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

To: kumar who wrote (58664)	11/24/2002 8:59:11 PM
From: epsteinbd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Kumar, this line of yours is strange. Are you a fatalist to some extend ?

To: kumar who wrote (58664)	11/25/2002 11:06:51 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>>have to disagree on the basis of reality<< Not sure what you mean by "reality." Certain types of behavior are predictable, but not necessarily inevitable. Why are thousands of casualties an expected part of life in Asian countries? Is there something about human nature in Asia that makes thousands of casualties inevitable? One frequently reads of mass disasters in Third World countries that are the result of poor maintenance, e.g., trains leaving their tracks and wrecking, ferry boats sinking, but these types of disasters are very rare in the US or Europe. The Bhopal disaster might have been inevitable given the laxity of environmental regulation in India, but it could not be considered inevitable in the US. One frequently reads of massive riots in Third World countries, e.g., the massive riots in Nigeria over the Miss World contest, religious clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India. Such riots are very rare in the US -- very rarely in poor urban areas, pretty much never in the rest of the US. The 9/11 attacks were unprecedented in US history, primarily because we have not experienced much in the way of terrorism. We were very surprised at being struck from within, from people who lived among us passing as ordinary citizens. The US has a long history of excluding entire ethnic groups or uprooting them or placing them in reservations. We did it to the Native Americans in the 19th century (reservations), we did it to the Japanese during WWII (internment camps), and we do it to poor blacks and Hispanics all the time (ghettos and barrios). Compared to the treatment of the Japanese during WWII, or the treatment of Native Americans during the 19th century, our response to 9/11 has been relatively muted. So far.