Declaring War against terrorism

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: kendall
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 07:28 PM

Clinton Hammond, at least we are trying.

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 06:20 PM

Flattop dont confuse the fact that I live in Nova Scotia, and dedicate my life to saving lives, that I have no experience with the other side of terrorism. To answer your question. We are the Western nations that will be targets for this type of agression. More than likely it will spill over to Canada. Some of the people dont want any kind of agression against this Bin Laden, and clearly he wont be given up lightly. The final option is military, but it is not the only option. I along with many others hope that with frozen assets, limited communication ability, his regime of terror will end by him being given up for trial (again not likely) The final option is to destroy his training camps and followers and attack the supporting regime. I dont want to see any casualties, but be realistic can we allow him and his kind to succeed? The next time something gets attacked, it might make the Halifax explosion look like a firecracker. Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: flattop
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 02:42 PM

Now I'm getting confused Dave, help me.

Who is 'we' and who would you surrender to? Who did you have in mind? (Aren't 'we' both in Nova Scotia at the moment?)

Your opportunities for hugging these guys in candlelight may be past Dave. If that was an option that you were considering, you blew it.

Do you think most of the guilty will be killed by any action that you can conceive of? What ratio of innocents killed to guilty killed do you see? Would you volunteer to be one of the innocents killed if you knew that someone you thought guilty would die at the same time?

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 01:40 PM

"Hugging and lighting candles will not stop people like them from attacking anyone"

THAT should be a line in a song called "A Good Place To Start, A Lousy Place to End"

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: GUEST,Dave (the ancient mariner at work)
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 01:34 PM

Maybe we should just fucking surrender eh? Sure its not a nice name, but make no mistake about it... Call it a Police Action, Mission, or any other name it is war. Hugging and lighting candles will not stop people like them from attacking anyone. What next? ships airplanes nuclear reactors? wait and see... No one is advocating bombing innocent people, but the likelyhood of innocents getting killed is very high. Failure to react to this threat will only mean that the Taliban will become heros and the extremists the victors. I dont want to live in a world dictated to by the likes of Bin Laden. Neither do I hate any race or religion. I do expect the rule of law to apply to this situation; and I expect that the vast majority of the worlds caring citizens agree with that sentiment. Simply put, dont start killing people in this manner and not expect to be hunted down as the rabid dog you have become. Yours, Aye. Dave (with appologies for my rudeness to the Mudcat ladies)

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 01:18 PM

War is itself terrorism in most cases. I make an exception for war that is fought on (or above) one's own geographical territory against an outside invader. When it's on or over someone else's ground it's terrorism.

- LH

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Kim C
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 12:42 PM

Ezackly. We have to treat the cause of the disease and not just the symptoms.

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: flattop
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 12:42 PM

The issue may not be semantics but general semantics, Dave. Semantics is about dialects and word choice whereas general semantics is about how language affects people.

S.I.Hayakawa said that the general semantics addresses questions like 'What are you saying if anything?', 'Are you fooling yourself?'

I thought that the words of our holiest leaders and most honored and admired politicians might have played some small role in slaughter. Words might even have been used to motivate people and in the hijacking of planes. I can't imagine mute people hijacking a bunch of planes.

Lack of clarity in their words can be an issue. Concepts and word patterns might play a part in most conflicts. In the book, Getting to Yes, the authors say, 'Understanding the other side's thinking is not simply a useful activity that will help you solve the problem. Their thinking is the problem.' Their thinking is usually in words.

You can call it semantics and bomb the hell out of people, you might even feel teriffic doing it, but that may not get them any closer to accepting your point of view as the truth and the light.

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: sophocleese
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 12:34 PM

Here is a useful link to some history about American involvement with Pakistan and Afghanistan. A war on terrorism would be useless if we don't address some of the conflicting issues brought up in this article.

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 12:09 PM

My immediate response when I first heard Dubya use the word "war" was "Oh, crap! Here we go again!" It was obvious to me that either he just didn't understand the situation or he was indulging in political rhetoric for the ears of those who somehow feel that an immediate, violent response will make them feel better.

"War" doesn't fit the circumstances any more than it fits when applied to drugs, crime, AIDS, or poverty. Bombing Afghanistan will win the war against terrorism in the same way that bombing Columbia will win the "war against drugs."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Kim C
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 11:59 AM

Why Dave! I have never heard you swear so! ;-)

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 11:40 AM

Pfffft!

You certainly aren't making any head way on them either... The war on drugs is a total joke... the war on crime is a token gesture that no one really expects will make a lick of difference... And well, I'm looking to the private sector for any decent scientific advances, especially in field of genetics...

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: GUEST,Dave (the ancient mariner at work)
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 11:30 AM

It behooves me to remind Clinton that we have not lost the war on Aids, Crime or Drugs. ;-) Aye. Dave

Subject: The War on Terrorism
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 10:45 AM

Hopefully it'll go better than the war on aids, the war on drugs, the war on crime and all the other 'wars' that American has 'declaired' and haven't got a hope in hell of 'winning'...

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: GUEST,Dave (the ancient mariner at work)
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 10:33 AM

Semantics..... War declared against terrorists and the states that support them is a plain and simple statement that everyone (even translated) understands. Fact: War has been declared on any state or individual that will murder Americans to achieve political aims in another country. Fact: When the world trade building was hit by civilian aircraft, they missed America and hit The World. Over forty countries lost people during this attack. There are enough threads to sink a battleship on this fucking subject, give it a rest for fucks sake. Yours, Aye. Dave (on the front line)

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: Bagpuss
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 10:27 AM

And wouldn't that make the US at war with itself. There are numerous documented examples of the US funding terrorist groups to overthrow governments who are too close to communist for america's liking. Oh, I'm sorry? They were freedom fighters not terrorists?

And don't forget Nelson Mandela was once a terrorist...

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 10:21 AM

The phrase 'declaring war on terrorism' does not sit easily with me either. If we have 'just' declared war on terrorism, what the hell have we been doing for the last 30 years?

Brian

Subject: RE: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: flattop
Date: 19 Sep 01 - 09:46 AM

Writing to cc last week and talking to a businessman on Monday, I started to wonder if most of the confusion and rhetoric wasn't on the American side. I don't see any reason why we should expect a calmer, more reasoned reaction from Jerry Falwell than Osama Bin Laden, both are leaders with the level of intelligence that their followers demand. However, it seems to me that the American media is running way ahead of 'the enemy' in noise and disconcertion. Someone pointed out that the hijackers didn't even leave suicide notes. CNN is more than making up for their silence.

In a review of a novel by an American Jewish author, Gore Vidal noted that the sex scenes failed because American Jewish writers have had trouble getting under the American gentiles' skins, let alone their foreskins. Understanding people who attack us may be an even more difficult problem.

We have been horrified by scenes from New York but it is quite possible that 'the enemy' does not see their actions of last week as terrorism at all. They may not see World trade Center workers as innocent civilians. It quite possible that they see the World Trade Center as a strategic military target and the workers as soldiers in a financial system that oppresses them and kills them. If they believe the claims that over a million people have died in Iraq alone as a result of an American led and American enforced embargo, then the attacks may seem modest to them. They may see the attack as a wildly successful and relatively surgical strategic military hit rather than an act of terrorism. To misunderstand their thinking in what looks like modernized guerilla warfare could be a costly mistake.

The businessman, a Harvard MBA, drove home my earlier thoughts when he told me that whenever he was in New York and when he visited the World Trade Center he had always been nervous because New York was such a visible and vulnerable target for surprise nuclear attack by any nut in the world. Any nuclear attack would have been many times worse. America developed the nuclear technology that is becoming more available around the world and even America has its fair share of Falwells. Truely frightening if we care to think about it. Perhaps dangerous if we don't (although I'm not sure what we can do about it.)

The Halifax Herald ran two interesting news wire stories yesterday that shine different lights into the darkness. Mudcatters have raised similar issues but the reporters' pencil marks draw interesting pictures. Note how low key the rhetoric is in Afghanistan. Perhaps the western world could give 'the enemy' CNN as an aid package and drive them completely crazy.

www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/loadmain?2001/09/18+151.raw

www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/loadmain?2001/09/18+150.raw

Subject: Declaring War againt terrorism
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 01 - 04:32 PM

From ,a href="http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=94353">Today's Indepedent

What is a declaration of war against terrorism, apart from a rhetorical device?

"Whatever the technical and legal issues about a declaration of war," the Prime Minister said yesterday, "the fact is that we are at war with terrorism." Never mind the technical and legal issues, there is the plain meaning of words. It is only meaningful to declare war on a state or a military power; anything else is metaphor.

You cannot declare war on a tactic; it is as if President Roosevelt responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by declaring war on bombing.

It does not even make much sense to declare war on terrorists.

When President Bush solemnly announces that the United States is on a war footing and calls up the reservists, he does not seriously intend to mobilise resources against Eta, the Tamil Tigers or the Real IRA.

Irish terrorism is an illuminating case: when it comes to harbouring terrorists, the pre-Clinton US record of tolerating IRA fundraising and refusing to extradite IRA suspects does not bear close scrutiny.

We cannot even be sure that Osama bin Laden was behind the 11 September attacks. The US – and Britain – is thus at war with only a "prime suspect".

This is a war which, like the war against drugs, debases the language. There may yet be a real war, of course. If the US and its allies commit forces to fighting in Afghanistan there will, of course, be casualties on the Nato side, unlike the war in Kosovo or, in significant numbers, the Gulf war. That could lead the West into a war like Vietnam, but we are, we hope, a long way from that yet.

We are being purist, possibly even pedantic.

President Bush needs to respond rhetorically to the grief, anger and frustration of American opinion.

Thus the geniuses of the presentational arts give us Operation Noble Eagle, while the intelligence agencies get on with the essentially rather passive job of working out who was behind the atrocities and the military planners with that of working out how to reach them. It is possible that by talking tough and acting cautiously George Bush is pursuing a sensible, pragmatic strategy. Meanwhile, Tony Blair is pursuing a similar approach: he has attracted attention in the US for his "shoulder to shoulder" stance of unqualified support, thus ensuring that, when in private he advises restraint, he will be taken seriously.

There are dangers in the over-use of the language of war, however. It raises the expectation of an early, overwhelming and probably indiscriminate military response.

If that does not happen, public opinion in America may prove harder to mobilise when it comes to the resolve and expense needed to follow through on what President Bush has accepted will be a long and difficult process.

A secondary danger is that the rhetoric of war will be used to justify intolerance. Although the lives of US or British service personnel are not yet at stake, there is already an assumption, which would be wrong even if they were at risk, that questioning the policy of national leaders is collaborating with terrorists.

This is particularly strong in the US, which has a long tradition of non-partisan support for the presidency at times of crisis. But it is happening here too, as it did in the Falklands and Gulf wars.

Any suggestion that aggressive military action against suspects in Afghanistan might be counter-productive (because it could recruit a new generation of suicide terrorists), is treated in some quarters as "left-wing bias".

Greg Dyke, the director general of the BBC, was wrong to apologise for last week's edition of Question Time, in which members of the studio audience said that the US ought to try to understand why it was so hated by some Muslims. [bold is mine]

It is vitally important, if this is indeed a war between civilisation and fanaticism, as President Bush and Mr Blair have said, that it is fought in the name of civilised values.

Most people will accept some restrictions on civil liberties for the sake of protection against terrorism – luggage and personal searches, for example. The arguments about identity cards and DNA records, meanwhile, are mostly those of practicality and effectiveness rather than principle.

What they should never accept, however, except in cases of incitement to violence, are restrictions on the right of free expression.

Mr Blair, to his credit, recalled Parliament precisely so that there could be an open debate, and told CNN that, "if people want to be anti-British or anti-American, we're democrats, we believe that people have the right to express their views".

He also accepted that all he was offering the US at this stage was words of support. "That is the easy part. The hard part starts when you actually take the action."

Let us hope that the weekend's inflated language has not prejudiced the sustained work needed to make the world safer from terrorists when the hard decisions do need to be taken.