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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (42152)	1/10/2002 3:21:45 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Your extrapolations are logically insupportable, given what I said, which was, in essence: When people are going to die in battle anyway, among them non- combatants, as cities are invaded, trying to save lives overall through terror bombing may be justified.

To: epicure who wrote (42152)	1/10/2002 4:33:52 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

Cultural war is not the same as a shooting war. Then there are no civilians and the bombing of 9/11 was totally justified. Those people killed were actively pursuing the values of a capitalist society. They were not civilians, they were cultural warriors for America! The people in the WTC were not committing violence against Arabs, or Islam, or Islamic fundamentalists, or even Al-Qaida. There tax dollars did help buy the weapons that had been used in limited attacks against Al-Qaida under the Clinton administration but the contribution was small, the connection tenuous and in any case these attacks did not amount to an all out war (unlike Japan's attacks in WWII) and where only done after Al-Qaida had attacked the US more then once (again unlike Japan's attacks). Tim

To: epicure who wrote (42152)	1/10/2002 7:30:46 PM
From: bonnuss_in_austin	Respond to of 82486

Hi, X! Happy New Year and nice to see you again!/eom

To: epicure who wrote (42152)	1/10/2002 11:14:48 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Then there are no civilians and the bombing of 9/11 was totally justified. IF we had attacked Afghanistan in an unprovoked raid which killed thousands of their citizens, IF we had fought a bitter war for three years killing tens or hundreds of thousands of their soldiers, IF we were sending suicide bombing planes, kamakazis, to destroy their forces, THEN yes, bombing the World Trade Towers would have been justified. But since we hadn't, it wasn't.

To: epicure who wrote (42152)	1/11/2002 9:45:48 AM
From: J. C. Dithers	Respond to of 82486

Then there are no civilians... That is essentially true... for nations which have formally declared war upon one another (obviously not the case in the WTC). Or, at least, if there are civilians, it is difficult to find them or distinguish them. In the case of Japan, the entire adult population had been conscripted into military service by 1945, except for those under 15 and those over 60 for males, 45 for females. Of the elders, many were employed in munitions manufacture, or other war-related work, clouding their status as "civilians." In Japan's case, probably by war's end only young children could legitimately be classified as civilians. In the U.S., our "Rosie the Riveter" initiative made masses of women on the home front producers of armaments, similarly beclouding their status as civilians. Many, perhaps most, others on the home front temporarily left their pre-war jobs to perform employment related in one way or the other to the war effort. Such is inevitably the case for nations in a state of total mobilization for war. Had Japan (or Germany) had the capability to carry the war to our soil, there can be no question that they would have attacked many so-called civilian targets. The concept of "combatants" is equally fuzzy. In a service branch such as the Army, probably no more than 10 percent of soldiers actually perform in combat. The rest serve in support and staff roles, most far from the front. Was an Army clerk-typist working in the Pentagon a combatant? Technically, yes. For nations at war, distinguishing "combatants" from "civilians" is an exercise in futility.