-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 on Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 03:45:07PM -0700, Steve Schear (schear@lvcm.com) wrote:
At 03:25 PM 9/30/2001 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote:
One of the most asinine arguments I've heard to date was a commentator on the BBC/PRI "The World" radio program a couple of weeks back. Her statement was that by calling this "a war", the US was validating the deaths at the WTC/P5 attacks as casualties of war.
Bollox.
Deaths aren't justified or not. What declaring war (formally or otherwise) does is put both combatents and other parties on notice (as the US was most decidedly not prior to the attacks) that there is a state of armed hostilities. Actions supportive of the (admittedly ill defined) enemy may be construed as acts of war against the US. And innocents are best advised to stay out of the hot zone.
This is IMHO naive. Have you ever been in a brawl?
Have you ever been in a brawl where one side (or both) has friends?
Unlike most silver screen fights my experience is that the first person to get in a good one usually decks the opponent and its over. If the first one to throw the punch can sneak up on the opponent or create over confidence in the other party by getting them to think that no violent reply will be forthcoming if attacked (in New York we called that "sucker punching") then the odds of success are that much more increased. "The Art of War" is still a good source of combat advice.
Sucker punching tends to violate the norms of honorable conduct. If you down the first guy, but have to deal with three of his friends, the issue becomes a bit less clear cut. Concepts of "unfair advantage" tend to escalate: sucker punches lead to friends, knives, back alleys, and/or heat. That's more or less where the perps of the 9/11 attacks find themselves at the moment. The other side of the argument is the bee'n'the bull theory. Sure, the bee can get in the first lick, but you've now got one pissed-off bull. If your sucker punch *doesn't* land the fellow, you've got consequences to deal with. I'd say the US is currently stung, but by no means hurting in any diminished-capacity sense of the word. This doesn't strike be as good strategic thinking on our oponents' part. I did make a halfhearted attempt to search through TAoW looking at strategic guidelines. I'll give it another shot and see what I turn up. Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7t6X8OEeIn1XyubARApr5AJwPUGhTsll52UypCfAqua/WFAssIQCfUy1Z iPG8lP8cqvwHdGTseIKXBc4= =tMHU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----