9-11 attacks utterly legal!

[Trav]

Why aren't you doing something about it then?

If your answer is "Because I'm only one person" then thats how everyone feels.

[The Man]

Who says I'm not?

[Trav]

Elaborate...

[Honest Abel]

Originally Posted by My Final Heaven

THere's no chance, given the time that I posted this to your responses that you had time to read the whole thing.

I didn't have to; I read the first couple words of each paragraph and then moved on, because all you did was summarize a bunch of **** everybody already knows.

Proportinatly, you would have to kill the U.S. population about 9 times before you approached the level of death that has been caused in a 50 year period by the U.S's state sponsored terror. (That's a guestimate, I have no legitimate numbers to back that up)

Yeah, we should really work out a way to fix the United States, but killing a bunch of people and getting nothing out of it seems kind of pointless. At least the United States actually tries to justify their actions with something better than "a chip in your fingernail for an eye." Shows we're thinking about it at the very least.

[The Man]

Originally Posted by Travnia

Elaborate...

As we speak I'm preparing for a career in the public sector in hopes that I can help guide U.S. foreign policy in a more humanitarian and, I believe, logical direction. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing once I graduate uni but it'll probably be something related to the government, either working from within or without in attempts to change it.

[Etheon]

Justify : To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid: justified each budgetary expense as necessary; anger that is justified by the circumstances.

I'll go with Kant on that one and say that no matter the reasons or the consequences, killing isn't justified. It's auto destructive (as in, if everyone human decided to do so, we'd erase our own race).

As for what Noam Chomsky said, I doubt he actually said that the attacks of 9/11 were justified. He tried to find reasons for them, no doubt, but I don't believe he'd go and say they were justified.

[The Man]

Chomsky may have said they were justified by the criteria U.S. applied to its activities in other nation. But that's not particularly controversial; anyone who looks at the facts carefully can see that. Those criteria are casually dismissive of the value of innocent human life at best and sadistic at worst.

[Etheon]

Eh, justifying actions by subjective standards is a strong point of most Governments.

[The Man]

Ergo, one strong reason to distrust everything governments say

[Etheon]

That's a... very depressing statement, to say the least.

[The Man]

Yeah, well, the history of what governments have done to people is pretty depressing. I suppose one could marginally describe me as an anarchist, because I don't believe people are responsible enough to wield power in a manner that does not cause undue harm to other human beings. Ergo, I'd like to see all forms of social control eliminated eventually. However, I don't believe humans are responsible enough to handle real freedom, either, so either way, we're pretty much ****ed. The only hope is that society can be vastly transformed... which is what I'm hoping to be able to assist with in my life somehow. But I have to admit, a lot of time I don't see much hope.

[My Final Heaven]

Chomsky didn't say it was justified, I said it was justified, Chomsky said everything else, and I have no reason to doubt his sources.

America's crimes are on-going, and yes, the population of today does bare responsibility for it's history, myself included in however small a way it is.

Dave, you sadden me that you'd believe that a) the U.S. doesn't specifically target civilians and that b) you believe they fight wars to impose Dermocracy.

And that's the word isn't it? Impose. To force upon. If democracy is freedom, what exactly is forced freedom?

The U.S. can state that it's military does not target civilians (And they'd be lying because they attack infrastructure like powerstations, bridges, water treatment plants and hospitals. Yeah. Hospitals were bombed in each Gulf war.) but the fact is, for all the examples I stated, it was not the U.S. military but militia groups funded by the U.S. government conducting clandestine (terrorist) opperations.

Who said that Reagan fought the cold war without firing a shot? You, whoever you are, are simply ignorant. He didn't fire a shot at Russia no. No nuclear devastation to the globe I'll grant you that, just utter devastation to a few select places around the world who supplied Russia with Oil or Nickel or food. That's all. And when I say utter devastation, I'm talking millions of bodies. Total chaos in several of the south american countries. Remember the Iran/Contra thing? Where U.S. administration officails were caught selling weapons to Nicaragua when weapons sales to that country were banned? Look up Iran/Contra on google and see what you find. That's the kind of **** I'm talking about.

Man, so many quotable things to get back to.

For whoever said 'Why should the american people be responsible' and so forth, if not the american people who put the government in power, then who bares the blame? The politicians themselves say they are always accountable to the public and you know what? Over enough time, the reverse applies. If they keep giving the people the same lies and the people keep buying them, then it is the people who are to blame for thier ignorance. That's how democracy works. It is the responsibility of the voter to educate themselves about the actions of thier government and to vote accordingly. If you're ignorant of your crimes, that's no excuse. You can't shoot a guy in the face and then say 'Oh ****, I didn't know that was illegal' (Unless your'e Dick Cheney of course, and even then you have to be lucky that your friend refuses to press charges). Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse, and that should apply on a global scale as well. And if you knew all along and just didn't care, well that's like speeding isn't it? Eventually you get pulled over and you have no right to bitch and feel put upon because look at it this way, you didn't get caught all those other times, and if you had it could have gone much much worse for you. Feel lucky 9-11 doesn't happen everyday. In some countries it does and in some countries, it does, and it's money from the U.S. government that makes it happen.

[Trav]

Riiiiiiight everyones dumb cause they dont agree with you. Guess now would be a good time to say I'm off to the US in April for 2 weeks

[My Final Heaven]

Did I say it was thier fault? What I meant was that it's thier responsibility. And that's what it's all about. When you're responsible for something, you take consequences.

But lets assume that those people who voted counter to all the governments that have been in power for fifty years do not bare responsibility. What was the latest voter turnout? I don't think it was above 60%. So count at least 40% of the voting population as being accountable for the crimes of the current government simply on the grounds of criminal negligence, at least another 30% are responsible cause that's how much of the population actually voted for Bush, so lets assume that 70% of the United states population is responsible for crimes in the middle east and therefore, on average, 70% of the people in the world trade center where legitimate military targets (Also assuming that we're using the U.S's rules of engagment here). 70% accuracy is far more than you can expect from a laser guided bomb.

JUSTIFIED!

No one here has yet to give me a reason why my justifications do not hold water, just that killing is wrong, well yeah fine but how can you live in a state that sponsors terror and say something like that? THAT doesn't hold water. I, thanks very much America no longer have the moral grounds to declare that killing is wrong because you know what? I like living in civilisation, I like my creature comforts damnit, and now as I sit here there's this little voice in the back of my mind that says 'People died violently so that I could have this. My freedom is the tyrany of others' And It pisses me off frankly.

[Honest Abel]

Bush isn't the government, he's the head of one branch of the federal government. A lot of potential presidents would have struck back in a situation like that. The best president ever, FDR, dropped two ****ing nukes on domestic areas of Japan and then ****ed them up thoroughly in a few years of combat for bombing a naval station. But that was all alright to you; you don't seem to have a problem with senseless violence. It's the violence that we claim to have a moral obligation to enact that troubles you.

My point is, I'm criticizing our means of government, not the current people in it.

[My Final Heaven]

Originally Posted by Abes

My point is, I'm criticizing our means of government, not the current people in it.

Aside from my most recent posts, so was I. Bush (Who many hate) is nothing but one link in a chain of contenuity.

Actually, what I'm critisizing is all the people who after 9-11 asked the question, 'Who would want to do something like that to us, what have we ever done to them?' Well, actually a miriad of things. Or the people that said 'There's no justification for flying a plane into a building and killing thousands. That's just an act of cowardice! We're not like that at all.' Actually no, the U.S. policies are worse, in fact, than Bin Laden could ever hope to achieve in a single life time, and they are worse for equally ignoble reasons.

[The Man]

Originally Posted by Abes

The best president ever, FDR, dropped two ****ing nukes on domestic areas of Japan and then ****ed them up thoroughly in a few years of combat for bombing a naval station. But that was all alright to you; you don't seem to have a problem with senseless violence. It's the violence that we claim to have a moral obligation to enact that troubles you.

For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of Hiroshima and Nagasaki either. Though it wasn't FDR that dropped the bombs on Japan, it was Truman.

[Obsidian Tides]

I like living in civilisation, I like my creature comforts damnit, and now as I sit here there's this little voice in the back of my mind that says 'People died violently so that I could have this. My freedom is the tyrany of others' And It pisses me off frankly.

i think this answers exactly why no one is taking your accusations very seriously. you're only making them because you can't accept the very fact that you just stated, that's all. you just have to realize that you can't become the best by being nice and giving to everyone while letting them step all over you. you have to exploit every possible advantage to help give your country the edge, and there is no special place for "morals" in doing so.
of course, you're also completely neglecting every bit of good that the US has done in the world too, so it's no wonder that you're so bitter right now. foreign aid money alone is anywhere from $50 to $60 billion a year. use whatever twisted logic you want, that helps a lot of people.

honestly, you sound like you're just in some kind of funk right now, so i'm not making a very big deal out of what you're saying, but just keep in mind that there are positives out among the seemingly harsh realities of the world. just try not to forget it.

[My Final Heaven]

How much of that foreign aid money goes to countries with shifty human rights records as a means to keep them in line with U.S. policy, visa vis: Keeping oil prices low at the expense of thier own populations?

That does not count.

And I beg to differ about the means to the ends because the U.S. doesn't even look out for it's own people very well, save for it's top 1% elite. Average quality of life in the U.S. is down somewhere about 30 out of the 50 top countries, so you cant even say that you're getting much in return for the horror the U.S. government inflicts on the world.

Take Europe on the other hand. Far better quality of life. True, Europe has had it's own record of attrocities, but mostly among other european countries. What really gets me pissed off about the U.S. is that it leaves the other relatively big players alone and only goes after the absolute weakest undefended countries for no better reason than that those little countries want to actually take a shot at self management which might MIGHT end up hurting the intrest of the U.S. wealthy elite some time down the road. Want to talk about the absolute injustice? When all the big boys gang up to pick on the little ones, that's injustice, hell, it's practically the defenition.

I am not so nieve as to think we that if we could all just shake hands, have a big group hug that we could solve all our problems. I don't even think that looking at the big picture of humanity continuing to thrive that violence is a bad thing. It keeps us sharp. What angers me is when the biggest bully in the yard gets his nose bloodied and THEN goes a whines about it to everyone else to feel sorry for him, and then people ACTUALLY DO!


I'm going to say this again because it's pretty clear that everyone simply overlooked it in a previous post of mine, and I'm going to put it in big letters this time so that it's the first thing everybody reads out of this.

BE THANKFUL THAT 9-11 DOESN'T HAPPEN EVERY WEEK IN THE U.S. IN SOME COUNTRIES IT DOES (If we're going by numbers killed by terrorist actions, obviously, not planes flying into high rises. These countries don't have buildings that big for a start) U.S. MONEY, MUCH OF IT FORIEGN AID MONEY, FUNDS THESE ATTROCITIES! HOW CAN THE U.S. HAVE A WAR ON TERROR, IT'S ITS OWN WORST OFFENDER!




"Violence against the perpatrators of repeat violence is justified as an act of self defense." -Anthony Lewis, New york times legal analist, 1986.

[Honest Abel]

Originally Posted by The Man

For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of Hiroshima and Nagasaki either. Though it wasn't FDR that dropped the bombs on Japan, it was Truman.

Who gives a **** about Truman? He was only doing what FDR wrote in his will.