mbs: Any proposal here is a gamble w/unknown odds. I would also like to make a distinction between proposing to bomb, and acquiesing (not protesting) to bombing. If I was king I might choose a different course. I don't disclaim responsibility altogether, but I don't think I have to embrace it either. I'm not in charge.
> gamble there is no way of maintaining that it fullfill what the American
> people allegedly crave - justice and assurance that this won't happen
> again/ Max thinks that the bombing will work if there are no more
> attacks on the scale of that disaster. But not only is that sentiment
> lacking in a statistical framework for verification, since the frequence
> of WTC-scale attacks is so tiny, it is also in practice an unfalsifiable
> proposition, because any future attack can be attributed to "not enough
> bombing". Lucky we've been discussing Kuhn...
mbs: I am happy to be more precise. I would say that after next year's spring offensive, if there are no more explicit attacks on targets in the U.S. resulting in mass deaths for the next two years, and no mega-attacks for the next five years, the U.S. response could be looked upon as having worked on one level. I don't count the anthrax stuff as attacks on a large scale, and the source of the latter is in considerable doubt.
TO: > Max and others seem to me to be a little reckless. In my opinion,
mbs: it's hard to be reckless sitting at a keyboard.
TO: > bombing innocent Afghani civilians is a reductio ad absurdum of any
> policy against terror, as well as being simply stupid, as it will surely
> create more resentment and more recruits to the terrorist cause. It
> provides ex post facto justification for Osama bin Laden's claims about
> the United States; people will surely listen to the other part of his
> message, the fanatical fundamentalist part, the more this part is
> proven. Little wonder, as this was in all likelihood the calculation
mbs: use of the word "surely" does not strengthen your arguments.
TO: > behind the attacks on September 11. Maybe you'll say "oh, but any
> military action will kill civilians" - well, yes, I am sure bin Laden
> was perfectly aware of this, and banking on it.
mbs: I'm sure too. I also believe that the US Gov has figured this out.
TO: > This is all made worse by the fact we refuse to negotiate bin Laden's
> extradition with the Taliban, who offered to turn him over. If that was
> a bluff, we should have called it - we do want to prosecute him, right?
> (or maybe there is a fear that if we took him to a fair court, the case
> would not be strong enough... who knows?)
mbs: trials in this context are bad military strategy. a trial would help build his network. Trials are for criminals, and this is war.
TO: > There was all along the current fiasco a possibility of forming a
> coalition not with loony leftists, who are irrelevant, but with the less
> insane rightwingers - who might be persuaded that bombing Afghanistan
> was to answer bin Laden's prayers. If Max and others need human
> sacrifices, or can tolerate them in name of "justice", then too bad for
> them. I think we'd get a better hearing from the "security" folks, the
> more perceptive of whom know this current war will worsen our situation.
mbs: basically you have a pacifist position. Logical extension of your ban on innocent casualties is complete renunciation of the use of force. Even the cops create innocent victims when they arrest people. You are saying there are, can be, or have been no just wars. I don't buy it.
I've said I'm no security expert. I suspect you aren't either. Real experts are usually more equivocal.
TO: > Justice? What justice is there in unknown and possibly negative
> punishment for the guilty (ie. martirdom), who are in turn not proven
> to be actually guilty and resulting in unknown and possibly negative
> "deterence" - all pursued by certain and terrible means?
mbs: see pacifism, above.
TO: > The terrible fact, which paralises the left is that in our world,
there
> can be no justice for a September 11, much as there can be no justice
> for the Holocaust or for the millions of dead in America's shadow. The
> best we can do is erect a monument in their memory, perhaps one that
> speaks "never again."
mbs: stopping the holocaust was an act of justice, as would be preventing further terrorist atrocities.
TO: Better yet, we can try to create a world where
> there is a possibility of justice. I can think of no better such effort
> than trying to solve this matter peacefully, by pusuing those means Max
> and others consider to be unpredictable, but which are no more
> unpredictable than war, namely, to try coopting the Taliban,
> undermining Al-Qaeda's support with concessions and so on and so forth,
> ultimately dealing with the accused in a fair and legal way. Max and
mbs: above it was surely this and surely that, but now you admit your position is no more certain than mine. I agree, though certainties aside I do find the idea of offering concessions to al-qaida to be repulsive. After all, they are fascists. Bismark may have been brutal, but he wasn't as bad as what was to follow.
> Kelly may think that this is likely to show terrorists that they can win
> concessions. Or it might show them that America can act rationally. Who
> knows? We don't - but we do know that this war is stirring up massive
> support for the terrorists anyway, so _we_ have nothing to loose except
> the oportunity to conquer Afghanistan. Not to mention it does nothing to
> build an alternative to terror - either for us or for moslem radicals.
> We are erecting a huge monument of skulls which fulfills every one of
> the terrorist sympathiser's fears and which does nothing to honor the
> dead. The present war is certainly not saying "never again" - how could
> it, following as it does the terrorist's own logic?
mbs: this is way overheated. U.S. forces in Afg are not the Khmer Rouge. again a failure to distinguish fascism from bourgeois militarism.
TO: > The point Nathan makes is a bit like standing next to one of Pol Pot's
> skull pyramids and saying "Jeez, but if only we had a better idea of an
> alternative, maybe we could convince some of the people who support
> building these things that it may not be so nice after all." Maybe you
> think this is hyperbole - but according to the UN estimates, millions of
> people are directly threatened with starvation by our current actions.
> How tall does the pyramid have to be before we start noticing it was
> wrong at any size?
>
> Of course this is not going to win converts to my cause, and I apologise
> if I seem abrasive. I have no alternative course of action for justice
> for bin Laden. As far as I am concerned, the whatever possibility of
> justice afforded by our international institutions evaporated with the
> first American bomb. I see the job of the left being to point at the
> growing pile of corpses and say "not this way." Then, the other job is
> to talk about how it might be done otherwise. But the problem here is
> that anything is better than killing millions of defenseless people -
> and biting the bullet that there can be no justice in the current world
> is hardly the worst alternative. Thiago Oppermann
mbs: But you haven't said how 'it' would be done otherwise. All you've raised are things that tell Osama he's on the right track.
You seem to revolve around the philosophic issue, do I have the right to try and save my life if it means the deaths of innocent people? This may be easier to answer if you're not one of those threatened. What is clear is that if people are threatened, they will try to respond in a way that elevates their own survival to the highest moral imperative. Do you really expect otherwise?
Alternatively, you go to the practical approach -- U.S. force is not merely unethical, it will backfire in its own terms. This assumes your analytical capacity surpasses the collective powers of the U.S. Gov. This I doubt, no disrespect intended.