Subject:
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Re: Terrorists hate freedom
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 14 Mar 2004 06:18:20 GMT
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Viewed:
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374 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
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No wonder I didn’t get it. I would never have thought that I needed a moral
justification for freeing myself from ‘evil oppression’. I’ll think on this
some more.
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I fear you still don’t get it. I am talking about killing an innocent
(unrelated to your oppression) in order to free you from your oppressor. I am
saying that that action is morally unjustified.
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“terrorism” is defined as the targeting of innocents with the goal of
breaking a society or group’s resolve
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I am not sure that there is a useful difference between the concept of
‘targeting civilians’ and recklessly disregarding civilians in ‘targeting
combatants’. It comes down to a question of intent with each side making its
own unsupported or unsupportable assertions.
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WRT to Iraq, the US took great care to avoid civilian casualties. Yes, it comes
down to intent. I think the US intent was clear, and homicide bombers’
intentions are also clear. There is no moral equivalence here.
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In my first post on this I talked about targeting combatants and
non-combatants alike, as in drawing no distinction, as in ignoring one’s
different status, in contrast to targeting John’s “women, pregnant women, the
elderly along with children” for the sake of it.
As a side note, its disquieting that John would call all women ‘innocents’ in
this regard. Many women I know would find this insulting and the mark of a
closet misogynist.
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lol what would they say if I called all women “guilty”? Seems I’m damned if I
do, and damned if I don’t! :-) The point of the “women and children” is to
simply drive home the concept of individuals who are in no way responsible for
any harm perpetrated. I’m just trying to insure that we are talking about
bonafide innocent people. So, “innocents” = “babies”, and “babies” =
“innocents”. I don’t care what the little cusses think about me;-)
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This is why terrorism is so disgusting, because it is so cowardly. If you
want to oppose a government, then rise up against the government!, not
against its citizens! But the cowards might think, “We are not powerful
enough to oppose the government, let us strike out at it by killing its
citizens instead”.
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This cowardly thingie never ceases to amaze me. Let us contrast taking over
an aircraft armed only with a knife and then flying that aircraft to my
certain death, with say, flying over a battlefield at 35,000 feet, safe in the
knowledge that the enemy has no weapons that can reach me, and carpet bombing
it. There are a bunch of derogatory terms that might be applied to
terrorists, but cowardly does not stand out as a useful one. And where it is
advanced as key, one can only wonder at how thin is the understanding.
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Your equivalence is specious. Merely because some puke denies their humanity so
much that they can justify to themselves the savage butchery of cold-blooded
murder does not for 1 nanosecond imply the least amount of bravery, only the
most heinous kind of hatred. Only the worst coward would go on to paradise and
X number of virgins rather than face the consequences of their despicable
actions. I haven’t the words to express my outrage and contempt for such
dirtbags.
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So, you are acknowledging that if you tried and tried and tried to liberate
yourself and couldn’t, you could then justify murdering babies (innocents).
I need to know if you believe that if someone is desperate enough, they are
justified in killing innocents.
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This enthusiasm for rushing to extremes is part of the problem. There is no
scope for gradations of behaviour, so while we are focussing on the worst
possible scenario to fuel our hatred and support our brutality, we miss all
the opportunities in between.
No John, I can’t think of a justification for murdering babies.
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Thank you. This is what I have been trying to elicit from you. This directly
contradicts what you said previously:
“Terrorism is a perfectly logical and inevitable result of a resilient, clever,
passionate and aspiring humanity constrained by a system that offers no hope.”
So you would agree that even if one is being constrained by a system that offers
no hope, one would not be justified in killing innocents in order to obtain
freedom.
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I do think that if someone is desperate enough they will murder innocent
people,
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Unjustly.
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particularly under the widest definition of innocent that you give (all
women!).
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Forget about women (don’t tell your women friends I said that;-) Stick with
babies.
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And I am not sure that I need to say its justifiable. Perhaps it is enough to
point out that its likely, its to be expected, that complaining about its
inherent evilness is a counter-productive waste of time, and if you want it to
stop, you need to address the circumstances that give rise to it.
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I believe that any side which employs terrorism forsakes any moral high ground
and therefore has no justifiable case to present.
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Show me the economic oppression being suffered by al-qaeda. Their leader is
a multi-millionaire. What are their demands? What do they want? Why don’t
we know these things?
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I think that there’s actually quite a bit known about what they want.
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They want me dead and America isolated and in ruins. There isn’t much more
AFAIK. What else?
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But
that’s actually less interesting than the fact that you’re thrilled to bits to
go stomping off all over the world trying to kill these people, with less than
no idea!
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The fact that they want me and my country dead is plenty reason to go stomping
all over the world trying to kill them, thankyouverymuch.
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“Wahabism” is a particularly violent anti-Western form of Islam. Why? Who
knows; who cares. There is no rational or moral justification for it.
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Of course there is. It might not be one with which you agree...
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Please, enlighten me.
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What if I am correct? That Islamo-extremists want the West to fall in order
to set up an Islamic Theocracy. There is no negotiating with that-- you
either convert or die.
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I imagine that there ARE Islamo-extremists want the West to fall in order to
set up an Islamic Theocracy. In the same way that there are some in the
American administration who would like to see the East fall in order to set up
an American Bureaucracy.
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Say what?
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But neither can succeed unless they can take their people
along with them.
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In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a war out there for the heart and soul of
Islam, and Muslims don’t seem too keen on fighting against the extremists...
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There used to be a bunch of Communist extremists who wanted
the West to fall so that they could set up a Communist Autocracy, but they
failed to keep their people convinced. The key is to show that there is
another way, a better way, and one that is open to all.
Sap their popular strength and their plan withers and dies.
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The problem is that the rallying cry for Islamo-extremists is “Death to America,
death to the Jews”
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Why are you so reticent to characterize such atrocities as “evil”?
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Because calling it evil is simply entirely counter-productive. Calling it
evil does nothing but push it further from our understanding it. Calling it
evil says I don’t need to understand it, indeed, I should try NOT to
understand it (lest it overpower me and make me evil too). Calling it evil
means I should simply try to kill it.
And that path is doomed to failure.
So I won’t call it evil.
EVEN, if it IS evil.
As you might have deduced, I’m not a big believer in evil generally.
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And that is the Achille’s Heal of the Left. The path to doom is trying to
fathom the unfathomable. The greatest evil of all is to deny its existence, for
only then will it flourish beneath the acquiescent eyes of tolerance and
understanding.
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(snip)
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There is one difference, and it makes all the difference. The innocents
who lost their lives in the liberation of Iraq were not targets. Their
deaths were unintentional, and great lengths were taken to keep civilian
casualties to a minimum. Contrast that with strapping on bomb belt filled
with rusty nails dipped in rat poison and boarding a public bus or entering a
restaurant and detonating it.
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Sophistry. Both are doing what they think will best advance their cause, with
the tools at their disposal, with a disregard for your ‘innocents’, or at the
very least an openness to the deaths of ‘innocents’ which you find so heinous.
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Well, I reject your moral equivelance.
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(snip)
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all I understand now is that if I don’t stop them, they won’t stop.
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This I see. Beyond this is a recognition that you are failing to stop them.
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We will continue to oppose them until they stop. There simply is nothing else
to do.
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You may want to consider changing strategy to one that can succeed.
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Like what? Trying to empathize with them, to understand them? Even if it were
possible, what good would this do? They don’t want empathy or to be understood,
just victorious.
JOHN
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Terrorists hate freedom
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| (...) Why are unlawful killings not investigated? This is from (URL) HRW>: “It’s a tragedy that U.S. soldiers have killed so many civilians in Baghdad,” said Joe Stork, acting executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human (...) (20 years ago, 14-Mar-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Terrorists hate freedom
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| (...) No wonder I didn't get it. I would never have thought that I needed a moral justification for freeing myself from 'evil oppression'. I'll think on this some more. (snip) (...) I am not sure that there is a useful difference between the concept (...) (20 years ago, 14-Mar-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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