RE: Ad hominem? I think not.

From: Louis Newstrom (lnewstro@bellsouth.net)
Date: Wed Nov 21 2001 - 05:52:14 MST


> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Curious

> > 1) The US intervention in Afghanistan is doing more harm than good.
> why they don't drop ONLY food bombs ,and let afghans access net to say by
> their own??

I don't think that it's doing more harm than good. Neither do the Afghan
people dancing in the streets.

> > 2) A superior strategy for the US would have been to turn the other
> > cheek, thus gaining moral superiority and showing the world
> that we don't always bomb people we don't like.

We tried that the last time the trade center was attacked. The taliban just
tried again.

> > 3) The number of dead Afghan civilians has vastly exceeded the
> number of dead American civilians, and this puts the US in the wrong.

You must be listening to different numbers than I am. Who is claiming that
we have killed over 6,000 people with our bombs?

> and - with the technology involved? bombs? strange actions.
> is USA poor or rich? or simply - bandites!

I don't see your point. We're rich? So? Are you saying that there is a
more humane way to wage war and we aren't using it because of cost? I doubt
it. Fighter jets with precision aimed bombs are VERY expensive, and very
humane. We don't have to (and aren't) carpet bombing the whole country.
We're just bombing the Taliban strongholds.

> > 6) Bin Laden may not have had just cause to blow up the World Trade
> > Center, but a lot of Middle East citizens have reason to be
> pretty annoyed at the US - perhaps more reason to be annoyed at the US
than the US has
> reason to be annoyed at Bin Laden.

Exactly. That's why we are bombing the Taliban and not the entire Middle
East. We are not bombing people because they hate us. We are bombing
people who bombed us first, so that they won't bomb us again.

> Bin laden could drop Biological-Bomb instead of ONLY crashing WTC.
> i think Bin Laden was VERY polite!

Actually, he was just stopped. Don't you recall the guy trying to smuggle
anthrax into Washington state from Canada? Haven't you heard of our foiling
weapons grade arms sales to the Taliban? It's not Bin Laden being polite,
it's the US preventing him from using his weapons. When all is said and
done, what the terrorists did, they did with box-cutters because they
couldn't sneak in anything more lethal. It has NOTHING to do with
politeness.

---
Louis Newstrom
lnewstro@bellsouth.net



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