[lit-ideas] Re: Who are you supporting in this war?
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:47:38 EST
<<One ought to remember that as a cause of loss of human
life and other damages, terrorism probably ranks well
below lightning strikes. Thus a total response, a war
is not justified by it.>>
I've long believed that the US Administration used the Towers attacks as an
excuse to attack ME countries which had been on its agenda for some time
before the Towers .... oil pipelines, etc. This is becoming less and less of
a
wild leftist conspiracy theory.
Julie Krueger
wondering if America can ever repair the damage 8 years of Bush has wrought
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Who are you
supporting in this war? Date: 2/23/06 3:17:15 A.M. Central Standard Time
From:
_teme17@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:teme17@xxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Let's start with some definitions, as the discussion
is too muddied.
War
a) War is a military action.
b) State of War means that the government has powers
not available to it in peace time. At a state war,
rights can be suspended, citizens may be enlisted to
fight the war, property like trucks and ships can be
placed under military command and so on.
Both are necessary but neither alone is a sufficient
condition for war.
Terror
a) Violent attacks, usually on civilians.
b) Designed to spread panic, terrorize, and thus
sometimes called an attack on the mind.
Once again both are necessary but neither alone is a
sufficient condition for terror.
So war on terror is a total war that will not be won
as long as terror exists, meaning that the war will
never end. Which means that exceptional government
powers will become the norm.
So the question that should be asked is whether
terrorism is the kind of threat that requires
permanently altering the society and removing safe
guards on government power?
People often evaluate threats based on either
intentions of would be attackers or the potential
impact of the threat. This is wrong in both counts,
wrong as in trying to fit a square peg in a round hole
and not as in cheating on your wife is wrong.
That there are people hell bent on destroying this or
that civilization is inevitable and irrelevant. The
question to ask is whether they are capable of doing
that. AQ may want to invade Andalusia, but can they
take on the Spanish army and the entire NATO in a war
of invasion?
Furthermore, it shows lack of imagination to fixate on
a single potentially devastating threat. Once we get
to very low probability scenarios (like a nuclear
attack on Manhattan), the scenarios multiply
correspondingly. Manhattan could also be destroyed
by an industrial accident, say a catastrophical
chemical leak on a ship in East River, ebola outbreak,
massive fire, earthquake, tsunami, meteor strike,
riots, etc. Safety regulations and authorities,
medical systems, fire department and fire safety
regulations, intelligence services and police, exist
to counter these threats and mitigate the damages, and
are (should be?) provided resources accordingly.
One ought to remember that as a cause of loss of human
life and other damages, terrorism probably ranks well
below lightning strikes. Thus a total response, a war
is not justified by it.
One more thing about preventive strikes. That
counter-attack is by far the most effective defense is
obvious and well understood. Should for example
President of USA discover that there is a terrorist
training camp in Algeria, there is no question that he
should order an attack on it, preferably in
co-ordination with the Algerian government. But the
problem with the doctrine of prevention is that it
takes for granted that there are targets, it is like
insisting that your opponent show up 9 AM on third
Monday of the month to a battlefield of your choice in
case they want to fight a war.
The strength of small scale, low budget terrorism is
that it is very difficult to detect the terrorists in
advance. A discussion on whether we have the will to
strike at them when found is completely beside the
point, which is can we find them?
Yours,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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