Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/12

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Terror
From: Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 14:50:45 -0400

on 9/12/01 2:13 PM, Austin Franklin at darkroom@ix.netcom.com wrote:

>> and further realize that we
>> (United States) have also annihilated tens of thousands of
>> civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
> 
> I can't imagine for the life of me what your point was in making "this kind"
> of statement.

presumably that there are plenty of precedents for the mass killing of
civilians in the pursuit of a specific geopolitical goal, whatever you think
of the goal itself. clearly the scene the morning after Nagasaki must have
been quite beyond anything we have seen on CNN in the last 24 hrs, even if
they are  both beyond the scope of human contemplation.

My point is that f you think the goal was good and that the means were
proportionate to the ends, you are unlikely to classify either act as
terrorism. If you disagree with the goal or you consider the act
disproportionate you may classify either act as terrorism.

like it or not there are many people, not just Bin Laden's followers, who
consider the WTC bombing just act, just as many millions of Americans
consider Hiroshima a just act, just as many Britons consider the bombing of
Dresden was a just act, just as many Germans consider the Blitz and the
bombing of Coventry a just act. Probably Herod thought the slaughter of the
infants was justified. Pol Pot had plenty of arguments for the terror in
Cambodia. The Chatila (?sp) camps in the mid-east? My Lai? The arguments
rage. I am not trying to equate all these ghastly events but simply point
out that there is no universal agreement about what constitutes a
justifiable act of war and what is an act of terrorism.

which is why again I think we should drop the rhetoric of terrorism and
adopt the rhetoric of warfare, which seems ten times clearer to me whichever
side you are on.

- -- 
John Brownlow

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com

Replies: Reply from Mark Rabiner <mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com> (Re: [Leica] Terror)