[rescue] God bless America

[Mike Meredith]

On Thursday 13 September 2001 15:45, you wrote:
> > at least partially because it could make the problem of terrorism
> > worse.
>
> This is the attitude which causes a continuation of the cycle of
> violence, it is predicated on the notion that if you fight back, it

We've been fighting back against terrorism in the conventional sense 
for a long time. Terrorism is still in use today.

In the UK, the IRA were persuaded to stop using terrorism by talking to 
them. Attempting to defeat them militarily just didn't work.

I say again, conventional retaliatory strikes by the US against the 
terrorists (which always ends up included innocent civilians) won't 
stop terrorism. It hasn't in the past, so why should it now ? Greatly 
increasing the severity of the attacks won't work either --- unless the 
US plans to commit genocide.

The world needs to find a new method of fighting terrorism that doesn't 
perpetuate the cycle of violence. What that method is, I don't know.

And I certainly did *not* suggest not 'fighting back'.

> Unfortunately, this depends on the Terrorists being rational people,

Assuming that terrorists are not rational is a rather dangerous 
assumption to make. Maybe the suicidal ones aren't rational, but the 
ones who stayed in the background and the ones who funded the operation 
certainly are. People who are willing to commit murder on this scale 
*and* are perfectly rational do exist; they're called Pschopaths (or 
possibly Sociopaths --- my knowledge of abnormal psychology is a bit 
rusty).

> Reality is, that elimination of the Terrorists results in cessation
> of the attacks perpetrated by those terrorists.

Only if you assume that the number of terrorists in the world is fixed. 
It ain't so.

> Elimination of the groups funding and supporting terrorist attacks
> results in those groups ceasing to fund/support terrorism.

"Elimination" of the people who funded these attacks may in some cases 
be a little harsh. In some cases they may not have known what their 
donations were intended for --- or do you believe that those US 
citizens who funded the IRA during the 1970's should be "eliminated" ?