Kill em alll ((Was: Re:[lbo-talk] Randians: Kill--Don't Expel--Arafat)

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 12 09:00:54 PDT 2003


My Dad used to joke, "When all else fails, use brute force." Unfortunately, the idea abounds, maybe created or furthered in this country by Hollywood action movies, who knows, that brute force is where you _start_, and that if you just kill all the unbelievers, everything will be OK. The idea that killing people might be part of the problem is taken aas proof that you are dreamy-eyed utopian, a nonserious lacy-pants-wearing pansy, not tough and manly manly man. The tough and manly thing to do is to kill people, you see.

Limp-wristedly yours

jks (still as a general rule opposed to killing people)

--- Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Doug posted (letter from David Holcberg, Ayn Rand
> Institute):
>
>
> Taking him [Arafat] out would not only advance the
> prospects for peace in the region but would show to
> every Palestinian terrorist that Israel means
> business
> and that the days of moral cowardice and appeasement
> towards its enemies are over; it would show that
> Israel will no longer cave in to "world opinion" or
> to
> pressure from American presidents.
>
> **********
>
>
> Randian stupidities aside, we can see that faith in
> force escalation as a method for ending hostilities
> is
> commonly held around the globe. You hear all sorts
> of
> people stating it in one form or another everyday.
>
> It's odd that this belief should persist when
> there's
> a mountain of evidence pointing to the opposite
> conclusion - particularly in the present age when
> technology and knowledge dispersal have given each
> individual the ability to participate in low scale
> warfare.
>
> We know that the US Calvary and settlers used force
> escalation to repress (and nearly wipe out) plains
> tribes such as the Lakota in the 19th century. But
> things would have been far less settled if the
> tribal
> groups had access to the means used by terrorists
> now.
>
> I think military wonks call the new situation fourth
> generation warfare.
>
> Just yesterday, a colleague told me that he felt the
> US wasn't being "ruthless enough" in the war on
> terror(tm). If only we amped up the pace - bombing
> more, invading more, using nukes, essentially going
> completely mad in our application of technodeath
> methodologies "the terrorists would know we mean
> business and stand the fuck down."
>
> I suggested that intelligence and old fashioned
> detective work would go farther, harm fewer
> innocents
> and, in the process, produce fewer new nihilists.
>
> He was shocked at my naivete.
>
> Force is apparently all this breed of subhuman - the
> terrorist - who apparently rose from the murky
> depths
> of the earth uncaused understands. "But" I said,
> "anyone can at anytime choose to become what we call
> a
> terrorist. It's not a tribe of people who can be
> penned in or genocided off the face of the earth.
> It's
> a mode of action, like being a bank robber, that's
> available to just about anyone. So killing lots of
> people to 'prove your point', unless you kill
> everyone
> but a carefully monitored few, is an evil act that
> solves nothing."
>
> "No" he insisted, "more force is what's needed."
>
>
> This is a pretty common notion.
>
>
> We have a tendency to believe all sorts of things in
> spite of contradictory evidence. I think it's one
> of
> our many collective cognitive weaknesses as a
> species.
> Maybe it served some useful function during our
> evolution. Maybe it's just a flaw in our wiring
> that
> was never helpful.
>
> It certainly is not helping us now, in the nuclear
> age
> of terror, climate change and quite literally
> dead-end
> global economics.
>
>
> DRM
>
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