Michael S. Lorrey [mike@lorrey.com] wrote:
>Tim McVeighs crime was NOT that he bombed the building. Any government
>building is a legitimate military target for a dissident insurgency
>group under the Laws of War. What was his crime was in setting the bomb
>off when he KNEW there were people in the building who are classified by
>the Red Cross, the Laws of War, and by the UCMJ as non-combatants, i.e.
>the children in the day care center and the civilians using the government
>services in the building.
So you're saying that if a government doesn't want their enemy to attack one of their strategic sites, they can just create a 'human shield' of children and civilians, and the site will be off-limits in warfare? I think not; that didn't deter British bombing of Dresden, American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or bombing of 'human-shielded' sites during the Gulf War. If anyone committed a crime in that sense at Oklahoma City, it was the Feds putting children in a building which was known to be a target for numerous 'freedom fighters' day-dreaming of civil war.
Note that I'm not making any moral argument for or against McVeigh's actions, merely arguing against this suggestion it was somehow much worse because he killed some kids. US government support for sanctions against Iraq has killed many, many times as many children as McVeigh did, yet there's no outcry against their actions.
Mark