The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Dennis Gunn, 9/23/01:

>  >Whatever happened to "unguilty until proven guilty"?  Isn't that the
>>basis for our judicial system?  As far as I know, no guilty persons
>  >have yet been found, and evidence still is inconclusive.
>
>[...] Bin Laden has been video taping himself making
>threats that came true and calling on his followers to kill Americans
>where ever and when ever possible for about ten years now.  It is
>idiocy of the first order to call this man innocent.

I can't remember calling him innocent.  He may well be guilty of 
various crimes or acts of terrorism, but we're talking about _this_ 
particular act right now.  Has he been proven guilty "beyond a 
reasonable doubt"?  No.
Bin Laden has been no.1 on the FBI's most-wanted list for quite some 
time now, but did they ever really open such a man-hunt on him 
before?  No.  Why do it now?  Because he's the _most likely_ 
candidate for the WTC-bombing.  As I said before: fair enough that 
they want him, and fair enough that they already wanted him earlier, 
before the attack.
However, the way the US government goes about with it's 
chesthair-cowboy language mainly gives the impression that they 
simply need someone to be guilty.  Very human: whenever something 
horrible happens, we all want a face to blame.  Some anonymous group 
of fanatics just won't do -- it has to have a name and a face.  It 
has to be something you can wipe of the face of the earth, if only 
for the satisfaction and "sense of justice" of the people.  The 
history of mankind is full of this (understandable) mechanism.  And 
when we can't find someone to blame, we blame some god -- "the wrath 
of god" has always had great explanatory power.
The fact that "the masses" cry for revenge and want a face attached 
to the horror that came over them is, once again, very understandable 
and very human.  But, call me naive, from world-leaders I would 
expect a somewhat more rational attitude than these gut-level 
instinctive reactions.

>Dead or alive is just common sense.

'Dead' is never common sense.  There may be cases when killing 
someone may be the only possible way out (are there really?) but it's 
never "common sense".

>  >Still the US president (of all people) calls for murder...
>
>Complete sophist bullshit.  Get a grip.

Enlighten me...  Saying you want someone "dead or alive" doesn't 
provide justification for killing a person?  I surely must be missing 
something.

Mind you, I don't argue the fact that the world would be a better 
place without BL and the likes of him.  Of course it would.  And 
maybe we will all be happy when he's dead.  Fine.  But that's not the 
issue.

>  >  and thereby already
>>makes completely innocent victims...
>
>Where is the tense in this sentence are we talking future or present
>because AFAIK the US has yet to have fired a shot.  Lots of people in
>the US have been fired upon though.

Present tense.  Tens of thousands unguilty citizens fleeing their 
homes.  See a previous post.

>Alright lets put things in perspective.  6 thousand people have just
>been killed
>[...]
>that the Afghan's psyches have been twisted by so many years of
>poverty, war and brutality from their leaders that instead of seeing
>Bin Laden as the sick fuck the folks where he comes from know him to
>be Bin Laden probably just seems like another pretty normal guy to
>them.

And you call that "perspective"?  Judging an entire people whom you 
know _nothing_ about?  Surely that must justify upcoming bombings of 
Afghanistan, right?
I don't care how the Afghan people think about Bin Laden.  They're 
poor, suppressed, terrorised by their own government, and massively 
under-informed.  Their perspective on bin Laden or whoever is 
completely inconsequential.

>I agree that it is sad that innocent Afghani people are probably
>going to suffer and I truly hope that there is some way of avoiding
>that. I have yet to see anything that vaguely resembles a real
>solution being proposed by anyone.  Sticking your head in the sand is
>not going help.

Agreed.  However, killing bin Laden, no matter how satisfactory, also 
isn't going to help. The problem is way, way bigger than this one 
person, and goed back decades (or longer) in world history.  The 
arrogant attitude of christians  suppressing muslims dates back to 
the crusades, at least.
Of course this doesn't justify terrorism, and of course this isn't an 
excuse to let bin Laden & co run wild and let them do whatever they 
fancy.  I never said that.  It's just that imo "putting things in 
perspective" means that pinpointing one guilty person, just because 
it looks good on tv, is no solution either.  "Satisfaction" and 
"solution" are two different concepts, even though they both start 
with an 's'.

>It is the Taliban that said they were willing to shed every last drop
>of Afghan blood to protect Bin Laden.  It is utterly understandable
>and reasonable that the proposed donors are taking their plasma
>elsewhere.  I wish them luck.

Ditto.  Of course blaming the US for all the fleeing Afghans (as I 
may have implied earlier) isn't entirely honest.  In the end it's the 
Taliban attitude which frightens the people.  Still, US politicians 
should have realised the consequences of their single-track minded 
attitude, and therefore at least share the blame for what happens now.
Threathening a psychotic parent who mistreats his child, will only 
lead to more child-abuse in the family -- after all that's what 
"psychotic" does, isn't it?  So even though the parent is directly 
responsible, the one making the threats is, at least, an ignorant 
fool to think that his threats will actually solve anything.

>The Taliban could avoid all kinds of trouble and in fact gain
>international praise by simply kicking Bin Laden out of their
>country.
>[..]
>They should not
>put him up or put up with him and if they had a modicum of
>responsibility they would not.  But then I can't think of anyone
>anywhere who claim that the Taliban are a responsible leadership.
>What do you think HJ?

Sure the Taliban are a bunch of crazy bastards.  If your beard isn't 
long enough you can get killed.  Women aren't allowed to visit 
school.  Etc.  Not what I would call "responsible leadership", no, 
obviously.
As far as you statement goes that they should be grateful to the US 
for helping kick out the Russians...  I think the cold war, 
anti-soviet area of US politics is one of the shadiest and most 
debatable areas of international politics ever, and I'm simply not 
willing to get into a discussion on that subject.
However, I think it's naive to really expect gratitude from 
fundamental Muslims.  Not even naive, but bizarre...  Bin Laden is a 
fundamentalist, as are the Taliban, and for fundamentalists the US is 
the Big Evil.  Now add 1 and 1, and make sure you get to 2...

>If you want to object to someone's behavior why don't you object to
>the Taliban or Bin Ladin.

Of course I do.  I NEVER said or implied otherwise, and implying that 
I would somehow condone such terrorist and psychotic groups is... 
well, insulting, to put it mildly.
The only thing I said in my initial post was that US politicians (and 
Bush in particular) seem to adopt the same short-sighted attitude 
that they accuse others of having.
That's not anti-American, it's not pro-fundamentalist, or whatever. 
It's just an appeal to common sense, hoping that we will not stoop to 
the level of "doing to others what they've done unto you".  "An eye 
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" may have had some merit 3000 years 
ago, when nomads roamed the desert, but it is NOT a solution now, in 
a globalised and (hopefully) civilised world where every country can 
annihilate every other country with a push on a button.

Isn't it time we elevated ourselves beyond the level of tribal rage 
and patriotic narrow-mindedness?  Most will now probably say "yes of 
course, but then 'the others' have to behave decent as well".  Why do 
so little people understand that this attitude of "we will if you 
will" will _never_ solve the endless spiral of violence and abuse in 
which we've been caught ever since we descended from the trees?
In an ideal world, some influential people would be able to adopt 
Gandhi's attitude of non-violence.  Unfortunately the world is not 
ideal, and the people at the top don't even know how to spell 
'Gandhi'...  And even if they did, then the masses that elected them 
would soon kick them out and make sure a more vengeful leader would 
come to power.

>But after all it is easy to understand why Western Europeans might
>have a different take on all this than US citizens.  After all they
>don't have the gun pointed at them.  OTOH some day some African
>victim of the diamond cartel sponsored wars might decide that Bin
>Laden's tactics look pretty smart and that they have nothing to loose
>anyway so "why not just start dropping some airliners on Belgium?"
>It will be interesting to hear the European take on terrorism then.

If anything like this happened e.g. in the Netherlands, I'm sure many 
people would cry for revenge as well.  I hope that our political 
leaders would have the sense to refrain from joining the masses.  And 
if they didn't, then I would write the same message I wrote earlier.

>For Europeans on the other hand the sophist sniping that has
>been going on around this incident is inexcusable.

I fail to see how a few critical remarks regarding the somewhat 
simplistic and risky utterings of the US president can be considered 
to be "sophist sniping".

>Our western European critics bitch and whine about Bush's behavior in
>this crisis but are very low on specifics regarding what he should be
>doing different.   Go slow?  He has been.  Investigate?  Being done.
>Do not act unilaterally but work with other countries to build
>consensus and coordinate effort?  Being done.  Use all diplomatic
>channels.  Being done.

I confess that I probably wouldn't know what to do in a situation 
like this either.  However, that's probably one of the reasons I'm 
not a world-leader.

So, ok, we start fighting terrorism on a global scale.  Fine.  But 
why now?  Why didn't we do so earlier?  Or do we need 6000 dead 
before we get our asses moving?  Maybe it's the other way around: 
deep down inside we don't really care for all the injustice in the 
world, and don't really want to make an effort to stop it... until it 
hits us personally.
Who's being hypocritical then?  And if we're talking "personally", 
then fine, but why then do we all of a sudden have to view this one 
attack as an attack on the entire western world, our democratic 
standards and way of living, and so on, and so forth?
Don't get me wrong: in a sense I don't mind the entire western world 
(including my own country) joining forces in an attempt to "wipe out 
evil" (even though it's a pointless undertaking).  I only try to 
point out that it still _is_ a two-sided coin, and not a one-sided 
one, as some want us to believe.

And if we're busy fighting terrorism, why not get to grips with all 
other forms of evil as well?  After all, terrorism is just one of the 
many forms that "crimes against humanity" takes.  So while we're at 
it, we might as well start fighting the Taliban, not because they 
provide shelter for bin Laden, but because they commit horrid crimes 
against their own people.  And then we'll tackle China (for obvious 
reasons).  And there are quite a few Central- and South-American 
countries who condone or actively support large-scale drug dealers. 
The number of drug-victims in the western world probably far exceeds 
the number of victims in the WTC, so we have a rather compelling 
reason to "smoke them out of their holes" too, haven't we?  And while 
we're at it, how about the countries actively supporting the 
terrorist acts the Israelis commit against the Palestines?  So nuke 
the US for supplying bombs to Israel.  And to solve the entire issue, 
we might as well nuke the Palestines too, since they commit acts of 
terrorism against Israel.  Oh, and violence doesn't stop at "bodily 
harm" but includes psychological terror and harm as well, so are you 
people going to wipe out the Ku Klux Klan too (should be peanuts, 
with all the info the FBI and CIA probably got on these people)? 
After all, they learn their children to hate the other 99% of the 
world population, and yell 'white power' when they're only 6 years 
old.  Isn't that a form of gross abuse, and aren't such subcultures 
the breeding ground for hatred and violence?

Et cetera -- this list could go on, and on, and on... probably 
including every possible country, nation and group...

The bottomline is: violence will never be wiped out, especially not 
by using more violence.  Maybe indeed it is a 'good thing' to erase 
psychopaths like bin Laden.  Fine, let's do so.  Just don't think 
that _anything_ will be solved after that.  New young psychopaths are 
yelling 'white power' or 'praise Allah, kill the Americans', or ..., 
as we speak.  A new generation is learning how to operate the 
laboratories that produce heroin.  New soldiers are being trained, 
learning to 'obey and kill without thinking'.  Etc.

The solution?  I don't know...  The only possible solution I 
personally can think of, is when we finally _refuse_ to answer 
violence with violence.  One person, one nation, one culture has to 
start acting sensibly... finally, for the first time in human 
history.  But then, as I wrote earlier, the government starting to 
act sensibly would probably soon be overthrown by the people crying 
for revenge.  Dead-lock?  Probably...  And that's why I said that the 
sorrow never stops.  The human condition is a sad one.

>  >  >So please think twice before you dispense your anti-American comments.
>>
>>I do think twice.
>
>May once  or three times or some odd number would work better for you.

As a mathematician, I do prefer prime numbers...

>I am tired of watching Americans get crucified by: European pseudo
>intellectuals looking for prey

I fail to see how my post could be interpreted this way.

>I just can't believe that Americans are the evil perpetrators of 
>some scheme for world domination

No-one said you are.  At least _I_ didn't.

>  >Does anyone really believe the Palestines will ever cooperate with the US?
>
>#1 Palistine is not Afghanistan.

Out of context...  I reacted to "whoever is not with us, is with the 
terrorists".  Since the Palestines (just an example) will never be 
"with the US", they're therefore implied to support the terrorists. 
A completely moronic accusation.

>#2. The US cannot control the Israelis or the Palestinians.  The US
>has been trying to use what influence it has over Israel for years to
>get them to lighten up on the Palestinians, because among other
>things, Israeli belligerence causes the US problems as well, but
>every time things start to move in a positive direction extremists on
>one side or the other start killing people.  It is ridiculous to
>blame the US for that.  But don't let that stop you. It never stops
>anyone else.

Isn't there something... weird... going on when on the one hand the 
US government conducts peace talks in the middle-east, and at the 
same time provides the bombs that have been terrorising the 
Palestines for some 50 years now?
But don't let _that_ stop you...

>#3.  I will not deny that history has been unfair to them but the
>Palestinians have at some time to take some responsibility for their
>own actions.

Agreed.  But: ditto for the Israelis.  It's however the Israelis who 
receive US weapons-support, not the Palestines.

>In the climate of political correctness prevailing in the West it is
>not popular to believe that one Ideology may have more merit than
>another but in fact its does seem that some ideologies do in fact
>work better than others.

Agreed.  I have no trouble confessing I'm glad to live in Holland, 
and not in Afghanistan, or quite a few other countries.  So what? 
Are we now entitled to say that "we are better than they are"?  Or do 
we now have the right to bomb the sh*t out of "the others"?  I mean, 
even if you and I agree that a western democracy is preferable to 
some particular different system, then what consequence does that 
have and what is being legitimised then?

>  >Saying that anyone who doesn't like the US is therefore "with the
>>terrorists" is, imo, a horrible and shortsighted thing to do.
>
>True but so is playing apologist for the terrorists cause.

Did I _ever_ _anywhere_ in my postings play apologist for the 
terrorist cause?  I refuse to get angry, but at times it _does_ take 
some effort...


regards,
HJ
-- 
     Hendrik Jan Veenstra
     email: mailto:h@...
     www:   http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html