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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (69562)	9/12/2004 1:01:16 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793931

That does not logically follow. If we are in the process of losing our liberty as Americans to some horrible foreign conqueror, killing as many of them as we can by any means necessary cannot be said to rbring on the loss of our liberty You have this idee fixe that between the Minutemen of Concord (who also didn't fight fair, according to the British) and the "hostage-takers" of Beslan is some straightforward spectrum, and if the British had just oppressed the Minutemen harder, and made them sufficiently enslaved and "desperate" they too would have said, 'anything goes' and begun shooting children. This theory is NOT supported by history. Even hard pressed groups do not start by saying "the ends justify any means" and start shooting children. They don't even end by saying it. Why not? Because they have morals themselves, instead of the ecstatic abandonment of morals that marks the Islamists (a very modern movement in that respect). If the Minutemen had shot British children, they would have destroyed their own movement in a instant. If you destroy your own self-definition in the conflict, then you have lost far more than any tactic might gain you. People know this instinctively. The difference in fighting the Islamists is that they have a well-thought out ideology that explains to them how the ends justify any means whatsoever, and how it is not only allowed but even commanded for good Muslims to do such things. So the terrorists can keep their own identity intact and retain the support of their followers even after a Beslan atrocity.