{"id":2011,"date":"2004-03-22T05:01:19","date_gmt":"2004-03-22T05:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulhuntre.com\/items\/date\/2004\/03\/22\/terror-for-terrorists\/"},"modified":"2004-03-22T05:01:19","modified_gmt":"2004-03-22T05:01:19","slug":"terror-for-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/2004\/03\/22\/terror-for-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"Terror for terrorists…"},"content":{"rendered":"

On [[Metafilter]] there is a post<\/a> discussing the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin<\/a> (you can use this link<\/a> to log in if you don’t have a NYT account). The thread centers around the ethical and practical issues of assassination as a tool of policy. Go over and check it out, I have copied my post below as it doesn’t involve a large quote from anyone else if you don’t want to go there (but you should).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

posted by soulhuntre<\/a> at 4:51 AM<\/a> EST on March 22 <\/h1>\n
\n

“a. is assassination of political\/spiritual leaders justified?”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes the answer is absolutely yes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That’s probably not full of enough disclaimers to play well, especially here, but its the simple answer to a simple question.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Are the ramifications complex? Yup.\n
  • Are the factors in the decision complex? Sure. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    But the basic question? That’s simple… “Yes, sometimes it is”.<\/p>\n

    I do see, as a practical matter, that sometimes killing the leader of your sworn enemy may bring a increase in violence. However you cannot always allow someone to act against you with impunity and always back off so you don’t “get them really mad”.<\/p>\n

    You cannot continue to live your life with some madman randomly killing your people and attacking your nation and simply roll over and say “we won’t fight back, that will only make it worse”.<\/p>\n

    Of course its a symmetrical proposition, your enemy may well see your attack as one they cannot tolerate and open conflict will arise. But that doesn’t change anything. You still cannot grant your enemy impunity because they are a threat to you… not if you hope to survive in the long run.<\/p>\n

    Sometimes you simply have to pull the trigger, knowing it will start a war…because the continued existence of that partular human bent on your destruction is a bigger threat than the zealots who will arise to avenge him.<\/p>\n

    Imagine a serial killer on the loose. He is killing women and children and he says to the media “lay a finger on me and my 5 serial killer friends will start where I left off”. <\/p>\n

      \n
    • How long will you tolerate this?\n
    • How long will you allow it to go on out of fear?\n
    • How long before you realize that the only response to being a victim of terror is to fight? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Appeasement won’t save you. So you shoot him down, and when his 5 friends come you shoot them, and the 10 after that.<\/p>\n

      Because living on your knees while some terrorist holds a figurative gun to your head is no way to exist as a nation or a individual.<\/p>\n

      Are there some folks out there using exactly the same logic to justify attacks on Isreal or the US? Sure thing. They obviously see themselves as the victims and us as the terrorists. The proposition is symmetrical because their analysis is correct insofar as they realize that they too have an enemy bent on their destruction. The irony of that doesn’t change anything about the realities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      On [[Metafilter]] there is a post discussing the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin (you can use this link to log in if you don’t have a NYT account). The thread centers around the ethical and practical issues of assassination as a tool of policy. Go over and check it out, I have copied my post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}