November 11, 1887 : The Haymarket Martyrs — August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel — murdered by the state. November 11, 1918: The formal end to The War To End All Wars™.
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” ~ Jay Gould (attributed)
Join the Herald Sun Brigade to Afghanistan!
“Well, there’ve always been people going around saying someday the war will end. I say, you can’t be sure the war will ever end. Of course, it may have to pause occasionally–for breath, as it were–it can even meet with an accident–nothing on this earth is perfect–a war of which we could say it left nothing to be desired will probably never exist. A war can come to a sudden halt–from unforeseen causes–you can’t think of everything–a little oversight, and the war’s in the hole, and someone’s got to pull it out again! The someone is the Emperor or the King or the Pope. They’re such friends in need, the war has really nothing to worry about, it can look forward to a prosperous future.”
~ Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)
“All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State.”
‘War Is the Health of the State’, Randolph Bourne (1918)
If the holocaust was happening in 2003, would it be right to go to war with Germany? [if Germany had not invaded any other country] this might sound like a cop out question but I would really like to know what you think. regardless of the reason the united states went to war, there was terrible human rights abuses taking place. could what they did be justified?
Good questions.
Very briefly…
I think prevention is better than cure.
So in terms of the Nazi Holocaust, it would have been better if Nazism had been defeated prior to 1933 (the year Hitler The Dead Foreign Incestuous Coprophiliac Suicide became Chancellor). The same goes for Italian Fascism, and also Franco’s regime in Spain. Anarchists fought against all three. Much of the blame for their emergence therefore lies elsewhere, and should be understood in terms of 1) Western support for Hitler, Mussolini and Franco and 2) Communist sabotage of the anti-fascist (and anti-capitalist) struggle.*
In terms of the Taliban and Hussein’s Iraq, again: Western support was crucial to the success of both. To put it another way:
*Ken Knabb provides the following pithy summary:
B U R E A U O F P U B L I C S E C R E T S
IN THE CROSSFIRE: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
Note on Stalinism and Trotskyism
For those who are not familiar with the international political background of Ngo Van’s story, it may be helpful to make a few remarks about Stalinism and Trotskyism and to outline some of the twists and turns of the Third International under Stalin’s control.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 consisted of two relatively distinct stages. The “February revolution” was a series of largely spontaneous popular struggles beginning in February and continuing over the next several months; the “October revolution” was essentially a coup d’état carried out by the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. The Bolsheviks had a reputation as radical revolutionaries, due in part to their having been one of the few leftist groups to oppose World War I; but once in power they repressed grassroots radical tendencies and morphed into a new ruling class. Although they changed their name to “Communist Party” in 1918, the system they created had nothing to do with communism in the true sense of the word; it was simply a cruder and more concentrated version of capitalism. Private ownership was replaced by state ownership, but capitalism itself (the system of commodified social relations) was in no way eliminated. The workers who were formerly exploited by a multitude of private capitalists were now exploited by a single all-owning capitalist enterprise: the state. Although this process was complex and gradual, the transformation had become pretty clear by 1921 when the revolutionary Kronstadt sailors were crushed by the “Communist” regime under the direct leadership of Trotsky. (See Voline’s The Unknown Revolution and Maurice Brinton’s The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control: 1917-1921.)
Following Lenin’s death in 1924, the Communist Party faction led by Stalin became increasingly powerful, to the point that Trotsky was put on the defensive and eventually expelled from the Party and forced into exile. Stalin then imposed the various internal totalitarian developments which will not be discussed here since they are generally well known — police-state dictatorship, forced collectivization, Gulag labor camps, show trials, etc. (Good accounts of this process include Boris Souvarine’s Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, Ante Ciliga’s The Russian Enigma, and Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary.)
The Stalinist regime also exerted a malignant influence on radical movements in other countries all over the world. The Third International (a.k.a. Communist International or Comintern) had been formed in Moscow in 1919 to unite revolutionary communist parties around the world, after most of the socialist parties of the Second International had betrayed their socialist and internationalist principles by rallying to their respective governments during World War I. Under Stalin’s control, the Comintern became increasingly centered on the goal of defending Stalin’s regime at all costs. To this end, over the next two decades it imposed a succession of zigzagging policies on the subservient Communist parties in other countries, most of which worked out disastrously.
Following some “adventurist” debacles in the early 1920s (Germany 1923, Estonia 1924, etc.), the Comintern shifted to a defensive policy of compromises and alliances with various bourgeois forces around the world. The most dramatic failure of this policy was in China in 1925-1927. At the very moment when radical workers were attaining significant victories in the major cities of China, Stalin insisted that the Chinese Communist Party subordinate itself to the Guomindang, the nationalist party led by General Chiang Kai-shek. When the workers of Shanghai had taken over the city in April 1927, the Communist leaders thus urged them to welcome Chiang Kai-shek’s army and to turn in all their weapons. When they did so, Chiang’s army entered the city and massacred the radical workers by the thousands. (See Harold Isaacs’s The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution.) This catastrophic result of Stalin’s policy, which Trotsky had accurately predicted and sought to prevent, was undoubtedly an important factor in accounting for the readiness of Vietnamese radicals to rally to Trotskyist positions in the following years.
In 1928 Stalin imposed another policy change, arguing that, after the initial post-World War I period of revolutionary upsurges (1917-1923) and then the ebbing, defensive period (1924-1928), the international workers’ movement had entered a new “Third Period” in which radical revolutions were once again on the agenda. The primary enemy was now supposedly the socialist parties, which the Stalinists referred to as “social-fascists.” Following this policy, the German Communist Party focused on attacking the German socialists while largely ignoring the Nazis, thereby helping pave the way for the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933 (which soon led to the destruction of both the socialists and Communists in Germany).
In 1935 the Comintern line flipped to an opposite extreme. Now it was supposedly necessary to ally with the socialists, and in fact with just about anyone who wasn’t outrightly fascist, including centrist and even conservative parties, to form a “united front against fascism.” This policy led to the victory of Popular Front governments in Spain and France in 1936. But the radical currents that had supported those fronts now found themselves compromised, their hands tied due to their alliances with more centrist forces. On the Spanish Popular Front, see Note 2. In France, the Popular Front government, pressured by a nationwide wave of strikes and factory occupations, passed some progressive legislation (40-hour week, paid vacations, right to strike, etc.), but did nothing to eliminate French colonialism and scarcely anything even to improve conditions in the colonies beyond a few minor reforms that were mostly not implemented. This put the Vietnamese Stalinists in the awkward position of having to defend the French colonial regime that they had been fighting so desperately for so long.
Then the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 caused yet another zigzag. Now the focus was once again on the struggle against France, while the menace of fascism was played down (although Nazi Germany was on the verge of invading France and Japan was on the verge of invading Indochina).
Then, when Hitler double-crossed Stalin by invading Russia in 1941, it was once again a “war against fascism.” The Vietnamese Stalinists thus once again found themselves allied with their French colonial masters (although the colonial regime in Indochina was pro-Vichy and thus more or less allied with the fascists).
Then, in the power vacuum following the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, at a time when the Vietnamese people were in a position to prevent any significant French forces from reentering the country (France was recovering from years of Nazi occupation and demoralized by the Vichy regime’s collaboration with the Nazis, and most of its armed forces were half way around the world), the Stalinist leader Ho Chi Minh made a succession of compromises with the Americans, the British, the Chinese and the French, which enabled him to augment his power, destroy the Trotskyists and other potential rivals, and assume total control over the nationalist forces, but which at the same time enabled the French forces to reenter the country, thereby leading to thirty more years of war to obtain the national independence that might well have been won in 1945. Only in 1975 was the country finally liberated from its foreign masters — while remaining subject to an indigenous Stalinist dictatorship.
Most of these Stalinist policies had been sharply criticized by Trotsky. From around 1923-1934 Trotsky and his followers referred to themselves as the “Left Opposition,” meaning an opposition within the Russian Communist Party, attempting to recapture power from the Stalinist faction so as to turn the party back into a revolutionary and internationalist direction. After being expelled from the Russian party in 1928, they turned their attention to Communist parties in other countries and to the Third International. This strategy proved equally unsuccessful as Trotskyist tendencies were systematically eliminated from the Stalin-dominated parties around the world. By 1933 or 1934 most Trotskyists had concluded that the Third International had gone hopelessly astray and that it was necessary to form a Fourth International. This took place in 1938 (which is why some interim groups such as Ngo Van’s League of Internationalist Communists referred to themselves as “for the Construction of the Fourth International”).
It would be far too tedious to discuss the complex differences among the numerous Trotskyist groups and tendencies from the 1930s to the present day. Suffice it to say that since Trotsky was himself directly implicated in the process of the Communist Party becoming a counterrevolutionary force within Russia, and since he never recognized that that party had evolved into a new bureaucratic ruling class, his attempts to push the party to resume a revolutionary international policy were bound to fail. “Trotsky was doomed by his basic perspective, because once the bureaucracy became aware that it had evolved into a counterrevolutionary class on the domestic front, it was bound to opt for a similarly counterrevolutionary role in other countries” (Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle #112). This is why Trotskyist polemics, however radical they may seem in some regards, always end up floundering back into the same lame conclusion: Stalinism is criticized in many ways, but in the final analysis it is still considered to be “progressive.” Stalinist regimes are referred to as “degenerated workers’ states” or “deformed workers’ states,” implying that the socio-economic system is basically fine, it’s just that it is poorly guided by a faulty political leadership which needs to be replaced by a correct leadership à la Lenin and Trotsky. Trotskyists fail to recognize the origins of Stalinism in the earlier authoritarian practices of Lenin and Trotsky and in the hierarchical structure of the Bolshevik Party, which had already inaugurated the new state-capitalist system well before Stalin came to power.
It should be noted that none of these political tendencies have much connection with Marx, despite the fact that they all claim to be Marxist. One of the reasons that Ngo Van appreciated Maximilien Rubel was that he convincingly showed how Leninism and Trotskyism (to say nothing of Stalinism) diverge significantly from Marx’s actual views. While Marx had well-known differences with some of the anarchists of his time, his perspective was in reality much closer to anarchism than to any of the varieties of state socialism. The prevalence of statist “Marxism” during the last century has tended to drown out other currents of Marxism that are closer to Marx (and to the more coherent strands of anarchism), such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Karl Korsch, Socialisme ou Barbarie, and the Situationist International.
This text by Ken Knabb is one of the appendixes in Ngo Van’s book In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary (AK Press, 2010).
No copyright.
“prevention is better than cure”…are you serious? christ, andy, everyone has 20/20 vision in hindsight. the answer to your question, dale, is the allies did not go to war because of the holocaust. the discovery of the magnitude of the holocaust, among other things, served to reinforce the necessity of the debated policy of ‘unconditional surrender’. it also highlighted the true nature of depravity in what was once merely an ‘objectional regime’. the very same can be construed in regards the u.s. invasions. the u.s. took military action in response to a reasonably serious provocation. as a result of these, the world has been exposed to the horrific nature of both the iraq and afghan ruling regimes. whatever your views are regarding the justification of the amount of lives destroyed, bear in mind the casualty figures of ww2. bear in mind one half of afghanistanis living a life no better than a pack mule and worth considerably less. bear in mind those who suffered years and years of torture. not the pretend torture the americans are accused of, but real, disfiguring, mutilating, often mortal torture. it no longer matters why the war began, rather the question is, now that we are aware of the suffering faced by so many people, is it right to abandon them to the living death that was their previous existence.
“…everyone has 20/20 vision in hindsight…”
You missed the point: deliberately or not, I’m unsure. The anarchists who fought the Fascists in Europe did so prior to their assumption of power. And yeah: WWII wasn’t triggered by Allied opposition to fascist rule: Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939 following the invasion of Poland; the US declared war on Germany in December 1941 following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I’m unsure precisely what is meant by the following:
“the very same can be construed in regards the u.s. invasions. the u.s. took military action in response to a reasonably serious provocation.”
By reasonably serious provocation is meant the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? Committed by al-Qaeda?
In reality, the US invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan and then Iraq (one-third of the Axis of Evil) had little to do with the objectionable nature of either the Afghani or Iraqi regimes — these merely provided a handy pretext. Besides: those responsible for the attacks of 9/11 were not the peoples of either country, but a terrorist network with origins in the theocratic regime of Saudi Arabia (a long-term US ally). Regarding the current situation, I think that the views of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan are worth paying attention to.
Interviewing Chomsky
Radio B92, Belgrade
September 18, 2001
Q: Why do you think these attacks happened?
Chomksy: To answer the question we must first identify the perpetrators of the crimes. It is generally assumed, plausibly, that their origin is the Middle East region, and that the attacks probably trace back to the Osama Bin Laden network, a widespread and complex organization, doubtless inspired by Bin Laden but not necessarily acting under his control. Let us assume that this is true. Then to answer your question a sensible person would try to ascertain Bin Laden’s views, and the sentiments of the large reservoir of supporters he has throughout the region. About all of this, we have a great deal of information. Bin Laden has been interviewed extensively over the years by highly reliable Middle East specialists, notably the most eminent correspondent in the region, Robert Fisk (London Independent), who has intimate knowledge of the entire region and direct experience over decades. A Saudi Arabian millionaire, Bin Laden became a militant Islamic leader in the war to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan. He was one of the many religious fundamentalist extremists recruited, armed, and financed by the CIA and their allies in Pakistani intelligence to cause maximal harm to the Russians — quite possibly delaying their withdrawal, many analysts suspect — though whether he personally happened to have direct contact with the CIA is unclear, and not particularly important. Not surprisingly, the CIA preferred the most fanatic and cruel fighters they could mobilize. The end result was to “destroy a moderate regime and create a fanatical one, from groups recklessly financed by the Americans” (London Times correspondent Simon Jenkins, also a specialist on the region). These “Afghanis” as they are called (many, like Bin Laden, not from Afghanistan) carried out terror operations across the border in Russia, but they terminated these after Russia withdrew. Their war was not against Russia, which they despise, but against the Russian occupation and Russia’s crimes against Muslims.
The “Afghanis” did not terminate their activities, however. They joined Bosnian Muslim forces in the Balkan Wars; the US did not object, just as it tolerated Iranian support for them, for complex reasons that we need not pursue here, apart from noting that concern for the grim fate of the Bosnians was not prominent among them. The “Afghanis” are also fighting the Russians in Chechnya, and, quite possibly, are involved in carrying out terrorist attacks in Moscow and elsewhere in Russian territory. Bin Laden and his “Afghanis” turned against the US in 1990 when they established permanent bases in Saudi Arabia — from his point of view, a counterpart to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, but far more significant because of Saudi Arabia’s special status as the guardian of the holiest shrines.
Bin Laden is also bitterly opposed to the corrupt and repressive regimes of the region, which he regards as “un-Islamic,” including the Saudi Arabian regime, the most extreme Islamic fundamentalist regime in the world, apart from the Taliban, and a close US ally since its origins. Bin Laden despises the US for its support of these regimes. Like others in the region, he is also outraged by long-standing US support for Israel’s brutal military occupation, now in its 35th year: Washington’s decisive diplomatic, military, and economic intervention in support of the killings, the harsh and destructive siege over many years, the daily humiliation to which Palestinians are subjected, the expanding settlements designed to break the occupied territories into Bantustan-like cantons and take control of the resources, the gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, and other actions that are recognized as crimes throughout most of the world, apart from the US, which has prime responsibility for them. And like others, he contrasts Washington’s dedicated support for these crimes with the decade-long US-British assault against the civilian population of Iraq, which has devastated the society and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths while strengthening Saddam Hussein — who was a favored friend and ally of the US and Britain right through his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, as people of the region also remember well, even if Westerners prefer to forget the facts. These sentiments are very widely shared. The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 14) published a survey of opinions of wealthy and privileged Muslims in the Gulf region (bankers, professionals, businessmen with close links to the U.S.). They expressed much the same views: resentment of the U.S. policies of supporting Israeli crimes and blocking the international consensus on a diplomatic settlement for many years while devastating Iraqi civilian society, supporting harsh and repressive anti-democratic regimes throughout the region, and imposing barriers against economic development by “propping up oppressive regimes.” Among the great majority of people suffering deep poverty and oppression, similar sentiments are far more bitter, and are the source of the fury and despair that has led to suicide bombings, as commonly understood by those who are interested in the facts.
The U.S., and much of the West, prefers a more comforting story. To quote the lead analysis in the New York Times (Sept. 16), the perpetrators acted out of “hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.” U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned (Serge Schmemann). This is a convenient picture, and the general stance is not unfamiliar in intellectual history; in fact, it is close to the norm. It happens to be completely at variance with everything we know, but has all the merits of self-adulation and uncritical support for power.
It is also widely recognized that Bin Laden and others like him are praying for “a great assault on Muslim states,” which will cause “fanatics to flock to his cause” (Jenkins, and many others.). That too is familiar. The escalating cycle of violence is typically welcomed by the harshest and most brutal elements on both sides, a fact evident enough from the recent history of the Balkans, to cite only one of many cases.
Q: What consequences will they have on US inner policy and to the American self reception?
Chomsky: US policy has already been officially announced. The world is being offered a “stark choice”: join us, or “face the certain prospect of death and destruction.” Congress has authorized the use of force against any individuals or countries the President determines to be involved in the attacks, a doctrine that every supporter regards as ultra-criminal. That is easily demonstrated. Simply ask how the same people would have reacted if Nicaragua had adopted this doctrine after the U.S. had rejected the orders of the World Court to terminate its “unlawful use of force” against Nicaragua and had vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. And that terrorist attack was far more severe and destructive even than this atrocity.
As for how these matters are perceived here, that is far more complex. One should bear in mind that the media and the intellectual elites generally have their particular agendas. Furthermore, the answer to this question is, in significant measure, a matter of decision: as in many other cases, with sufficient dedication and energy, efforts to stimulate fanaticism, blind hatred, and submission to authority can be reversed. We all know that very well.
Q: Do you expect U.S. to profoundly change their policy to the rest of the world?
Chomsky: The initial response was to call for intensifying the policies that led to the fury and resentment that provides the background of support for the terrorist attack, and to pursue more intensively the agenda of the most hard line elements of the leadership: increased militarization, domestic regimentation, attack on social programs. That is all to be expected. Again, terror attacks, and the escalating cycle of violence they often engender, tend to reinforce the authority and prestige of the most harsh and repressive elements of a society. But there is nothing inevitable about submission to this course.
Q: After the first shock, came fear of what the U.S. answer is going to be. Are you afraid, too?
Chomsky: Every sane person should be afraid of the likely reaction — the one that has already been announced, the one that probably answers Bin Laden’s prayers. It is highly likely to escalate the cycle of violence, in the familiar way, but in this case on a far greater scale.
The U.S. has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die, possibly millions. Let me repeat: the U.S. has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. This has nothing to do even with revenge. It is at a far lower moral level even than that. The significance is heightened by the fact that this is mentioned in passing, with no comment, and probably will hardly be noticed. We can learn a great deal about the moral level of the reigning intellectual culture of the West by observing the reaction to this demand. I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled. It would be instructive to seek historical precedents.
If Pakistan does not agree to this and other U.S. demands, it may come under direct attack as well — with unknown consequences. If Pakistan does submit to U.S. demands, it is not impossible that the government will be overthrown by forces much like the Taliban — who in this case will have nuclear weapons. That could have an effect throughout the region, including the oil producing states. At this point we are considering the possibility of a war that may destroy much of human society.
Even without pursuing such possibilities, the likelihood is that an attack on Afghans will have pretty much the effect that most analysts expect: it will enlist great numbers of others to support of Bin Laden, as he hopes. Even if he is killed, it will make little difference. His voice will be heard on cassettes that are distributed throughout the Islamic world, and he is likely to be revered as a martyr, inspiring others. It is worth bearing in mind that one suicide bombing — a truck driven into a U.S. military base — drove the world’s major military force out of Lebanon 20 years ago. The opportunities for such attacks are endless. And suicide attacks are very hard to prevent.
Q: “The world will never be the same after 11.09.01”. Do you think so?
Chomsky: The horrendous terrorist attacks on Tuesday are something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the US, this is the first time since the War of 1812 that its national territory has been under attack, even threat. Its colonies have been attacked, but not the national territory itself. During these years the US virtually exterminated the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way. The same is true, even more dramatically, of Europe. Europe has suffered murderous destruction, but from internal wars, meanwhile conquering much of the world with extreme brutality. It has not been under attack by its victims outside, with rare exceptions (the IRA in England, for example). It is therefore natural that NATO should rally to the support of the US; hundreds of years of imperial violence have an enormous impact on the intellectual and moral culture.
It is correct to say that this is a novel event in world history, not because of the scale of the atrocity — regrettably — but because of the target. How the West chooses to react is a matter of supreme importance. If the rich and powerful choose to keep to their traditions of hundreds of years and resort to extreme violence, they will contribute to the escalation of a cycle of violence, in a familiar dynamic, with long-term consequences that could be awesome. Of course, that is by no means inevitable. An aroused public within the more free and democratic societies can direct policies towards a much more humane and honorable course.
yeah i did miss the point…remember kids, wine and computers don’t mix. sorry ’bout that, dale. you’re right, though andy, a good question.
whether right or wrong, if the united nations didn’t do anything, i’m sure israel would. now that would be a fucking good blue.
With or without wine. I can agree with alot of what what was said by Lest we forget and Andy, I have another shit question: If the people who attacked New York and Washington (without knowing their reasons for their attack) had been home grown, would the United States be justified in pursuing the guilty? Of course they would. What I am trying to say is if a country is attacked beyond its boarders, what should they do (if diplomatic measures fail)?
Don’t get me wrong, I would rather see a peaceful answer to my questions. But the world is a bit weird and a bit fucked.
Dale: You’ll note that the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and not Saudi Arabia. If you think for a few minutes who has paid the greatest costs of the terrorist attacks, it has been Afghani and Iraqi citizens, who have the misfortune of being saddled with appalling governments followed by sadistic invaders.
United Airlines Flight 175
Marwan al-Shehhi (United Arab Emirati)
Fayez Banihammad (United Arab Emirati)
Mohand al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Hamza al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Ghamdi (Saudi)
American Airlines Flight 77
Hani Hanjour (Saudi Arabian)
Khalid al-Mihdhar (Saudi Arabian)
Majed Moqed (Saudi Arabian)
Nawaf al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
Salem al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
United Airlines Flight 93
Ziad Jarrah (Lebanese)
Ahmed al-Haznawi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Nami (Saudi Arabian)
Saeed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
So I would start by not invading a third country, even if it gives succour to terrorists, or a country that looks a bit Arab-y and just so happens to have heaps of oil. Secondly, I think that terrorists should be bought to trial in an international court. Seems realistic, doesn’t involve dropping bombs on weddings and can actually have a just outcome.
Lumpen: Sorry I didn’t make my question clear enough. More or less I’m asking, could a country be justified in defending itself outside of its borders? (I was using the U.S invasion of Afghanistan as an example.)
What if:
They attacked my great great grandma, killing half the people in her town. Thirty years later the same bastards attacked again killing dozens of women and children. Even after all this time, my mum names and mourns the lost every night. When I was a child these motherfuckers invaded again, leaving my family shattered and in poverty.
Still they press their advantage. Hundreds of my family members have been brutally killed fighting against these fucks. Despite our best efforts this country is over-run.
Every decent man should provide for and protect his family yet foreign murderous assholes dominate every legal aspect of life. The ‘men’ around here are either semi-slaves or petty criminals and I know, if nothing changes, this will be my fate.
Some bloke at school says he has the answers. The call of national pride is irresistible and only traitors and poofters would refuse to fight. The plans for defence sound weird and unachievable but I can’t help but agree. After all, what choice do I have, every man would happily die to protect his family, his culture and nation.
Every part of my being tells me that it’s either me or them.
That every single one of these cunts must die.
(just sayin)
dale, i hope u dont mind if i change your question.. can a country be justified in defending itself at all?
how can a country who wants peace justify murder? people have put themselves in a situation that has no right answer, the only way peace can be achieved is when decisions people make are from people who are truly are at peace.
“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
[Albert Einstein]