From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Sep 22 16:21:19 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net (avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.121.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81DA237B429 for ; Sat, 22 Sep 2001 16:21:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dialup-209.245.142.122.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net ([209.245.142.122] helo=mindspring.com) by avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.32 #2) id 15kw4z-0004nt-00; Sat, 22 Sep 2001 16:21:02 -0700 Message-ID: <3BAD1D06.6E56344F@mindspring.com> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 16:21:42 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Reply-To: tlambert2@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paul Richards Cc: Stephen Hurd , Technical Information , FreeBSD Chat Subject: Re: Helping victims of terror References: <3BAC3644.1CB0C626@mindspring.com> <948140000.1001159802@lobster.originative.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Paul Richards wrote: [ ... destruction of Buddist statues as a part of revisionism in Afghanistan ... ] > You are showing a prejudice against a > people that you do not have respect for because of their beliefs and > actions. In your mind that makes it acceptable to carry out actions that > you would find abhorrent if carried out against a nation you did respect. Incorrect; I am only attempting to demonstrate a pattern of a profound lack of respect for others. In the U.S., we tend to have people who have been trained to believe that all opinions have equal validity, and thus we tend to extend the belief in such a belief to others; just as a child might personify a teddy bear, U.S. citizens trained in the throes of political correctness have a tendency to "Americanize" their view of others, and thus accept zealots as being "just people with different points of view", rather than perceiving the dangers which lie in such intolerance. > Harbouring terrorists is the other main issue. The Irish govt. had > terrorists based within its borders for the whole time of the conflicts > there (and it's not completely resolved yet). What the US is planning with > respect to Afghanistan is akin to the UK waging war against Ireland for > harbouring terrorists that were bombing London. Technically, the U.K. is harboring those same terrorists; this is a different issue than the U.S. "harboring" Kazinsky, for example, given the basis for governance. > This is not a war; a small number of individuals have committed a heinous > crime and they should be tracked down and brought to justice. That is a far > cry from invading a foreign power for not doing as they're told. You are wrong. This is a war. It is much more a war than the so-called "war on drugs", and it is much more a war than "the Gulf War", or, come to that, the Vietnam or Korean wars. Not since the civil war have there been such casualties on U.S. soil. Unlike those others, this war has near unanimous support of the U.S. citizenry. > From Afghanistan's perspective, they are not attempting to hide Bin Laden, > they've made a diplomatically astute statement, that clearly shows, at > least in my mind, that they do not want to fight this battle and that if > the US wants him they can have him. However, the Taliban would be > committing political suicide to do the US' dirty work. The social > environment in that part of the world is such that most of the population > hates the US and would rise up and overthrow a regime that supported it. > This is a real danger for the Pakistan govt. who are seeing large > demonstrations on its streets already. The demonstrations in Pakistan are a relatively small percentage of their population. There is some indication that they are being intentionally incited. I really no more believe the Pakistani demonstrations than I believe the file footage of the Christmas celebrations in a number of countries represented an anti-US celebration of the terrorist acts in Washington, New York, and Pennsylvania. > > They "publically expressed outrage"? Was this before or after > > they stated that a religious court should judge him, and we > > should accept the outcome, if the activist zealots of the same > > stripe as Osama bin Laden found in his favor? > > Umm, the last statement I heard was that they would not hand him over, but > requested that he leave their territory. That's not showing support for > him, that's turning their back on him, but that's as strong a statement as > they can make publically given their own internal political situation. They > did publically express outrage in fact; the very first public statement > they made was to express sympathy for the US. I agree that they are between a rock and a hard place. But that doesn't mean that they will be cut sufficient slack that bin Laden is not going to held accountable for his actions. > > This is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. The U.S. > > is in no way acting as terrorists: terrorists bomb first, and > > claim credit afterwards -- assuming that they don't say to > > themselves "Oh shit... I've stepped in it this time...". > > The IRA generally issued warnings before bombings so that casualties were > minimised. Though they still killed plenty of innocent people it could have > been a lot higher. The main difference here is that the U.S. demands are coming from a duly constituted government of a nation which has had non-combatant civilians attacked and killed, en masse. A closer approximation would be the Nigerian embassy bombing several years ago (also a U.S. embassy, and also a terrorist attack), which resulted in the deaths of ~5,000 Nigerian citizens. > The US approach isn't that different and the IRA would definitely be > considered to be terrorists. While on the subject of the IRA, a lot > of the finance came from the US, so if you accept the current US > thinking then the UK should have invaded the US for aiding and > abetting the IRA over all those years. A lot of financing for _everything_ comes from the U.S., including the financing for Palestinian activities on the West Bank. Any rich nation is in the same boat. > The US, until Clinton got involved, turned a blind eye to the > Irish situation because a lot of US Irish were sympathisers. > That was apparently an "acceptable" struggle being waged. If the U.S. is to be held responsible for the foreign policies of Bill Clinton, then we might as well throw in the towel now. > Terrorism is not some black or white issue. It's a manifestation of > underlying politics. It's hypocritical of the US to wage war on terrorism > at this point given that it has participated and supported it in the past, > as long as it wasn't on their doorstep. On the contrary: dead terrorists do not commit terrorist acts. > Did the US express outrage and decide to wage a war on terrorism when the > IRA blew up the hotel that the UK govt were staying in at the time, or when > they killed a member of our royal family, or when they carried out a mortar > attack on the MI5 HQ? I don't know. I rather suspect that, unless you are talking about the Clinton administration, that the answer is "yes". > Did the UK decide to wage war on innocent countries when faced with > such provocation? You mean like Ireland, for harboring the IRA? That would be a "yes". > There needs to be a reasoned response to this attack, and declaring war on > countries because some of their residents are suspected of being involved > is not a reasonable response. It's more a symptom of the foreign policy the > US has had for many years which led to the terrorist attack in the first > place. i.e. do what we want or we will send the boys around. What if the residents are provably involved, and the country is unwilling to permit extradition? > Incidentally, the support in the west for US action is flimsy. The EU was > very guarded in it's support yesterday. While the UK may be gung ho about > supporting the US that is not reflected across the whole of Europe. No-one > is going to stand up and not support US action, but there's growing feeling > that the US will not be given open-ended support to do whatever it wishes. I think the U.S. will do what it has to do, what it has been forced into the position of being required to do, the actions which are now necessary. The U.S. has generally kept its gloves on, with regard to trying to be "the nice guy", and be everyones friend. > There are many countries on the fringes of the EU that will be very worried > about US retaliation, countries like Turkey for example. In other words, Moslem countries. This is not a vendetta against Moslems, even though bin Laden would love to paint it that way, just as Saddam Hussein attempted to pain the Gulf War, with regard to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait: "Oh, help us brother Moslems against The GReat Satan, and by the way, ignore the fact that we just invaded another Moslem country ourselves... K PLZ THX". The vendetta is against terrorism, and I doubt that it will end with bin Laden -- nor should a peaceful world tolerate such people. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message