-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Anonymous <nobody@replay.com> wrote:

...

Every day that passes, I'm more convinced that McVeigh did the right thing. Some innocents died, but, hey, war is hell. Broken eggs and all that.

This speaks for itself. Only an utterly depraved, sick, and vicious individual could support the killings in Oklahoma City. This is the man who many would say is the most respected on the list.

I suppose it could be true that after consideration, only a morally bad or evil person would view positively the Oklahoma City bombing. However, the discussion is valuable and it is a productive one in which to engage. The morality of war is an exceptionally important question to resolve. What is interesting about Timothy McVeigh's world view is how astonishingly similar it is to the view of most people in the organizations he is attacking or, indeed, the view of most people in American society or even the world. In general, the massacre of innocents is considered "depraved" when the acts are committed by those far from the levers of power. The USG was exposed to some criticism in the Gulf War, but much less than would be proportional to the number of innocents who died. For the most part, the people who die in modern war are non-combatants. McVeigh apparently found it to be acceptable to kill, for the most part, a bunch of office workers to get at his actual target the ATF offices on the top floor of the building. (I have no idea whether he knew of the day care center and whether this would have affected his decisions.) Generally, when a military mind is confronted with a shield of innocents, the innocents won't last long. Once this reasoning is accepted, and it is widely, the real question is whether the war is justified. After seeing the horrifying picture of the body of an 8 year old girl who was gassed and then burned at Waco, it's difficult to dismiss war as a moral and just response. For those who have not seen this picture, the poor child's arms and legs were horribly twisted into unnatural positions as a consequence of cyanide poisoning which causes muscles to violently contract. The muscles in the back and on the back of the legs are stronger than the other muscles. In executions, the contractions can be so violent as to break bones. Gassing is particularly hard on children as they typically will not have closely fitting gas masks. (Children come in all sizes, but the available gas masks may often do not.) While some aspects of what happened at Waco are debatable, there is no question that representatives of the United States government consciously decided to gas the people in the house. This was not a mistake made in a time critical situation. It was carefully planned. It is my sense that we must not allow these sorts of acts to occur in the future. I feel quite strongly about this. "The System" failed to prevent the murders and it failed to prosecute even a single Federal official for the crimes committed. Crimes which can certainly be compared to "crimes against humanity". Little seems to be publicly known of the responsibility of the various levels of the chain of command. We do know that there was a great deal of communication with the highest levels of the United States government. William Jefferson Clinton and Janet Reno may not be guilty of premeditated murder. But, a series of fair trials would have cleared up this question. Instead, some of the surviving victims were tried. Given that the government itself committed the atrocities and the mechanisms to discourage future atrocities through public condemnation and punishment were not invoked, it is clear that the solution will not come from "within the system." McVeigh apparently decided that the proper response was a war on the United States government with the attendant loss of innocents. This decision expresses a moral code indistinguishable from that of most officials in the government itself. McVeigh even implied that his government is his "great teacher"! In my view, this is an error. Surely we can choose better moral teachers than the United States government! Returning to Tim May's comment that he was feeling sympathetic with Tim McVeigh's decisions, it seems to me that it is understandable why such a thought would cross the mind of a person who is not morally bad or evil. However, it may be that after thought and discussion that a person with sound morals and good intentions may also decide that McVeigh's actions should not be emulated. The important word here is "discussion". The interesting property of discussion is that one does not always know at the beginning what one will believe at the end. That's why they are worth having. That's why it is not "utterly depraved, sick, and vicious" for somebody to discuss an idea, even one with which we do not agree. Most people are not pacifists. Brian Riley related an experience he had in Vietnam in which somebody came running out of the bushes with a bayoneted SKS rifle. It would be hard to find anybody who wouldn't do the obvious thing in this situation. That said, I do not believe that McVeigh did the right thing. Few of his victims can be said to be responsible for the actions taken at Waco. And the problem with the use of violence is that it is hard to control and the consequences of the act are often hard to predict. Violence is often dangerous to the user. Those participating in the use of organized violence seldom have much choice in the targets, type, or quantity of the violence employed. Violence is, in nearly every case, a poor investment of time, money, and energy. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNHDrg5aWtjSmRH/5AQFCigf8CWGqSxP43jcNsrtYGgUWCyNjK4kcZHU/ EaaCx3BNlwpTStUxdqtAC+phhjvjXvJD+C/44RqJOMISzu2fD9+QpLXGY4PnD4vt hur8oFVLOcKgZLOaBx4QpAfrNeahhKE5AOhcaqgXvqxKUpTHb97tZsTGo/ob0Jfp aGBJ5MhUVvHEJAwo2PHsnSEiBxVzJKI6nfWYlMaNvVrkhrh7TakSEO9t4lp6Jo4q AW/SYblOY4jQiyNxtphCUQOWPx09gUaA6Ej/jwuDp2l49hngZ5AlaylkY9+Oqow1 s0kO+cQrFxtLEFO8PN8xX9Qbl9C0w9HdoyEiRxDfl9fQyMxDVRZOvg== =QhN7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----