At 01:42 PM 9/12/01 +0000, Dirk Wright (in response to a post of mine) wrote:
> 1. Find out for sure who did this;
current evidence points to bin Laden.
Yes. The FBI have already found the names of suspected terrorists on the
flight manifests of the aircraft that were "used". As well, several of
these terrorist suspects were training at a Florida flight school (and
probably elsewhere) on multi-engined turbo-prop aircraft for as long as
seven *months*. The training experience is not supposed to be directly
applicable to 757s/767s, but then, the terrorists would have only needed to
actually commandeer the controls for the last thirty seconds or so of the
flight. Until then, they could just hold a knife to the throat of the
pilot, telling him to fly a certain bearing at a certain altitude.
Mind you, the pilot and crew (as well as all the passengers) of the plane
that slammed into the Pentagon were apparently herded to the rear of the
plane at least a few minutes beforehand. This is known because one of the
women passengers on the plane, a former Justice department official, had
used her cell-phone (twice!) to call her husband, apprise him of the events
and ask "What should I tell the captain to do?"
> 2. Bomb the f**kers back to the Stone Age.
>
expect the cruise missles and the B-1 bombers to fly very soon. Parts of
Afganistan will be nothing but a smoking crater after the US and NATO
get done with them.
For those who are afraid that nukes are inevitable, nice big fuel-air
weapons would do almost as much damage, and produce no radiation
whatsoever. Typical momentary overpressure from the shock wave of a FA is
100,000+ atmospheres, more than enough to flatten anything humans are
capable of building that doesn't have 100 metres of quartzite rock between
it and harm's way.
I've spent most of my adult life watching my liberal, humane ideals slowly
get trampled into the dust by organizations and individuals I used to (at
least cautiously) support. Now, at 43 years of age, I realize that our
fathers, and their fathers, were closer to the mark: sometimes you have no
options other than the utter destruction of your enemies.
And to my Canadian brothers and sisters who are afraid that this "might"
draw us in -- it *will* draw us in, and it should. We are signatories to
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that "An attack
against one is an attack against all." This is not terrorism, it's
war. States which harbour these people are not-so-clandestinely assisting
them, and they (and their citizens) will be punished. Harsh? Yes. But
one or two total melt-downs might convince other states that harbouring or
assisting terrorist organizations is a *really* *bad* *idea*. In the long
run, *less* innocent people may ultimately die.
As one commentator in today's National Post put it:
"U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell's first reaction to the day of infamy
was to pledge to 'bring those responsible to justice.' This is exactly
wrong. Franklin Roosevelt responded to Pearl Harbor by pledging to bring
Japan to its knees. He did not pledge to bring the commander of Japanese
naval aviation to trial."
It's time. In fact, it's long overdue. If we don't do this now, this will
spread to every Western nation in a way we cannot fathom. The stuff that
Europe has seen in the past will seem like a day at the beach, and we can
also expect tens of thousands more dead right here in good ol' North America.
I'm sorry. My liberal instincts want to fudge, to hedge, to find "a more
humane way." I'm afraid that another set of instincts have finally kicked
in, and they're screaming an entirely different message. My wife and many
of my friends work in office towers. All I could imagine yesterday was my
wife trapped in the same situation, phoning me one last time to tell me
that she loved me, to ask for my forgiveness for what she was about to do,
and then to jump to her death, because the alternative way of dying was too
much for her to bear.
This isn't a "left-wing vs. right-wing" discussion, though some people wish
to delineate it in such a fashion. This is realpolitik, and we'd better
get used to it, quickly.
"Nuke 'em 'til they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark."
-- Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven,
"Footfall."
Garth
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