This is going to be a long post…
JP –
I’ll try to quickly respond to some of your points today. I agree that these terrorists were nothing new to the scene – look at the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombing of the embassies in Africa, the attack on the Cole, as well as terrorist action in the 1970s and 1980s. But until the sneak attacks on American soil, there was not a perception of this being part of a larger whole – we ignored the problem for decades, hoping it would go away. It didn’t – it just got worse.
Of course, citizens fighting an invading force can gain a lot of sympathy and support. But this label didn’t apply to the 9/11 attackers. Nor does it apply to the terrorists blowing up a lot of Iraqis and occasionally Americans in Iraq. The vast majority of these people are not Iraqs – they are outside “invaders” looking to defeat democracy in Iraq. Thankfully, Iraqi popular opinion has turned against them: look at this article on Strategy Page today.
Here’s the first paragraph, with my emphasis added:
Iraqi popular opinion has turned against terrorism in a big way. Apparently the key event was the revelation that Osama bin Laden had appointed Abu Musab al Zarqawi as "Emir" (leader) of al Qaeda efforts in Iraq and commanded him to go forth and kill big-time. But as suicide bombing attacks increasingly failed to reach American targets, and killed Iraqis instead, it appeared that a Saudi (bin Laden) was telling a Jordanian (Zarqawi) to kill Iraqis. This attitude never made headlines, but it slowly spread among Sunni Arab Iraqis over the last year. Sunni Arab areas where were most of the violence was, particularly after Shia Arab demagogue Moqtada Sadr stopped instigating violence (because he found that he had much less popular support than he believed). Once the Sunni Arabs turned against terrorism, the terrorists found themselves operating in an increasingly hostile environment.

You are right that there is a distinction between fighting injustice and spreading it. Look at the IRA today – it began by fighting injustice and now is accused of spreading it – see the biggest cash robbery in the world (last December in Belfast) as well as the brutal killing of McCartney in January.

I don’t know much about the Shining Path, but looking at the entry about them on Wikipedia, they look to me to be inherently evil, and not victims of spin. I don’t know if you find the following acts evil, but I do (again with my emphasis):
- In one of its last attacks, on July 16, 1992, the militants detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street in Lima, killing more than forty people and destroying several buildings. During this period, Shining Path also targeted specific individuals, notably leaders of other leftist groups, local political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations, some of whom were anti-Sendero Marxists.
- In August, 1991, the group killed two Polish and one Italian priest in the department of Ancash. They later blew up their bodies with dynamite.
- According to a 1988 report in the Los Angeles Times, "the insurgents hung the women on a wall and hacked them with knives and machetes before slitting their throats."

Murdering community leaders; killing priests and detonating their bodies; hanging women on a wall and hacking them to bits before cutting their throats - is evil, in my moral universe.

Also, your suggestion that a “wellplaced charge” (EMP, I’m guessing?) would certainly cost millions and royally screw the economy. But any major disruption to the economy would affect the neediest of society the worst. Homeless people who depend on functioning civil services for food, occasional shelter; poor people who live hand-to-mouth. These people would bear the brunt of any such action – wealthy people have contingency plans, or the resources to bribe their way to relative safety. So I think that along with making some point about dependency on oil, advocating this kind of thing also is saying, “Screw the poor – they are expendable – my point is more important than their lives, happiness, whatever.”

Dad – congrats on getting your computer to work. Regarding the IRA, the current matters are not religious in nature – IRA bigwigs (Catholic, of course) beat a loyal Catholic guy (McCartney) to death because his friend may have said something inappropriate to a woman in a bar. I don’t know if you can consider a major bank robbery to have religious overtones – I guess you could try to find out the faiths of its depositors, owners, etc.

I agree that Social Security is a much smaller problem than Medicare. But you have to give the Republicans some credit in bringing any of these problems to the public’s attention. It is much more courageous for a politician to say “you can trade away your children’s retirement money for your own comfort, or we can sit down and try to hammer out a solution” than to deny there is a problem at all, which is what the Democrats seem to be doing. I don’t understand this strategy – once the shortfalls become painfully apparent (decades down the road), even if they had failed to amend Social Security, Republicans can say, “We tried, but the Democrats said there was no problem. Blame them for not wanting to change things while we still could.”

H – regarding Schiavo, I think the problem for me is that she never clearly made her wishes known regarding euthanasia, etc. If she were to say that she wanted to starve to death, I would say, “no problem.” But the husband may have interests that are not in Schiavo’s best interest, and so his judgment is suspect. One interesting point I read today is that if she were a prisoner, she would have much greater support than she does now – withdrawing her food supply without her consent would be seen as “cruel and unusual punishment” and no court would ever allow it. Maybe they should have her arrested if they want to keep her alive.
My hang up is that they are letting her starve to death, without her consent. I don’t think that conflicts with (my understanding of) libertarian beliefs.

(More than) enough for now.
C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 3/17/2005 03:31:00 PM