Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Originally posted by: Farang
ProfJohn, still waiting on you to refute Zinn's point. You seem more interested in blasting rapid-fire bullshit than in engaging in any kind of real discussion.
And has anyone told you you're a total joke, trying to suggest you're a professor with both your username and diploma avatar? Let me guess the thought process. . . 'The random bursts of drivel I spew from my mouth are not enough to make credible arguments.. if people think I'm an educated man and not some blathering idiot this shall surely be more convincing!'
What point am I suppose to refute?
This one?
?The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent?
I don?t think it needs to be refuted. Anyone with a half a brain who isn?t a member of the anti-war brigade will understand it as an idiotic statement.
Aerial bombardment is done to degrade the enemy?s ability to fight and thus end wars.
So is suicide bombing. It's one of the few and most effective tactics when faced with an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
Suicide bombing is done to kill civilians and has no legitimate military purpose.
It has a very legitimate 'military purpose' from the view of the bombers' side - it's one of the few ways to fight an overwhelmingly powerful opponent that has any effect.
The purpose is to weaken 'the enemy', which includes a large civilian population who is paying for the oppression and typically allowing it to go on, maybe not paying attention.
Just ask yourself why the US has often supported terrorism in the past - in places such as North Vietnam in the early 60's (the Gulf of Tonkin was involving supposed attacks on US ships escorting US_trained South Vietnamese terrorists into North Vietnam), or Castro's Cuba in the same time frame, or Reagan's sponsoring non-state terrorists like the Contra Army in Nicaragaua (which successfully pressured the population to vote out Noriega) or state terrorism (e.g., El Salvador). Why did the founders of Israel use terrorism?
Ask yourself how oppression would be challenged without terrorism, by the Palestinians (maybe they could get another UN vote), or by Chechens against Putin.
Of course it's easy to condemn the killing of civilians - but can you show me many examples of terrorism where the terrorists don't feel they're responding to the wrongful killings of their own civilians? You completely miss the point attributed to Zinn above, that ignoring the civilian casualties and bombing anyway is the *same disregard* for innocent life that a desperate group killing civilians as the only tactic they have to oppose an oppressor, are similar morally.
It seems to me that you are simply myopic on the issue - since you are not afraid of any oppressor, of being bombed by an overwhelming military force, you don't care about that point of view; since you are more worried about the suicide bomber, that could affect you, you do condemn that. Dropping Napalm and Agent Orange on civilians? Appropriate military activity. Killing some of a population who is electing politicians who order that bombing against your family? That's wrong.
I rarely see you question the morality of the underlying policies, PJ - you seem a sucker for any government claim that invading a nation is right, at least when it's our government.
IMO, you have a SERIOUS deficiency in your own morality and sense of justice because you are so blinded by the authority of your nation, resulting in the aforementioned myopia.
When you hear tells of an oppressed people fighting the powers that be, you seem to first check your partisan filter (are the oppressors our 'friends'), and if they are, then you have a blind spot for their wrongs. Where are your posts against the Central American thugs who we sponsored in the 1980's, for example? I have never seen a word of concern. You cherry pick your use of of objecting to wrongs for all the wrong reasons - not to pick the worse wrongs, but to try to score debate points against whatever enemy you're condemning.
Name for me one war that was ended via suicide bombings?
The Israeli/US invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Oh, sorry, you meant more than one. Algeria's occupation by France in the 1960's (you should watch the
classic movie).
But you don't need to prove that to show that the tactic makes strategic sense for groups facing very large enemies. Often it doesn't work; but we're talking about the sort of acts used by the most outmatched opponents that are desperate, so of course they're going to lose. Did the Japanese tactic of Kamikazes not make any military sense, just because it didn't allow them to win the war? No, it made a lot of sense - and even the ethical issues with it might be debatable when the pilots were facing virtually certain slaughter already.
), known to lust in his heart (you have to have been an adult in 1976 to understand that one) outstanding one term president who guided this country through one of its most darkest periods ... etc... etc ...
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