Michael P. O'Connor

I guess I have a problem when he said “It’s good that these men have been detained so that the authorities can discern if a plot was being formulated. If not, no foul.” No foul? Well, gosh, thank you for arresting me because you have a tip. Gah. He does say a lot of good centrist things such as news from Iraq, I happen to agree with most of that. I do find it troublesome that “I can’t speak for anybody but little ol’ me but … to consider the destruction of a ‘Muslim’ city in response to a nuke attack on an American city isn’t that far of a stretch.” My problem with that is he left something out – shouldn’t we find out who nuked us first? I see an interesting pattern – whenever there’s a strike anywhere on the globe for any reason, it must be that pesky al queda. It can’t be the ETA, IRA, or Aceh guirrelas or anyone else, it must be this Super Network(tm) of terrorists, secret decoder ring and all. (I guess Tim McVey or Eric Rudolph were Arabs after all, I mean look at how they look and dress) How many Americans will assume that any attack on our soil is the fault of al queda? Everyone will believe it, even if no shread of evidence was presented (like it wasn’t presented 4 years ago). Ask the same question even 20 years ago and it would be the russians. 63 years ago – japanese, 61 years ago – germans. Then we get Mexicans, French, Indian, British, and I forgot Vietnamese and Koreans in there as well (is there a country we haven’t fought with?) This public fear is getting out of control, especially when we have a divided country and a lot of nukes to launch. Information, real information instead of hysteria or propaganda, will fight that fear and while I’m not one to sit idly by after we were attacked and talk to a psychologist about it, I’d rather my retaliation was focused without a shadow of a doubt and without any hidden agenda.. and with some real proof for once.

I agree that there are a few considerations to take when talking about this guy. Still, there was nothing symbolic about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We didn’t bomb Tokyo and we didn’t bomb Kyoto. I bet if we did, Japan would not surrender. I think it’s actually counter-intuitive to bomb a capital. Don’t forget that if you bomb a capital, you rapidly increase nationalism of that country (NY is a major city, look at what happened when a relatively small piece of it was bombed… imagine the whole city). The key is to send a message, so instead of bombing Paris or an islamic capital, bomb another city to make a point that you will do it. Of course, one should first try to find out what happened first. You increase nationalism and hatred against you when you attack someone. Bombing terrorists has its good and bad – good that they are not a nation that has legitimate rights, bad that they are not in one physical place. Bombing nations has its consequences and nobody ever cares about civilians.