On Sun, 4 Nov 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Analogously in Vietnam, the enemy mingled with the populace, so that even with the best of intentions, US forces wound up killing a lot of ordinary civilians, a problem made far worse by the stupid "body count" policy, where young ambitious officers, like the future Senator Kerrey, were apt to rack up very large body counts by any means convenient.
Senator Kerrey was cerrtainly a mass murderer, and the guardsmen who stopped her from flying were certainly thugs, but the reason there are arguably grounds for overlooking Kerrey's cynical murders and the guardsmen's thuggery ,is that in the face of this quite real threat even good people will do things that are hard to distinguish from the things that bad people do.
Amazing! Here you make an "argument" that mass-murder is an acceptable behaviour, while you are simultaneously arguing that a political BELIEF is *not*.
--digsig James A. Donald
This is the exact kind of "logic" and "policy" that gets the US attacked in the first place James. Ultimately, the problem isn't this woman's political beliefs - it's YOUR political beliefs. And the fact that the USG both shares them and *lives by them*. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------