Tag Terrorism

Entries 3 Total

The worst terrorist attack in history

Aug 8, ’09 8:08 AM

Photo of mushroom cloud of nuclear terrorist attack on HiroshimaThis week marks the 64th anniversary of one of the largest and most hein­ous acts of ter­ror­ism ever per­pet­rated: the nuc­lear bomb­ing of Hiroshima and Naga­saki by the United States of Amer­ica, the only coun­try to have ever used nuc­lear bombs to mas­sacre civil­ians. The largest attack, also per­pet­rated by the U.S., was the fire­bomb­ing of Tokyo five months earlier, killing 80 000 to 120 000 civil­ians in one day.

What I find par­tic­u­larly hard to con­tem­plate is not that these events took place but that most Amer­ic­ans ever since have viewed these incred­ibly hein­ous crimes as neces­sary, effect­ive and other than crim­inal and immoral, or at best neces­sary evils. This is to effect­ively believe that any­thing can be legit­im­ate means, as long as it’s car­ried out by the Americans.

I doubt this kind belief and the sur­vival of the human spe­cies are mutu­ally inclusive.

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We bear responsibility

Jul 14, ’05 12:11 AM

“The cent­ral fact is that over­whelm­ingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by reli­gion as much as they are by a clear stra­tegic object­ive: to com­pel mod­ern demo­cra­cies to with­draw mil­it­ary forces from the ter­rit­ory that the ter­ror­ists view as their home­land. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kash­mir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist cam­paign — over 95 per­cent of all the incid­ents — has had as its cent­ral object­ive to com­pel a demo­cratic state to withdraw.”

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So what came before September 11?

Jul 8, ’05 8:45 PM

Accord­ing to Jack Straw, in response to George Galloway’s quite reas­on­able point that the cow­ardly attacks on Afgh­anistan and Iraq increased the threat of ter­ror­ist attack in Bri­tain, “People have to remem­ber that 11 Septem­ber was in 2001 before the mil­it­ary action.” This cheap little chunk of self-deluded spin is an attempt to weave the story that the Septem­ber 11 attacks came out of the blue.

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