>> Sam ... didn't we cheer and celebrate while watching CNN's live
>> coverage of our missiles falling on Baghdad a few short years
>> ago?  What's good for the goose is good for the gander, even
>> though at times we have to be the goose.


> Yeah, and for the most part they were military targets.  Last time I
> checked, the WTC wasn't a military installation.


If cruise missiles can now distinguish between civilian and military targets
and between "innocent: and "guilty" parties then they must have changed to
using PICs in the decision making circuits :-)

In Iraq the government purposefully builds military installations in close
contact with civilian housing etc in order to both discourage attack and to
ensure civilian losses when attacks occur. Civilians are offered "shelter"
in presidential palaces (of which there are many) when attacks are imminent.
You can be fairly certain that, with such policies, attacks on Baghdad would
have resulted in much higher civilian than military fatalities. How you
"reasonably" deal with such policies may be terminally challenging claiming
that civilian fatalities are not occurring or are minimal  is just lying to
ourselves. If we say that we don't care about civilian casualties in such
cases it would at least be more honest.

Many Iraqi citizens fear both the US for what it has done to them and their
leadership for what it continues to do to them. They are encouraged to hate
the US and have reason enough to do so. Even if you were justified in
attempting to kill their leaders and those who (to a variable extent)
willingly support them, the people's hatred for you alone is not, I think,
enough justification for killing them. If we kill people because they hate
us for killing them where will it end?

I condemn absolutely the cowardly actions of September 11th. By any
standards worthy of acknowledgment the attack on the WTC was untenable and
not something which should be countenanced under any circumstances. But to
not understand that to many the WTC, as both a symbol and  a means of
exploitation of the worlds resources by a disproportionate few,  is seen to
be as offensive as any military installation is to hide our heads in the
sand and invite history to repeat itself in due course.

Pretending that what we are doing internationally is invariably upright and
pure and just and that we are all good citizens of the world is a good way
of ensuring that the future will be a worse version of the past.



            Russell McMahon

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