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mike_m

11/10/02 12:49 AM

#597 RE: Zeev Hed #592

Zeev, your argument is both articulate and ardent...but hardly practical. Our founding fathers had no jourisdiction over this turf. Surely, they understood the frailty of man but not the hazards of technology. Rights of society versus those of individuals will never be universally resolved.

There is no moral absolute here. The men who were killed in Yemen were mass murderers. They were out of reach and effectively protected by a country unwilling to submit to international extradition laws. While it may be true that moral outrage has become anesthetized by the horrors of countless terrorist acts, that doesn't make the retaliation wrong. We are in a state of war. A war which will not likely end until the right to live in peace and harmony is respected by both sides or one side is rendered ineffective. There can be no analogy to doing this in Canada. This retribution would not have occurred in Canada because they would be respecters of international law and the terrorists would have been apprehended and tried.

Hide your head in the sand with moral platitudes if you want but it will serve no more useful purpose than have all the random acts of killing. I sure wish that the world was a more civil place. It isn't, and unilateral passivism won't make it better. You and I both know that ignoring the terrorist acts will be not one whit more successful in suppressing their ambitions than would retaliating. This war will continue to be mired in a holocaust of one upmanship until the will or ability of one protagonist to continue is vanquished.

What Sharon is doing is both inconsequential and reprehensible because it adds to the disenfranchisement of people while solving nothing. Unfortunately the solution to the problem is not within his domain short of virtual annihilation of all who would refuse his nation the right to live peacefully.

Two wrongs don't make a right. One wrong and one right may make us feel better about ourselves but it affords us no comfort when the other is playing by a different set of rules. Man's basic law of survival is stronger than even our Constitution.

The old testament pointed to the same solution for Israel's welfare time and again. Complete annihilation of the enemy. When that was not fulfilled there was always a painful consequence.

We have many years of misery ahead, unless all countries will prosecute vigorously all perpetrators of terrorism so other countries aren't compelled to violate their borders. If countries are unable to prosecute, they will be "aided" by those who can. Anarchy cannot be condoned nor can it be ignored. War is hell and the sum of man's failures.


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TheProphet

11/10/02 4:16 AM

#599 RE: Zeev Hed #592

They most certainly did try to balance security and liberties, but even they did not seek to apply our constitution extra-territorially, especially not in wartime. Moreover, they never had need to consider the balancing test in the age of atomic weapons; being practical individuals, they surely would not have handcuffed government in the name of liberty.

Having said that, I am not arguing that we should abandon vigilance in the area of civil liberties. We do need to watch carefully. However, thus far, I do not think the pendulum has overswept....

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Cotswald

11/10/02 6:50 AM

#600 RE: Zeev Hed #592

Zeev,Abraham "Ruthless" Lincoln was the founding father of modern America..He forged the "mini" nation states into one country and planned the eradication of the Native Americans down to an easily control-able population with the Reservation "death camps"..I don't believe in the liberal MYTH of the Noble Red man,but I kinda suspect that we shouldn't have been shooting them in the back as they were try-ing to run away from being herded on to Reservation "death camps"!!!