In a message dated 11/23/01 10:58:40 AM, lee@piclab.com writes:
>> > You needn't stretch to find worse US parallels. Dresden, Hiroshima,
>> > and Nagasaki were all straight-up terrorist acts - trying to force
>> > action onto governments/societies by killing civilians in areas of
>> > minimal military importance.
>
>Dresen, certainly, because the war was pretty much already over
>and it didn't accomplish anything but a sense of retribution,
>which I agree isn't as effective in international relations as
>it might be in interpersonal ones.
>
>But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were different: at the time, there
>was no reason to belive the war wouldn't continue for a long
>time, at the cost of many thousands of lives. A show of
>devastating, overwhelming, terrifying force against an enemy
>that was clearly the agressor, leaving him no choice but total
>unconditional surrender, accomplished exactly the right goal:
>war over, lives saved, no questions.
But the action wasn't against the aggressor or even the aggressor's
assets. It was taken against tens of thousands of basically
innocent people who just happened to live in the wrong city.
Yes, the idea was that the horrible deaths of thousands of
innocents would force the government of those people to surrender
- exactly what the WTC bombers were trying to do, just on a
larger scale. Are you saying terrorism is OK if it works?
Or if it's done in a "good cause"?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:21 MDT