and bring them to justice. Given the horrible violence of the crime and the innocence of the girls, everyone in the Blogg family – and many of the Smiths - agreed. However, one of her brothers, John, took her aside and tried to explain about the raping that members of her own family had been involved in; he tried to tell her that unless that raping stopped then there would always be some in the Smith family ready to retaliate, or ready to condone such retaliation. In her anger, Jane responded, ‘No! Any attempt to restrain our brothers now, or bring them to discipline – in fact, any admission from the head of our family that this raping has been going on – is impossible. It would be to condone what the torture of our sisters. We must stand firm.’ Whether she was refusing to believe that her family included rapists, or that the their actions were condoned by the head of her family, or whether she was so angry that she did not care, nobody could tell.

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Jane is, I would want to argue, wrong. She is wrong because she makes the wrong done by others to her family a reason for perpetuating a real injustice committed by her own family. Had the Smiths carried out their torture in order to extort money from the Bloggs, or had they carried out their torture in order to gain land from the Bloggs, she would have been right: to give in would be to condone the murders. However, to condone, protect and encourage the rapists in her own family because of the more horrible crimes committed by those in the other family – that seems to me to be terribly, terribly misguided.

Now, I know that this parable is relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves only if the US is, like the Bloggs, has truly been involved in ‘raping’ members of the constituency from which the 9-11 terrorists came, and if the US administration has condoned that ‘raping’. If this is an unjustified claim, then the parable I have told is irrelevant, and my condemnation of ‘Jane’ gives no ground at all for arguing against Erin. I admit that.

However, in order to answer that question, we need to do precisely what Erin seems to be ruling out: we need to examine ourselves to see whether the description fits. If it does then we will still not condone what the terrorists did: not one bit of it – we will still mourn the lives of all those who died in the attacks, and we will still be resolute in seeking to bring the terrorists to justice.

However, we will
(a) combine that quest with a long hard look at our foreign policy, and take seriously the possibility that we need to change too before we can look the families of the victims of the attacks in the eye. We will also
(b) think hard about the ways in which we pursue the quest for justice, and make doubly sure that there is as little as possible about our response which resembles the crimes of which we are accused. This might mean we look rather differently at the possibility of ‘collateral damage’, and will certainly mean that we look askance at the rhetoric of righteousness our side is using. Otherwise, we might as well be training new terrorists ourselves.

Does that make sense?
 

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No, the "war on terrorism" does not include Northern Ireland. Bush explicitly stated in his address to Congress last Thursday that they would be going after terrorist organizations with a global reach. Internal and regional terrorist organizations will not be tackled.

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What status then the three Real IRA members arrested in Colombia in August, suspected of being there to train local para-military activists?
 

One could extend your analogy to say that prominent 'Smiths' have treated the women in the family like third class citizens, taught the young males the techniques of killing others (particularly those who do not go to the same place of worship as them) and taught them it is a good and blessed thing to kill oneself in the process of killing as many non-Smiths as possible.

I have to agree with Erin as to the need to 'dispatch' the sort of people/organisations that are behind this. It is of course vital to be as sure as reasonably possible that the people targetted ARE very likely to have been involved.
 

You miss the main point I was making, though, and perhaps I was not clear enough: my main claim was not that the parable was a good one (i.e., not that America was a 'rapist') but that given that this is the kind of claim being made by many in the constituency from which the terrorists came it is a grave mistake to refuse even to ask about America's culpability.

Let me put it more directly: If the constituency which is unwillingly and appallingly represented by the terrorists has genuine and just grievances against the US and her allies because of injustices perpetrated by us, then we need to repent of those injustices. That is a moral obligation, and we are not absolved of it because some in that constituency have taken absolutely and terribly unjust and uncondonable forms of retaliation for those injustices. If we refuse to repent of those things, then we are stoking the fires which will fuel the terrorists; we will bear some responsibility for the next attack.

Further, if, in our pursuit of the terrorists, we fail to realise that many in the constituency which the terrorists would claim to represent believe that we are the perpetrators of gross injustices against them, we risk acting in ways which turn that constituency more sharply against us.

(By 'constituency' here, by the way, I do not just mean those who support directly or indirectly the terrorist actions, but the far wider grouping of those who habitually regard America as 'the enemy' - many of whom would currently condemn the attack on the WTC.)
 

Furthermore, I would argue that the only course of action the US and the rest of the West can take to avoid pissing these people off is complete isolation from the world outside of North America and Europe. They want us out of the Middle East. ObL stated before that the presence of Western troops in Saudi Arabia is what did this. The Palestinians have gone on record as stating that he couldn't care less about them and their plight. While the policy in Israel may have something to do with why other people are pissed off at us, for this guy and the people who work for him it's simply the fact that we are there.

What part of "get out or I will kill all of you" do we need to understand and change in order to keep this from happening again?
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Alaric the Goth:
...'raping' (your word, and a rather strong one at that, IMO)...

---

It is not too strong for describing the claims which are made about US foreign policy. The leader in this week's New Statesman (a left-wing British political magazine), for instance, puts it this way: 'To them [i.e., the 'constituency' I mentioned, not just the terrorists], the US is an imperial power.... It has left a trail of grievances around the world. American-made weapons pound the Palestinians; an American-sponsored war creates misery for the Colombians; American-led sanctions lead to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. In the past, an American-supported dictator perpetrated unspeakable cruelties in Indonesia; an American-prompted coup overthrew a legitimately elected government in Chile; an American strategy...built support for Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. The US ideology of market liberalism has led to obscene global inequalities. US national interests block agreements to control global warming and arms sales and to set up an international court of justice. US companies block the manufacture of cheap anti-Aids drugs. US banks demand interest payments that cripple the economies of around 50 countries.'

(Hosts: I hope this quote is not too long for copyright purposes?)

Now, we may disagree, and we may debate any or every item on this list - I think we are morally obliged to take it seriously though, and no amount of fully justified righteous abhorrence and disgust for the terrorists who claim to represent this point of view lets us off that hook.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
It makes sense, Mike, but I think that analogy is flawed. If the policies are unjust, then they are unjust regardless of whether or not more than a dozen flights are targeted for hijacking. If we are looking at foreign policy BECAUSE of this attack and for no other reason, it is complete and utter capitulation and they have won.

---

What if, though, one believes that even if ObL is killed, even if his finances are wrecked, even if the training camps in Afghanistian are destroyed, the hatred of America fuelled by US foreign policy will lead to others filling the vacancy as fast as we cut them down? In other words, what if one thinks that the only way permanently to reduce the likelihood of more such terrorist attacks is to reconsider aspects of that foreign policy? It seems to me that our main response to 9-11 must be to ask how we can prevent it happening again.

(I am not suggesting letting ObL off, however; I fully agree that he and any one else involved should be brought to justice - although I personally would rather have him brought to trial than simply bombed, if at all possible.)

quote:

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Furthermore, I would argue that the only course of action the US and the rest of the West can take to avoid pissing these people off is complete isolation from the world outside of North America and Europe. They want us out of the Middle East. ObL stated before that the presence of Western troops in Saudi Arabia is what did this....

---

There's a difference between what ObL says and believes his reasons now are, and the way he and his supporters came to have those reasons. So, yes: ObL is not going to buy a US flag the day America cancels some more third world debt; nothing we can do is going to stop him hating us. And yes, that means we need to stop him forcefully. But that does not mean that we can do nothing to make it less likely that others will grow into similar views.

Next time a terrorist attacks my country or its allies (and there will be a next time, inevitably), I don't want to have to face the victims' families and admit that there were things I could have done to make it less likely, but that my (genuinely) righteous anger got in the way.
 

Terrorism is terrorism whether in US or in Europe.
 

quote:

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American-led sanctions lead to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children.

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I know this isn't the debate at hand, but with all due respect, this particular claim is complete and utter bullshit and I cannot let it stand a minute longer without being challenged. Iraq has gotten more than enough food and medicine in exchange for its oil. It is Saddam Hussein who has turned around and exported it for a profit. So the blood of those Iraqi children is on his hands, and his hands alone.

Again, I say that if the policies are unjust, they are unjust regardless of whether or not some nutjob gets it into his head to steer airplanes into buildings. If we are adjusting foreign policy BECAUSE OF this attack, we are capitulating. If it wasn't unjust enough to fix before now, then hijacking planes into civilian buildings does not make it unjust enough to fix now.
 

Battered Wife Syndrome.

The developing ideas about justice in domestic violence have led to this concept. That a woman can be so disempowered and frightened that the only way she can think of to help her self is violence.
Male dominated courts for years ignored the violence done to women by other men. This male violence was the normal way for men to control their wives. To the courts it was invisible.

So the courts put women in prison for stabbing their husbands after the husband had been punching, burning, threatening, manipulating them for years.

When women stared speaking out and saying this is not just it was said that we cannot change the law in response to this female violence. All that would do is give women a carte blanche on killing their male partners.

Male violence is largely perpetuated by men's refusal to examine themselves and see the violence that they do.

This is often a feature of powerful groups in society. They can afford to avoid self-examination because they are able to absorb retaliation from the weaker group. Indeed arguements that support non-self-examination are common because they allow members of the powerful group to feel innocent and even to feel like they are the offended against.

How many men do you know that feel like feminists are male-bashers? It easier to blame than to self-examine...

Splinters and logs.

Ferg
 

I certainly disagree with the idea that if policy is found to be wrong, then to change it is a capitulation to the terrorists. To me, they win if they can get you to think like them - that the solution to a problem is to dehumanize your enemies and exterminate them.
 

Again -- policies do not create terrorists, they only create targets. Terrorism is a pathological mindset that is independent of its chosen target. We can examine foreign policy from now until the judgment day. That knowledge, however, is ultimately useless in addressing terrorism.

Those of you who think we need to understand their motivations behind all of this -- how much understanding did you advocate when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma City?
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
[QB]One more time -- if killing nearly 7000 civilians in any way makes the US change its policy in favor of what he wants, that is total capitulation.
QB]

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What if what needs changing is not what Mr Bin Laden wants but the policies that make young muslim men easy pickings for people like him?

Ferg
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
We can examine foreign policy from now until the judgment day. That knowledge, however, is ultimately useless in addressing terrorism.

---

I can't quite agree with this.

The fact that criminals react to policies by taking matters into their own hands, and killing thousands of innocents, does come pretty close to invalidating their objection to the policies. I agree that it would be pretty wimpy to react to these terrible bombings by saying, "Well, that sure got our attention. Someone doesn't like what we're doing. We better change our ways."

Nor is it possible for any country to be completely free of policies that make some people hopping mad.

At the same time, however, the more policies that a country has that people around the world object to, the more likely it is that someone will be angry enough to do stupid things.

Large and powerful countries can't help causing problems and facing resentments from other countries. Obviously they try to minimize that kind of thing, but it certainly happens. You cannot say, however, that there is absolutely no relationship between national policies and the incidence of terrorism.

I do agree with Erin that the national reaction should be to apprehend those reponsible in order to prevent further crimes - and not self-flagellation over possible past foreign policy mistakes.

Imagine if the U.S. reaction to Pearl Harbor had been to give in to Japan's demands to give them a free hand in the Western Pacific!
 

I would add that I think there is no way that the United States of America could ever satisfy the constituency of The New Statesman.
 

the trouble is, i can't think of what else, realisticly, we could do.
 

Erin, I disagree with the idea that if we re-examine our foreign policy in response to this terrorism we are capitulating to the terrorists. We would be capitulating if we withdrew all support of Israel and pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia immediately and without much discussion. We could have and IMO should have re-examined our foreign policy long ago -- it is a measure of our leaders' pigheadedness that there only seems to be serious consideration of this only after over 6,000 civilians are killed at once. The terrorism can be the catalyst for considering change, I think, with the real reasons for making changes being that some of our foreign policies have been short-sighted, to say the least.

[edited so it would make sense]

[ 26 September 2001: Message edited by: RuthW ]
 

(i) Hypothetical question: Would your principled stand against making changes in foreign policy as a result of the terrorist attack be altered if you were convinced that such changes would make future such attacks less likely? (I'm talking about the kinds of changes that bleedin-heart liberals like myself have been suggesting, of course.)

(ii) Suppose that a Palestinian suicide bomber were tomorrow to bomb a cafe in Tel Aviv, killing fifty Israelis; suppose that the Israeli government started using the same rhetoric as Bush about the need to root out and kill the terrorists and wage war against those communities that harbour them; suppose then that an Israeli were to post on this board saying that any softening of this policy, or any attempt to 'understand' the Palestinian point of view, any attempt to deal with the claimed injustices which fuel Palestinian anger, would be a 'capitulation' to the bombers. Would you support this Israeli's line? If not, what is different about the situations that justifies the difference in your response?

These aren't meant to be rhetorical questions, by the way - I'm genuinely interested.

[edited to fix UBB]

[ 27 September 2001: Message edited by: Karl ]
 

Cannot the lessons learnt from the mistakes (e.g. the Versaille Treaty) and success stories (e.g. the Marshall Plan) of the past be remembered, and applied?

The history of the 20th. Century shows clearly that combatting terrorism solely by the use of force does not work, and has never worked!

This is not a statement of liberalism, or "The New Statesman constituency", it is cold hard fact, (as Margaret Thatcher found to her cost, John Major faced up to, and countless others have experienced).

It must be remembered that terrorism is a label applied by the opponents of a movement using force against an established order.

The supporters will use terms such as "freedom fighters", "revolutionaries" or "liberators", and will refer to "the armed struggle".

Former terrorists are now in gorenment in many countries in the world. Let's look at how they got there, and what lessons we can learn from the past. Because it has a direct relevance to the present, and the future.

It is understandable and perfectly normal that the first reaction to being on the receiving end of terrorism is to want to go and kill all the ******** who did the appalling deed, and those who think like them and support them. But this action alone doesn't work, never has done, and it never will.
 

(i) is moot, since you will never, ever convince me that giving in to terrorists' demands will stop their attacks.

(ii) yes, I would support this response.

Again, you have to understand something: these wastes of carbon killing 7000 civilians doesn't suddenly make any particular foreign policy bad. If it was bad, it already was bad. Don't you see the difference?

quote:

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The history of the 20th. Century shows clearly that combatting terrorism solely by the use of force does not work, and has never worked!

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And those of us paying attention know that we will NOT be combating terrorism solely through the use of force, so this statement is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ham 'n' Eggs:
It must be remembered that terrorism is a label applied by the opponents of a movement using force against an established order.

The supporters will use terms such as "freedom fighters", "revolutionaries" or "liberators", and will refer to "the armed struggle".

---

The distinguishing characteristic of terrorism is that it is directed at unarmed people, frequently civilians who are unfortunate enough to be in a certain place at a certain time.

When it is directed against soldiers it is carried out when they are off-duty.

I think that the use of arms to target unarmed people is the essence of cowardice.

Moo
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Erin:
(i) is moot, since you will never, ever convince me that giving in to terrorists' demands will stop their attacks.

---

First - even if you think I will never convince you, that doesn't make the question moot. Let me put it differently: do you hold the line you hold because you think it will make future attacks less likely? Or do you uphold it irrespective of whether it will make future attacks less likely - even if you happen to believe that this is one effect following your principle will have.

Second, who on earth is talking about 'giving in to terrorists' demands'? The changes in foreign policy I would suggest are not based on giving in to demands, but on recognising that unjust things the US has been doing have helped fuel terrorism. Can you see the difference?

quote:

---

(ii) yes, I would support this response.

---

Are you really telling me that, in the light of the terrorist bombings which have taken place in Israel, you would support the Israeli government's decision to 'wage war against those communities that harbour them', that you would rule out any 'attempt to "understand" the Palestinian point of view, any attempt to deal with the claimed injustices which fuel Palestinian anger?'

And do you really believe that such a policy would make future terrorist attacks in Israel less likely?

quote:

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Again, you have to understand something: these wastes of carbon killing 7000 civilians doesn't suddenly make any particular foreign policy bad. If it was bad, it already was bad. Don't you see the difference?

---

I'm not saying the attacks 'made' any foreign policy bad, or even necessarily that the attacks will make anyone in government realise that things which they had thought were okay were in fact bad. It might just be that the attacks help those in charge of US foreign policy realise that they can't carry on with impunity: that the injustices they have supported somewhere a long way away, out of sight and supposedly out of mind, have contributed to all-too-visible effects back home.

Let's take a very limited case. Suppose Bush decided that, as a result of these attacks, he was going to chat to the CIA and say, 'Folks, I've been thinking; hows about we stop supporting and funding people who look like they might have the potential to become the next Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, even if to do so would suit our short-term economic and political goals? Seems to me that our policy of doing that in the past has had some nasty repurcussions.' You'd vote him out for it next election, would you?
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Qestia:
What can we do to make them happy? I DON'T CARE.

---

quote:

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Imagine living in a nation where if you're a woman, and you're raped, you can be stoned for adultery. Imagine being a woman and not being allowed to learn to read. Going about with every inch of your skin covered. Any errors of our foreign policy seem miniscule in comparison with the hells they've set up for themselves. We send them millions of dollars of humanitarian aid, they jail the Christian Aid workers that were mentioned earlier. What can we do to make them happy? I DON'T CARE.[/QB]

---

I wonder if african americans reading this might find this familiar. Sounds like the country their grandparents grew up in and that some of them are still living in.

I wonder what the US would be like today if Martin Luther King had advocated violence in return for violence? How many more black men and women and children were killed than in those towers? Mr King had provocation. Yet he refused to call white people, even the white people who did those terrible things, anything less than human.

In his words,
"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964

Mr King is and will remain forever one of my heroes.

Ferg
 

It was slavery which denied education to black women and treated them as sexual chattels - and a war in which thousands of Americans died was fought with this as a main issue.

The war did not end discrimination against black people but it did stop slavery which allowed masters to deny education to their slaves and use them as sexual chattels.

Are you saying that the slaves would have been better off if the Abolitionists had preached non-violence and let the slave masters get on with doing whatever they liked to their 'property'?

I hesitate to venture into this as there will be Americans with a greater degree of historical knowledge about this (and strong feelings!) but I think your argument suffers from an extreme lack of historical perspective.

Louise
 

Can anyone closer in touch with US internal affairs tell me whether the government's commitment to bringing justice to terrorists and their backers has extended as far as taking action against NORAID yet, whose financial support of the IRA been responsible for killings and bombings in Northern Ireland and in England for a matter of decades?

Is there a general feeling in the States that this is an important way to get one's own house in order before knocking down anyone else's? Or are things understood differently?
 

Since there is a persistent tendency on this thread for those of us who are advocating 'changes in foreign policy' (or some such phrase) to be vague about what we mean, and for those who disagree to assume that the vagueness simply covers a desire to 'give in to the terrorists' or 'make them happy'), I thought it might help if I tried to spell out more concretely and positively the sort of thing I mean.

(i) We've heard a lot of talk about 'building a coalition' against terrorism, and some quite remarkable pledges of international co-operation; that's a good thing. What I would like to see, though, to back this up, is a larger investment by the US in international law and the institutions of international law. And that will include institutions of international law which are able to hold the US to account as much as any other nation. At the moment, many in the world see America as using 'international law' only when it suits it.

(ii) Back in 1997 in Britain, there was a lot of talk about an 'ethical foreign policy' - and ever since there has been a lot of back-tracking. I would love to see my own government, and the US, making a real commitment to supporting democracy, freedom, and human rights around the world, and making that a prime objective of foreign policy. If you think this is already true, you've probably not been looking very hard. However, even if we'd made this commitment, we would have to work very hard not to substitute a different objective for it: the extension of market liberalism, and of a Western brand of political liberalism, throughout the world. This is a difficult balancing act, and would need to work hand in hand with (i) above if it is not going to be imperialism by another name.

(iii) A recognition by the major Western economies that global inequalities are a bad thing - that major economic inequalities are likely to add fuel to fires which will burn us - would be useful. And this could also be made an explicit goal of foreign policy. Sounds reasonble, doesn't it - but when we still take far, far more out of the economies of the poorest countries each year than we ever give back in aid, you have to wonder. And, funnily enough, this is not the same as making sure that there are ever more global markets for our own goods: that may be a partial consequence, but should not itself be the goal.

What about dealing with the immediate threat? Yes, I think that the perpetrators are going to have to be forcibly brought to trial; yes, I think that in various ways existing terrorist networks are going to have to be broken up (financial freezes, destruction of training camps). But a 'war on terrorism' that thinks that the longer term problem will be solved by these means is massively mis-guided. The only kind of war on terrorism that will work in the long term is, as I have been trying to say, a war on inequality, a war on various forms of imperialism, and a war on the abuse of and lack of international law.

Is any of this 'giving in to Osama'? Is any of this 'capitulation'?
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Louise:
Scuse me Ferg, but what was that thing called 'the American Civil war', in which thousands died, about?

---

Well I think that is a bit more complicated actually. Many people think that people like General Lee were fighting for ideals to do with the independance of their states from Northern control.

I would like to hear an answer to this question from an african american though:
Which did more for Black americans, the civil war or the 60s civil rights movement?

I have not studied this formally so I can't give quotes but I seem to recall hearing that the civil war changed slaves into waged slaves...

Ferg
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ferg:

Well I think that is a bit more complicated actually. Many people think that people like General Lee were fighting for ideals to do with the independance of their states from Northern control.

I would like to hear an answer to this question from an african american though:
Which did more for Black americans, the civil war or the 60s civil rights movement?

I have not studied this formally so I can't give quotes but I seem to recall hearing that the civil war changed slaves into waged slaves...

Ferg

---

I am one of those who believe that the Civil War was fought about states' rights, but one
result of the war was to give the slaves their freedom.

There is an enormous difference between actual slavery and wage slavery. A wage slave has some choice in where he will live and what kind of work he will do. A real slave has no choice.

Moreover, one of the greatest evils of slavery was that families were torn apart. Husbands were sold away from their wives, and children were sold away from their parents. This was very evil, and it stopped happening one hundred and thirty-six years ago.

At the time the Civil War ended, there were people in Britain who were wage slaves to the same extent that the newly-freed blacks were.

Moo
 

I agree with you in deploring American help to the IRA and its supporters.

The problem is that American politicians with many Irish-Americans among their constituents have a strong incentive to support the Irish republicans. For the politicians, it is a way of getting political support without having to pay anything for it.

Most Irish-Americans have formed their attitudes from stories handed down from their great-great-great-grandfathers. They want to avenge the wrongs done. They don't realize that it's impossible to avenge a wrong when both the perpetrators and the victims are dead, and the situation has changed greatly.

I have heard that the IRA was founded in New York city. I wouldn't be surprised if this is true. The average Irish-American bears far more rancor toward the English than the average Irishman does.

I am ashamed of my government's collusion in this terrorism.

Moo
 

Where I'm coming from is that this is an act of war. Period. If we knew that, for example, it was Belgium nationals supported by the Belgium government who had struck us we would be at war with Belgium right now (actually it would probably be over already). And no one would be saying, well, it was our policies towards Belgium that made this happen.
 

on july 30, 1863, pres. lincoln issued the "eye for an eye" order, warning the confederacy that the union would shoot a rebel prisoner for every black prisoner shot, and would condemn a rebel prisoner to a life of hard labor for every black prisoner sold into slavery....this had influence on conf. government, but not on individual commanders and soldiers.

different time, different technologies, but interesting indicator of how policies don't mean a damn at the gut level.

May 17, 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. (that's almost 100 years after abolition)

from Richard Wright's Native Son: "When men of wealth urge the use and show of force, quick death, swift revenge, then it is to protect a little spot of private security against the resentful millions from whom they have filched it, the resentful millions in whose militant hearts the dream and hope of security still lives."

that is the voice of a black man, oppressed man, whether we agree with him 100% or not, it would behoove us to try to imagine his position as it relates to countries like afghanistan and the middle eastern countries where we get our petroleum

1870 right to vote regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude

1920 right to vote regardless of sex

i don't like that women's rights typically lag behind. (i'm a woman) but in afghanistan where everyone is desperate it seems unhelpful to single out women's plight...(yet)

and the more i think of bin laden being killed, the less i like it...too quick...what about building a glass panopticon on the wtc rubble...a kind of terrorist zoo...we could put falwell in there with him, pump in upbeat christian rock and put 50 naked virgins, separated by unbreakable glass, next door to them...proceeds to education. is there a hellhound on my trail?

i do not like the flag hysteria in my country at all. and my husband served 6 years in the navy and we have a flag on our house (by coincidence)...i'm actually tempted to take it down...does it prove who is a good american? or the sudden band-wagon religious hysteria... our country was founded for many freedoms including religious freedom. lack of religion does not make one a bad american. much of what the media is pumping out smacks of mob mentality.

news reports tell us to expect more attacks on water systems, power plants (where my husband works) and government installations...how to stay reasonable under these circumstances?
 

I think you and I are a lot closer than we first appeared. What I disagree with are the calls to change foreign policy because they killed 7000 civilians.

There are unjust policies. I'd be willing to bet that you and I would not agree on what those policies were, or (if we did) how they ought to be changed. But they were always unjust, and it didn't take 7000 dead Americans to make them unjust. I would venture to say, though, that there was absolutely nothing we could have done to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

The world looks the way it looks today because the USSR and its allies were in a race with the US and its allies to spread ideologies. Now, I happen to think that a lot of what we did was necessary at the time. Even though communism has failed miserably, and would have even if the entire world had been transformed into the worker's paradise, having to rebuild an economy in its aftermath is an almost Sisyphean task. So I think it was necessary to fight it wherever possible.

However, the great experiment has proven to be a great failure, so we can move away from that strategy into a new one in which acknowledges that we are no longer fighting that particular war. Again, I am sure that you and I will differ on how that has to happen (I am a great believer in the free market), but it needs to. I just want it made crystal-freakin'-clear that it is in no way tied to the shitheads who did this.
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by blackbird:
i do not like the flag hysteria in my country at all. and my husband served 6 years in the navy and we have a flag on our house (by coincidence)...i'm actually tempted to take it down...does it prove who is a good american? or the sudden band-wagon religious hysteria... our country was founded for many freedoms including religious freedom. lack of religion does not make one a bad american. much of what the media is pumping out smacks of mob mentality.

---

I've gone back and forth on the sudden patriotism thing... on the one hand, I am horrified at how many times I've seen the flag displayed incorrectly the past couple of weeks. But then I stop and think about what I see on the Fourth every year and I realize that the patriotism really IS there all the time. It's just not always this in-your-face. But when we're celebrating the founding of the US, or when some outsider is marshalling forces against us, then it reasserts itself.

And maybe that's a good thing. I am sure that part of the goal of the 9/11 attacks was to fragment our society along social, political and economic lines. Instead, he gets 280 million pissed off Americans whose only squabble is where to drop the bombs. I wouldn't want to piss off 280 million anything, much less the population of the richest and most powerful country in the world.

So being seen as complacent may suck in the beginning, but it lures your enemies into a false sense of security and superiority.
 

To respond to the two points that upset me most, whether or not i agree with how women are treated in these countries, i have to care because they are people as much as we.

And I keep hearing 7000, 7000, I know it sounds like a lot but so many, many more die in other countries (like East Timor) aided and abetted by US interests and it doesn't seem to matter. But 7000 die in the States and this is now a real problem. Please, I am not belittling the pain. Let's get some perspective on this though. Let's think through all the implications of vengeance.
 

one of these articles from the BBC

Is this true?
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nicole Smith:
And I keep hearing 7000, 7000, I know it sounds like a lot but so many, many more die in other countries (like East Timor) aided and abetted by US interests and it doesn't seem to matter. But 7000 die in the States and this is now a real problem. Please, I am not belittling the pain. Let's get some perspective on this though. Let's think through all the implications of vengeance.

---

Nicole, if you really honest-to-God believe that this is only about 7000 dead Americans, if you truly cannot see the scope of what we're up against, this conversation is going no where.
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nightlamp:
There have been a number of articles in the British press recently about a decrease in amnerican support for Irish republicanism as a result of 11th september and other factors.

one of these articles from the BBC

Is this true?

---

I read the BBC article with great interest. I hope it's true. I have not heard anything about it from the American media. Considering everything else that's happening, this just may be a low-priority news item for the American press.

I was living in Belfast in the late sixties when the current round of violence started. I have been heartsick about it ever since.

Moo
 

Terrorism is a massive problem! Not solveable by quick strikes.
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nicole Smith:
Terrorism is a massive problem! Not solveable by quick strikes.

---

And if that was the whole solution being proposed, you'd have a valid point. But since it's not...

In fact, there have been no strikes as of yet. In the meantime, the US and its allies have exerted diplomatic pressure on countries known to fund terrorism, arrested and/or detained hundreds of suspects and frozen financial assets. As Bush et al have said, ad infinitum, this is a long war that will be fought on diplomatic, financial, military and political fronts. It just completely mystifies me why some people continue to focus to the point of obsession on only one component.
 

re E. Timor...have to admit i needed to consult a map to get a real handle on it....think you're right about the human rights violations that we (Am) engage in. these problems exist right here in our own country with our own people, too. just listen to the rhetoric fly during any election campaign and you'll hear what we wish we could be, but unfortunatley we frequently fall short...it IS a frustrating thing to have so much knowledge at our disposal when it really DOES feel like individually we have so little control...the modern mindset is therefore plagued with depression, sometimes with good cause. but while i admit we, as americans, seem to turn a blind eye to injustices around the world when it serves our particular needs, i think a lot of the time it is more a case of we're paralyzed by the details of our particular lives...not a good excuse, i know, but have you ever tried to get a prescription drug authorized by your insurance company? do you know how long it takes to accomplish simple tasks in a country this enormous? multiply that by every move you make and you have the typical american life....so E. Timor? i guess i need to go to the confessional, because i feel victorious if i make it to my annual town meeting. i have to add, too, that my priority is my family....i have seen many people committed to causes the world over while their families had to go fish...maybe part of the problem?

How would god have us pray our anger? or our cowardice? denying our anger will not make it go away. i do not glorify war. i have never seen a rambo movie. i did not like our involvement in vietnam, though i was really too young to know anything much about it. i greatly admire ml king and ghandi and all those good guys and the "idea" of pacifism. However. i don't like being chained to an ideology, either. a line of a certain collect resounds in my mind....to serve you is perfect freedom. that you is GOD. how do we, as individuals who fall short as moral arbitrators, serve god? not easily.

i am reminded of an interview with nelson mandela. the interviewer asked him about his past boxing career. mandela said he was able to separate the seemingly conflicted arenas of pacifism and boxing because when he stepped into the ring he had chosen to, in order to exhibit the skill he was trained for. he was not forcing his will on an innocent bystander. i think that is somewhat how i feel today....i did not, and do not, want to engage anyone in violence...but we're in the ring now, baby. and i for one will not roll over and give it up without a struggle, whether my country is saintly or not...and while i sympathize (to an extent) with some of the peace marchers (seems like a shoe-in to march for peace after all!), i am startled by the clarity of the reasons for committing to this new war...i may be terribly wrong. i am taking that risk.
 

What is shaping up now is a much more subtle, international, multi-pronged, special operations kind of approach that may actually succeed in getting bin Laden (who, don't forget, is responsible for more trouble than the latest, largest outrage) and maybe even work out better in the end for Afghanistan.

I'm much encouraged by the developments of the last few days.

But I think it's crazy to think that only peaceful means will work for this. It isn't about diplomacy or economic injustice, or status for these guys, it's about getting the infidel out of the Middle East. And moderate regimes out of countries like Egypt. We can't give them what would appease them, even if it were the right thing to do.
 

1. A wide range of nations support some form of action
   
2. A wide range of actions is considered: Financial, legal, law enforcement, as well as military.
   
3. No one has rushed out to seek revenge, no innocent bystanders has been harmed, and no military invasions seem probable in the immediate future.
   
4. On the other hand, the military options have not been ignored and, if true, stories of Special Forces operations suggest that realistic and appropriate actions are taking place.
   

I have two worries.

1. Special Forces can still be killed or captured. That would be a potential political crisis in the post-Vietnam US. (It is not clear that we have gotten beyond that experience.)
   
2. Adversaries may be amazed that we have done so well and shown such maturity and judgement. This may have been unexpected and very threatening; in some ways war is a zero-sum game. They are not helpless, however. They probably have several projects at various states of maturity; one or more might be pushed forward and unleashed to frighten and demoralize us. Increased vigilance is required, but consider: (can we nest lists in this language?)
   [list=A]
   
3. Schedule changes can expose the perpetrators to increased risk, especially from lack of the preparation so characteristic of bin Laden*s other operations.
   
4. The climate has changed and although action-cells can be counted on, support-cells may become unreliable. Intelligence leakage is a new phenemona for bin Laden, but as his force comes under increased pressure some parts may be less reliable than before.
   

I should have tried the list-nesting in Styx. Sorry, in advance, if it fails....

So the question is now: how we face the next development.