posted September 18, 2001 07:38 PM            

This week, I'm much calmer. I've done a lot of thinking.

If you ask me today, I'll say the same thing.

To me, it was never a matter of 'country X needs to be bombed into oblivion'.

It's not for a majority of Americans or people around the world either, I'd wager, nor is it the focus of any retaliation to completely eliminate a nation.

No one's going to bomb anyone into a pile of rubble.

But the time for peace is past. The cowards who did this should die. When they are caught, I sincerely hope they do. Because, just like last week, I don't want them able to do this to anyone again. Not the U.S. Not the U.K. Not the United Arab Emirates .. not Iraq .. not Germany .. no one. Ever again.

posted September 19, 2001 06:59 AM            

At that point, they become our enemy, and will be treated accordingly.

posted September 19, 2001 06:19 PM            

It's my birthday. Yay for me. I'm bowling, and people are dying. Isn't it funny how life goes on.

Read with bittersweet poignancy.

People are back at work on Wall Street. Somehow, people are going to rebuild from this.

I talked to a friend of mine who is over from Croatia. She said: "Everyone is really upset, and talking about this happening in America. It makes me angry, because no-one talked about it when people threw bombs into the marketplaces near my home."

Yay for the whole world. Kill the bastards horribly - it won't help, because there are always more bastards.

Sorry, I'm really really morbid at the moment. I wish I could find a way to say this without sounding like I'm opposing DBB. I wish I could convey that him and me are on the same side. I'm not opposing anyone right now. I just want people to stop throwing bombs and planes around, because it's really growing old now.

I quoted Nehemiah in another thread. I think that this is important to convey how I feel action should be taken. Nehemiah's men built with one hand and held their sword in the other. They did not go and seek trouble, they rebuilt the wall, but sent a message that said, "Any crap, and we'll use these. Let us rebuild first, and then we'll talk."

posted September 19, 2001 06:56 PM            

I say we give Afghanistan 24 hours to extradite Bin Laden.

And now, in Pseudo-BASIC, this should be what happens next.

IF BinLaden=Extradited THEN
MOVE BinLaden to HAGUE
TRIAL()
ELSE
MOVE Paratroopers to AFGHANISTAN
LOCATE(BinLaden)
ARREST(BinLaden)
MOVE BinLaden to HAGUE
END IF

posted September 20, 2001 05:50 AM            

Anyway, this thread is about what we're thinking/feeling after having a week to absorb it .. I'm not sure any of us will ever be able to truly absorb all this. At least, I know I won't, and I'm half a country away from the area.

Anyway, point is, your thoughts are your own. If they oppose mine, so be it. Not like I'm the moral leader of this board by any means. Hell, the last time I took a break from this place, the only one that noticed I was gone was Ogre.

So oppose away. I'm gonna head over to Killian's and have a black and tan with the juggalo(s).

posted September 20, 2001 01:16 PM            

"Toon, it's okay -- just think of the config.sys file as bizarre post-modern poetry."
-Rob Wynne on #filkhaven

IP: Logged

posted September 20, 2001 01:40 PM            

quote:

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...[terrorists'] political statement ends as soon as they aim a bomb or a bullet at innocents.

At that point, they become our enemy, and will be treated accordingly.

---

Brilliantly put, DBB. Thank you.

posted September 20, 2001 04:52 PM            

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"Hi."- Toon

"Smile. It increases your face value." - "Truvy" from "Steel Magnolias"

"Inside every geek beats the heart of a raging green monster."- Jack Havoc

posted September 21, 2001 09:44 AM            

*waves at Toon*

posted September 21, 2001 12:29 PM            

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posted September 21, 2001 06:56 PM            

I, too, see terrorists as my enemies. It's just my boss issued a memo saying I should "love thy enemies," so to not do so would be against policy The reason I "defend" Jesse (not that he needs it, he can do a good job himself, it's just we happen to be on the same side) is that he vocalises part of my thought process better than I do. How can I not do that? I'm just trying to be honest.

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Ack, bec's geometry homework wants to sell me a Tiny Wireless Camera! - Cropherb, via IRC

posted September 23, 2001 04:14 AM            

My issue all along has been to wonder why it's okay to scream how horrible we are for indulging in some patriotic rhetoric in a time when the people (notice that word -- people .. not the government, the people) so desperately need something to rally around .. something that we can cling to and know that this country will heal.

How in the hell is it appropriate at a time like this to take the opportunity to pound on the symbols and the things alot of us are clinging to with bullshit dime store political analysis?

The answer is, it's not. Nor is is appropriate, logical, or necessary to run from thread to thread yelling panicky bullshit like "they're going to kill us all".

If that's a fucking nudge, then I'd hate to see a push.

Bitching about the evils of rhetoric and then vomiting even more of it up on the boards is called hypocricy. Pure and simple. And spewing a bunch of alarmist crap isn't going to do anyone any good on either side of the argument.

No one is getting turned into a glass parking lot.

So please drop the hysterics on both sides.

posted September 23, 2001 04:27 AM            

Also I see Jack Straw is going to Tehran tomorrow to lock in Iran as a 'With you' nation. Interesting, seems the reforms are getting notice at last and this would provide another border to enter from.

Anyway, Iran would love to see the Taliban crushed (to a point) as they are of the other major branch of Islam.

On the bad ledger, protests in Indonesia by Islamic extremeists are getting bigger and US and allied targets have been identified. This could cause trouble from UN forces in East Timor, as the extremeists in Indonesia view this as Christians versus Islam.

Edited to note Indonesian protests

posted September 23, 2001 06:31 PM            

What I have said seemed to be "stop talking about war or you might do something you regret." NATO hasn't stopped talking about war, Bush decided that the victims get two weeks of half mast and that's that, and I'm placing the odds 50:50 that a LOT of Americans will have regrets that it wasn't done differently in a year's time.

The thing is, I think that this was inevitable. Everything that has happened, you could have traced it out with a ruler. Nostradamus could have made a fortune by telling people what was going to happen. America is reacting exactly as it always has, exactly as it believes is right. There is no way it COULD possibly have happened differently. Absolutely no way, because no-one was willing to countenance that this route was not a certainty, but an option. This is the track that was marked out on Sept 11, and set in stone. And because there was no way that it could have been done differently, nobody in all seriousness looked anywhere except straight ahead, down the track, to see not what the best or worst thing to do was, but the next thing to do.

I'm going to make some predictions, looking down the concrete track. NATO is going to go ahead with the ground war. Soldiers are going to move into Afghanistan and fight with Taliban soldiers. At this point, there will be an uprising in Pakistan. The power base in Pakistan will be weakened, and UN Forces will fire on a crowd of people in some public place, in or around the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. The Taliban will be deposed by force, but it will not surrender, and will retreat into the hills, using guerilla tactics which make them impossible to eliminate. This will still be called a victory, for the sake of morale.

Sometime after or during this, there will be another terrorist attack. This will be viewed as conclusive proof that the laws we have in place are inadequate, so new, rushed, ill considered laws will be enacted in the UK and US. These will not help. Public and political opinion in the West will remain firmly on the side of NATO. Eventually, the media will grow bored of the conflict, and it will fade from the public consciousness.

I challenge you to put your money where your mouth is and tell me you think that the situation I have outlined above won't happen.

I'm not giving empty rhetoric. I'm giving a genuine view of reality as seen through my eyes. Reality ISN'T pretty, it's made of cruddy little events and tediously self centred decisions. Merely because I know what'd going to happen doesn't mean I have to LIKE it.

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Ack, bec's geometry homework wants to sell me a Tiny Wireless Camera! - Cropherb, via IRC

posted September 23, 2001 06:48 PM            

quote:

---

the people who committed this atrocity need to die. They need to die in the worst way possible.

---

Maybe I'm inherently nastier than you, DBB, because I can think of nearly 100 ways to kill bin Laden that, given the real choice, you wouldn't be able to do yourself, or even advocate. The reason my rhetoric isn't empty is because, if I really believed it was my job to dispense justice in this matter, and that it was right for me to kill someone, I would not flinch from it, I would do it unhesitatingly, efficiently, and without ceremony. And I would do it myself. Words like "worst way possible," unless they are backed up by a genuine desire, are empty.

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Ack, bec's geometry homework wants to sell me a Tiny Wireless Camera! - Cropherb, via IRC

posted September 23, 2001 06:53 PM            

BIG FAT HAIRY DISCLAIMER: I still don't condone it. Just because Bin Ladin is an admittedly evil dickhead doesn't mean pissing off the entire Middle East is a Good Thing. If we REALLY want to pull him out, hire a half dozen Israeli soldiers; they'll get him out a day and a half.

posted September 24, 2001 09:45 AM            

I don't think that's going to happen.

What I see more is that all the big large grand show you're seeing on the news is going to make more and more areas over there less likely to hide the fuckers responsible, giving them less places to go and making it easier for our special forces units, as well as those of any other nation that joins us in this operation, to find them and deal with them. I think we're seeing a big feint .. basically, an intelligence based operation in action. Nothing I've seen or heard so far even remotely inclines me to believe that the world is going to end over this whole thing, the way you seem to think it will.

I'm sorry if I don't agree that we're headed for such a nightmare as you do, but I don't. And I don't see how running around like a chicken with its head cut off is going to help anything.

Incidentally, the statement about rhetoric was aimed at Jesse's posts, which have been quite laden with rants about rhetoric while containing the same. That was my issue. That's still my issue. If you don't want to accept that as my issue, it's not my fucking problem.

My initial response to your "I don't want to come across as opposing DDB" thing was a simple "this thread is for thoughts, not debates".

I don't give a shit what your thoughts are, or if they oppose mine. I really don't. And I'm not going to argue about them in this thread, because that's not why this thread was started. Your offense at the matter is immaterial.

quote:

---

Maybe I'm inherently nastier than you, DBB, because I can think of nearly 100 ways to kill bin Laden that, given the real choice, you wouldn't be able to do yourself, or even advocate. The reason my rhetoric isn't empty is because, if I really believed it was my job to dispense justice in this matter, and that it was right for me to kill someone, I would not flinch from it, I would do it unhesitatingly, efficiently, and without ceremony. And I would do it myself. Words like "worst way possible," unless they are backed up by a genuine desire, are empty.

---

You're so cute .. you actually think this little tirade means something to me?

I wouldn't have fucking said it if I didn't fucking mean it.

I believe the people responsible need to be caught. I believe the people responsible need to die. And I can be very creative if it was my responsibility to carry the duty out.

But until it is, I'm not going to say that I wouldn't flinch. In my mind, I don't have any moral issues with the matter. In fact, the concept kind of makes me smile, but I've never been in that situation. I guess I'm just not as cool as you are since I haven't been in that situation.

So tell me, McDuff .. how did you enact your last execution? Obviously you have experience since you know you wouldn't flinch in gutting someone.

Hey JD -- did you know your biggest backer had a black hood and an executioner's axe in the closet?

posted September 24, 2001 10:26 AM            

DBB, even though you appear to be incapable of reading the language I type in, you've GENERALLY not been an asshole at all. Don't change that.

posted September 24, 2001 01:28 PM            

As far as McDuff, all I'm doing is challenging what was said as far as the ground war predictions, and wondering what the little "oooo, I'm a big scary bugger" bullshit was about. Even given the intense amount of anger and hatred I feel towards the type of creature that would commit an atrocity like this, I still have yet to say anything along the lines of "If I had my way, I'd do X".

Because I can't say what I'd do in that situation until I was there. Apparently McDuff has been there, based upon the 'ooo scary' post.

So I was just wanting to know how it went.

Asking me to put my money where my mouth is apparently wasn't being an asshole, but me asking the same is ..

whatever.

posted September 26, 2001 11:28 AM            

quote:

---

if I really believed it was my job to dispense justice in this matter, and that it was right for me to kill someone, I would not flinch from it

---

I just really want to know that, if you have no problem with a public execution or a boiling in oil... what are you defending? the Holy Roman Empire? It can't be the US, because the US is civilised.

I'm tired of arguing about this, because you are a good person, who I happen to fundamentally agree with on points which have been brought to the fore here. In fact, lets just forget about it, because this really isn't going anywhere. Lets shake hands.

posted September 26, 2001 01:01 PM            

I never thought your feelings on peace were empty. At all. The implication that my feelings of anger were hit a nerve in a very bad way. I'm not saying that that was what was meant. I'm just saying how it came across to me.

I'm not defending public executions. I'm not defending gutting someone in the town square .. I'm just expressing my anger at an attack on what I see as my home. It's an anger than is very real, and still very much with me. I'm not expressing a desire to see people drawn and quartered on pay-per-view ... just a very real anger. An anger strong enough that I can't say what I would do if given the opportunity of being the one to enact the justice in question .. whether the anger would overcome civility, or vice versa.

Regardless, the desire is there. It has been since the words 'terrorist attack' first became concretely associated with this horror.

Would that desire be enacted given the opportunity and the responsibility? I honestly can't say, nor would I try to. But the desire is every bit as real as your feelings on peace.

Regardless, you're right .. arguing over this is pointless because we both believe what we say. Best left at that.

posted September 26, 2001 08:31 PM            

And I mean ALL of us, not just Americans. It will never end no matter what is bombed or who is killed, the threat of terrorism will never become just a bad memory no matter how much security we have or how badly we want life to be as carefree as it was on September 10.

There will always be some group out there that hates another group for any variety of reasons, and no amount of reasoning or cooperating or compromising will ever change the fact that a good number human beings are basically assholes and they ruin life for the rest of us.

Yep, I screwed up my tags again.

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Night breeds its own sort of anticipation.

[This message has been edited by Devin Austra (edited September 26, 2001).]

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posted September 26, 2001 09:48 PM         

Right on the nose.... you pegged it. I imagine humanity will destroy itself in a most gruesome fashion eventually, let us hope that it is not within our generation.

posted September 27, 2001 09:05 AM            

quote:

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3. The original meaning of the word "apocalypse" was "revelation," and in the esoteric spiritual traditions of the West, the apocalypse is regarded as a Great Awakening -- a marvelous resurrection.

I propose that the apocalypse we're living through applies in both the degraded modern sense of the word -- the end of the world -- and in the original sense. In other words, collapse and renewal are happening side by side; calamity and blooming; rot and splendor; grievous losses and unpredictable surges of miraculous novelty. Yes, the end of the old world is proceeding apace; but it is overlapped by the birth pangs of a fresh, hot civilization that will be beautiful beyond all imagining.

Often the horrifying mayhem and the gorgeous regeneration have no link. But in the case of our recent trauma, I propose that they are meshed. My mailbox has been filled by people writing to testify about how the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, D.C. have inspired them to live more authentically. Their dedication to creating peace and love and understanding has leaped to a higher octave; their petty worries have dropped away, leaving them passionately focused on their core spiritual values; they've been roused by an electrifying new clarity of purpose, which has incited them to stop wasting their time on dead-end, low-priority desires and instead channel all their vital force into accomplishing their most essential goals; and they have had direct perceptions -- gut-level, intuitive, soul-enriching gnosis -- that We Are All One.

It's as if millions of people have had a simultaneous Near Death Experience, and are now harvesting the revivifying fruits that typically come to those who have peered over to the other side of the veil.

---

posted September 27, 2001 09:09 AM            

Turns out the delivery system isn't nearly as easy and carefree as movies and books like to make it.

The Iraqi's tried to use chemical weapons on Iran, and ended up engulfing their own troops. That Sarin gas attack in Japan only managed to kill 12 (most of the injured where injured fleeing..the panic thing).

Apparantly, delivery systems for the things are pretty difficult.

And Brad...just a question for you. Since the US kept smallpox, and played with it as a biological weapon, do you think that maybe one of the versus things they worked up was countermeasures for that very sort of enhanced smallpox?

You think? That's not exactly rocket science, you know.

"Hmm. We have a nasty version of smallpox. The Russians are developing one. They'll probably use it on us. We can (A) Simply respond in kind, living most everyone dead or (B) develop and effective cure/vaccine so that when we do (A) they die, and we don't".

Tough choice.

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Lisa! In this house we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics!

posted September 27, 2001 09:47 AM         

If your contention is that biological terrorism is not a catastrophic threat, I would suggest that it is you and not I that is getting his information from public access television.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,176066,00.html
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0499issue/0499infocus.html

posted September 27, 2001 10:52 AM            

quote:

---

It will never end no matter what is bombed or who is killed, the threat of terrorism will never become just a bad memory no matter how much security we have or how badly we want life to be as carefree as it was on September 10.

---

The only thing that changed about the world on September 11 was the tearing of the temple curtain in the Western Public Consciousness.
Brad>

quote:

---

I imagine humanity will destroy itself in a most gruesome fashion eventually, let us hope that it is not within our generation.

---

Can you now see what the Pacifists have been talking about all this time? Can you now see that when people protested the futility of killing people to prevent evil, of fighting violence with violence, that they may have had a point 50 years ago, 20 years ago...?

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Ack, bec's geometry homework wants to sell me a Tiny Wireless Camera! - Cropherb, via IRC

posted September 27, 2001 11:39 AM            

"Influenza! I choose YOU!"

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Lore> I want to go to the Jehovah's Witness paradise, 'cause you get to pet baby pandas.

babybabble