Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> >From: "Smigrodzki, Rafal" <SmigrodzkiR@MSX.UPMC.EDU>
>
> >Brian Williams wrote:
>
> >Murdering innocent civilians is a definition of cowardly (and
> >criminal) in any soldiers book, and should be in anyones book.
>
> >### Just for the sake of philosophical hair-splitting - murdering
> >innocent civilians is definitely evil, but not necessarily
> >cowardly, and in some legal systems is not even criminal. If you
> >attack with your bare hands, knowing you will die, it's maybe
> >deranged but not cowardly, even if you attack civilians rather
> >than soldiers.
>
> The problem isn't your philosophical system, it's mine, and in mine
> these men were/are cowards and will be treated/refered to as such.
>
> These acts took place within the borders of the continental U.S.,
> and by our standards and laws they are both cowardly and criminal.
But by our standards, when the CIA with little or no oversight
and using secret funds goes to various countries and topples
their elected governments using a variety of means including
those which cannot be termed other than terrorism, torture,
assasination, sabotage and so on - is this somehow not criminal
but a reasonable function of the government?
It seems to me there is a bit of a double standard here. As bad
as WTC was we have been involved in covert operations in
countries we were not at war with, even in countries we were
supposedly friends with that are every bit as horrendous. Some
of our secret operations resulted in much higher loss of life
and property. Does it enter into anyone's head along with
chest-beating righteous anger that some of the anger and venom
directed toward us is not without cause? Do we understand that
our rhetoric is roundly condemning as utterly beyond the pall
actions that portions of our own government have committed, are
committing and plan now to commit even more egregiously? Some
of what is proposed as curative would include a variety of even
more ambitious covert activities around the world and even
within our own borders by some of these same players and any
undesirables they may see fit to influence, use or recruit.
Have we learned a damn thing from the history of using such
methods? Does anything seem a bit cockeyed about this sort of
"solution"?
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:12 MDT