On 8 Feb 2006 at 0:00, HP3000-L automatic digest system wrote:

> 1)  Just because the suicide bombers are willing to die to
> destroy their enemy does not make them right. 
> 

Right and wrong are similar to truth and falsehood, everything 
depends upon the point of view of the judge.  I do not recall 
asserting that the tactics of the Iraqi resistance are appropriate 
or justifiable and I frankly do not see that methods employed by 
someone else ever can be used as a defence for ones own criminal 
behaviour.  Any such a claim is puerile. Indeed, to adopt the 
precepts and practices of ones enemies is to thereby legitimate 
those practices.  Such a process of convergence in military 
practice is well understood and is called mirroring.  From my point 
of view that does not make it right either, but others evidently 
differ.

> 2)  Saddam Hussien used propaganda to justify starting this war
> by invading Kuwait. 

Your information is some 15 years out of date.  It may therefore 
surprise you to learn that since that time the United States has 
invaded, conquered, and presently occupies Iran.  The "war", such 
as it was, is over. It ended with a United States "victory" 
proclaimed on April 16, 2003. The legal position of the United 
States as an occupying military power of a conquered state was 
ratified by a decision of the UN Security Council on October 16, 
2003.

> 
> 3)  Emotional attachments determien truth.  (Which is not so).
> 

Besides your own emotional attachment to this position, what 
evidence can you present that proves your assertion is correct?  
Islam believes in Allah and considers Jesus Christ a non-divine 
prophet in the the tradition of Abraham. Christianity believes in a 
divine Jesus Christ in a polytheistic modification to the Jewish 
monotheistic tradition devolved on an unnameable god.  Adherents of 
each of the above mentioned faiths and their innumerable internal 
factions all purport to believe in the same god and yet none 
concede that any of the other formulations are correct.  Each 
partisan has their own truth and each considers an unbeliever to 
hold to a false faith.  They cannot all be correct.  Some who 
deeply believe in the truth of their faith must be mistaken. On 
what basis is truth and falsehood determined? How then do you come 
to state that truth is not essentially an expression of desire?

> 4)  Only evidence, no matter how long it takes to accumulate, can be used to justify killing an enemy during wartime.

The United States is only rhetorically at war.  There is no state 
of war presently in existence between the government of the United 
States and any other armed power.  You can call a military 
occupation a war if you wish, but that does not make it one.  
Similarly, you can call women and children asleep in their homes 
terrorists and kill them, but that does not make your actions 
warlike either. It is just plain killing.  Murder, in fact.

Ask yourself this:  What would be the situation if those people who 
were killed by that "smart" bomb dropped on January 3 had instead 
been individually killed by a bullet to the back of their necks 
administered by special forces personnel acting on intelligence 
that the victims were all members of a terrorist cell?  Would that 
have been considered the same thing or not?  If not, then why not?  
The outcome is the same is it not?  The victims are the same are 
they not?  The reasons are the same, are they not? 

The second method would be much less expensive however, and the 
execution far more intimate, not to mention risky. Is that what 
makes the difference to the American public? Is an expensive, 
detached, cowardly killing more easily sanctioned and assuaged than 
a cheap, intimate, dirty one?  Does the internal argument go 
something like this?  

     "We build these expensive bombs so that when we drop one on an 
     undefended home it does not disturb the neighbours. That proves 
     that we are a responsible people.  When we have people arbitrarily 
     killed in our name we at least take care that the victims are only 
     the ones we aim at.  That proves that we are a merciful and 
     compassionate people, does it not?"

> Deciet and Surprise are the primary tools of the terrorist.

Your lack of subtlety is evident.  What you apparently fail to 
appreciate is that war itself is nothing but terror.  The 
professional soldier does not seek a fair fight, he seeks a 
decisive one with the the odds all in his favour.  A submarine does 
not announce its intentions to the torpedo a ship, nor does it 
pause to take on survivors.  A bomber does not warn its sleeping 
targets any more than a tank camouflaged in defilade hoists a 
banner before engaging its targets in their flank. 

The entire purpose of war is to impose ones own will upon that of 
another against their own desire through recourse to wide-spread 
violence and lethal conflict.  It is impossible to conceive of a 
more terrifying state of human existence.  In practice, one warrior 
is much like another. Their causes do not distinguish them except 
in the minds of the naïve and their methods are shaped only by the 
tools available and the behavioural restraints fashioned by their 
leaders.

American popular denigration of "suicide" bombers as somehow 
"beyond the pale" betrays a remarkable inability to see past their 
own prejudices.  Ultimately, what difference does the delivery 
system make to the victims?  Does the return of a US pilot to his 
carrier after bombing a house establish any moral difference to the 
effect of the bombs that he dropped? Are the actions of that pilot 
really qualitatively different than another man detonating an 
explosive device carried upon his person in the midst of a police 
station or public market?  Does either individual really care about 
the after-effects of their actions?  Does not the significant 
difference lie only in the means available to each?

Many people desire such a qualitative difference to exist, but I 
can see none.  It is disingenuous to suggest that your opponent's 
methods are uncivilized because your methods are more costly than 
they can afford. In conflict, it is not cost but effectiveness that 
rules.  The US response to indigenous resistance in Iran is 
remarkably costly and evidently ineffective. Its opponents in Iran 
are employing methods that are cheap out of necessity and happen to 
be effective nonetheless.  

The point of all this is that, if the United States wishes to 
distinguish its behaviour qualitatively from its opponents then it 
must adopt methods and procedures with respect to its military 
actions that establish and sustain such distinctions.  If it does 
not wish to establish that distinction, then I fail to see what its 
actual objectives in Iraq can amount to.

It does no good whatsoever to run civic affairs programs staffed by 
military personnel if bombs and rockets are randomly rained down on 
civilian homes by that same military.  The United States can only 
successfully withdraw from Iran if it can establish a consensual 
agreement with the preponderant majority of the Iraqi population.  
Randomly killing tens of thousands of civilians each year will 
never advance the cause of establishing such consensus.

Let me indulge in a parable:

A rat-catcher is employed to rid a city of rats and the person 
engaged destroys three thousand rats in three years. However, they 
also kill 30,000 cats, dogs and other family pets in the same 
period. What then are we to make of the rat-catcher?

--   
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