[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >In a message dated 10/26/01 1:21:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> >>All we are saying is give peace a chance. > >I'd like to chime in here. I don't believe in giving peace any more of >a chance than it's already gotten (remember, the Taliban had a month to turn >over bin laden).
A month? That's nothing ... conflict resolution takes a lot more time and patience. We haven't given peace a chance at all. >Frankly, I think all this peace talk does not reflect >reality. Remember the 6,000 people who were killed? We didn't ask for >that, and if we don't strike back, we're saying their lives are in essence >worthless. So the 6000 innocent lives that were lost will be worthless unless we waste innocent lives, too? >Kill our people and we'll give you lots of aid. Huh? "Huh?" is right ... no one is suggesting giving aid to the terrorists; that's a sloppy and, ultimately, dishonest portrayal of what I was suggesting. The plan I outlined calls for giving aid to moderate Muslim masses (instead of killing them, either directly or as a result of our sanctions) so that their support of our coalition will be based on something more meaningful than John Wayne-type challenges of "Either you're with us or against us." The plan also calls for tracking down the terrorists with focused, covert action, not broad bombing, especially not of the sort that blows up not one but now two Red Cross warehouses by mistake ... you know, those buildings with the big red crosses on the roofs? Someone punched in the wrong coordinates for the target ... oops! >There are a lot of people who hate us. I don't care why they hate us; >they just do. As Susan Sontag eloquently wrote, "Let's by all means grieve together, but let's not be stupid together." If we don't examine why the extremists hate us so much, and then we respond in a way that provokes more of their hatred, as well as provoking more moderate Arabs and Muslims who may not hate us now but will soon when the civilian body count gets high enough, then we will surely see many, many more American civilian deaths. >I agree that there has been a very great deal of anti-American sentiment >expressed on this site. It's gone beyond criticizing to demonizing. When >you paint the US as more evil than the Taliban and Bin Laden, which I think >a number of these posts have done, you demonize us. I've seen too many emails >along the lines of "poor victim bin laden, protecting his culture against >the evil US". That is demonizing us. I guess I should be insulted that by starting your response with a quote from my post, you're suggesting that this is what I am saying. It simply isn't, and no amount of you saying so will make it so. No one here is pitying Usama bin Laden, no one here is calling him a victim, no one here is painting the U.S. as "more evil than the Taliban and bin Laden" ... that's a hyperbolic red herring of the highest order, and quite an enormous and specious leap from suggesting that some past and present U.S. foreign policy needs to be questioned and modified. In the parlance of pop-psychology guru Dr. Phil, he might well ask us "So, how's that 'shoot first, ask questions later' thing working for you?" This is *exactly* what the terrorists want, to galvanize the Muslim world against the U.S. and the West. Why on earth would we want to play right into their hands? -Fred
