"Intelligence doesn't work against a madman."

[minsue]

Even so, considering all the atrocities committed by citizens of Japan during the war, for instance, there were more people murdered in Nanking than died in both nuclear attacks, I don't cry too much about it.

I've cried about it more times than I can count. I guess we even each other out.

 

[tolyk]

*LAUGH* Sorry to laugh after such a topic, but I just saw your new AV Mindy, and its awesome! heh heh..

 

[Pure]

Hi Box,

These are excellent points, and there were I believe at least 30,000 deaths instantly in Nagasaki, a city with not very much military importance.

There is an excellent interview, in 1960, with Szilard, about the decision, since he struggled to prevent these happenings.

{my posting continued after}

Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand
An authorized web-reprint of the full text of
"President Truman Did Not Understand,"
U.S. News & World Report, August 15, 1960, pages 68-71.

Created: January 26, 1996
URL:

http://www.peak.org/~danneng/decision/usnews.html


Accesses with graphical browsers January 26 - May 31, 1996:
Accesses with graphical browsers since June 9, 1996 .......
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright, August 15, 1960, U.S. News & World Report.



President Truman Did Not Understand

Dr. Leo Szilard, 62, is a Hungarian-born physicist who helped persuade President Roosevelt to launch the A-bomb project and who had a major share in it. In 1945, however, he was a key figure among the scientists opposing use of the bomb. Later he turned to biophysics, and this year was awarded the Einstein medal for "outstanding achievement in natural sciences."
At NEW YORK

Q Dr. Szilard, what was your attitude in 1945 toward the question of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?

A I opposed it with all my power, but I'm afraid not as effectively as I should have wished.

Q Did any other scientists feel the same way you did?

A Very many other scientists felt this way. This is particularly true of Oak Ridge and the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. I don't know how the scientists felt at Los Alamos.

Q At the Oak Ridge and Chicago branches of the A-bomb project, was there any division of opinion?

A I'll say this: Almost without exception, all the creative physicists had misgivings about the use of the bomb. I would not say the same about the chemists. The biologists felt very much as the physicists did.

Q When did your misgivings first arise?

A Well, I started to worry about the use of the bomb in the spring of '45. But misgivings about our way of conducting ourselves arose in Chicago when we first learned that we were using incendiary bombs on a large scale against the cities of Japan.

This, of course, was none of our responsibility. There was nothing we could do about it, but I do remember that my colleagues in the project were disturbed about it.

Q Did you have any knowledge of Secretary of War Stimson's concern at this time on the question of using the bomb?

A I knew that Mr. Stimson was a thoughtful man who gave the bomb serious consideration. He was one of the most thoughtful members of the Truman cabinet. However, I certainly have to take exception to the article Stimson wrote after Hiroshima in "Harper's Magazine." He wrote that a "demonstration" of the A-bomb was impossible because we had only two bombs. Had we staged a "demonstration" both bombs might have been duds and then we would have lost face.

Now, this argument is clearly invalid. It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.

Q Were you aware then of the attitude of Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard or of the memorandum by Lewis L. Strauss?

A No.

Q So, in effect, there was no concerted opposition to military use of the bomb?

A No, there was none. You see, it would have been impossible for me to go and talk with Lewis Strauss because of the secrecy rules.

Q Do you feel that President Truman and those immediately below him gave full and conscientious study to all the alternatives to use of the atomic bomb?

A I do not think they did. They thought only in terms of our having to end the war by military means.

I don't think Japan would have surrendered unconditionally without the use of force. But there was no need to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan. If we had offered Japan the kind of peace treaty which we actually gave her, we could have had a negotiated peace.
[end szilard interview excerpt]

===

Continuing comments to Box,
Yes, of course the 'rape of Nanking' lives in memory as a atrocity, as is the capture of HongKong.

But US defenders shouldn't have to stoop to saying, "We didn't do the rape of Nanking, just incinerated a 100,000."

The whole point here, which I see Ogg shares, is that one party cannot plausibly set itself up with 'moral superiority' in most of these cases. Szilard in his first petition, already posted, noted how the Allies were doing in Dresden, etc., what they had earlier denounced for British cities.

I don't intend to single out the US or Israel, except to redress the balance in this forum and thread. But I refuse to routinely attribute moral superiority over their opponents.

The only good argument against 'terrorism', imo, is that, done unwisely, it's ineffectual in advancing one's aims. This happens, for instance, if the terrorists turn on the populace who've supported them. (E.g., Shining Path, sendara luminosa, in Peru). Combatants who kill (the other fellow's) priests and nuns create a similar problem and public revulsion for themselves. In this sense one can say that the 'Stern Gang' (LEHI) against the British, and the Syrian supported bombers of US troops in Beirut, 1983, were effective, even though excedingly brutal.

Best,
J.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Hi Box,

These are excellent points, and there were I believe at least 30,000 deaths instantly in Nagasaki, a city with not very much military importance.

There is an excellent interview, in 1960, with Szilard, about the decision, since he struggled to prevent these happenings.

{my posting continued after}

Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand
An authorized web-reprint of the full text of
"President Truman Did Not Understand,"
U.S. News & World Report, August 15, 1960, pages 68-71.

Created: January 26, 1996
URL:

http://www.peak.org/~danneng/decision/usnews.html


Accesses with graphical browsers January 26 - May 31, 1996:
Accesses with graphical browsers since June 9, 1996 .......
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright, August 15, 1960, U.S. News & World Report.



President Truman Did Not Understand

Dr. Leo Szilard, 62, is a Hungarian-born physicist who helped persuade President Roosevelt to launch the A-bomb project and who had a major share in it. In 1945, however, he was a key figure among the scientists opposing use of the bomb. Later he turned to biophysics, and this year was awarded the Einstein medal for "outstanding achievement in natural sciences."
At NEW YORK

Q Dr. Szilard, what was your attitude in 1945 toward the question of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?

A I opposed it with all my power, but I'm afraid not as effectively as I should have wished.

Q Did any other scientists feel the same way you did?

A Very many other scientists felt this way. This is particularly true of Oak Ridge and the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. I don't know how the scientists felt at Los Alamos.

Q At the Oak Ridge and Chicago branches of the A-bomb project, was there any division of opinion?

A I'll say this: Almost without exception, all the creative physicists had misgivings about the use of the bomb. I would not say the same about the chemists. The biologists felt very much as the physicists did.

Q When did your misgivings first arise?

A Well, I started to worry about the use of the bomb in the spring of '45. But misgivings about our way of conducting ourselves arose in Chicago when we first learned that we were using incendiary bombs on a large scale against the cities of Japan.

This, of course, was none of our responsibility. There was nothing we could do about it, but I do remember that my colleagues in the project were disturbed about it.

Q Did you have any knowledge of Secretary of War Stimson's concern at this time on the question of using the bomb?

A I knew that Mr. Stimson was a thoughtful man who gave the bomb serious consideration. He was one of the most thoughtful members of the Truman cabinet. However, I certainly have to take exception to the article Stimson wrote after Hiroshima in "Harper's Magazine." He wrote that a "demonstration" of the A-bomb was impossible because we had only two bombs. Had we staged a "demonstration" both bombs might have been duds and then we would have lost face.

Now, this argument is clearly invalid. It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.

Q Were you aware then of the attitude of Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard or of the memorandum by Lewis L. Strauss?

A No.

Q So, in effect, there was no concerted opposition to military use of the bomb?

A No, there was none. You see, it would have been impossible for me to go and talk with Lewis Strauss because of the secrecy rules.

Q Do you feel that President Truman and those immediately below him gave full and conscientious study to all the alternatives to use of the atomic bomb?

A I do not think they did. They thought only in terms of our having to end the war by military means.

I don't think Japan would have surrendered unconditionally without the use of force. But there was no need to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan. If we had offered Japan the kind of peace treaty which we actually gave her, we could have had a negotiated peace.
[end szilard interview excerpt]

===

Continuing comments to Box,
Yes, of course the 'rape of Nanking' lives in memory as a atrocity, as is the capture of HongKong.

But US defenders shouldn't have to stoop to saying, "We didn't do the rape of Nanking, just incinerated a 100,000."

The whole point here, which I see Ogg shares, is that one party cannot plausibly set itself up with 'moral superiority' in most of these cases. Szilard in his first petition, already posted, noted how the Allies were doing in Dresden, etc., what they had earlier denounced for British cities.

I don't intend to single out the US or Israel, except to redress the balance in this forum and thread. But I refuse to routinely attribute moral superiority over their opponents.

The only good argument against 'terrorism', imo, is that, done unwisely, it's ineffectual in advancing one's aims. This happens, for instance, if the terrorists turn on the populace who've supported them. (E.g., Shining Path, sendara luminosa, in Peru). Combatants who kill (the other fellow's) priests and nuns create a similar problem and public revulsion for themselves. In this sense one can say that the 'Stern Gang' (LEHI) against the British, and the Syrian supported bombers of US troops in Beirut, 1983, were effective, even though excedingly brutal.

Best,
J.

I have read several posts mentioning "The Stern Gang" and from what I have heard and read about them, they weren't really terrorists. Most of their targets were British military or, at least military protected. They were not known for planting bombs in railroad depots at rush hour or machine-gunning school busses. The bombing of the American Marine barracks was probably not terrorism because this was a military target in a war zone.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly,

I do not think you will ever understand the viewpoint of the weaker party in a war. They do not have the weapons or technology of the stronger party so they use whatever they can.

It has always been that way. War isn't fair. During WWII the Germans used nasty brutal U-boats. The Allies used brave submarines. The German U-boat crews suffered the heaviest losses of any large military unit in any war - 4 out of 5 died.

In the Middle East suicide bombers are the only effective way the weaker party can attack the stronger one, whether in Israel or Iraq. In the UK the provisional IRA were not suicide bombers but some died planting their bombs. The provisional IRA targeted "soft" targets because soft targets cause the maximum impact on public opinion.

I still do not like people being killed, Israeli or Palestinian (or British - one man died trying to prevent conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces - shot by an Israeli soldier at close range despite wearing fluorescent clothing and carrying no weapon and threatening no one).

Unless the US understands WHY the Palestinians cannot stop the suicide bombers then there will be no peace.

It only takes a few people to make a suicide bomber and if the populace around them even half-believe that the bombers might give them hope they will not be stopped by the Palestinian Authority, nor the Israelis, nor the US.

Just be very thankful that the formerly oppressed minorities in the US did not start a serious and sustained bombing campaign. It would have been impossible to stop and very difficult to rebuild trust across communities afterwards.

While many in the US think in black and white terms "Israel good; Palestine bad" then the killing is likely to go on and on.

Reality has shades of grey.

Og

Not incidentally one of my favorite movies is Das Boat. I understand a lot of what history offers is offered in the terms of the victors. I am a history major and if I wasn't able to discern the various shades of gray and how much interpretation was in a piece I would be a poor one. I know for example we decried "unrestricted submarine warfae" when it was the Germans using it, but the day after Pearl harbor that is prcisely the strategy adopted by us (the US) against Japan. I also know that Donetz is the only person tried at Nuremeberg who was allowed to cite specific examples of the allies using the same tactics with which he was accused and I know admiral Nimitz and the comander of U.S. Submarine forces Pacific wrote letters to the court on his behalf.

Believe it or not I have also read the U.S. Marine Corps improvised muntions manuel and the unconvential warfare manual as well ( I dated a LURP for a while). I understand that a weaker opponenent must use what is avialable to fight, the concept of an asymetrical resistance isn't lost on me.

That said, I draw my personal line at targeting unarmed civilians. I feel no sympathy for terrorists. I don't give a shit what their cause is, how noble they think they are or how evil their "enemies" are. In this case thier stated position is they are going to destroy Isreal. It's a pretty brutal and straightforward proposition, not too many shades of gray involved. If you choose to sympathize with them that is your perrogative. I choose to save my sympathy for those being killed on the bus or in the bar or at the mall.

You want to understand them. I don't. It is perhaps a callous attitude, but there are a great many aggrieved persons on this earth and the vast majority don't resort to blowing up women and children to get their point across. When you cross that line, you can't step back. At least not in my opinion. I am just one small person, with my own personal moral and ethical code. I don't make more than a drop in the ocean when it comes to that. I don't consider myself to be particularly represenatie of any group, that's just my opinion, Colleen's and no one elses that I pretend to represent.

But I will say this Og. Killing innocents with suicide bombs isn't likely to gain you a lot of friends in this country. In fact I can almost promise you it is likely to give the government more support for backing the Israelis. Our stated position of not negotiating with terrorists makes it tricky to even ask Israel to go to the table and try to bargain in good faith. With every bomb the Palestinians set off it becomes even harder for us (the US) to try to get the Israeli's to soften their postition.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

If the majority of Palestinian innocents killed by the Israeli army were killed because they happened to be in a building 'built near a military target', I would agree with you wholeheartedly. Israel uses US made helicopters and routinely shoots missles at cars on busy streets that are suspected to have leaders of terrorist organizations in them. Noncombatants are regularly killed as 'collateral damage' when this is done and, at least locally, it's on the last fucking page of the newspaper every time. I have no sympathy for the terrorist suicide bombers and the networks that arm and recruit them, but Israel lost the moral high ground in my mind when I started reading all the way to the last fucking page of the newspaper instead of just the front page stories showing each suicide bombing.

- Mindy

This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?

-Colly

 

[minsue]

This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?

-Colly

Didn't sound like an attack at all and I hope this doesn't either because it's not meant to be.

They do arrest people in Israel, Colly, even in Gaza. I'm sure that seems like an unbelievably simplistic answer, but consider this: When the government received intelligence on Timothy McVeigh how would you have reacted if they had shot a missle from a helicopter at his car while he drove in the middle of rush hour? It's too bad about those people nearby who also died, but he's a bad man & a terrorist and now he's dead so it makes up for it? And what if they realized afterwards that he wasn't even in the car? The intelligence was good and they thought he was there, but they only killed one of his cohorts. Is it still ok?

As far as we can see from the US media coverage, it is the Palestinian terrorists doing all of the killing. It wasn't until about a year and a half ago (when I started paying more attention) that I began to lose sympathy for the Israeli government. The statistics are even more depressing now than they were then.

from the BBC News website*More than 2,600 Palestinians and at least 875 Israelis have died since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

Over 2,600 dead on one side and at least 875 dead on the other. There are a hell of a lot of innocents represented by both numbers. Think about how many innocent Israelis are murdered by each Palestinian terrorist and look again at the death tolls.

- Mindy

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3450361.stm

 

[Pure]

Colly said,
//This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?//

you pick an easily demonizable case, colly.

why not challenge your mind a little??

 

[minsue]

Colly said,
//This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?//

you pick an easily demonizable case, colly.

why not challenge your mind a little??

It actually seemed pretty accurate to me, Pure. I disagree with Colly on this, but since she was responding to my rant about the Israeli gov't's assinations the example given is simplified but not out of the realm of reality or anything.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Didn't sound like an attack at all and I hope this doesn't either because it's not meant to be.

They do arrest people in Israel, Colly, even in Gaza. I'm sure that seems like an unbelievably simplistic answer, but consider this: When the government received intelligence on Timothy McVeigh how would you have reacted if they had shot a missle from a helicopter at his car while he drove in the middle of rush hour? It's too bad about those people nearby who also died, but he's a bad man & a terrorist and now he's dead so it makes up for it? And what if they realized afterwards that he wasn't even in the car? The intelligence was good and they thought he was there, but they only killed one of his cohorts. Is it still ok?

As far as we can see from the US media coverage, it is the Palestinian terrorists doing all of the killing. It wasn't until about a year and a half ago (when I started paying more attention) that I began to lose sympathy for the Israeli government. The statistics are even more depressing now than they were then.

Over 2,600 dead on one side and at least 875 dead on the other. There are a hell of a lot of innocents represented by both numbers. Think about how many innocent Israelis are murdered by each Palestinian terrorist and look again at the death tolls.

- Mindy

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3450361.stm

Tim McVeigh was within the U.S. Withing area's where law and order are at least practicible. Arrests are made, but usually they are made during military incursions of the IDF. Those take time and would provide a terrorist with ample opportunity to effect his escape, especially when aide by the populace.

Gaza, The Goalan heights, the West bank are all occupied, but they are by no means peacefully patroled or pacified. In your example if police set up a road block and Tim burst out of the car and into a crowd would they protect him? The Palestinians would and have, blocking military and police vehicles and throwing rocks while terrorists flee. It isn't the same because the populace actively supports the terrorists. In the U.S. Timmy would have most likely been screaming for the cops to come save him.

It's a hard call to make, how many lives balance how many lives taken? If killing him and five bystanders means he dosen't build another bomb and no more die by his handiwork is it worth it? I think that is a personal judgement call, one I wouldn't like to have to make. People do have to make them though, all the time. It's the world we live in.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

I have read several posts mentioning "The Stern Gang" and from what I have heard and read about them, they weren't really terrorists. Most of their targets were British military or, at least military protected. They were not known for planting bombs in railroad depots at rush hour or machine-gunning school busses. The bombing of the American Marine barracks was probably not terrorism because this was a military target in a war zone.

So the bombing of our ship in the Gulf or of the Marine barracks in Lebanon were not terrorist attacks?

I understand your point, Boxlicker. But for me it serves to demonstrate the malleability of the word "terrorist."

Originally posted by Boxlicker101

Even so, considering all the atrocities committed by citizens of Japan during the war, for instance, there were more people murdered in Nanking than died in both nuclear attacks, I don't cry too much about it.

I sometimes envy the capacity of people - nationalists, "patriots," Little League baseball parents who are able to enhance the experience of a children's game by booing the kids on the other team - to make an emotional distinction between the suffering of innocents on the enemy's side, and the suffering of our own.

As a species, we wouldn't be capable of inflicting horrors on each other like the ones we're discussing here, if we didn't tell ourselves that there are two kinds of anguish: theirs and ours. We all have that to an extent; how it becomes ingrained in each of us in different degrees is a mystery to me. My nephew cries when a neighbor's child smashes frogs on the sidewalk; the neighbor's mom laughs when she's told her son is harming animals and says, "A frog? A frog isn't an animal, it's just a frog."

At what point would she be concerned that her little boy lacks empathy? If he tortured pets? Would it make a difference if it was the family pet, or a stranger's?

I'm not saying you lack empathy, box. I'm saying I'm curious about what makes some people able to keep their gut-level response - their empathy for the victims of a horrific moment in history, at a level that doesn't interfere with their logical judgement of whether it was right or wrong or matters at all.

Like Mindy, I can't. When I see any innocent creature in pain, I can't help but imagine how it must feel - I think that's what empathy is. I stop to pick up dogs hit by cars, as you probably do too. But if I see pain that's been caused by a deliberate act, no matter the motive behind it, I "feel" it to an extent that can make me physically sick. The more distant the event, the easier it is to turn off those feelings, but I sometimes have to work at creating that distance.

A journalist for our local newspaper spent some time in Somalia a few years ago. Having described the suffering he saw there - a village whose children had each had an arm chopped off one day as retribution for supporting the civil enemy; one nightmarish cruelty after another, years of it, a generation of teenagers who have never known any other kind of life - he offered a theory to explain why westerners are able to know these things are happening and not be outraged by it, sickened by it so that we can't rest until there's an end to it.

He said that the value of a life and the significance of suffering must diminish for each of us like ripples, with our own community - the family - at its center. And that we define our communities not just by how closely related we are, but how alike we are, and how far apart geographically.

I've heard Americans of my father's generation express emotions about the Dresden bombing that they denied when the topic of Hiroshima came up. Germany was our enemy, but they were part of the wider community of people who look like us, people whose art and music and architecture are not unlike our own, and whose lives aren't entirely alien to us - their food; their table utensils. Japan was the farthest ripple. They weren't us; the nightmare of Hiroshima, had it been inflicted on a European city to force an end to the war, might affect more of us the way it affects Min.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly said,
//This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?//

you pick an easily demonizable case, colly.

why not challenge your mind a little??

I do not know what I have done to get on your shit list, but I am about tired of your attitude.

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Tim McVeigh was within the U.S. Withing area's where law and order are at least practicible. Arrests are made, but usually they are made during military incursions of the IDF. Those take time and would provide a terrorist with ample opportunity to effect his escape, especially when aide by the populace.

Gaza, The Goalan heights, the West bank are all occupied, but they are by no means peacefully patroled or pacified. In your example if police set up a road block and Tim burst out of the car and into a crowd would they protect him? The Palestinians would and have, blocking military and police vehicles and throwing rocks while terrorists flee. It isn't the same because the populace actively supports the terrorists. In the U.S. Timmy would have most likely been screaming for the cops to come save him.

It's a hard call to make, how many lives balance how many lives taken? If killing him and five bystanders means he dosen't build another bomb and no more die by his handiwork is it worth it? I think that is a personal judgement call, one I wouldn't like to have to make. People do have to make them though, all the time. It's the world we live in.

-Colly

It is true that the example I gave isn't really analogous to the situation in the Middle East, but it's the best I can do on short notice.

Basically my point is this: I do not agree with governments assinating people. I do not agree when we do it. I do not agree when Israel does it. When you ask if the lives saved are worth the lives lost all I can think of is 875 Israelis killed by terrorists. 2,600 Palestinians killed by a government supported with my tax dollars.

I'm not ok with this being the world we live in.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

That said, I draw my personal line at targeting unarmed civilians. I feel no sympathy for terrorists...
I choose to save my sympathy for those being killed on the bus or in the bar or at the mall.

How many unarmed civilians who were not specifically targeted are acceptable as "collateral damage" before the bombing of an urban community becomes a terrorist action? Is it the bombers' motive that makes the difference?

Our stated position of not negotiating with terrorists makes it tricky to even ask Israel to go to the table and try to bargain in good faith.

Really? Didn't Ronald Reagan blow that positon to dust when he turned the Iran hostages into negotiable currency?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Basically my point is this: I do not agree with governments assinating people. I do not agree when we do it. I do not agree when Israel does it. When you ask if the lives saved are worth the lives lost all I can think of is 875 Israelis killed by terrorists. 2,600 Palestinians killed by a government supported with my tax dollars.

I'm not ok with this being the world we live in.

- Mindy

I don't know if you are aware of this, Mindy, but bombs don't ask the nationality of their victims. When suicide bombers detonate themselves, everybody in range is at risk and sometimes they are Palestinians. The Israelis are more cautious but sometimes they kill their own people by accident also. What I am saying is that some of those 2,600 killed themselves or were killed by other Palestinians.

 

[minsue]

I don't know if you are aware of this, Mindy, but bombs don't ask the nationality of their victims. When suicide bombers detonate themselves, everybody in range is at risk and sometimes they are Palestinians. The Israelis are more cautious but sometimes they kill their own people by accident also. What I am saying is that some of those 2,600 killed themselves or were killed by other Palestinians.

That is true, Box, and a good point. An extremely small portion killed themselves and a larger portion were killed by terrorists, but a very large portion were killed by the IDF. I just can no longer see Israel as a victimized country. I see the majority of the citizens on both sides as victims, but I lost all respect for the Israeli govenment long ago.

 

[Couture]

That's a really confusing situation for me. I just wish they would go ahead and either give some land to the Palestinians or declare war on them. This business of assassinations and suicide bombing....what the hell good is it doing? It's bloody fucking stupid on both sides. They've got two old goddamn hard-headed men (Sharon and Arafat). Send those two old fucks to the rest home and get someone in there who do *something* to solve this thing.

 

[shereads]

The whole point here, which I see Ogg shares, is that one party cannot plausibly set itself up with 'moral superiority' in most of these cases. Szilard in his first petition, already posted, noted how the Allies were doing in Dresden, etc., what they had earlier denounced for British cities.

"Free societies do not develop weapons of mass destruction."

George W. Bush on Meet the Press
Feb. 8 2004

If Leo Szilard thought President Truman did not understand, what might he have thought of this?

 

[Pure]

Hi Colly,

You are certainly not on any 'shitlist', being a well read and intelligent person. I guess I just 'saw red' over your little example of 'taking out' a nasty terrorist in a car with a few accidental 'collateral' deaths compared to letting him live and (no doubt) blow up a dozen Israeli children. Sorry.

Many terrorists go overboard, and are self defeating; I've already mentioned Sendera Luminosa. OTOH, as has been mentioned, the word is very flexible.

What I meant by 'challenge' was to take a case like the following and apply your historical and debating skills. Consider the two assassinations mentioned.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0293/n452_v113/20920835/p1/article.jhtml

//The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949. (book reviews)
English Historical Review, June, 1998, by Mark Levene

The Stern Gang are best remembered for two notorious assassinations, that of Lord Moyne, the British Resident in the Middle East, in 1944, and of Count Bernadotte, the UN appointed mediator to the Palestine conflict, in 1948, as well as for their participation, earlier in that same year, in the massacre at Deir Yassin. The fact that the main perpetrators in this egregious event were the much larger Irgun, under Menachem Begin, and that some forty years later, his close associate and successor as Israeli prime minister was the notable Sternist, Yitzhak Shamir, has led most commentators to assume that the Sternists were little more than a more thuggish version of the Irgun. //

J.

====
Originally posted by Pure

Colly said,
//This is just a question Min, not an attack. But what would you have them do? If Abul Kabber the "Engineer" who builds the suicide bombs is moving by car from hard site A to hard site B and you get local intelligence that confirms this what would you have them do? Let him go because they might hurt civilians? Civilians who support his network? Or try to kill him and hope that no one else gets killed, but accept the possibility that they might?//

Pure: you pick an easily demonizable case, colly.

why not challenge your mind a little??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Colly I do not know what I have done to get on your shit list, but I am about tired of your attitude.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It is true that the example I gave isn't really analogous to the situation in the Middle East, but it's the best I can do on short notice.

Basically my point is this: I do not agree with governments assinating people. I do not agree when we do it. I do not agree when Israel does it. When you ask if the lives saved are worth the lives lost all I can think of is 875 Israelis killed by terrorists. 2,600 Palestinians killed by a government supported with my tax dollars.

I'm not ok with this being the world we live in.

- Mindy

I am not real big on the idea of "targeted" assassinations either. But I don't live in a small country best with enemies and facing a string of bloody terrorist attacks either. Who am I to question thier retaliatory policy. We got hit once, granted it was hard, but we took down an entire nation's government for that one hit. I live in the U.S. and we are the big boys on the block and the possibility of me boarding the short line to shop in NYC and having some nut detonate enough explosives to kill me and the rest of the passengers is absurd in the extreme. For Israeli citizens it isn't absurd. It may not be probable, but it certainly happens often enough that they must think about it everytime they set foot on a bus. Thats a sobbering prospetct if you consider it.

If someone lives there, and it's their folks being blown to bits by bombers I tend to believe that the collateral damage incured would be worth it in their minds. The life that is saved by having him dead might be your own, but even more important, it might be that of your wife, or child.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

How many unarmed civilians who were not specifically targeted are acceptable as "collateral damage" before the bombing of an urban community becomes a terrorist action? Is it the bombers' motive that makes the difference?



Really? Didn't Ronald Reagan blow that positon to dust when he turned the Iran hostages into negotiable currency?

If you park an anti aircraft missile in the middle of the community as Saddam did, then the number acceptable in my mind is the number who die before it is destroyed. War is cruel, it's bloody, it' hard and people die. That is the bottom line in a war. Like it or not, thats the way it is. I prefer the lives lost to be "thems" and not "uses" (if thats a word) and I accept that if we are at war it often comes down to the lives of the enemy or the lives of our service men.

If you are talking about bombing a community in the effort to kill a terrorist then frankly, I have no answer for you. There is not a whole lot of hate in me, I generally save it for people who deserve it, like the phone company, Social security and the other people who make my life hell. But I hate Ossama Bin Ladan for 9/11. If our government has hard intelligence that he is hiding somewhere among civilians, and a bombing is the only way to get to him, then I have to honestly say I am for it. Before he kills more of us.

The stated position of our government is no negotiation with terrorists as far a I know. I would guess in the wake of 9/11 it is chisled in stone somewhre in washington. I could be wrong.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

That's funny, I was just going to say I expected an example like this: Osama is known to be on a crowded jet liner, say 300 innocent people, leaving Pakistan for Syria. The liner refuses to land where US fighters direct it, and they can shoot it down before it leaves Pakistani airspace. Should they?

This is along the lines of the recent defense of torture, in the Atlantic Monthly, I believe. Example: A man is known to have hidden an A bomb in a New York subway. There is only a couple hours left till the explosion. Should the police torture him to find the location and save a thousand lives. (This is a repeat of a French army rationale used in Algeria.)

 

[shereads]

The stated position of our government is no negotiation with terrorists as far a I know. I would guess in the wake of 9/11 it is chisled in stone somewhre in washington. I could be wrong.

-Colly

It was chiseled pretty clearly in Washington until the day we learned that everybody's favorite President had authorized a violation of that policy because he (a) had that much compassion for the hostages, including hostage negotiator Terry Waite who was kidnapped after being briefed by Oliver North. Or (b) he was determined to bypass congress and fund the Contras, with or without legal means, and without regard for someone like Terry Waite who may have been in the way.

Edited to add: Note that the Contras were not terrorists. They were freedom fighters. As perdita noted in the Sour Cream & Semen thread, it's all about packaging.

Terry Waite had 5 years in a concrete hole to wonder what had gone so dramatically wrong: He had spent months in the attempt to get a meeting with the commander of the hostage-takers, who had been reluctant but finally agreed to a meeting. They already had five hostages; what purpose did one more serve?

Long after his release, when Terry Waite began writing a book called, "Taken On Faith," the media learned of Reagan's illegal arms-for-hostages scheme. At last he began to see a reason why a hostage negotior might have been so unwelecome in the scheme of things that he had to be taken out of the way.

If the negotiation techniques with which Waite had been so successful in other hostage cases had been allowed to proceed, it might have damaged the relationship that North had built with the terrorists holding the hostages. One of them might even let it slip to Waite that his backers and the hostage's families couldn't possibly compete with what the U.S. President was offering: a sale of arms to the government of Iran in defiance of our own government's arms embargo.

The worst-case outcome for North and the U.S., although unlikely, would have been a successful hostage negotiation by Waite. Suppose he had been able to win the kidnappers' trust as he had done before with success, and convince them to accept a prisoner exchange?

If that had happened, all of North's work on behalf of the President would have been for nothing.

For a lot of reasons, his mission couldn't be allowed to continue. Someone needed Waite out of the way. And Oliver North was the last westerner he had met with - at North's request, so they could discuss the plight of the American hostages.

In his book, Terry Waite doesn't accuse North or anyone in the administration of complicity in arranging his kidhapping. But this is another one of those stories that tell themselves, if you just look close enough.

This story doesn't end yet for Terry Waite. In the introduction to his second book, he describes the years of confinement that began shortly after Oliver North asked him to change his schedule so they could meet.

-----------------------

January 23, 2002

Former Beirut Hostage Speaks Out on the Guantanamo Prisoners

Justice or Revenge?

By Terry Waite

I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we - countries that call ourselves civilised - are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?

I was determined that my five years in captivity would not break me, and they didn't. But I cannot say that it was easy. The hardest thing for a prisoner in those conditions is the uncertainty. You don't know what will happen to you next: you have no rights, no one to speak to, no one to advise you, no one to fall back on. You only have your own resources. These men, who may or may not be guilty, will be experiencing that sense of isolation and dislocation.

For four years I was kept in solitary confinement and had no companionship at all. I was always blindfolded, or had to wear a blindfold when someone came into the room. I never saw another human being. The initial effect is eerie, but eventually you become accustomed to it. You learn to live from within. But that's tough, and no one should be forced to attempt it.

I had a diet very similar to that being given to these men - bread, cream cheese, rice, beans. I was adequately fed, but not luxuriously, and I lost a lot of weight. The greatest difficulty was never having any exercise in the whole period. I had to get what exercise I could while chained to the wall. I had five minutes a day to go to the bathroom; for the rest of the time I had to use a bottle. The conditions were inhuman, but all the time I had to assert my humanity. What I experienced makes me all the more determined when I say that prisoners of whatever description must be treated humanely and justly. I would stand up for the rights of the alleged terrorist and of any other individual facing serious charges. I am not soft on terrorism - I have had too many dealings with it to be so - but I am passionate that we must observe standards of justice. I fear that unless firm action is taken to institute just and fair procedures, the long-term results for the US will be catastrophic. Terrorism is not ultimately defeated by the force of arms; you have to deal with the root causes and ask what makes people act in such extreme ways.

It alarms me greatly that the prisoners' status seems to have been determined almost exclusively by the US president and his advisers. Their status should be determined by an independent tribunal. The US seems to be making up the rules as it goes along. First, it said that the appalling acts of terrorism in New York and Washington were acts of war; now it is saying that these captives are not in fact prisoners of war, that they are unlawful combatants. An independent tribunal should establish precisely what they are.

If the US is making up the rules, it will have no moral authority should other countries try, convict and perhaps execute American and European suspects. There will be no moral grounds on which we can stand if we allow this to continue. Americans tell me that they have little patience with international tribunals - they take a long time, and often come up with a different result from that which was hoped. But that is no argument. It doesn't matter how long it takes - justice must be seen to be done, and be done impartially.

I was appalled when I heard a prominent American suggest that in certain circumstances the limited use of torture might be justified. That is a dreadful statement to come from a civilised nation. Torture can never be justified, and must be clearly condemned. When it comes to trial, these men are entitled to basic defence rights and ought to be tried under the auspices of the UN. It is vital that we uphold standards of international law for the protection of the innocent, and for the protection of American or European subjects who may find themselves in difficult circumstances in the future. For once, morality and pragmatism go hand in hand.

Terry Waite is the former special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was held captive by terrorists in Beirut from 1987 to 1991.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It was chiseled pretty clearly in Washington until the day we learned that everybody's favorite President had authorized a violation of that policy because he (a) had that much compassion for the hostages, including hostage negotiator Terry Waite who was kidnapped after being briefed by Oliver North. Or (b) he was determined to bypass congress and fund the Contras, with or without legal means, and without regard for someone like Terry Waite who may have been in the way.

Edited to add: Note that the Contras were not terrorists. They were freedom fighters. As perdita noted in the Sour Cream & Semen thread, it's all about packaging.

Terry Waite had 5 years in a concrete hole to wonder what had gone so dramatically wrong: He had spent months in the attempt to get a meeting with the commander of the hostage-takers, who had been reluctant but finally agreed to a meeting. They already had five hostages; what purpose did one more serve?

Long after his release, when Terry Waite began writing a book called, "Taken On Faith," the media learned of Reagan's illegal arms-for-hostages scheme. At last he began to see a reason why a hostage negotior might have been so unwelecome in the scheme of things that he had to be taken out of the way.

If the negotiation techniques with which Waite had been so successful in other hostage cases had been allowed to proceed, it might have damaged the relationship that North had built with the terrorists holding the hostages. One of them might even let it slip to Waite that his backers and the hostage's families couldn't possibly compete with what the U.S. President was offering: a sale of arms to the government of Iran in defiance of our own government's arms embargo.

The worst-case outcome for North and the U.S., although unlikely, would have been a successful hostage negotiation by Waite. Suppose he had been able to win the kidnappers' trust as he had done before with success, and convince them to accept a prisoner exchange?

If that had happened, all of North's work on behalf of the President would have been for nothing.

For a lot of reasons, his mission couldn't be allowed to continue. Someone needed Waite out of the way. And Oliver North was the last westerner he had met with - at North's request, so they could discuss the plight of the American hostages.

In his book, Terry Waite doesn't accuse North or anyone in the administration of complicity in arranging his kidhapping. But this is another one of those stories that tell themselves, if you just look close enough.

This story doesn't end yet for Terry Waite. In the introduction to his second book, he describes the years of confinement that began shortly after Oliver North asked him to change his schedule so they could meet.

-----------------------

January 23, 2002

Former Beirut Hostage Speaks Out on the Guantanamo Prisoners

Justice or Revenge?

By Terry Waite

I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we - countries that call ourselves civilised - are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?

I was determined that my five years in captivity would not break me, and they didn't. But I cannot say that it was easy. The hardest thing for a prisoner in those conditions is the uncertainty. You don't know what will happen to you next: you have no rights, no one to speak to, no one to advise you, no one to fall back on. You only have your own resources. These men, who may or may not be guilty, will be experiencing that sense of isolation and dislocation.

For four years I was kept in solitary confinement and had no companionship at all. I was always blindfolded, or had to wear a blindfold when someone came into the room. I never saw another human being. The initial effect is eerie, but eventually you become accustomed to it. You learn to live from within. But that's tough, and no one should be forced to attempt it.

I had a diet very similar to that being given to these men - bread, cream cheese, rice, beans. I was adequately fed, but not luxuriously, and I lost a lot of weight. The greatest difficulty was never having any exercise in the whole period. I had to get what exercise I could while chained to the wall. I had five minutes a day to go to the bathroom; for the rest of the time I had to use a bottle. The conditions were inhuman, but all the time I had to assert my humanity. What I experienced makes me all the more determined when I say that prisoners of whatever description must be treated humanely and justly. I would stand up for the rights of the alleged terrorist and of any other individual facing serious charges. I am not soft on terrorism - I have had too many dealings with it to be so - but I am passionate that we must observe standards of justice. I fear that unless firm action is taken to institute just and fair procedures, the long-term results for the US will be catastrophic. Terrorism is not ultimately defeated by the force of arms; you have to deal with the root causes and ask what makes people act in such extreme ways.

It alarms me greatly that the prisoners' status seems to have been determined almost exclusively by the US president and his advisers. Their status should be determined by an independent tribunal. The US seems to be making up the rules as it goes along. First, it said that the appalling acts of terrorism in New York and Washington were acts of war; now it is saying that these captives are not in fact prisoners of war, that they are unlawful combatants. An independent tribunal should establish precisely what they are.

If the US is making up the rules, it will have no moral authority should other countries try, convict and perhaps execute American and European suspects. There will be no moral grounds on which we can stand if we allow this to continue. Americans tell me that they have little patience with international tribunals - they take a long time, and often come up with a different result from that which was hoped. But that is no argument. It doesn't matter how long it takes - justice must be seen to be done, and be done impartially.

I was appalled when I heard a prominent American suggest that in certain circumstances the limited use of torture might be justified. That is a dreadful statement to come from a civilised nation. Torture can never be justified, and must be clearly condemned. When it comes to trial, these men are entitled to basic defence rights and ought to be tried under the auspices of the UN. It is vital that we uphold standards of international law for the protection of the innocent, and for the protection of American or European subjects who may find themselves in difficult circumstances in the future. For once, morality and pragmatism go hand in hand.

Terry Waite is the former special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was held captive by terrorists in Beirut from 1987 to 1991.

The Iranian hostage Crisis. I think I was...ten. As part of the show of support for our hostages my school held a contest. The contest was who could come up with the best solution to the crisis. Among the plans to send candy, bubblegum and other offring of a childs imagining to secure their release was mine. I think this little tale hearkens back to my note that I was never liberal. At ten my answer was to drop a nuke on the biggest city in Iran that was far enough away from Teheran not to hurt our folks, then politely inform the mongrels in charge of that pathetic little country that they would get a fresh nuke, every ten minutes on the next biggest shanty town we could find until they let our people go or became the world's largest glass factory.

I did my papa proud with that one. Won first prize too, a huge yellow ribbon to tie on the tree outside our home. My folks were so proud, Dad took me to Shoney's and let me get a chocolate fudge cake. Life didn't get much better than a Shoney's chocolate fudecake either, I can tell you. Just a little Neo-con, waiting for the opportunity. Ahhh, the splendor of youth.

I am quite a few years older and perhaps the years have taught me some wisdom. Now I would say the proper course of action would have been to have the 101st airborne land, secure the compound and defend it with an absolute crushing air superiority. Land the First marine division, estabilsh a beachead, then send out a single column, securing cross roads and bridiges, link up with the 101, secure the line of retreat by bombing anything approximating a town back to the stone age with FAE's and once the marines withdrew THEN start droping the nukes.

I am of course being a Tad facetious with the second part, but the first part is a true story. And I think it illustrates how I felt about terroists then (and perhaps if I were very honest with myself how I felt about muslims and arabs). It was a watershed moment in my growing up, I was too young to remember vietnam, but I do remember the hostage crisis very well from a ten year old girl's perspective. I do not doubt it colors my thinking and feeling to this day.

Iran-contra recieved scant attention from most of those in my peergroup and I didn't try to balance my thinking back then. It was all some BS concoted by the Democrats to try and get a master statesman like Ron Regan out of office and put some Carteresque, appeaseing, liberal, tax and spend pantywaist in office. And yes, at the time I was a completely unsophisticated, Navie believer in the republican party and I took the party line as unctitically as some do today. I couldn't vote yet, but I spent a lot of hours running errands at a Regan elction headquarters in my voting district.

I suppose a good deal of understanding me is understanding where I came from. So that in a nutshell is where I got my grounding in foerign policy. It wasn't until late in highschool that I realized I had freinds of arab extraction and at least two who were practicing muslims. The weren't monsters, they didn't have blood stained fangs, they weren't shouting scripture and brandishing swords. Once was quite possibly the most beautiful girl in school. And maybe that is when I started to take a closer look at my assumptions and do a little soul searching and maybe it's when I started to really grow as a person, when I started to become a skeptic and freed my mind.

Don't get me wrong, I still despise terrorists and have not the slightest qualm about deadly force being used against them. I remember Ron Regan as the greatest president of my time and there is very little you can say that will make me revise that opinion. I remember him through a child's eyes, a kindly old fellow who my dad said was much like TR. He spoke softly but carried a big stick. He restored pride in America, showed the world we weren't a paper tiger, bomed Lybia and shut Quadaffy up, made that plane land and captured terrorists, got our people out of Iran, fully backed his ally Britian in the Fauklands war and ended the cold war.

There aree some memories from my childhood I refuse to let go, so I hope you will excuse me if I don't know who Terry Waight is and have no intention of finding out.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

There are (at least) two stories in recent news that are disturbing, one is Feds going after abortion records (see the "sorry to get political" thread) here is the other:

An Antiwar Forum in Iowa Brings Federal Subpoenas
By MONICA DAVEY

Published: February 10, 2004, New York Times


DES MOINES, Feb. 9 — To hear the antiwar protesters describe it, their forum at a local university last fall was like so many others they had held over the years. They talked about the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to convey their feelings about Iraq into acts of civil disobedience.


But last week, subpoenas began arriving seeking details about the forum's sponsor — its leadership list, its annual reports, its office location — and the event itself. On Monday, lawyers for the sponsor, the Drake University chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, went to court in an effort to block the federal prosecutors' demands.

Those who attended the forum, at least four of whom said they had received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury on Tuesday, said that they did not know what to make of the inquiry and that they feared it was intended to quash protest.

Late on Monday, prosecutors in the United States attorney's office for the southern district of Iowa took the unusual step of issuing a confirmation of the investigation, stressing that its scope was limited to learning more about one person who had tried to scale a security fence at an Iowa National Guard base in a protest a day after the forum.

"The United States attorney's office does not prosecute persons peacefully and lawfully engaged in rallies which are conducted under the protection of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," a written statement issued by the prosecutor here, Stephen Patrick O'Meara, said.

Prosecutors also delayed the grand jury appearances by a month, a move local civil liberties officials interpreted as a sign that the government might be backing away from the investigation.

"I'd say the prosecutors are recognizing the groundswell of reaction that has happened in the face of this extraordinary thing they've done," said R. Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union.

Still, the protesters, their lawyers and some national civil liberties advocates described the investigation into the attendance rolls and leadership lists of the lawyers' group as highly unusual in recent years. Some said it could send a chilling message far beyond Iowa, leaving those who consider voicing disapproval of the administration's policy in Iraq, or anywhere else, wondering whether they too might receive added scrutiny.

"I've heard of such a thing, but not since the 1950's, the McCarthy era," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor. "It sends a very troubling message about government officials' attitudes toward basic liberties."

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he feared news of the subpoenas — which was spreading rapidly via e-mail on Monday among activist organizations — might discourage people from showing up to protests, attending meetings at universities or even checking out library books.

"People will have to be asking themselves: will this be subject to government scrutiny?" Mr. Romero said.

Brian Terrell, the executive director of the Catholic Peace Ministry here, received a grand jury subpoena last week, he said. Mr. Terrell said he had helped conduct "nonviolence training" at the Nov. 15 forum on the Drake campus, which was titled "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!" and attended by 21 people.

Mr. Terrell, 47, said he had been involved in and sometimes arrested for protests of United States actions related to Honduras; Vieques, Puerto Rico; and elsewhere over many years. He said he offered advice for people who chose to be arrested about how best to carry out their protests, like how to deal with police, how to deal with hecklers and how to react to jail.

At the forum, Mr. Terrell said, at least one local television station filmed the events, which were open to the public. Organizers had also mailed a leaflet about the events to a sergeant in the Des Moines police in case he wanted to come.