Maine National Guard bars Green Party leader from flying

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
On Sun, 4 Nov 2001 jamesd at 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.

On 4 Nov 2001, at 12:48, measl at mfn.org wrote:
> Amazing!  Here you make an "argument" that mass-murder is
> an acceptable behaviour, while you are simultaneously
> arguing that a political BELIEF is *not*.

Not what I said.  Did not say a political belief was
unacceptable behavior, did not say Senator Kerrey's mass
murder was acceptable behavior.

What I said is that guerrila warfare and terrorism results in
situations where it is hard to distinguish between mass
murder and self defence, and hard to distinguish between
political repression and routine safety precautions.  Senator
Kerrey (Democrat Party) can claim, implausibly, that he was
defending against communist aggression, rather than inflating
his body count in order to secure advancement, and we cannot
prove otherwise, though it hardly seems plausible.

The guardsmen can plausibly claim they were taking sensible
precautions against an undeniably real terrorist threat,
rather than repressing someone for their political beliefs. 
We cannot prove otherwise, and it may well be true. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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