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

To: FaultLine who wrote (2401)	10/3/2001 12:53:40 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Declaring total war is the easy part... Carrying it out quite another... Especially if you're not quite sure you have world public opinion backing you up. (of course, that hasn't stopped OBL)... But the reports we're seeing coming out of Europe about these foiled terrorist attempts (real, suspected, or fabricated) are taking us to the point where people will be willing to pay any price to be willing to once again be able to live in some semblance of "relative safety", or at the illusion thereof... OBL is a dead man walking... he knows it, we know it,.. the world knows it... But how he goes out will make all the difference to those who follow him... I hope we catch him alive and have the ability to shave his hair and beard, and have a bunch of pregnant women enshroud him in a pig-skin overcoat. Anything that will diminish his ability to be considered a martyr. Hawk

To: FaultLine who wrote (2401)	10/3/2001 1:22:23 PM
From: SirRealist	Respond to of 281500

Hawk & F/L: Such knowledge makes them accessories to the fact... We might not be able to justify elimating them as combatants since they may not have been engaged in the planning and execution of this attack, but I'd say we are justified to seize their assets in the US (elsewhere if possible) and blare their names around the world as those who sought to profit by this act. Asset seizure is not enough. It reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt's comments about "...with education, you can steal the whole railroad." The wealthy financiers may not know the details, but they know they finance murderers and that should bring more than a financial setback.... like imprisonment in something less than a country club prison. BTW Hawk, I understand well that legal ways exist to rise from poverty. Since I've drawn the parallel between Afghanistan and the ghetto, places proven to exhibit lawless responses, perhaps there is something else common to both.... missing daddies. Just a thought. F/L wrote: I've been trying to put together a mental model that rationalizes our WWII actions within the context of the present situation. That total war scenario Hawk described is not confined to WW2.... we pretty much faced the same thing in South Vietnam. Not that they were attacking us here, but by all reports, many in the South worked against us and viewed Ho Chi Minh, not the US, as the liberator. As I said, these are the ugly realities of war. Civilians die and innocents die (even under 'total war' there's no argument that young children are not innocents). I do not seek rationalizations nor easy answers. In some cases, war is the only answer that has demonstrated effectiveness. And in some cases, what is defined in black and white terms as 'terrorism', reasons exist and the actions prove effective. All righteous coups are not bloodless.