So James, what would you have done on 9/12, the day after 9/11? After
watching your brothers and sisters jumping from 100 story buildings
engulfed in flames, as these leaders of rogue nations watched and laughed
and applauded. Put yourself in GWB's shoes and tell us all...what would
you have done?
John Lee
At 12:37 PM 10/29/04 -0400, James B. Byrne wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:50:47 -0500 Denys Beauchemin
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Pure sophistry=2E
>
>> Whilst you fiddle around with the meaning of =93war=94=2C the enemy has
>> a= lready declared war on the US=2C Canada and the rest of the Western
>> World= and has attacked multiple times=2E In fact the declaration of
>> war from = the Islamo-Fascists is constantly expanding=2C to the point
>> where anyone = who does not immediately subordinate themselves to their
>> will is condemne= d to die=2C by the most disgusting means possible=2E
>
>THE enemy? And who is THE enemy? How will you know when THE enemy is
>met? How will you defeat THE enemy? Where will you find THE enemy?
>How many more "enemies" has this pointless, aimless, futile exercise
>in primitive violence begat? How many more people must die before
>the sheer impossibility of the task sinks in? THE enemy, as if there
>is ever one true source of anything.
>
>The United States is NOT the western world. Canada does not feel
>itself under attack. Your hyperbole reveals a naive and childlike
>view of existence where all imagined groups are homogeneous, readily
>identified, and easily categorized. The world is neither so neat nor
>so superficial. It may surprise you to learn that the United States
>itself is not as homogeneous as you seem to assume. Many within
>consider that present attempts to force it to become more so pose a
>far greater threat to the well-being of each of its citizens than any
>imagined external enemy. THE enemy is met, and it is ourselves.
>
>You mock the law because you lack both the imagination to see how it
>can work and the desire to try. Yes, the law is a oft-times
>lethargic, always blunt, and frequently unsatisfactory instrument,
>particularly when the fundamental desire is to promote a narrow self-
>interest. Funnily enough, that is its strength. Instead of yielding
>to red-hot emotion or private gain it forces cool public
>contemplation of all the issues that can be discerned and
>consideration of all of the consequences that can be estimated. Then
>it applies rules, standards, and precedence to establish a "just"
>response.
>
>A "just" response is often unsatisfactory for those that have been
>injured. That is because the law does not exist to protect the
>individual but rather the society to the which every individual,
>victim and criminal alike, belongs. Justice, to have effect, must be
>acceptable to all, or at least a preponderant majority, or it is
>retribution only. Justice may have an element of retribution in it,
>indeed it often must or else it is no justice at all, but justice is
>primarily a process of establishing the rightness of public action in
>the face of an offence to the common order.
>
>To be just, all of the acts leading to judgement must themselves be
>free of the taint of personal revenge and private interest. Claims
>about how present circumstances are somehow different than the past
>and thus justify departure from hard won advances in civil behaviour
>are the cry of the barbarian. An appeal to base fear. An atavistic
>response to horribly complex issues that are simply not susceptible
>to simple answers and are only confused and worsened by recourse to
>mindless violence.
>
>Islamo-Fascists indeed! Your paranoia would be humorous in other
>circumstances but I find it hard to smile when I consider the tens of
>thousands of women and children dead because similar thoughts have
>blinded people who ought, and have a duty, to think things through to
>their likely outcomes before precipitating irretrievable acts of
>violence.
>
>I will put it very clearly. The present course of action pursued by
>the United States cannot succeed in reducing terrorism as a political
>tool because it creates more foes than it kills. The process is
>geometric and it can only be halted if one of the instigators
>restrains itself. Since the role of barbarian has been cast for the
>other side then this necessitates that those who see themselves as
>civilized must act with restraint. The process by which public
>violence is both restrained and legitimized is called law.
>
>Law is a process that develops to suit evolving social needs. The
>requirement to reduce international political violence is a pressing
>social need. Two world wars made that case very clear. Responses
>that employ raw violence without social consent fail in their social
>object and often create internal social stresses of separate and
>novel natures in themselves. This in turn promotes internal
>instability and may cause cherished social institutions to weaken or
>fail under the trial. The longer violence whose legitimacy is
>contested is continued the greater the possibility of some
>catastrophic internal failure.
>
>The situation in Iraq is not tractable to a military solution. The
>deep unhappiness of many non-western people who see important
>cultural values being swept away by a tide of capitalist inspired
>consumerism cannot be satisfied by superficial calls for greater
>education and more equitable wealth distribution. These are
>important issues but they are not central to this situation. This
>problem most certainly cannot be answered by killing people
>indiscriminately. A space must be made for these people or they will
>continue to strike out at those whom they perceive promote this
>social upheaval for private profit and against the institutions that
>they believe support the process.
>
>They will fail, because blunt violence only creates problems, it
>cannot solve any. The mistake is to copy them and respond in kind.
>By doing so you play into their hands and accept the rules of the
>game as they have written them. For killing spreads unhappiness to
>the relatives and friends of those killed, it does not cower them.
>If you try this then you end up having everyone for an enemy and you
>cannot watch everyone all of the time. Eventually, either you must
>enlist the world's co-operation to eliminate this source of violence
>or you are condemned to retreating within a prison.
>
>The law that you mock, the legitimacy that you deny, is in the end
>the only thing that stands between the individual and brute force.
>If you do not grant its protection to others then you will not
>preserve its shield for yourself.
>
>There is nothing utopian or idealistic about this, it is simple
>politics. Piss enough people off long enough and eventually they will
>combine to kill you. The only realistic alternative is to convince
>most people that the law needs to be changed to eliminate that which
>you find intolerable and to see that it is equitably enforced for
>all, including yourself. And that often necessitates giving up a few
>valuable considerations in exchange. Sometimes it takes the powerful
>and wealthy a long time to see where their interests truly lie.
>Sometimes they never see it. Sometimes their hands are forced and
>they loose the ability to choose.
>
>As for your opinion on the credibility of the United Nations, you are
>in a minority position even within the United States. Many who
>express similar sentiments wish it were otherwise but one opinion
>poll after another show that a constant 60%+ of U.S. citizens approve
>of the UN and the same number indicate reliably that the United
>States should only take action abroad with UN approval.
>
>Now, once the United States is actually committed to some foreign
>adventure approximately 50-55% will support their country (right or
>wrong) but that is an artifact of contested loyalties overwhelming
>personal belief under circumstances of actual conflict. It is not an
>expression of what these people desired as preferable prior to open
>hostilities.
>
>There is a body of international law that permitted removing Saddam
>Hussein from power though the UN and trying him under the authority
>of the ICC. However, that idea does not sit well with the
>chauvinists presently running the United States (and to be fair, most
>of the other governments of the world), who perceive one set of
>standards for themselves and another, quite different, for the rest.
>No, the idea that ruling sovereigns, even from forth rate countries
>like Iraq, might be taken to the dock for mistreating their own
>citizens and threatening their neighbours must have caused blood to
>run cold in many that hold high office, both in the United States and
>abroad. So it is not surprising that the UN presently can do little.
> It is a case of the powerful having to choose between what they have
>and what they want.
>
>Naturally they want to get what they desire and also to keep what
>they have. However, past experience shows that in great events this
>is an unlikely outcome. So the present unsatisfactory state of
>affairs will continue, until the growing cost in blood and gold
>impresses itself upon the public consciousness and popular political
>pressure to end it becomes too dangerous to resist.
>
>And what will be the result do you think? Do you believe that the
>rest of the world thinks higher of, or is more fearful of, a super-
>power with 300 million citizens that cannot impose its will on a
>single impoverished state with fewer than 30 million? Do you believe
>that the rest of the world is now more inclined to follow
>Washington's lead on anything? Do you believe that the public
>opinion of the rest of the world's population is of such
>inconsequence that it may safely be ignored or mocked? Do you think
>that this type of behaviour actually furthers the interests of the
>United States? Do you think that the United States can afford the
>bill? For someone who hates taxes as much as you have evidenced in
>the past you are not really thinking this through.
>
>No, the law, for all its faults, is the only way to go for it is the
>only thing that proves socially durable, or affordable. The problem
>is that for now the United States is unwilling, and perhaps unable,
>to pay the political price that consent to the law necessitates.
>However, the present mess in Iraq is representative of the
>alternative and the next one will be worse. Eventually, the value of
>the freedoms lost to submission to the rule of law will come to be
>viewed as less than the costs of resisting. At that time, change
>will occur.
>
>One last point on semantics, it is impossible by definition for
>sophistry to be pure since the art hinges on substituting variable
>meanings for words that are used throughout the argument. If rather
>you intended its meaning in the modern sense of false argument then
>again your statement fails, since no postulate can ever be formulated
>free of imprecision. Thus all true assertions must contain elements
>of falsehood and all false ones, elements of truth. Purity therefore
>is an unachievable ideal. In any case, asserting that ones
>opponents' arguments are nought but sophistry requires recourse to
>logic in either displaying the fundamental falsehoods expressed or
>the changes of meaning employed. This is notably lacking in your
>response. Indeed, consider the impossibility of rationally
>establishing the truth or falsehood of many of your own opinions
>given as evidence but falling outside the realm of objectively
>determinable fact.
>
>
>--
>
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