Don't become the very thing you seek to destroy. It diminishes you. And humankind. It is not right to leave a swathe of dead innocents behind us in our zeal to bring those responsible few to justice. We must surgically excise this "cancer", not destroy the good with the bad. We are all lessened if even ONE innocent is harmed in our moral crusade to bring the guilty to judgement. Shortnfool I totally agree, Short. Guys, get a grip on yourselves. Every bomb you throw that creates what is euphemistically called "collateral damage" straight away creates 100 new terrorists who see absolutely no future for themselves, that therefore don't have anything to lose, and for whom dying for their cause borne from a desire for revenge is not a problem but a one way ticket to paradise, and then imagine lots more of those being willing to come here and create havoc, and don't forget, it doesn't take much if you think biological weapons etc. Go and live in Israel or Northern Ireland or Chechnya or Spain, go and live in a situation where bombs in cafes or supermarkets are a part of normal life. Still think you can fight terrorism with military force? Remember when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan? And even though the Soviet Union back then had absolutely no moral or other limits to what they could do and in fact were willing to do and also did do, including pretty much every atrocity in the book of dirty warfare, they still couldn't win that conflict with military means, even though they had the advantage of having a clear cut enemy and not a more or less invisible and highly mobile fractured enemy. Either we want to find a long term solution leading to peace on a politically negotiated basis for the Israel/Palestine conflict, or we don't, only then we'll have to live with the consequences. I'm personally all in favour of lasting peace as per the prior option. Terrorists are made, not born Indiscriminate bombing? Dirty tricks? They're part of the problem, not the solution. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Bruce Shapiro Sept. 12, 2001 | "How much anger can prompt a group of people to do this?" asked my friend David Handschuh, a New York Daily News photographer, after firefighters pulled him, legs shattered, from the rubble at the World Trade Center. With President Bush talking of war and "a monumental struggle between good and evil," motivation may seem beside the point. But David's anguished query is the right one, and one we ignore at our peril: What do we make of a rage so deep that it could prompt a few individuals to convert box-cutters, pilots' licenses and airline schedules into weapons of mass destruction? For now, with the attackers still officially unidentified, the only thing that can be responsibly said is that terrorist killers are made, not born. Call it blowback, call it payback -- but whichever part of the world these sadistic attacks emanated from, it is someplace where people have long acquaintance with body counts and death raining down from the sky. Handschuch's question is even more relevant because, as the bodies and survivors are finally recovered, the mute bewilderment and confusion will turn into anger of our own. That is natural. But what contours will that rage take as it emerges in Washington and around the country? President Bush read the words "a quiet, unyielding anger" from his teleprompter Tuesday night. But hours earlier, even as Air Force One scrambled the unseen president's entourage from airbase to airbase to bunker, something different was already evident. Already, certain Washington hands and select media mouthpieces were playing an alarming blame game, seeking to channel public anger into their long-favored favored projects. On ABC, former Secretary of State James Baker blamed the whole thing on the Church Committee -- the U.S. Senate inquiry that 20 years ago exposed the long history of CIA manipulation of foreign governments and subsidizing of torture. "In terms of intelligence, we unilaterally disarmed," Baker insisted, declaring it time return for a return to the days of unaccountable "dirty business." He seems to have forgotten just how deeply American embroilment in dirty business -- coups, assassinations, military regimes -- contributed to hatred of the U.S. (Today's CIA, let it be noted, profoundly objects to this yearning by nostalgic old Cold War hands: Earlier this year I attended a conference on terrorism at which Bill Harlow, the CIA's director of public affairs, bluntly said that the intelligence community manages to recruit any sources it desires under current rules.) A few hours later, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger called on the U.S. to flatten Kabul: "We've got to be somewhat irrational in our response. Blow their capital from under them." Just how effective would the Baker-Eagleburger strike-hard policy be in quelling the terrorist threat? Look at the West Bank, where the cycle of vengeance and victimization gets further cemented into the foundation of daily life with each new home demolition and cafe bombing. This is no time for lectures; in these first hours and days all of us are thinking about the people who escaped, or who didn't. But with the clamor for aggressive and massive military action already beginning, it's essential to point out just how many of the world's more baleful terrorists and mass murderers were born precisely from the kind of operations now advocated by the bomb-and-assassinate crowd. Pol Pot? Rode to power after formerly neutral and stable Cambodia was flattened by American bombs. The Taliban? Detritus of the anti-Soviet Afghan guerrilla movement financed and trained by the U.S. Chechnya guerrillas? Russia's own private blowback. None of this diminishes the responsibility of the perpetrators of this week's attack, or diminishes the need to bring the full force of domestic and international law to bear. But it should serve as a warning to our leaders that assuaging the public's grief with B-52 strikes will reap its own unforeseeable whirlwind. "Blow Kabul from under them?" You might as well hand out box-cutters and directions to Kennedy Airport to every kid in Afghanistan unto the third generation. And on the domestic front, while comparisons to Pearl Harbor are inevitable, the comments of some politicians Tuesday were a chilly reminder of the worst panic-driven excess of the Second World War: the internment of Japanese-Americans in prison camps. No one was going quite that far. But Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., called for closing the nation's borders. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., propose greatly expanding the FBI's surveillance powers -- powers that already are the broadest in American history. Not that there is a shred of evidence that the cold, disciplined commandos who so carefully perpetrated these ghastly attacks chatted about their plans over cellphones, or that dozens of terrorist teams are creeping in from Vancouver. What is striking, in fact, is the raging irrelevance of the extreme measures both military and legal authorities proposed in the last 24 hours. "The responses for which support is being mobilized are not going to address the true character of this challenge," says professor Richard Falk of Princeton, a foreign policy scholar who has thought long and hard about the reconfigured world order. "This is the first war for which there is no military solution. And without a military solution our leaders lack the imagination to understand what is happening and what to do." One former high-ranking federal emergency official and terrorism response expert described to me a recent simulated terrorism exercise that featured role-playing by such Washington luminaries as Sam Nunn and David Gergen. The participants were given an imaginary scenario involving the deliberate release of smallpox. This observer was struck how in the "outbreak's" early phases, when small measures could have made the simulated events more manageable, the players could not settle on a course of action. Later -- when in a real epidemic it would have been far too late -- they resorted to draconian measures. In the all-too-real scenario now playing out in Washington, draconian measures -- political, legal and military -- seem to have similar appeal. The war has indeed come home. But I don't mean the war on terrorism, a phrase repeated endlessly and meaninglessly on television Tuesday night. Nor do I mean, in any narrow sense, the fanatic war of whoever it was who attacked lower Manhattan. What has come home, on an unimaginable scale and with inconceivable speed, is a vicious cycle of victimhood and revenge -- a bitter, confusing jumble of shock, grief, fear. "How much anger can prompt a group of people to do this?" That is the question to ask -- of ourselves as well as of our attackers. salon.com
http://208.56.99.174/shootosama.htm sorry if it's a bit immature, I'm just still in a state of shock and beyond angry and sad at this bs... so i thought id lend my web skills to help folks vent some anger at bin laden feel free to pass the url along via email etc to others... let me know if any requests... also, pls donate via amazon.com to red cross i will for the rest of my life remember this, as it unfolded on the news, and the cnbc anchor was saying "the first tower is gone"..worse than the challenger, the ok. city bombing, worse than anything.. this was like a nuclear bomb being dropped on NY. ignorant f'in terrorists need to be squashed now. semper fi
i have zero compassion for enemies of the US.. these terrorists killed thousands of innocent fathers, mother, children.. what we dont need are beeding heart liberals to tell us that its our own damn fault that these people attacked us because we made them "angry".. if we need to use "dirty tricks" and barbaric methods to protect our own people, then lets do so with vigor.. and if it takes killing 500,000 arabs to prevent a single additional US victim, then so be it.. -qwik
Qwik, what you're doing is dangerous, you're basically warmongering here. What I'm talking about is REALITY vs your WISHFUL THINKING based on nothing but a desire for revenge. Wanna go live in Israel? Or wanna have a state of permanent terror in the US? Go ahead for the first, that's your life, but a definite no thanks for the second, because that's everybodys life in the US. Lets see, this guy here, US Republican Congressman, is hardly a BLEEDING LIBERAL, as you quaintly put an understanding of REALPOLITICS without illusions. We Must Remember Our Responsibilities by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) September 12, 2001 Tuesday, millions of Americans awakened to find the nation at war, attacked by barbarians who targeted innocent civilians. This senseless slaughter of human life was reprehensible, and must be denounced by all civilized peoples. For the moment, we can only share our grief and our condolences with those who lost family and friends. In our grief, we must remember our responsibilities. Congress has an obligation in this constitutional republic to preserve freedom and provide for national security. Sadly, our security measures were not adequate to prevent Tuesday's tragedy. We must be willing to honestly examine our policies, and change those that weaken our national security. When we retaliate for this horror we have suffered, we must be certain that we punish only those who are guilty. There is an understandable sense of urgency in the nation, a sense that Congress should take action immediately. However, we must not kill innocent civilians in our rush to retaliate against those truly responsible. Times of tragedy and war naturally bring out strong emotions in all of us. Yet we must be careful to preserve personal liberty and privacy rights in the months ahead. Sometimes the people are only too anxious to sacrifice their constitutional liberties during a crisis, hoping to gain some measure of security. Yet nothing would please the terrorists more than if we willingly gave up some of our cherished liberties because of their actions. We can all pray for peace and ask for God's guidance during these troubling times. I know that our President, our congressional leaders, and all Americans possess the wisdom and compassion required to resolve this devastating crisis. PS ACTION = REACTION, get it?
Roger, thx and glad you liked the article. I believe that civilisation, something that we here take for granted all too often, is not our due or a God given gift, but something that we have to actively work for on an ongoing basis, and for me that includes fighting against the beast that's in every single one of us, doing that we can hopefully create sustainable values for our future.
Nick, you ignorant cuss =) do you realize that the problem in Israel is because the Israelis have not taken military action in strong enough measure against the people that perpetrate terror on their country? i doubt you do, because people like you think that terrorists are a few bullies that happen to live in a country of generally moral people.. let me break it down for you.. Arab extremists have declared war on Israel and the US.. that makes countries that knowingly support and harbor Arab extremists our ENEMY, even if the majority of the people in that country are not evil themselves.. as long as people try to make distinctions between the "few guilty terrorists" and the states that support and encourage these people, we will never defeat terrorism.. i am not for the indiscriminate slaughter of citizens of arab countries.. but i do support whatever means necessary to take meaningful action against these terrorists and the governments that sponsor them.. if that means some associated families need to suffer, that is the price of war.. if that means that national treasures, capitals, factories, economic centers, holy places, etc need to be destroyed, thats the price of war.. we have to find something that will strike fear in the heart of people whose purpose is to die for their cause.. that means we have to take from them something that is important to them.. since they embrace death to be with allah, i think we should take the motivation away by the threat of dying unclean.. and the next logical step is to threaten their families.. i know that you feel the families of the terrorists are innocent, but i feel the people who died in the WTC were innocent.. there are no rules in war.. -qwik
NickLeeson I am not sure what you are advocating with your posts but I am concerned about the action = reaction thing and I am also unsure about your salon.com post. I am getting a whiff of moral relativism about right and wrong. Are you affirming the "its a cultural failure and consequently since we are part of the culture we deserve part of the blame " line of thougt. Why should I care about the anger or supposed anger this mad man and his idotic followers feel. They are wrong and they and their actions are evil. How bad can Bin Laden's life be if he has millions of dollars to recruit and fund his evil desires. If we can not determine what is evil and then attmept to eliminate it then we have lost the war before it begins.
Qwik, I'm talking about working hard to finding real solutions for the underlying causes to the problems and not trying to delude ourselves into supposedly easy QuikFix solutions in order to satisfy a primitive need for revenge that however will just aggravate the problem. Life in Israel is sheer misery because of the permanent terror, and believe me, they've tried everything in the book based on military force without even coming close to fulfilling the most basic obligation of an elected government towards it's citizens, life in peace. As somebody else wrote here, violence does no more than beget violence, it has never solved the underlying problems, it's just aggravated them, and that's exactly what you are suggesting. You want real and lasting peace, you need to go after the underlying causes on an equitable basis for all involved.
Hi Ken, Glad to see you on this board again though I wish it were under different circumstances. I would like to see you stay and contribute to this board, and share your considerable knowledge and skills with us all. Good to hear from you again. PS Amusing page you've got there. Also, congrats on your article in Active Traders. Job well done.