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Date:      Fri, 21 Sep 2001 23:45:05 -0600
From:      "Stephen Hurd" <deuce@lordlegacy.org>
To:        "Technical Information" <tech_info@threespace.com>, "FreeBSD Chat" <chat@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: Helping victims of terror
Message-ID:  <NFBBJPHLGLNJEEECOCHAGEDNCEAA.deuce@lordlegacy.org>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010921173959.02994178@threespace.com>

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> Believe me, after a tragedy of the magnitude that occurred on Tuesday,
> we're all armchair politicians or generals or analysts or whatever.  I have
> yet to meet the person that has no opinions on the events, so you're
> certainly no less entitled to your own.

/me leans over his armchair to grab his pipe, stokes it up nicely and
proceeds... :-)

> Killing civilians is a terrible thing to do, but if Country A kills the
> civilians of Country B, then I would think Country B were within it's
> rights to inflict similar damage/pain upon Country A.  An unprovoked attack
> is one thing, but retribution is an effective form of defense.

In my mind, the most important bit of this is that in this case, Country A
hasn't DONE anything.  Afghanistan has NOT attacked the United States yet the
United States wants retribution against Afghanistan because there is a person
there who has been grated asylum that the US government THINKS organised the
attack.

If the US granted asylum to someone say (totally random example) from the IRA,
and the British said "Hand him over, or we'll bomb the hell out of you.
You're harbouring him, so that makes you responsible for all he has done...
including this stuff that we don't have any hard evidence that he actually
did."  the entire US public would be outraged, refuse to hand the refugee over
and quite possibly be happy to go to war over it KNOWING they were right.  Yet
this is the position that the US has put the Afghanistan government into.
They have not offered convincing evidence that Bin Ladden is responsible for
this attack.  With the evidence that has been made public, they would NOT get
a conviction in a court of law.  Doubtless they know something we don't, but
the entire US piblic is going along with this WITHOUT being offered the proof.

So now the United States uses terrorist tactics itself "We want Bin Ladden or
we will start killing people who have had no part of the attack, did not
condone the attack, and have publicly expressed their outrage at the attack...
and keep it up until you hand him over."

This sounds a lot like the traditional hostage situation... only now, the
United States is holding an ENTIRE COUNTRY hostage.

That is the bit that scares me.  If the United States said "We are going to
hunt all terrorists down no matter where they hide - that's why we have
special forces and are justifiably pround of our ability to effect pinpoint
strikes with massive firepower." I would be about 87% behind them.  That's not
what they're saying though.



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