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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (1973)	9/30/2001 11:24:01 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

Steven... There's a difference between attacks upon military targets, in which civilians become caught up in a battle, and directly targeting them indiscriminately when no state of war exists between nations. Even if certain Contras may have committed such atrocities, I have no evidence that this was a chosen strategy by US supporters. It would just be completely and utterly counter-productive to target those civilians you are hoping with support you own efforts to overthrow the government. And btw, I don't consider political leadership to be civilian. The political infrastructure is a legitimate military target since they represent the government you are trying to overthrow. Now many in the media wish to call them civilians, but that's not what we're talking about here... Civiliams, in my perspecitive, are those people who are caught in the middle of the fighting who care nothing for the government that rules over them, but only for the welfare of their family. People who have no personal stake in which government is in power. Were Palestinians to limit their attacks to Israeli soldiers, or political leadership, I would have a hard time calling them terrorists. However, I would consider anyone who supported their efforts, by providing shelter, arms, money, or financial support as being a potential combatant, if their activities could be uncovered. And I believe this is where the Israelis have limited their retaliatory strikes to, those who carry out the attacks and/or shelter and protect them. I DO NOT see any evidence of the Israelis deliberately targeting innocent civilians who want only to stay out of the way of the combatant forces. However, by Hamas directing their suicide bombings to crowded restaurants, shopping malls, and discotheques, we see someone who IS WILLING to engage in the same activities that you decry. And the WTC attack is one more example of this... I can "excuse"(for lack of another term) the attack on the Pentagon as it is a military target, or even excuse an attack on our political institutions and members. But to claim that Bin Laden doesn't target civilians has been soundly discounted by both the 1993 bombing of the WTC building, as well as the destruction of the twin towers on September 11th. Had those planes waited a mere 1-2 more hours, when the majority of the 50,000 people who work there had arrived, they would have easily killed tens of thousands of people. Or if they had managed to fly into a lower portion of the towers... they would have trapped even more people in the upper levels. Lord only knows how many people actually had time to escape the eventual collapse of those buildings. A stike at a lower level would likely have caused the buildings to collapse even more rapidly due to the additional weight above. And even Bin Laden's attack against the US embassies in Africa caused FAR MORE DEATHS to the local people than they did to US personnel. Anyone who analyzed their plan of attack would be able to discern what the result would be. Hawk