On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Why not? It is actually very good news that so many countries are
> pulling together to stop insanities like that which occurred on
> Tuesday.
Excellent. We're talking about ground troops, then. Because the sigint is
yet incapable of tracking small bands of people from high above, and tell
it apart from innocents, and you can't send in robotic fighters to
slaughter them. So, uniformed people have to do it.
So, we're talking about more body bags. How many more body bags do you
think the U.S. will tolerate, especially after what has happened? I don't
have to ask to know that Germany as a member of NATO will get very cold
feet when we're talking about 10 dead young men. The European NATO as a
whole is similiarly constrained. If you can get Russians to cooperate you
will push the envelope further, but you might not like their methods.
For obvious reasons purely technological warfare against a small group of
extremists hiding in what is one of the poorest, most abused nations in
the world (starting with the British involvement, as Charlie so helpfully
pointed out) is atrocious.
You will get your war. There's no need asking for it extra, the people on
the street are clamoring for it loud enough. At this point every sane and
rational person should not only stop amplifying hate but try to spread
information and moderation amongst those who are willing to listen.
Retaliation always overshoots, and this time it looks it will overshoot
very badly. Try to limit the damage.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:47 MDT