X-Message-Number: 18135 From: "Dani Kollin" <> Subject: Dani's rebuttal to Matthew Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 21:33:21 -0800 Hi Matthew, Sorry my response has been so late in coming. My PC had a major crash (as in operating system died) and I'm lucky I got most of my unbacked up info back. So without further ado... Message #18084 Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 20:43:03 +0900 (JST) From: "Matthew S. Malek" <> Subject: Moral Relativism Matthew: Again, I would point out to you that the United States established and funded the training camps that were used by Al Qaeda. They were established to train terrorists, the only difference is that they were called "Freedom Fighters" when they served US interests. Dani: They were set up to attack Soviet troops invading a country that did not want them. They were not set up for terrorist to kill civilians Matthew: Again, the United States is culpable. Recall how many innocent women and children died in Dresden. Or when the atomic bombs were unleased. Dani: The U.S. was attacked by a country and had the other declare war on it. Both countries showed no hesitation in attacking and destroying civilians as well as the cities in which they resided. We needed to end the war as quickly as possible so _our_ citizens would not be killed in any numbers greater then absolutly neccessary. If they didn't want us to attack them they could have left us the hell alone. Matthew: Manuals are irrevelevant. Not only do I have no access to _any_ CIA manuals (I suspect you do not, either), but actions do speak louder than words. Read up on the history of other actions taken by the CIA. Look at Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Grenada, Chile, and others. Dani: I agree with you. A lot of really bad stuff went down in those places and we certainly have to take responsibility for where we screwed up. And by the way, in your list above, you forgot the granddaddy of them all - Vietnam. However, for the exception of MyLai, I know of no instance where American forces purposley went into areas to kill innocents. With all the media attention on just such an issue I think it would have turned up by now. Matthew: In fact, the US terrorist actions have killed far more than the numbers who dies on September 11th (tragic though that day surely was!). Bush's goal of "ending terrorism" is a propoganda tool, nothing more. If the United States were sincere about wishing to end terrorism worldwide, the best place for it to begin would be at home, with the dismantling of its own terrorists. Speaking of facts, how about some? When?, what?, where?, how many died in these 'terrorist actions'? Matthew: Again, the United States put the Taliban and Saddam Hussein into power. An automatic association with their actions, and a shared responsibility, follows. I stand by my words, and think that you might wish to take a less naive look at the foreign policy of the United States. Dani: The US had nothing to do with Saddam coming to power. He siezed power in the 70's as part of the Socialist Bathe Party and promptly tried to make a deal with the USSR. He only turned to us when Iran threatened to wipe Iraq off the map. We helped him in order to keep a religious army from rolling across the Middle-East, setting up Taliban-type governments at the point of a gun. The real irony of course is that we have much better relations with Iran today than we do with Iraq. However, at the time, who knew? Matthew: Moral relativism? Hardly. I take a very simple view: Killing civilians is wrong. If the US does it, it is wrong. If Al Qaeda does it, it is wrong. I don't care which rich religious fundamentalist is behind it, Bush or Bin Laden. It's still wrong. Dani: It is a simple view. THIS IS NOT A SIMPLE WORLD! If you had to bomb a village to keep a nuclear missile from destroying Berlin, London, Cairo, or Los Angeles, would you? I know I would. If you wouldn't, then you'd have far more deaths on your hands from inaction than action. But inaction is an action in this world. You cannot have the power, not use it and be morally blameless. Matthew: The relativism that I have seen here is more along the lines of, "It's a terrible affront to all of humanity when our citizens are killed, but no matter who _we_ need to kill in pursuit of our goals, trust us... it is sadly necessary." Dani: That is not relativism, its reality. When our people are killed it's not an affront to humanity, it's an affront to' us. That is human nature. Matthew's tagline: =>Long Life for ALL, Dani: Let's talk about that tagline for a minute. I know that as part of the cryo-net you feel that this is a desirable end, yet your personal views seem calculated to allow humanity to exist in a very short and brutish life. I think you are of the opinion that if we ignore the world we will be able to live in a kind of moral saving grace in which we will not have to sully our souls with the evil of bad and worse. Wake up. We as a nation tried something like what you're suggesting. We cut off our ties with the 'evil' world and had as little to do with it as possible. This was post WW I and the result was a communist state that murdered not thousands, not millions but, if you combine Russian and Chinese communism with all the rest, hundrededs of millions. let's not forget the thirty five million or so murders we can lay at the door of the Nazi's and the fascists. All these deaths because we did't get involved. How many French and Italian and German and throw the rest of Western Europe into the mix would have died if we took your outlook again and preserved our precious moral purity and did nothing? Review Western Europe after WW II. The choices were the U.S or the USSR. I know we wouldn't have killed the millions of Western Europeans who would have died had we allowed communism to prevail but they would have been just as dead. But to your point. Are we responsible for the deaths of many thousands? Yes. We screwed up plenty of times and plenty of times people died (see your list above). Guess what? That's the world. We, (I mean Americans), had a choice. intervene, with all the moral messiness that entailed, (that meant mistakes like killing, backing killers and oppressors), or stay out. This is the sad nature of the world. Staying out leads to more death. Whether it's Clinton not caputuring Bin Laden in '97 when the Sudan offered him to the US, (it would have been messy, politically, morally, etc.), or us letting Europe hang while the totalitarians took over, it comes back to us. Our problem in Afganistan and the world isn't that we intervened too much, its that we intervened too little. It's our job until someone better or worse comes along and takes it away from us. Dani P.S. More comments on Matthew's "nuke" take below. Message #18085 Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 22:38:55 +0900 (JST) From: "Matthew S. Malek" <> Subject: Re: More Comment on Nukes (by Mike Perry) Matthew: I think that this is less truth and more an after-the-fact rationalization for the horrendous crime against humanity that was committed with the use of the atomic bomb. Even ignoring the fact that Japan was running low on raw materials needed to make weaponry, aircraft, etc. (indeed, temples were being taken apart in many cases to take metals from within!), the numbers just don't add up. Dani: The Japanese had four million battle-hardened veterans armed to the teeth with years of small arms & ammunition stock piled. The army had shown no inclination to give up at any point in the war. For America to think that four million would break the mold would have been foolish. Matthew: The war casualties of WWII were about six million over the course of six years, with fighting on three fronts (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific). This figure does _not_ include the additional millions slaughtered in Nazi death camps. Dani: Interesting figures. Mind telling me where you drummed them up? Most historians today (and I checked) agree that WW II deaths were around fifty-five million. Hell, the Russians killed 20 million alone and who knows how many Chinese bought it under Mao? Matthew: So we have about 1,000,000 causalties per year, on all three fronts combined... or about 350,000 casualties per front. At this rate, it would have taken an extra year and a half of fighting on the Pacific front to equal the casualties that resulted in the dropping of both atomic bombs. Dani: According to facts the death rate, leaving out the Holocaust was over nine million dead a year. That would be three million per front. But let's not forget geography (the American High Command certainly didn't). The fighting until the bombs were dropped had been island fighting. Usually no more then fifty thousand Japanese could fit on an island. And we were about to invade the mainland with approximately four million of the same fanatic, show-zero- inclination-to-surrender soldiers that we had already encountered. No, Matthew. The Japanese were ordered by their emporer to fight till the end and or die trying. One thing is certain - we were in for a world of hurt. Even with our massive superiortiy in air and naval power (which, by the way was something the Japanese had ignored). Matthew: (And these raw numbers ignore the differences between military casualties and the civilian casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... plus they ignore the lifelong health effects suffered by atomic bomb survivors, some of whom were in utero at the time, which continue even now) Dani: In total war the line between military and civilian casualty counts goes to zero. I wish it didn't have to, but it does. We've only fought one total war in history and I pray we won't ever have to fight another. Though the best way to find yourself in one is to encourage enemies into thinking you won't fight ( see 'isolationism'). Matthew: With the USA and the USSR united against it, it seems unlikely to me that Japan could have sustained the war effort for another eighteen months. Dani: The Japanese government told civilians in Okinawa to commit suicide rather than surrender. Do you think if they stayed in power that same gov. would have had any problem starving their own citizens to death? This is the same gov., mind you, that brought us Nanking and the Bataan Death March. Matthew: You are suggesting that the death of nearly 500,000 Japanese civilians is justifiable if it halts _Soviet_ expansion??? Dani: First of all. Facts man facts. 187,00 Japanese died in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More died in all the fire bombings. A conventional invasion would have buried 500,000 Americans and an estimated 2.5 million Japanese. Personally I believe the four million Japanese soldiers would have died almost to a man so you can make the total Japanese dead 6.5 to 7 million. But this is my opinion. The actual figures are from the Japanese and Americans - compiled by both governments after the war. Matthew: Even ignoring questions about the parallel imperialistic exansionism of the United States, it should be obvious how callous such a comment is. Dani: In 1946 we gave the Phillippines independance. In the 1980's when they told us to get our air and naval bases out of, we did. If that's imperialism we, apparently, still have a lot to learn. Matthew: As far as your comment abut "less conditioned" nuclear powers, I don't see any evidence for the existance of such "less conditioned" powers. Out of all the nuclear capable countries, only one has proven itself irresponsible enough to actually use such weaponry. Dani: All throughout the cold war the USSR knew, absolutly knew, that the US could and would nuke its cities. They never had a seconds' hesitation as to that fact. If they had ever, for a moment thought we would hesitate, the world might not be here as we know it. This is pure speculation, but a little study of Russian history and and the bully mentality that allowed it to annihilate over 20 million of its own would have me empty my bank account on that bet. OK. I'm done. Dani ___________________________________________________________________________ Visit http://www.visto.com. Find out how companies are linking mobile users to the enterprise with Visto. 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