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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: diana g who wrote (10506)	11/14/2001 10:51:51 AM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Yawn, not much happening today except a vicious energy reversal. Sold my PTEN in a hurry today for a small loss; could have had a small gain if I'd sold yesterday. May jettison the slice of KEG I have for a similar small loss. As for surrender, we may be thinking of different folks here. I doubt the 20,000 Taliban soldiers who are left are very extremist at the core. Their foreign mujahadeen leadership will very soon be revealed to all Afghanis as demented and the entire Taliban period, and the Al Quaeda network, as a worse plague. In any group like this you have fewer than one percent leaders and the rest more or less loyal soldiers. I would no more think of summarily executing surrendering Taliban soldiers than I would the same for surrendering German or Japanese troops in WWII. Take their weapons, place them in jail, process them and when the fighting is over, send them back to their villages and ignominy. Kb

To: diana g who wrote (10506)	11/14/2001 11:25:17 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Diana g, you wrote: "Not killing them lets the victor wallow in pleasant feelings of magnanimousness while the weeds bearing the seeds of future 911s are left to recover in quiet corners. --- Seek out, uproot & burn the weeds or you will have another plague of them in a short time." Actually this is a sentiment that Americans have subscibed to in the past. In fact in the good old days of the 19th AND 20th century when Indians (American) were massacred, the byword was "nits grow into lice." Our ancestors massacred nits along with lice based on this wisdom and they didn't shirk this task either. Children and babies were reportedly swung by their feet and bashed into trees. I admit that's not as antiseptic as shooting them, perforating them with schrapnel or incinerating them with bombs but the thinking and end result is the same. I think those who advocate extreme measures are terribly wrong in their thinking on this. I understand that the SAFEST course to take in removing the immediate threat posed by these terrorists is to wipe them out, wipe out their families, wipe out their communities, wipe out anyone who may be sympathetic to the fact that they were wiped out, wipe out anyone who didn't participate in wiping them out, and on and on. We don't do that for reasons that have to do with factors other than our personal safety. Those other factors are hugely important. Everything the people who have the biggest stick in the world do has long term consequences for the balance of darkness and light in the world. We have been, and should continue to be, the beacon of hope and enlightenment for a better and more civilized world. In that world you give voice AND SUBSTANCE to ideals and concepts such as; innocence until guilt is proven, myriad freedoms, the rule of law vs the rule of the mob, and many others that in the short run result in less personal security but in the long run result in a better, saner and freer world for US. I think we should be very careful that we don't become those we despise and, in the process, lose the high ground that was gained by many generations of Americans who understood the importance of giving a second chances to those who might well use that chance to do further harm. If America means anything in the big picture of history it is that sometimes, on rare occasions, a people with great power and the opportunity to abuse that power, won't. That is a remarkable thing in the history of mankind. It sets a standard and shines a light that leads us up. If I understand your position correctly, your course would tend to dim or blanket that light. Ed