Is even one civilian death from a U.S. bomb acceptable to topple the Taliban?

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Discuss.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And the local corollary: is even one falsely accused terrorist suspect deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement acceptable for same?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Utterly unacceptable, yet happening in such cases. But is the better question: is such a situation in both cases in fact entirely and totally avoidable -- assuming that the US *must* attack and that suspects *must* be arrested -- and if so, what are the steps to make them avoidable?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

no, death is unacceptable, civillian or military

― Ed, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Robert Wright"This is fundamentally what we're fighting about: moral universalism, the idea that no person, by virtue of religion or race or nationality, is better than any other person; the idea that casually devaluing people's lives in the pursuit of your political goals is wrong. At least, that is the claim I'd make on our behalf. But the higher the number of dead Afghan civilians—and the higher the ratio of that number to the number of dead American soldiers—the less plausible the claim, and the closer we come to being the moral equivalent of Osama Bin Laden. That we'll never get all the way there strikes me as meager consolation."

― Michael Daddino, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What bothers me is the math of death. Even the writer you quote above has got it into their head that somehow if we kill 5,999 Afghans it'll still be somehow justifiable as long as it doesn't top the number of people murdered in the WTC.

The number of innocent people our bombs kill is ADDED to the total dead, not subtracted from it.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The number of innocent people our bombs kill is ADDED to the total dead, not subtracted from it.

Quite true indeed. Now there is one thing I am trying to keep in mind -- namely, that unless you're the worst, most vicious kind of conspiracy theorist, it's clear we wouldn't have been dropping any bombs at all (at least at the present time) had the WTC attack not taken place. This neither precludes an attack on Afghanistan due to other circumstances nor does it excuse the current campaign and its growing grotesqueness, but as far as I am concerned, the Afghani dead are as much Bin Laden's victims (assuming, to raise the nagging point again, that he really *is* the guy behind it all) as ours. That there are enough innocent deaths attributable to our flag and the policies carried out openly or subtly in its name over the past fifty years is beyond dispute, but the current civilian bombing victims, plus those who will die of starvation and god knows what else over there, have been sacrificed to both the ego of the 9/11 attackers and our attempts to take punitive action -- this must not be forgotten.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm the exciteable, angry, negative type. So yes, it is OK to have some collateral damage in the form of civilians, because wicked, evil, Jimmy The Mod logic sez that to kill adults is to prevent angry children from being created.

― JM, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

An evil part of me appreciates this...but what if the kids had already been born?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I R thinking that our societys are not really structured in a way that can fight global terrorism outright. However, it R also being unacceptable to let a crime of that magnitude go unpunnished. Hence the obvious choice of action R being to attack the largest organisation with links to the bombing. I R just hoping they R attacking the right one.

― I R fatnick, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes. Toppling the Taliban would be impossible otherwise.

― bnw, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

How do we stop the cycle of retribution?

kill adults is to prevent angry children from being created

Is that what we're doing? There's a stage term called "tool matching". When someone uses a certain tool on you to achieve an action [Action: maybe, 'to get someone to seize the reins' or 'show someone who's boss' or 'get someone to take my hand' - Tool: maybe "cajole" or "plead" or "simply ask" etc] and then you MATCH that tool, which they've just used, it's indubitably a concession, and not the strongest tack for your character. The audience (and the stage hands) implicitly understand that you are not getting what you want. We need something a little more imaginative from our "statesmen" (whatever that means) than what we're getting. There are too many unanswered questions on the basic level of "what is the ideal outcome?" etc to justify, it seems to me, the utter annihilation of a country already in ruins on account of the selfish and oppressive policies of the very people we say we're after, but who are safe as houses while the 'military targets' that are exploded are the SAME infrastructural elements - barely tottering in place - that Afghani civilians depend on for what brutally meager existence they've managed to eke out under this crushing Taliban regime. Leaving them nothing. Children of the region: "yay" ?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

[i are also thinking that the Doctrine Of Open Season On Any Country That HarborZor, which seems like it's already been swiftly enshrined, opens up a space for legitimate legal protest against the shady fuckers the U.S. deals with on reg basis. tho of course Congress will carve the words right around whatever Strategic Allies we've got at the moment pah]

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If you really want to get Osama bin Laden, then I think that civilian deaths are inevitable. Not only because Osama bin Laden is a ruthless fuck who wants a jihad, but because he's being protected by/is protecting the Taliban. Getting rid of Osama, then, means getting rid of the Taliban. And the Taliban is also ruthless enough to put civilians in harm's way.

This isn't to say that we should bomb indiscriminately, or not try to minimize civilian deaths. I just think that, if you really want to get rid of the Taliban, then there will be civilian deaths and we should accept that (or, if you don't, oppose the war altogether).

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I do oppose the war altogether, as it is being conducted.

Can't wait for the new breed of superpatriot cop show where hostage negotiators are relieved of all marksmanesque angst and telephone finesse: they can just bomb the warehouse.

[also can't wait for the new breed of superpatriot republicans who love this blessed country so much that they pay DOUBLE taxes]

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

1) Is toppling the Taleban the point of this war. I thought that was just a side effect of trying to catch Bin Laden. They've kind of brought it on themselves by refusing to hand it over. (Though I have to say the US should have shown them the evidence).
2) This is, unfortunately, what happens in war. But it's not as bad as it used to be (See the bombing of cities by both sides in world war 2. We didn't have to fight world war 2 but what would have happened if we hadn't?)
3) Watch public opinion turn again when just one US soldier gets killed. Sorry to be cyncial, but it will.

― Bill, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Does everyone here think that human beings are naturally immortal, and if we just stopped doing nasty shit nobody would ever die ever?

― dave q, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes: cuz it's in the Bible. "The wages of sin = death."

― mark s, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Tracer, your question really is about what war means to us now. Most if not all of us have never lived in a country at war for real (since WW2), let alone at war on its own territory, and are from countries belonging to NATO and/or G7. Technology and wealth replaced faith on a large scale. Our nations want Gap clothes and Entertainment Tonight, Britney cds and freedom to do whatever the fuck we like. We're PC and educated young people, with leftist tendencies surely, and the idea of having enemies with other beliefs and alien motives whom we'll have to hate and fight against is repulsive and simply makes no sense. Nothing like the hateful call to aller casser du Boche. A country at war, until now, traditionally wanted to do as much damage to its enemy as possible, this being the purpose of war, to subdue another people through violence, but now Western countries have reduced war to the delicate overthrowing of a political regime. Civilian targets are to be avoided at all costs. Well, that's bollocks. That's not how its done. War is dirty and bloody and it's the devil's work. A clean war is an oxymoron. I am myself against intervention, but that's hypocrisy and misplaced moral reservation. If there is to be war, it should always be all knives out.

― Simon, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'the idea of having enemies with other beliefs and alien motives whom we'll have to hate and fight against is repulsive and simply makes no sense'

The real problem is when the motives BECOME understandable and you still have to kill them.

― dave q, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If only SCience could conquer politics.

― Mike Hanle y, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No more!! No more science! its not a panacea for all human ills, thats what soma is for

― Menelaus Darcy, Saturday, 3 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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