[Fwd: Iraq Dispatches: Inside Abu Hanifa mosque during attack

[boblq]

On Wednesday 01 December 2004 06:36 pm, Jaron Omega wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, boblq wrote:
> > On Wednesday 01 December 2004 10:20 am, JD Runyan wrote:
> > > boblq wrote:
> > > > Here we agree. I think we should enlarge that chink not ignore or
> > > > abolish it. I can see an extension of the Geneva Conventions that
> > > > within a millennium or two would lead to the concept that War itself
> > > > is a crime and that those who pursue when found guilty are given
> > > > sentences appropriate to that crime.
> > >
> > > How do you stop, capture, punish someone who is waging war?  I suggest
> > > that you engage them in war, and defeat them.
> >
> > In a word, overwhelming force as a preventative. You stop them or
> > contain them before significant damage is done.
>
> You know, this blurs the line of justified military action. 

Yes I know, I agree. This is why it becomes a problem. A structural problem. 

> People 
> tend to be skeptical of preemptive decision making.  Why send a military
> into a soverign nation, if they have yet to do anything to justify
> the assault?  You might agree, processing nuclear fuel rods as just
> cause for preemptive force, but some may not.  Where would you draw
> the line?  How many nations must be taken over?  How many civilian
> lives lost before it's clear something needs or should be done?  One
> civilian dead?  A leader that seems to have a hard ball attitude?
> Let's invade his country, he must be taken down!  Problem here, is
> the world wouldn't see it that way but see us as conquerors.

Again I agree. All good questions. Until such time as we have some form of
international federation, not an imperial state, then all of the problems you 
raise will occur. Once there is a federation though the problem of tyranny 
becomes foremost. 

There is likely no escape from the problem of being human. 

> > Thus war prevention becomes police action.
>
> And people hate the police.

And with good reason. The police represent two opposing concepts,
order and justice. Order is favored by tyrants, justice by those who 
favor freedom. You cannot have freedom without order so the problem
lies in setting the balance and finding mechanisms to implement that
balance, i.e. a legal system. We do not yet know how to do this well. 

I am hopeful that we shall find a way. My optimism flies in the face of much 
data except for one important observation. Slowly, often with backsliding, 
the balance that allows for more freedom within order seems to be coming 
into being.  The reasons for this are that the technological and economic 
underpinnings of freedom and justice are being created to which I suspect 
(and hope) James H. will testify (or critique). 

> > Think about it a moment. It has been about 100 years since there
> > has been a major war on the North American continent. Why is that?
>
> Pacific and Atlantic ocean.

You miss the point, for which I apologize. I should have been more explicit. 
Why is this continent not subject to wars in the way that Europe has been?
I am not asking why we are easily defended from their wars. Oceans, I 
agree, have been fortunate barriers against the importation of foreign wars. 
 
But I am asking why we do not have wars of our own. 

> > We already have this problem with the ordinary police in our cities.
> > Ask why the "peaceful" USA has the highest per capita incarceration
> > rate in the world.
>
> It is obvious as we also have the highest crime rate.

Duh, Tautology. If we had no laws we would have no crimes. Do we 
have people who are somehow more criminal than the rest of the 
world? I don't think so. I think we have an oppressive system that 
both encourages a certain segment of society to become criminal 
and then penalizes them severely when they act as we encourage 
them to act. 

I would like to ask you guys to come down to my neighborhood 
and work directly with some of the people I work with daily. I think
you would enjoy it. They are, many of them, criminals and welfare 
rejects.  It would be a lot better for your spirit then these endless 
political diatribes which quite honestly have become so repetitive 
as to be written by bots (LEWBOT, NEILBOT, LANBOT, all sounding
like a +-RUSHBOT). These are good people who have real problems 
and yet they go on every day in the face of difficulties
that would cause most people to give up. e.g. see 

http://www.osocomm.com/Bob/images/garth&precy.jpg
http://www.osocomm.com/Bob/images/dan.jpg
http://www.osocomm.com/Bob/images/alvin_randy_boat.jpg

I told Randy the other day, "I cannot afford to pay you to work
on this boat. You need to get more friends. I am not a Christian
or a Muslim, but you need to go to these churches and find 
people who will care for you." I don't see any of the "secular" 
types doing a damn thing except pushing words into the 
air. I don't see anybody on this list that actually gives a 
damn about anyone except (perhaps) their immediate 
family. But I have no way to know and may be completely 
off base. I do however need to vent. 

There is a great loss in this. On another level this is what the 
election was about. There is a population, manipulated not doubt 
by assholes like Bush (actually Carl Rove), of people who do give 
a damn about other people on an immediate and direct level. Many 
of them happen to be religious people including some fanatics. 
But if you are down and out I suggest that you go to them for 
help and don't knock on the door of your favorite atheist or
agnostic. 

I am not religious. I am a devout agnostic. I don't get answers 
to many fundamental questions. OK, call that a religion if you
will, but it does not follow from a lack of belief in god or God
that one should not care for one's fellow humans nor does it follow 
that the only mechanism for that caring is an uncaring bureaucracy.

I do believe that we need the secular equivalent of churches,
sermons, and direct voluntary social  action. I hear lots of talk  
about what politicians and governments should do by people who 
walk right by the homeless every day and do nothing. 

I refuse to accept the notion that caring for others is a sign of
weakness and naivete. I suggest the real problem is fear. People
of all political and religious persuasions are afraid of the underclass,
perhaps because their own middle class situations are so precarious. 

I just don't know though.  

So ... I tire. My tirade winds down. 

Enough,

boblq