And there were only military personnel in that hotel and around it on the streets or around the area where the missles were launched from????
With Japan on the brink, the mass vaporization of thousands of civilians at Hiroshima and then again at Nagasaki, were unconscionable, disgraceful acts - beyond rationalization. Truman was a mass murderer.
And since morality between Christian and Islamic nations is relative, there are many in Islamic states who would flip Ian's argument, calling the suicide bombers of Al-Qaeda and Hamas the Good people bombing the bad people (the US and Israel). It all looks very different if you are sitting on the other side of the fence. I really have no problems with the attack on Wolfowitz, and I mean that without rancor or malice towards him personally. To call the attack terrorist opens a whole can of worms as to what is and what is not a terrorist act. Is is just because we declared "military action" to be complete (Bush's speech on the aircraft carrier) that Iraq is no longer a war zone? In my opinion, in a war zone, military targets are fair game. I'm not a military man or a politician, but the distinction seems pretty clear. Iraq is not a democracy yet, and at the rate our soldiers are dying over there, it has to be considered a hostile state. Until that happens, until there is lasting peace in Iraq, this stuff is going to happen pretty consistently. Was this really a surprise to anyone? People had to know that Wolfowitz was a target if they were willing to target humanitarian (yes, this could be considered terrorist) entities such as the Red Cross in today's bombing. An attack on the #2 in the department of defense is no too different than targetting Qusay or Uday Hussein.
http://www.deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2003_08_07_0330.php I found this linked at frontpagemag.com I wonder if they know that it is a joke? It's still pretty funny. I wonder if suicide bombers are going to move out of Israel & into countries with lower workers' comp rates? Maybe Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc will send delegations to Israel to attract suicide bomber operations; just like Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, etc send delegations to California to lure business?
That's unfair. He could get hurt. When he and Bush and the rest were ducking the draft, it wasn't so they could get shot up later. Military service is for the tax paying underclasses.
The Bushies claim that Wolfowitz was not the target. Also, W claims that the boldness of the attacks suggest that things are going better for our interests in Iraq, in that the opposition is getting more "desperate." Are the Bushies THAT stupid, or do they think we are that stupid?
"Feel the luuuve" from Jumbaltt: "Druze Chief Rues Rockets Missed Wolfowitz in Iraq BEIRUT (Reuters) - A top Lebanese politician enraged the American embassy in Beirut Monday by saying he hoped the next attack on the number two in the Defense Department would prove fatal. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt described Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as a "virus" who needed to be destroyed, a day after the American emerged unscathed from a guerrilla rocket attack on the fortified Baghdad hotel where he was staying. The U.S. embassy described Jumblatt's remarks as "outrageous." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031027/wl_nm/iraq_lebanon_wolfowitz_dc_1
I haven't noticed any conservatives here talking about liberals they'd like to see killed. Interesting.
How can it be a topic dodge when I answered his question directly? Why don't you just admit that your definition of terrorism means that you think Harry Truman was a terrorist in WWII? After all, we didn't have a direct target in Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Either answer yes or no, or explain how those bombs didn't fit into your definition.
That's funny, he didn't ask a question, and certainly didn't bring up WWII. You still won't answer if Wolfie should have called the al-Rashid attack "terrorism". You answer that, and then maybe we can talk about Truman and the bomb.
Yes, Wolfie was right in calling the attack "terrorism". As I stated in previous notes, killing when enacted by the "good guys" to extract the "bad guys" is legitimate. Your problem is that you're having difficulty identifying the "good" from the "bad". How you equate the moralism of the western nations who are trying to end terrorism with the actions taken by Al-Qaeda and their cohorts is beyond me.
I find your definition very interesting, Ian. First, you have made "terrorist" a word without any objective meaning - it is no longer a descriptor for a type of attack, but simply a descriptor for the person who does the attack. Second, you have attached it to a morality that is totally divorced from any sort of normative behavior at all - the term "good" and "evil" are simply descriptors of which side you belong on. The good side can do the exact same thing as the evil side, and the good side will still be good and the evil side will still be evil no matter what. This is very similar to what Nietzsche describes in Beyond Good and Evil, where the "slave" class defines good and evil based on what is their nature and what is not their nature (that is, in the "master's" nature). The "slave" is good because he is a "slave", not because of what he does or does not do. The problem with this is that it is a very limited philosophy, with no tools for determining methods of self-improvement or even self-description beyond the "me good you bad" stage. And similarly, the definition of "terrorist" you posit removes any ability to describe what is going on or how to change it. It seems that you would answer the following questions this way: What is a terrorist act? It is an attack from the enemy. What does the enemy do it? It is in his evil nature to strike out and destroy. How do I prevent terrorist acts? You cannot. It is in the nature of the enemy to attack. How do I stop terrorist acts? You must either beat him into submission or destroy him totally. For a long time I though that the word "terrorist" was mostly useless. It was either simply a pejorative, or an amorphous term that doesn't really describe anything. The problem is that the term has been twisted by its use in media reporting, mostly of fighting in Israel but especially since the Sept 11 attacks. The term has become connected to people whose actions are terrible and not at all understandable to us in the West. And thus, we cannot use the term to describe anything we do because we do not want to be linked to those people that do those acts. But the word does have a real meaning, and a useful one at that. Terrorism is simply the use of terror to being about political change. It is a kind of indirect method of warfare. This is a morality-free definition. Americans can and have done this kind of terrorism, and there is nothing wrong with it, as such. In fact, if you define a moral war action as one that brings about the ending with the fewest amount of casualties and destruction, then terrorism is the most moral kind of warfare. There are even times when the receiving side are happy to be the victims of terrorism. England was in serious trouble when Germany was bombing their airfields and radar sites. But when the Nazis switched to a terror style attack instead of using the direct method of attack, it gave England the chance to recover it warmaking ability and reduce German's warmaking ability at only the cost of civilian losses. You can see what using the original definition gives you by going back to those questions I asked: What is a terrorist act? It is a kind of warfare where one side uses some amount of violence in order to imply a greater use of violence in the future, in the hope of causing the other side to change its political stance. What does the enemy do it? He hopes to gain political change at an extremely low cost. This is very beneficial when the enemy does not have a lot of fighting power in the first place. How do I prevent terrorist acts? By providing alternate means of achieving the political ends (democracy, rights to citizens, negotiation) or by distraction (providing wealth, providing stable family life, propaganda, introducing a more pressing enemy or problem to deal with). How do I stop terrorist acts? 1) By utilizing your own warmaking ability, in any capacity you are capable or willing to do. 2) By giving in to the political demands. 3) By proving the same outlets as in the prevention question.
Is it just me, or does Ian's foreign policy explanation here most closely resemble a professional wrestling plot? When the bad guy hits his opponent with a chair the crowd boos, but when the good guy does it everyone cheers. Vince McMahon would fit right in on the NSC advisory board.
From American Heritage: Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." How was Hiroshima and Nagasaki NOT terrorism by this definition? If you want to say that the US Govt. is not an "organized" group, then I guess you may weasel out of it. But dropping the bomb on civilians in order to intimidate the Japanese Govt. is exactly what this was. And it was very different from attacking primarily military targets.
So there was a smarter version of the "Saddam Dead - Confirmation in 72 Hours" post that you chose not to make?