Subject:
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Re: A question of remembrance...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 2 May 2001 01:00:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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749 times
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Larry Pieniazek writes:
> But what if the fault is almost all on one side? (it's not 60-40 in this
> case but it's not 99-1 either, so this is a hypothetical, I want to know
> what you think) What then?
Well, this is a very hard question to answer in the hypothetical without
more specifics, so I leave it to you to pose a more detailed hypothetical
should you choose to do so.
Given the real world instance of the nations of Israel and Palestine, I am
not sure that either has been the political authority over the disputed
territories long enough or with sufficient stability to claim the status of
sole political authority. Who then is the terrorist and who then is the
country suffering the threat of terrorism? That very status is a hotly
contested point.
But I say this: people do not kill without a financial gain or madness at
the root of it unless they are politically motivated. There is almost always
motive. If a kid throws a brick off a bridge and kills someone, there is
motive. Unless the kid is just abyssmally stupid, I can probably show you a
victim of neglect or some such thing...the kid is angry and doesn't respect
his own life much less the lives of others. S/he feels hopeless and abandoned.
Its not that I wish to excuse everything, but there is a sound reason why
our juries in the U.S. were conceived as juries of the accused person's
peers -- these were the people thought to have "walked a mile" in the shoes
of the accused. They understood his circumstances and could judge right
from wrong about the accused in a culturally relevant manner.
I tell you that we do not understand from the outside what might make a
Palestinian plant a bomb in a public place, or an Israeli fire dum-dums into
a crowd of people armed with little more than stones. May the gods help and
forgive them, I expect they have their reasons. These reasons didn't spring
from them fully formed without a cause...
> I come from the "never negotiate with terrorists" school of thought, and I
> think there is a lot of merit in that approach. Terrorists need to be
> apprehended and smacked down, not accomodated.
Great! Welcome to the North American Game Preserve -- where your rights are
respected right until the point that you can be declared to have committed
a crime, or are merely suspected of having planned to commit a crime as part
of a "conspiracy" (Muchas gracias, Senor Nixon!).
Larry, could you define what you mean by a terrorist? Do you mean like
Timothy McVey, the dozens of people at the Wacco compound, or rioters in the
streets of Los Angeles after the civil trial of the police who beat Rodney King?
Some people claim political grounds for their actions but can be thought of
as little more than common criminals. When their numbers are significant
enough, their individual crimes may coalesce into a kind of civil
insurrection - a movement of a sort with real grievances they would like
redressed. Where and how do you draw the line between each group?
Turn back the clock 200+ years and I'll show you some ungrateful Englishmen
who terrorized British rule right back across the Atlantic -- and what was
their beef? Basically a tax rate equivalent to some 15%...
Looking at today: Do you suppose it is accidental that the people of color
in the United States are pissed off? They have been economically oppressed,
ghettoized, profiled, harrassed, etc. Fine, maybe there is no concerted
effort to cause them these problems, but the problems exist nonetheless.
When one of them flips out in the local McDonald's brandishing a machine gun
-- is it a crime or a cry for political equality? Before you answer, count
the persons on death row by the color of their skin...
When is it time to talk of peace? Right now! The murderer and terrorist is
a creature of our own creation in many cases...
You want to slap them down and move them aside and out of your way? Perhaps
you should try to understand how they come to exist to cause you a problem
in the first place...
-- Richard
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: A question of remembrance...
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| (...) This is a very good point. I took the time on Sunday to watch a programme about a so called "hero of libertarian America" - Rany Weaver. From a UK perspective this guy appeared to nothing better that a moron with a gun. However, I could not (...) (23 years ago, 2-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: A question of remembrance...
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| (...) How about when one side is a nation that says it wants to exterminate a certain religion's adherents and the other side is an almost weaponless group of members of that religion in the inner city of an occupied capital of a country that nation (...) (23 years ago, 2-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: A question of remembrance...
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| (...) Where the fault is split 60-40 I think you're right. But what if the fault is almost all on one side? (it's not 60-40 in this case but it's not 99-1 either, so this is a hypothetical, I want to know what you think) What then? I come from the (...) (23 years ago, 30-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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