Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 03:31:05 +0300 From: Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <3BAFD049.D47F0F66@duth.gr> References: <20010925001027.A750@lpt.ens.fr>
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Bah... I tried *really* hard to stay out of this discussion, but I just can't. Rahul, this is not a direct response to your mail mind you, your mail was just a starting point for me. I believe that you may find that we agree on several points. Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> wrote: > This crime is not acceptable. There is no justification for it. > America has every right to retaliate. No argument on that. Certainly... striking the Pentagon is one thing - even though civilians do work there, it is a military installation, and war is war - but striking a civilian building at business hours is a clear indication that their goal was to kill thousands of innocent people. THIS is certainly not acceptable, and that is an understatement. I am not too sure though that this gives any God given right for any kind of retaliation or not, at least not without considering what results this would have. You see the problem is NOT that the terrorists did this, the problem is that they had the reason and will to do something like this. It is easy to dismiss a case of a lone terrorist as an act of lunacy or whatever, but it takes a cause (whether it is just or not is irrelevant and only history will be the judge of that) for so many people to team up and conspire and execute a plan as complex as that, especially one which involves the planned death of members of the team. Also, lets not forget that the desired outcome of any US action following those events is, or rather should be, not just to bring to justice those responsible, but to also ensure that such a tragedy doesn't happen again. Sure you can probably capture and kill all of those involved that weren't actually on the planes, but if you don't do anything about the root of the problem, you'll just get more of the same sooner or later, for the obvious reason that the obviously don't give a damn for their life anyway, and they aren't scared of the consequences of their actions. Preventing such attacks in the future is I believe obviously out of the question, even if freedom is severely sacrificed in the US. I mean come on, they did this with pocket knifes and paper cutters for crying out loud. That's all it took, along with careful planning and determination of course. You just can't ban all sharp objects and thought. Even with all the money and technology in the world, the US, just like any other country, will never be immune to such, or entirely different kind of attacks. If the US goes ahead and attacks Afghanistan or any other country for that matter, this will just create hordes of new innocent orphans or fathers that watched their children die for no reason whatsoever, just the kind of people in other words that it takes for such attacks to go on in the future. Oh, it would also do absolutely nothing to bring to justice those involved. I happen to live in Greece, which is in the EU and a NATO member for those not in the know, and I have friends in the army that were part of the KFOR. It is one thing to listen about "collateral damage" on CNN, and another to be a part of the peacekeeping force in a totally devastated country which only years ago you used to go on holiday to... Imagine what would have happened if these were not "surgical hits" with "smart bombs" as they were described back then. You know, when I heard G. Bush say in his first speech that day that this was an act of cowards, I felt uneasy... it takes a lot of balls to die for a cause, no matter how just or not it is, and it certainly takes more balls than taking a decision in the oval office to bomb a country back to the stone age (again, if I might add) from 50,000 feet with no risk of allied casualties... I wouldn't be too quick to use the word "coward" if I was in his shoes so to say. I think that the reason that the US public is unable to comprehend why would people do such a thing is that they have absolutely no idea whatsoever about what their government is doing worldwide. I'm not basing this on any stereotype or anything - I have friends, colleagues and relatives over in the US mind you. I believe that if they had a clue, perhaps they would realise that revenge might not be such a good idea, because it was such acts in the first place that fueled the hatred that was the root of the events of the 11th of September. Just the other night I was watching a late night talk show which included well respected people and people from the government (greek) and there was a live telephone interview with Colin Powell. One of the questions that the host of the show had the balls to ask (believe me it wasn't one of those staged PR acts you see on CNN or other similar "news" networks over there in the US) was whether or not the US had noticed a trend and had fears that after having armed and trained UCK to cause havoc in Yugoslavia, just like they did with the Taliban in Afghanistan, they too might turn against the US. Arguably, this was bellow the belt, however it is THESE kind of questions that the American public should be asking. For the record, Mr. Powell denied any US connection with the UCK and the Taliban (BS, both are well documented) and having nothing else to say went on mumbling about the "awful" track record of terrorism in Greece, which is absolute BS, we're talking a few dozen dead in the last 30 years, nearly all military or secret service related... contrast that with Oklahoma City bombing for example, or organized terrorist groups in other Western countries (ETA in Spain, the IRA in the UK, I could go on etc). He even went as far as to imply that the government wasn't doing a particularly good job at aprehending those responsible, quite clearly implying that the government might be supporting terrorism (!). This in my book is as close as it gets to a threat from a diplomat, particularly when it comes a few hours after the president of the US declared war on all states that provide a safe harbour to terrorists. I don't want to even think of what he might have said had Greece not been a US ally. Is this the new world order then? The US being the legislative, judicial and executing branch of a world government? I sincerely hope that the US citizens will wake up and start asking tough questions to those that govern them, because a crusade against such an ill defined enemy is merely a license to kill, and they, the innocent US citizens, might face the dire consequences again, just like the innocent citizens of other countries worldwide have been facing for years now. --kkonstan Disclaimer: I am just a network admin over here, and that's all I do at the university. This is my opinion and mine only, and I wouldn't be too surprised if all of the professors over here at the history and ethnology or the international relations departments told me I was dead wrong :> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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