All it would take is "yes" or "no"...is that so hard? "Appropriate action by credible means", to the extent that it says anything, reads to me as 100% weasel words.

If you can't or won't paraphrase it, or even nail it down as to agreeing with or disagreeing with Tony's proposition, it leaves me skeptical that you actually intend any fixed meaning by it whatsoever.

I'm not "oblivious to your intent", I only asked you to state your meaning plainly and with less ambiguity, rather than leaving enough wiggle room for your friends free to act as they please while you condem their enemies for similar behavior. Because *that's* the intent I'm perceiving right now.

"Semantics" is the study of the meaning of language; if you won't clarify your meaning, you can expect semantics to enter the discussion at some point.

I've clarified my meaning twice. I refuse to give carte blanche either way. You have to respond in an appropriate manner, or you are engaging in the same type of behavior as the extremists you're protesting.

And who the hell are my friends? If you're trying to imply that I'm linked to terrorism or extremism in any way...I work and study incredibly hard so that I can get a job combatting it. So don't even try to paint me in such a corner.

If you are not providing clarity, you can't be said to be clarifying. All you have said is "I say what I said and that's what I meant, go look it up". You refuse to simply say clearly that you either agree with or disagree with the proposition, so that falls somewhat short of "clarifying".

All I'm seing is a fig leaf of ambiguity that tries to cover the gap in your double standard with fog. Say clearly yea or nay, admit you won't respond...or leave it to everyone to reach that conclusion anyway.

There's no double standard. It's called rationality, not extremism. You're calling for a definite answer to an uncertain question, and I provided you with a rational answer that says basically, if you would learn to comprehend what you read, that appropriate credible action is necessary and recommended. That's an unequivocable yes if a specific action is appropriate and an unequivocable no if it is not. You can not expect someone to foresee what will happen in the future and make a blanket permissive statement. That's like saying "Billy is a smart kid, so I respect and admire every action he ever does." That's foolishness, and it is even more foolish to apply that to a nation-state.

So it seems to me that your hang up that you think the world is black and white, right and wrong, good and evil; with no grey area. Well, I'm sorry, but you need to wake up. There is little to no such delineation in the world. It is almost all grey.

So...terrorist violence is an appropriate means of expressing idiology? Tony posed a specific example. Simply saying that "appropriate things are appropriate" is kind of empty.

The example you rung in of the Predator Hellfire strike certainly wasn't motivated by idiology, it was a tactical response to a tactical situation: someone the CIA knew to have attacked an US warship was detected enganging in further operations in that same country, and they interdicted him with violence. His idiology--the *reasons* for his attacks--were not at issue, nor do I think they should have been.

This brings us back to my earlier point: when a group attempts to advance it's politicsl and idiology by commiting acts of violence against any target they think will generate attention or sympathy, it's beyond foolish for the group attacked to allow such acts to actually advance that idiology on their own agenda.

This is why you don't humor a child who throws a tantrum; if you reinforce such behavior by rewarding it, you will only encourage more of the same.

The way I analyse Tony's hypothetical is:

You have offered the opinion that "now that the-group-that-shouldn't-be-called-fascist-or-islamic is comitting terrorist violence on Western targets, the West should pay more attention to the interesting social insights propounded by the group. That the West does not do so is evidence of Western religious and cultural prejudice and blindness".

Tony's response in this framework might be presented: "Very well, if the West does study these ideas as you propose, but concludes they are mistaken, is attempting to advance *our* ideas by picking targets for their terror value and obliterating them an appropriate response?"

"Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander", you see.

But Mags, now you've taken my rather flip statement further than I ever would, and it makes me look bad. I don't want to kill people just because they think differently, I want to kill them when they proclaim loudly that they want to kill me and then prepare to do so.

I guess the point is that I'm not really all that concerned with WHY they want to kill me. If they want to kill me, that is enough. I'm not going to fucking study why I should be killed or enslaved. To me, after they decide they want to kill me, their philosophy is no longer deserving of study. It's deserving of termination wth extreme prejudice.

Well...I certainly didn't mean to suggest that either you or I believed your hypothetical was something that *should* be done.

The point of it as I saw it was that by turning the situation around as you did, you were highlighting why the *original* violence was, to use the delicate term, "inappropriate"--a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. This is why I pointed out that the Predator Hellfire attack wasn't idiological, it was self-defense.
That was my point exactly, before. But when I said I "didn't give a rat's fuzzy behind" about this idiology, I simply got a lecture on my lack of sensitivity to all the "interesting social observations" these people have made, and how unlikely it was that I personally might be a direct victim anytime soon. Apologists who say "Oh, there's no need for such an overreaction, a big country like ours should calmly take a few hits so these poor oppressed people can buy some press" are way off-base.

Again...advancing an idiology by sponsoring attacks on prominent high-value targets is *not* a legitimate method, and it's wrong-headed to cast a defensive response to such an attack as idiological.

That's all well and good -if- you have some way of guaranteeing your moral superiority. Even if you intend to avoid pissing people off, what's to say something out of your power wouldn't compell people to want to kill you? Diplomacy goes both ways; if you don't want people trying to kill you, it would probably help to not kill them at the drop of a hat.

Mind you, I fully understand what you're saying in the current context. I just think it's a particularly limited and short-sighted policy, applicable only to situations in which you're clearly on the side of Good and Light. How well will 'terminate with extreme prejudice' work when you're not dealing with morally ambiguous small countries or terrorists?

My biggest gripe about politics is the short-sighted and self-centered approach most people seem to have. If our goal is to <a href="http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/pd.html">survive</a>, wouldn't we be best off doing some sort of mutually-beneficial-make-people-like-and-respect-us thing?

--Sk

(edit: I suck at the grammar.)

Once they decide they want to kill me, they have given up that moral high ground.

I don't need everybody to like and/or respect me. In a civil society we can figure out how to get along anyway. I don't really like or respect the Amish, but I do buy their fine baked goods from time to time.

If you've decided to kill another, preemptively, do you still have the moral high ground?

Yes.

Is there any circumstance in which you don't have the moral high ground?

Actually it's a tactical policy applicable to situations where you're under direct attack. Which is that "current context" you're talking about, no?
Sure. :-) We'll just be...*nice*, and everybody will like us. Everybody. Except that tiny minority who have already declared 1) we're devilspawn and 2) they're ordained by God to set us to rights by the sword.

1) isn't really that big a deal, it's 2) that calls for some more energetic action.

Doggonit, I must have missed the episode where self-defense became immoral.

Then you can't make any judgement call about their culture, their history, their political system, their society, their current belief systems, and their motivations. You cannot claim any sort of moral right. You are aware that you could 'know more', but you refuse to. Willful ignorance equals moral inferiority, simple as that.

They are of course wrong in wanting to kill you; but to use willful ignorance as a shield from finding out the reason why somebody would reach a state in which he wants your death is criminally narrow-minded.

Maybe they want to kill you because your government is helping enslave their people? Maybe they want to kill you because your government is spending 1/3rd of its foreign aid to a state that has made racism its modus operandi, with their brethren - some of them completely innocent of anything - as the target?

Does that make their methods right? No, of course not. Does it make you incredibly ignorant for having

1. The education
2. The financial means (computer, internet)
3. The benefit of a democratic society to exist in
4. The gift of free speech and thought

and throwing it all away in blind hatred, rather than seeking to understand? Learning doesn't equal CONDONING, but in your hatred you don't want to know. Willful ignorance is your shield, assumed moral superiority resulting from that ignorance is your weapon. How does that make you different from a radical islamist who doesn't want to know about democracy and science and women's rights and history, and all the good things about the US, merely seeing his people blown up with American weapons and subdued with American money, deciding to blow up the WTC?

That's right. It doesn't. Ignorance is ignorance. Death is death. Wishing death on other without learning is wrong, either way. Stupidity is stupidity. Closing your eyes out of your own desire is the first link in the chain of terror.

Thus, escalation begins. Unless you are willing to commit genocide, you are the second step in a never-ending war of hate and ignorance.

It's fairly typical, actually, in the current anti-intellectual climate we are living in; seeking to know more and THEN making your judgement is condemned in favour of blind blanket condemnations. That may just be the reason why I find posting here subjected to increasing hostility: the praising of an anti-"idiotarian" manifesto, broadly painting all of different beliefs as idiots, is just another example of the aforementioned climate.

Oh dear. I must have missed the episode where murdering hundreds, if not thousands of innocent civilians who can barely read or write in a Third World country, lest alone organize resistance against their dictatorial oppressors, became immoral.

It happened. It'll happen again. Where does self-defense end, and murder begin? How smart are those smart bombs really?

Self-defense ends the second you kill an innocent. If you want to seek the high moral ground, try not to kill any children. I forgot. It was the Iraqi and Afghani peasant children's fault that the WTC was blown to bits. They deserved to die.

X.

When innocents are killed as a result of defending against an attack, the culpability belongs to the original attacker.

Simpleminded conclusions like yours are the reason Saddam wrapped his high-value targets with human shields of innocent civilians, and then pumped the resulting casualties for propaganda value.

Rewarding a terrorist by advancing his agenda because he's willing to commit violence for its publicity value is completely wrongheaded, and invites further violence from any nutball who has a cause but lack a concience. And to sit there and accuse those who won't fall for such a ploy of "criminally narrowmindedness" abets the terrorist's crimes.

Keep telling yourself that.

1. The US is keeping the feudal dictatorship of Saudi Arabia in power for political reasons. (Iran is another good example in the Spindle of Atrocity)

2. That dictatorship has oppressed and murdered dozens, if not hundreds of opponents of its authoritarian regime.

3. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, opposed to the current regime, and its cruel actions, all sponsored by the US.

4. The victims in the WTC and Pentagon were "killed as a result of defending against an attack" by the US on the Saudi people.

All of the above are logically consistent with your line of argument. They are also wrong. How can you be so naive?

I assume those human targets are the fault Saddam is still there? Why, exactly, has he not been removed in the past decade since he proved to be such a trouble-maker in the middle east? Why is the US listening to the UN and letting him off the hook with some weapons inspections when he should be removed for being such a collossal villain? Where is the consistency and logic in such a foreign policy approach?

Ah. I see.

And to happily murder hundreds of innocent Third World civilians because remote bombings are so much cleaner and less problematic, domestic-policy wise, than an actual invasion, is of course not wrongheaded at all.

CNN doesn't give a damn about dead foreign children, felled by smart bombs. CNN does give a damn about crying American mothers, weeping at the loss of the soldiers who would have fallen in an invasion. Wake up.

You didn't read my post properly, that quotation applied to willful ignorance. I still condemned terrorist actions, considering them to be wrong, and I didn't say that dealing with the issue is wrong. It didn't stop you from implying meaning where there was none.

After all, how could we talk about this issue without painting everyone to the left of Ashcroft as (dangerous traitorous commie) peaceniks who are betraying the American people and support terrorism? The David Horowitz school of character assassination seems to be taking students this year.

"Abets the terrorist's crimes", indeed.

(And that a supporter of ESR's political views could possibly consider someone else to be "simple-minded" is rather fascinating..)

X.

X, just a quick request, is there any way you could present your argument without being such a complete and total ass about it? Thanks.

OK, taking it one step at a time:

1) Terrorists commit violent acts directly and deliberately against noncombatant civilian targets to advance their political aims; a violent vehicle with a propaganda payload.

2)The terrorists then conceal themselves among the shelter of *another* noncombatant civilian population, and then paint the unintended results of any response aganst them as indiscriminant slaughter of innocents by the victims of the original attack, their fault for not bowing to the terrorist's agenda in the first place.

3) To then criticise the victims of the original attack for their failure to embrace the intended propaganda effect of the original attack as "narrowminded" or "blind" is to intentionally work to advance the goals and increase the effectiveness of the original attack, no matter how much self-righteous hand-wringing accompanies it attempting to achieve distance from complicity in the evil of the original attack.

What an arrogant, cowardly, cynical shell game: kill one batch of innocents for publicity, kill another bunch as camoflage, and then blame it all on your enemies.

First off, thanks for jumping in X. I was getting tired of Maggie not listening to anything I had to say.

That being said, I have more to say to her. :)

They don't necessarily conceal themselves among *another* group of people. Most terrorists come from a society that has at least some support behind them. For any terrorist to succeed, they have to have that support. Otherwise, they'll be turned in straight away. Look at it this way: it is estimated that for every terrorist 'soldier' there are 35 people in the support network - and that doesn't even count the sympathizers.

Your third argument is flawed simply because you can't understand what either I or X are saying. We're not saying that the victims of terror should "embrace" the terrorist propaganda. What we are saying is that there are reasons why these terrorists are not shunned by their communities. Most propaganda is based on a grain of truth, which is used as the starting point for a series of lies. But that little bit of truth, something that rings true to their base, has to be there for them to garner any kind of support. Then they are caught in the net, and are more willing to listen to any of the lies that follow.

So we are not arguing for the terrorists. We are arguing that the reasonings behind the terrorist's philosophy need to be understood if we are ever going to eliminate them. Killing a few, we have seen, is just a Band-Aid. More spring up in other parts of the world. (You could say that the same is true for the spread of Communism.) You have to show that they are wrong, and myopic declarations of their evil nature do nothing to advance this.

So we aren't arguing along the same lines as the terrorists. If anything, you are. Terrorists, especially religious terrorists, promote every struggle to the level of "cosmic war." Suddenly, they are fighting for the will of God, and their enemies are the enemies of God. What you are doing is the same thing. We live in a more secular society, so our concepts of "God" and "infidel" boil down to "good" and "evil." You are doing this, Maggie. You are painting anyone with a dissenting viewpoint as on the side of terrorists and therefore bad. Your delineations are along the same lines as the terrorists - just the sides are flipped.

I think that these people are evil. They have evil intentions. But to paint them as such without bothering to understand their evilness is to play right into their game (the one you outlined directly above). It promotes argument 3 in the minds of the people in argument 2, and the ranks of the terrorists grow.

I don't pretend to know that I have all of the answers, nor do I claim to be an expert on terrorism. I have done a little study, though, and it has taught me that this form of quick delineation does little good in forming a complete and cohesive policy. That is why I object to it.

If they are already evil, to see them as such requires no painting; it's there to behold.

*I* think their "grain of truth"--your words--being only a grain, has already had such study as it deserves; and commiting more terrorism doesn't entitle it to more consideration. Should we now devote deep study to the rest--lies, by your own definition--that accompany it?

I think their evilness is already well-understood; will this additional study yield some new enlightenment as to their goals, means, or anything else for that matter? Or is it just what it appears to be: a bid for mindshare at gunpoint? Since you're such an exponent for this, do share with us some of the insights you've gained from your own broadminded inquiry.

X's posts were just fine - no more belligerent than, say, MaggieL's posts. Unless anyone with an opposing argument happens to be an ass.

Understanding the dissenting viewpoint is necessary not merely in combatting the terrorists but in ensuring greater safety of innocent people. The masses are the ones with the most power when it comes to making sure that innocent people are not killed, but its precisely the masses who are most endangering innocents of dissenting viewpoint by proclaiming them to be evil and ignoring their pain.

People don't commit terrorist acts just because they're bored or because the Great Satan needs some bleeding, they commit the acts because something is fundamentally wrong in their society. And societal troubles are important. If we're doing something to endanger a society but refuse to recognize how it hurts others, we only hinder ourselves in solving the terrorist problem. You don't punch a man in the teeth and then act suprised when he punches back.

They commit terrorist acts because they believe they have something to *gain* thereby, whether they're the thug who wants to finance his crack appetite with your wallet or an ex-Saudi spoiled rich kid who yearns to be repatriated as a popular hero, and doesn't care who dies in the process.

I'm sure both of them will tell us "society is to blame".

That's an unfair blanket statement.

It is very probable that terrorism will always exist simply because, as you stated, terrorist acts can be committed by simple thugs looking for money, drugs, or glory.

The fact is, however, that there are a great many terrorists and potential terrorists out there with serious ideals which are their most powerful driving force when it comes to committing terrorist acts.

When some disgrace to humanity uses the excuse "society is to blame," they effectively mar the power and truth of the phrase as you pointed out. And, without investigation, you're correct in saying that it's an impossibly weak excuse.

However, those terrorists or fanatics who truly believe in their cause will use that same excuse, and our best hope is to actually pay attention. If we can calm the situation - pacify those who are truly upset to the point of willfully comitting suicide - then we are only helping the situation.

True, terrorism will most likely always exist partially for the reasons you described. But there are many kinds of criminals out there, and it only helps to try.

You actually believe binLaden & Co. acts out of deep principles and serious ideals rather than selfish opportunism? Personally, I don't buy it.; your pronouncement of your belief to be "the fact" doesn't make it one.

When this crew directly threatens me with death--very directly, mind you; their proclaimed "religious beliefs" call for my personal immediate execution should they somehow gain dominon over me--it becomes pretty much impossible to impress me with how principled you think their stand is.
Sorry. My own patience with them is exhausted. The harm in "trying" is that it diverts attention and energy from more deserving pursuits.

Actually it is not a matter if any of us believe it. What matters is if bin Laden & Co. believe it. I for one think they do. People who are in things for personal gain don't fly in airplanes they know will dive into buildings! So at least some of &Co. are acting out of their deep principles and beliefs which by their actions they prove their seriousness.

It is possible; I suppose that bin Laden could be the, Baker-Swaggart-Farwell of Islam. But those sorts usually align themselves with the powers that be and use the money extorted from widows and orphans to buy airplanes, diamond mines, and caddies. They certainly don't live in caves like the dessert fathers did. And while they rant against the powerless like un-wed-mothers in need of abortions, they don't follow in the footsteps of Girolamo Savonarola and beard the governing powers for their misdeeds. Again there is not much use for personal gain when you're hiding from 2000# bombs in caves and under rocks and have hundreds of armed drones looking for your ass. That sort of thing makes it hard to spend your millions on anything but guns.

In point of fact Kutz is right. Drug Lords and other normal criminals have a healthy respect for their own asses. People that "know" they will go to heaven because they are doing "God's Will" don't give a rat’s ass what happens to them personally. If you don't respect that, what ever your personal feelings, and act accordingly your ass is going to get burnt as per 9/11.

But....didn't you just say that your belief about it didn't matter? :-)
I don't doubt the islamo-fascists *seriousness*; I take their deadly intent very seriously. Hence this entire thread.

We haven't seen binLaden or Zawahiri themselves flying any airplanes into buildings. And even their minons who did were convinced a martyr's reward awaited them personally at the end of the tunnel. This doesn't demonstrate that the movement as a whole is "principled", any more than Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite or others of their ilk were. How much time have we all spent studying *their* beliefs for "interesting social insights"--beyond adding to the demagogery HOW-TO?

Of course, <b>they</b> only killed members of their own cult. These folks have higher ambitions than that.

Actually, it's a pretty well-researched subject in Sociology and psychology. The difference, of course, is that they are researching it, and not making blanket statements based on a few soundbytes.

I know I can be dense sometimes but I don't understand your confusion.

Its good that we can agree on something, even if I don't think that lableing is very productive.

A few Points

1. Leaders seldom take the role of foot soldier. We didn't see Mr. Bush or even Mr. Rumsfeld off loading from a c5 galaxy with a hundred pound pack and an M-16 either. Though I'd like to see them get the experience they missed back in the 60's no one really expects it to happen. We expect them to stay home and practice their "demagoguery" so we can stay stirred up enough to be willing to kill and maim a few thousand "rag heads" as an answer to our problems.

2. Just because a person or an organization doesn't hold your principles doesn't make them un-principled though people often believe that it does. It seems that is something you may hold in common with bin Laden as he seeks to eliminate you (and the rest of us) because he believes us to be un-principled, just as you believe him to be. You see him as evil and he sees you as evil. You believe that his death will be righteous, and he believes that your death will be righteous. And perhaps you both believe that trial by combat will decide the issue.

3. I wouldn't lump bin Laden or &Co. in with Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite and their followers. Applewhite stirred only a few 10s of people and Jones only a few hundred, where as bin Laden has stirred millions beyond his immediate group to want to kill and maim a few thousand "infidels" as an answer to their problems.

4. I wouldn't dismiss Islam a souce of social insight because of bin Laden any more then I would dismiss Christianity as such a source because of Jones. (I would dismiss comets though.) Though an athiest, I agree with much that is written in scripture such as: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the RE-publicans the same? kjv Matt. 5:43-46 [italics mine] I would like to add something simular from the Koran but I am too ignorant of it.

5. I don't see bin Laden as "evil" but he is an enemy. I will explain that in a differant post if you like, because this one is getting too long.

Absolutely! They wish to eliminate evil.

Oh, I'm not confused. Just amused.
Everybody in-thread has been using their own labeling. Since I doubt we agree on what's "productive", we surely won't agree on "productive labelling".
I'm dismissing neither Islam nor Christianity. But I draw a distinction between the two religions as a whole and the particular sects in question...Jim Jones isn't represerntative of Christianity, and the "worldwide jihadic fascists" or whatever you think they should be called today (as a courtesy I"ll detach "islamo-" from the term if you like, but I know a fascist when I see one) aren't representative of Islam as a whole, as some courageous Muslims are willing to tell us. There's lots of flavors of Christianity that aren't my buddies either. But they haven't threatened me with death lately.
Not at all. I seek to eliminate him and his coreligionists <i>because they seek to kill me</i>, and will if they can.

This isn't about ideology, it's about survival. If they weren't seeking <i>my</i> death, I'd be delighted to ignore them, as I wish they would me. After a few mass murders my country responds militarily, and you say "See? You're as bad as they are." What a load of hooey.

I'm not particularly concerned with their principles, that's an issue their apologists keep wanting to bring into this discussion. Then when I say "I don't care", they respond "Well, you should! If you'd been embracing these principles, this violence wouldn't be necessary!". That's nonsense too.

There's just no equivalancy here, seek it as you may.
Well, "they seek to kill people in addition to their own cult members", is the distinction I was thinking of; this doesn't require us to agree on something as abstract as "evil".

You do say...
How admirable. But "a few thousand"? You don't do your heroes justice; they're ready to kill a few thousands of *millions*--anyone who resists, in fact.--to establish their brand of religion in global control. binLaden has been very effective compared to the other cult leaders, but then he has a budget many orders of magnitude greater....money talks.

Do you need links?

Not really. I like to do my own threat analysis.

The Jihadists have and use vastly superior firepower; for them I'd really like to see my tax dollars buy me some defense leveraged by economies of scale and inspired by scriptures like the Talmudic Tractate Sanhedrin 72b...not that we're Jewish, but we do know A Good Idea when we see it, too.

Not that we wouldn't be pleased if a Jihadist threat were stopped or deterred by our household defenses (like ESR said, "meet the distributed threat with a distributed response"). But we're Equal Opportunity about such things; when attacked we don't intend to waste time quibbling about the merits of the precise ideology of the attackers, as some other folks might like us to do.

That said, by my reckoning the "Christian" threats are more local, low intensity, and better-met by lower-tier defenses; in that event we'll rely on the household armory to hold us until the cops can get here. Since I pay my local taxes as well as my federal ones, the local cops have served us quite well; I'm confident of their support even though they're likely mostly Christians themselves.

That's nice. I'm having fun too.

Well not yet at any rate.

I like that word hooey. It's just so wonderfully dismissive. Let us not think about them. Let us show them that our bomb is bigger than their bomb. Ah the raptures of combat. You do well in pointing out the idiocy of their argument, what I'm saying is that if you look at their argument in the mirror it is our argument.

I'm not seeking equivalency; I'm merely pointing it out. For example, at least from their point of view, you are not leaving them alone. You sent your infidel army to occupy their holy land. You help keep the oppressors of their people in power. You help infidels occupy their second holiest city. You are not innocent in their eyes any more than they are in yours. I think that they would agree with you as well about the survival thing. It is to them the survival of their way of life against yours. You might not be aware of your ideology but they are. To them you are saying, "I will live well at your expense."

Yes I think we are as bad as they, but on the other hand they are as bad as we. I condone neither side. I just point out that both have the same mindset and pretty much the same behavior. Of course you are aware that this side is not above murdering a few thousand people to force that side to do it's bidding and visa versa. When you do it is merely regrettable collateral damage as opposed to their despicable villainy. I'm not sure how they describe the reverse but it will be something similar.

I'm not an apologist for them, or for us. If I had the opportunity I would make the same arguments to them, and I suspect get about the same criticisms. However, I would hope that maybe some folks on both sides would step back far enough to see the other side has a point and be willing to not use bombs to get their own across.

I am disappointed with our side for not taking the moral high ground. I would like to be the good guys. To me that would lay in acting as Jesus pointed out in the Matthew quote above and not in dropping cluster bombs on Iraqi and Afghani citizens who had nothing much to do with 9/11 in the first place.

I don't think that anyone in the thread is asking you to embrace the principles of the enemy but merely to acknowledge that he has some, and may therefore be acting from a place similar to yours. That he is in fact human with a mommy and a daddy, and the same feeling of sorrow and anger at injustice that you feel. I for one am not for embracing anyone’s principle. Let's instead embrace one another.

For example, at least from their point of view, you are not leaving them alone. You sent your infidel army to occupy their holy land. You help keep the oppressors of their people in power. You help infidels occupy their second holiest city.

How, then, would you explain why all the other people of the world aren't equally as bloodthirsty?

The US has treated Central America with the same stick of supporting specific politics, sometimes awful politics, and many there are really ticked off. But they aren't trying to work out how to gas us.

Same with South America. A college friend of mine was from Uruguay, and he hated America with a deep passion. The US kinda played tetherball with the USSR, using his country for the ball. But he wasn't looking to ram airliners into buildings; instead, he went to the US for an education.

Meanwhile, France and Bali/Australia are fair game; what did they do to earn their status as targets?

This begs the question: what if we study why they want to kill us and we get it wrong? Or: what if we study it and find that we can't figure it out? Or, kinda my original question: what if we study it, and learn that it is actually based on irrational hatred coming from religious fervor for which there is no rational response?

Bali motive has been discussed by suspect
 

http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/11/12/bali.bombing/

It said exactly what I meant.
I thought *your* argument was that we should listen more to *their* argument. *My* argument was "I've already listened enough to their argument". Since my listening didn't have the result they thought it should, they're now attacking noncombatant civilians in order to advance thier argument.

That isn't an argument anymore.
I spoke metaphorically; you seek to point out equivalancy where there is none.
The reverse? There is no reverse, this is why your "equivalancy" is so specious. Have you even heard them apologize for killing Muslims who were in the WTC? Of course not, they were guilty of being infidels merely for being there. They *have* no "collateral damage", their targets are broad enough that all their casualties are intentional, they all advance the cause.

Choice of French tanker discussed by terrorist
 

AP is the source of this report.

How instructional. He chose no particular target because all targets were equivalently attackable -- not because of their politics, but because of their infidel status.

Oooh! Oooh! I wanna be an infidel! Pick me pick me pick me!!!

Don't be silly Maggie, there is always a reverse. How would we know if he apologized or not? We are certainly not allowed by our media or government to listen to what they have to say. Neither do we apologize for our "benign" yet intentional collateral damage. If we mistake a wedding party for Al-Quida henchmen well so be it. Most of those 5000 or so Afghani citizens we've killed are as innocent as the people in the towers and your intentionality argument makes them no less dead. I don't think we've apologized for that.

But that is not the point. You seem to insist that I am defending his actions, when I'm only saying that they are similar to ours. I condemn his blowing people up and our blowing people up. I am condemning blowing people up as the solution to blowing people up.

I have perhaps made the mistake of thinking that because of your articulate posts that you think more with your Neo Cortex rather than your Limbic System . I don't mean that as an insult. Most people pay more attention to the Limbic System than to their logical faculties, which is why the obvious solution is so hard to bring about.

In an attempt to break through I'll keep it simple this time.

Maggie's argument:

I am the good guy , bin Laden is the evil guy.
I am the good guy , Maggie is the evil guy.

bin Laden's argument:

That's utter BS. Do you honestly believe that the media and the government are that powerful? Yes, they have a big say in what we see and hear, but they can't possibly impose some all-encompassing control over what we hear and what we don't.

You don't think there have been tapes of bin Laden's on Al-Jazeera that our government would prefer weren't shown? I thought we "weren't allowed" to hear that stuff?

And you think the media wouldn't air something like a bin Laden apology? Are you serious? They care about one thing. And it's not information control; it's ratings. Any news network would jump at the chance to air a bin Laden apology if they came across it.

You really think every single media outlet in this country is part of an overarching conspiracy to prevent the American public from hearing what they don't want us to hear?

Oh, and of <B>course</B> the media is in bed with the Bush administration. Yeah, they love each other all right.

Of course you don't. *snort* Of course everyone can see that your point of view is calm, reasoned and rational, whereas mine is a knee-jerk reflex.

*I* think you have made a mistake in suggesting that cortical thinking never results in self-defense behavior. (You'll know when I start thinking with my thinking with my limbic system, because my rate of fire will go cyclic. Very contrasurival.)

I also think you've confused neuropsychology with phrenology, because that's the approximate level of your analysis.

By the way, to hold that the US actions are equivalant to those of the Jihadists *is* to defend the Jihadists.

Because it is OK to murder hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians living in squalor in a Third World country using our hyper-advanced weaponry.

After all, hey, they did it first.

And two wrongs make a right.

And you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

And as everyone knows, you can make the hatred stop or diminish by butchering their people, those who are innocent of *anything*.

After all, hey, if the evildoers (tm) are hiding cowardly amongst civilians, it's the terrorists' fault that we are blowing those civilians to shreds using smart bombs and remote cruise missile firings. Those thousands (?) of dead Afghanis sure were worth it in order to get to Osama bin Laden, and kill him. The thousands of dead Iraqis (from starvation, disease, etc) during the 90s sure were worth it - after all, it helped to remove Saddam.

... and justice for all.

X.

<shrug> If you really believe the two are equivalant, no amount of explaining will convince you...your responses will only dissolve into the litany of question-begging we've already heard.

We'll may just have to wait until someone attacks *you* to advance their own littlle jihad before you to begin to develop a genuine moral compass that rises above the kindergarden level of "fighting is bad" and "two wrongs don't make a right".



.

Ad hominem attacks aside, there seems to be some sort of cognitive dissonance going on in your postings as they relate to my (and other people's) opinions.

I wrote very carefully about "civilians" and "innocents" and uninvolved parties.

You answer (not quoting me, but using quotation marks to make it look like I wrote it) with sardonic retorts about "fighting is bad", which completely misrepresents what I said.

You of course completely and utterly ignored the points made about killing innocents to accomplish a target that is eluding us, again and again. (but as we fail, we shift focus to distract from that. Osama who?)

Since pretty much nobody else with the occasional exception (hermit22, jaguar, sometimes spinningfetus, sometimes vsp, sometimes Nic Name) seems to hold even vaguely similar impressions of the hypocritical, failing, and alienating foreign policy that the US is pursuing (and make no mistake, WTC/Pentagon were the consequences of US foreign policy; horrible, unwanted, wrong consequences, but in their principal form inevitable nonetheless to any student of International Relations during the late 90s), I'll be happier not reading/posting on the Cellar anymore. Frankly, it is tiring to attempt to argue one's points and be rebuked by sneering incomprehension and willful ignorance.

I'm sure my departure won't be a great loss. Tony's dig earlier in the thread (referencing my style, but ignoring my points, quelle surprise) was enough of a hint for me.

Anyone else who wishes to talk to me privately, please email xugumad at yahoo dot com.

It's been a nice time, for much of it.

X.

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority... from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason."
-- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

X, I resent not making your list. Maybe its my own fault for getting tired of the inconclusive discussions and moving on. Up until 911 the folks here were pretty rational about this stuff, since 911 they've lost their minds, but thats representative of the rest of the country. I've been throwing the Chalmers Johnson at them occasionally but have made no headway. I was quite pleased when you picked up the baton and was quite willing to let you run with it. Maybe we should have spelled you, I daresay the rest of us enjoyed your input. Come back any time, yours is a valuable voice here.

My "dig" referenced your style because I refuse to even address arguments so full of ad hominem. I won't talk with people who do that kind of thing with malicious intent, why should anyone?

I will miss you if you go, but I press you with this: why would you want to hang around someplace where everyone agrees with you? Why would you be so mad at people who disagree with you? Why do you want to judge them not only incorrect, and ignorant, but aggressively, willfully so?

Most people who disagree with you aren't somehow basically broken; they just come at things from a different point of view than you do. You study things in depth from your direction, and so things that appear to be blatantly obvious to you may be blind spots to others. (And to others, the blatantly obvious for them is sometimes a blind spot for you.)

To take the step of deciding that those who disagree with you are in fact basically faulty is very intellectually dishonest. You do yourself a disservice. By coming to that conclusion, you ignore their points of view entirely. It closes your mind to the fact that there are many points upon which they are right and you are wrong. You think you cannot learn from them, so there is no point to sticking around.

See, nobody is always right. I made that my user title partly to remind myself that I'm sometimes wrong. Probably often wrong. The goal is not to be insecure in my own thoughts, but to allow myself to learn from others.

So when you say "you are wrong" in big bold letters -- call me "incredibly ignorant", "naive", etc. -- hey, I agree with you. I also find that it says much more about you than it does about me.

X, you can't go. It will just thin our numbers on this board. Do you really want to see this board become dominated by people like Maggie?

X, leave and I eat your brains.

MaggieL, be so kind as to educate us on the constitution of your evolved moral compass.

It must lack exclusion of the double standard. There can be no other reason why you would be so quick to dismiss THEIR acts as pure evil and OUR acts as... misunderstandings, perhaps?

Both we and the terrorists have been in the wrong. Nobody is apologizing for them. Nobody wants to send them chocolates and cards of apology. Just as no terrorist is apologizing for US international policy.

And you're right, nobody can just stand around waiting to be attacked. But that isn't what's happening. We're provoking the attack. We continue to provoke the attack, and this knowledge comes as a direct result of studying their motives and beliefs. In such a manner, a change in foreign policy could help to avert further terrorist acts and perhaps save many, many lives.

It's important not to consider the situation in terrible extremes. We are right to try and defend ourselves by preventing further terrorist attacks - but that doesn't necessarily mean fighting back with guns and tanks and smart bombs.

So, is it appeasement, then? No. Appeasement means that we allow a direct plan of aggression. Letting Iraq invade Poland would be appeasement. Letting the Al Qaeda make a few more attacks to avoid trouble would be appeasement. Checking US policy to avoid offending the sovereign rights of others is not appeasement, it's diplomacy.

I'm not saying you're wrong to want to defend yourself, or to be angry at the terrorists who comitted these acts, or to want to fight back. More important than "fighting is wrong" - which is fairly hard to verify - is "fighting sucks." So we have to avoid it when possible. And in this case, avoiding it would probably lend us to the superior alternative.

The victims of the terroist attacks on WTC were 100% "civilians" and "innocents"...in fact they were the *intentional targets* of the attacks. The military *responses* to those attacks have made every effort to *avoid* civilian casualties. It's not a double standard.I just don't accord folks who hijack airplanes and deliberately fly them into buildings full of civilians or wrap themselves in high-explosives and shrapnel and dentonate in a shopping mall the same standing I do to the military who *respond* to those attacks under orders to deny the attackers further sanctuary so they can strike again.

If there's "equivalance" there, I don't see it. I'm not going to be able to reach agreement with someone whose values make those two kinds of acts equivalant; they're colorblind in a range where I see colors. Just because an act is violent doesn't make it automatically wrong. *That's* a moral compass more evolved than "war is evil".

Kutz, what policy are you proposing, exactly? Our "provocation" consists of not simply giving these people what they demand. We don't run our foreign policy based on the wishes of whoever tried to kill us most recently...or even on whose voice is the most strident or empassioned in our own internal discourse.

"Respect for soveriegnty" is all well and good, but it is not absolute. Soveriegn states who cynically and knowingly shelter and support terrorists are engaging in warfare by proxy. Sooner or later sanctions escalate beyond the level of sharply worded diplomatic notes and unenforced Security Council resolutions. Soverign states who invade neighboring soverign states and are defeated in combat live by the terms of a cease-fire or suffer the consequences; just because hostilities are suspended doesn't mean the bazzar is open again.

I agree when you say "it's not wrong to <i>want</I> to defend yourself"...but you seem to insert "want" because you think it's wrong to actually *do* it, and that's where we part company.

(By the way, for people who are upset about ad hominems, in my view "that's a idiotic idea" is an opinion, "you're an idiot" is an epithet or a personality, "you're an idiot therefore your ideas are idiotic" is an ad hominem.)

Oh yah, one more thing X, the reason I drop by the Cellar is for the community of the place. We can get absolutely ugly when we think someone has their head up their tucus but the thing is we can also exchange music info, good reads, meteor talk, gaming if thats your bag, jokes ;) eh David and sometimes we learn something in all these political blood baths. Maybe what you need to do, if you want to make the cellar work for you is to put a little more into the other forums.

When all else fails try Ad Hominem right Maggie? That’s good fascist logic, hey girl! The old if you don’t agree with me you are evil ploy. That’s good. Bin Laden would be proud of you. Hell Himmler would be proud of you. There I feel better. I apologize for the Ad Hominem in return. Sigh, it would appear that I’m no better than you. But not really, because I didn’t mean it.

Self defenses takes place at the time of a hostile action, not months afterward. If some evening your neighbor threatens you with a weapon you may take action against him, but you may not go shot him in the morning even if you promise not to shoot his kids unless they are in the way. The action that Mr. Bush plans against Iraq in the near future is not self-defense it is an attack, during a time of no hostile action against us from those people. When the government takes certain actions that it knows will, in spite of being careful, cause thousands of casualties and then “intentionally” caries on with said action it is intentionally causing casualties. Saying oops I didn’t mean it doesn’t count in my book any way and it didn’t used to count in a court of law. If bin Laden were to have said oops I only meant to blow up the 20th floor, you wouldn’t have cut him any slack. Nor should you have. The atrocities of one side of a conflict do not justify atrocities of the other. The moral ball is always in our court, if we act as the enemy acts we are no better than he.

You haven’t made a case for bombing Afghanis, for bombing Iraqis, for killing children, for killing mothers, for killing fathers, or anyone else, except self-defense, which it is not, and worse we are the good guys because we’ll be careful therefore it’s ok.

Hey X, I'll say this again. 95% of people don't consider double-quotes to necessarily mean that someone is being quoted verbatim. Most adults also use them to paraphrase, even to the point of intentional oversimplification in order to make a point.

You jumped my shit when I did it, and now you're whining about Maggie doing the same. Nobody else places the special distinction between single and double quotes that you do, so if you want to communicate with other English-speaking humans, you may as well put your own special grammatical rules aside.

Yes, it's kinda silly for me to even waste a post to say this, but apparently it bears repeating.

Now take your bally and go home.

I'm actually on X's side on the quotes thing, though. Paraphrasing is usually not quoted; putting quotes around it is misrepresenting someone's words. Maybe we need to establish some sort of standard like that around here? It may seem ridiculous, but in order to communicate, you must speak in the language of your audience.

Quotes are used to delimit ironic usage and paraphrase as well. This is what causes people to make little "quote mark" gestures in the air when speaking. Almost always when quoting an actual posting here--especially an entire sentence or more, but even a short phrase when responding to it--I'll use the vB quote markup, unless I want to use a phrase of a few words embedded in a sentence. In an email based forum I'd be using the typical > quoting for quoting another post and conventional quotemarks in rhetoric.

As for single vs. double quotes, I only use them for nested quotes in prose; starting with double quotes on the outermost level.

Some people here make a real fetish of "ad hominem" without apparently understanding the term. Every time a position is deprecated is not an "ad hominem". And it's just amazing how some of the the folks who lead off with outraged an accusation that they've been attacked "ad hominem", and then follow right on with the most amazing abuse that shoots right past being an "ad hominem" into being a direct personal attack.

That said, I will myself indeed use the "ad hominem tu quoque" form when someone takes a position inconsistant with something they've said earlier or elsewhere in another thread. Tough.

Chefranden, what makes someone evil is not their disagreeing with me. The Jihadists can sit in their homeland and disagree with me until the Sun burns out for all I care. What makes them evil is annoucing their intention to impose thier religion on my people, and kill me in the process, and then beginning to prosecute their campaign.

Self-defense doesn't always happen over a timespan of minutes, hours, days or even months. When someone has declared their intent to kill you, has the apparent means, and has already executed several successful attacks, what possible obligation could you be under to allow them to continue unless you reach them in hot pursuit?

There *is* no hot pursuit of a suicide bomber.

Here is what Maggie typed:

I think it is painfully obvious that she wasn't actually attempting to attribute the phrase "fighting is bad" as something that X said word for word.

I think that it is an obvious oversimplification in order to make a point. It's as if to say, "this is what your argument boils down to for me." (Whoops, I used double quotes.. no, I'm not implying that Maggie typed those words.)

Now, let's try it without the quotation marks:

Wow, that's pretty darn unreadable.

I might possibly begin to understand why some see the use of quotes there as incorrect, but X went as far as to say that I should have known, from examining all of his previous posts, that <I>single</I> quotes meant intentional paraphrasing, while <I>double</I> quotes meant literal repeating.

That's the distinction I was referring to, and I believe you'd be hard pressed to find many people who attribute the same connotation to them.

grammar lesson
 

not that i'm any kind of an expert ...

but i always thought that single quotes were used to mark a quotation occurring within another quotation ... you know, kind of like curly-brackets, square-brackets, parentheses ...

Well, I'm not going to waste any more thought or words on how I use quotation marks. Certainly not in attempt to humor X, who's so outraged at my characterizing a certain view as "kindergarden level" that he's thrown a tantrum and is now sulking.

Earlier in this thread I alluded to children throwing tantrums to get what they want. Once the tantrum is thrown "reasonable compromise" becomes positive reinforcemnent for tantrum throwing...no mattter what scale it's done on. You guys on the neopacifist tag-team can go chase after him if you like.

What seems to be weaving itself through this thread is a severe case of "I must be right" along with some barbs thrown in for added fun.

Griff, we're gonna put you in the running for either the official sage of the Cellar...or the official kiss-ass. ;)

Sage or Butt-Boy?
 

You make the call. :) As always, you are right on the money Warren.