From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 09:21:29 MST
At 02:19 PM 2/1/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Imagine....
>Osama Bin Laden (or one of his surviving assistants) announces that
>in a change of tactics he will stop bombing innocent civilians and instead
>will be putting a US$ 1 Million bounty on anyone who takes out a member
>of the Great Satan at the (oh let's say) O-7 military OR a civilian Federal
>employee at the Assistant Deputy Secretary level or higher.
>
>I think I would have to say this would be an act of war. I suspect
>it would be far more provacative as an action that killing a few thousand
>innocents in a "traditional terrorist" action.
>
>I suspect we would look seriously at nuking anyone who tried this.
>Why should our enemies not take the same attitude about bounties
>if the US offered them for Hussien and his crew?
>
>Just a thought,
>Brian
If he did this, *and* really stopped civilian bombings, I would be
overjoyed. Mind you, I disagree about the likelyhood of us nuking them,
especially since they would be surrounded by large groups of civilians,
which would of course change my view of the situation, but I can't help but
view Al Quaeda changing tactics from job lot murder of civilians to
military personnel and high ranking civilian officers as anything but a
vast improvement in general. I still would never forgive them for 9/11,
and a completely new group that did this would still be enemies of the US;
but I would be willing to call them Guerillas rather than terrorists, and
would have no problem with officials negotiationing with them.
With regards to acts of war, there are really just three lines to
cross: violations of the Geneva Conventions, terrorism (indiscriminate
targeting of civilians), and the use of weapons of mass
destruction. Though we should fight back against any attacker, its
important that we also encourage enemies to stay on the correct side of all
three lines.
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