9/11 - War or Crime?

[Guest]

Do you consider the attack(s) of September 11, 2001 to have been a crime or an initiation of war?

 For this discussion, crimes are adjudicated in courts by judges and juries and with the assistance of prosecutors and defense council.

 Wars occur when one nation attacks another.

 I admit in advance that this is a somewhat tricky question. Later I am going to talk about Jose Padilla and Zacarias Moussaoui.

[Standing Wolf]

It was one more attack in a world war. We're too stupid to notice the obvious.

[Fly320s]

Crime.

[RevDisk]

Crime.  


Declaring war on a concept hasn't work out so well in the past.

[The Rabbi]

What difference does it make?  Your definitions are not current with realities.

[Sergeant Bob]

What difference does it make?  Your definitions are not current with realities.

Indeed. 3000 people die and everyone wants to argue about what to call it.

[Tallpine]

War is a Crime committed by government(s)

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

War.  

Calling it a crime marginalizes what took place that day.  Sept 11 was no mere crime.  The people involved were not mere criminals.

[grampster]

The trap has been sprung.  If you define the events of September 11th as a crime, then the only way you can confront it is by using the legal system, sworn police and officers of a court.  The problem with that is the criminals have no base as they are a loose pohilosophical confederation with a world wide geography.  Their acts are hidden behind and use a religious basis for their actions.  They justify their acts as a directive from a higher power.  They subvert governments, destabilize cultures all the while proclaiming that they are righteous and the rest of the world is not.  The rules of engagement by defining the acts as criminal and then dealing with criminals place more constraints on orderly societies when they have to deal with these folks.  

In the past, war has been mostly defined as state vs state.  But underlining that, is there still was always a philosophical difference that led to war between states.  Today, we still have the underlying philosophical differences but the difference is that not always are the states that harbor these people are, in some cases unwilling participants.  Things change.  Definitions need to be revisited, especially when one's national security is jeapardized by bogging down with debate about what is painfully obvious.  I hate to say it, but the Left seems preocupied more with debate that grasping reality.

In my humble opinion a philosophical act of war has been comitted.  Whether states are involved is not germain.  Those acts happened some time ago and have been steadily ramping up and culminating on September 11th and continue to the present on a world wide scale.  The world is truly engaged in WW III and some folks that ought to get it, just don't.  If there is a crime, it is one of compelling failure to grasp reality.

[The Rabbi]

The trap has been sprung.  If you define the events of September 11th as a crime, then the only way you can confront it is by using the legal system, sworn police and officers of a court.  The problem with that is the criminals have no base as they are a loose pohilosophical confederation with a world wide geography.  Their acts are hidden behind and use a religious basis for their actions.  They justify their acts as a directive from a higher power.  They subvert governments, destabilize cultures all the while proclaiming that they are righteous and the rest of the world is not.  The rules of engagement by defining the acts as criminal and then dealing with criminals place more constraints on orderly societies when they have to deal with these folks.  

In the past, war has been mostly defined as state vs state.  But underlining that, is there still was always a philosophical difference that led to war between states.  Today, we still have the underlying philosophical differences but the difference is that not always are the states that harbor these people are, in some cases unwilling participants.  Things change.  Definitions need to be revisited, especially when one's national security is jeapardized by bogging down with debate about what is painfully obvious.  I hate to say it, but the Left seems preocupied more with debate that grasping reality.

In my humble opinion a philosophical act of war has been comitted.  Whether states are involved is not germain.  Those acts happened some time ago and have been steadily ramping up and culminating on September 11th and continue to the present on a world wide scale.  The world is truly engaged in WW III and some folks that ought to get it, just don't.  If there is a crime, it is one of compelling failure to grasp reality.

Grampster hits it straight on.  It is not an either/or issue.  Thus my comment about the definitions.  How do you define al Qaeda?  It is not a gov't in the traditional sense yet it has many of the same functions and characteristics as a government.
The question will shake out as follows: if it is a crime, then the scenario Grampster laid out is right.  It is pursued with police, courts etc.  If it is war, then which nation declared war on us?  It is a no-win argument because the terms have been defined to ensure this.
It was a terrorist act.  It is neither crime nor war but a third type of entity unique to our times, committed by people who are not defined by their passports (indeed those change regularly) but by their ideology.  Terrorist acts are dealt with by pursuing terrorists across whatever lines necessary, denying them sanctuary afforded by friendly nation-states, and degrading their ability to wage terrorist acts by destroying their command and control and financial resources.  All of which we are doing quite well.

[Gewehr98]

A terrorist act, justified as a guerilla warfare maneuver by the perpetrators.  So if it was war they wanted, it's war they got.

[RevDisk]

The trap has been sprung.  If you define the events of September 11th as a crime, then the only way you can confront it is by using the legal system, sworn police and officers of a court.

That might be a shock to Manuel Noriega.  Our legal system arrested him for drug trafficking with 27,684 soldiers and zero sworn police officers.  

Which is kinda ironic, because he worked for the CIA until three years before Just Cause.



Militant Islam is indeed a threat.  However, as unpolitically correct as the concept is, I view it as a relatively minor threat compared to other threats we've historically faced.   Naturally, the greatest threat against our way of life is our way of life.  Trading liberty for the illusion of safety.  It's more of a philosophical threat, as most people want to gut the American ideals in some specific fashion.

Compared to the British, Germany, Japan, and Soviet Union, militant fanatics of Islam are a drop in the bucket.  The British managed to burn Washington to the ground, Germany more than likely would have defeated or stalemated the Allied Forces if they weren't fighting a two front war, Japan wiped out a significant percentage of our Pacific Fleet and read up on Guadalcanal for how iffy that was at times, and the Soviet Union had the capability to wipe out the entire US within a few hours.  

Perhaps my estimate of Islamic fundimentalist capabilities are off, but I do not believe they are capable of burning DC to the ground, holding by force of arms the majority of Europe, destroying a very large percentage of our Navy or wiping out the entire US within a couple of hours.   Terrorism and guerrilla warfare are not tools of occupation.  They can wound, they can cause symbolic/morale damage, and they can kill moderate numbers (comparatively speaking, sigh) of civilians or military personnel.


If anyone asked me what I see the greatest threat on the horizon is, I'd have to say China.   They are rapidly modernizing their military and economy.  They have a long history of expanionism.   And oh yea, they have more than a few nuclear weapons.   Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime down the road, they will be a problem.  We fought them once, in Korea.   The DMZ hasn't moved an inch in over half a century.


My thoughts on 9/11 are simple.   Hunt down those who attacked us and kill them.   Turning this into an all out religious war would be a very bad idea.   Someday it might happen regardless, but avoiding a religious war would be to our benefit.  For now anyways.

[grampster]

You know, I started to comment about the "War on Drugs", but I deleted it so as to not cloud the issue.  The point or comparison that I was going to try and make was "war" has been declared on drugs, but we use, for the most part, police powers to push it forward within our borders.  The line seems to have blurred a bit because our military and our national system of spooks also seem to be involved outside our borders.  All we have gained from this 30 Year War is inflation in drug prices, corrupt police, corupt drug enforcement people, corrupt courts and politicians, erosion of freedom (money, goods and property confiscated and never returned even if there is no guilt), propping up or destablizing smaller nations and filling up our prisons with people convicted of drug "crimes".  It has not been a success by any stretch of the imagination.  Yet nothing is being done to use what we have learned to change or shift priorities.

The same thing is true with respect to terrorism.  We are learning a lesson about something we've never had to deal with before.  We have ignored it or stood by and poo pooed it, or sadly exclaimed how terribe it is, or worse pilloried ourselves over how did we bring this onto ourselves.  Yet we refuse on many levels (are actually divided-Left vs Right on the issue) to have a RATIONAL national policy discussion about what we should do and then do it.  We can't just put this in a box and use old definitions and follow paths well worn.  It is not the same.  It's also time for our "leaders" to quit politicizing this travesty for the purpose of power.  This is a national problem, not a republican or democrat problem.  Somehow we need to demand this of our elected officials and get them to shut up and start to lead.  Our administration is doing the best that they can in the face of the hometown opposition.  History dumped it in their laps.  It might be wrong in some ways.  It is probably right in others.  At least they are doing some things differently and need the support.  LOYAL opposition is fine.  I think it has crossed the line and borders on using petty obstructionism to promote an avaricious lust for power.  We need to quit blaming ourselves.  A careful examination of history will show that America, even with our warts, has been the single stabilizing force for good in the world for at least 100 years.  This national division that is being fomented by competing political entities, and gleefuly aided and abetted by sensationalistic media is causing our young men and women to be put in harms way to a greater extent than any roadside bomb.  It is also dividing our nation when we need unity more than ever, as we are being torn assunder from more than one direction, culturally.

To solve new  problems we need to cut new paths.  They may be false paths, dangerous paths, suspicious paths etc.  We are blessed with republican form of self government.  If we as a nation only decided to look at ourselves as our national slogan implies; e Pluribus Unum, out of the many, one and join together to walk those paths, we may survive and be the better for it.  If we continue to be confronted with dangerous and hostile situations, and in the face of that, continue to "celebrate diversity" (that which makes us different) creating or believing in erratic and irrational conspiracy theories, or actual outright lies, instead of promoting our unity, we are done as a nation.  We'll be the 21st century Balkans and we'll be making tennis shoes for the Chinese.

[Ron]

Our response seems to be neither war nor police action.

It is diplomacy with teeth.

It is better than diplomacy with UN resolutions.

[Perd Hapley]

Declaring war on a concept hasn't work out so well in the past.

Don't get trapped by semantics.  We are waging war, and enforcing law, against real enemies in real places.  The War on Terror is just a phrase, just as The War on Drugs is a phrase that means more intense law enforcement efforts against a particular type of crime.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

Anyone remember Franz Ferdinand?



Wars have been started by the pretext of the death of just one man. Crime? Act of war?  Semantics.

How many angels dance on the head of YOUR pin?
Just checking.


Regards,
Rabbit.

[Lennyjoe]

It's a crime!  A crime that Clinton didn't get the mastermind when he had the chance.  

The attack on 9/11 is exactly as grampster explained it.

[Guest]

... I hate to say it, but the Left seems preocupied more with debate that grasping reality..

Let's put this to rest once and for all, sir: I am a libertarian market anarchist. I am totally non-partisan and the furthest thing from a "leftist" or "rightist".

[grampster]

My comment was obviously generic and not directed at you.  Relax.

[Guest]

Now that Zacarias Moussaoui's trial is nearing a conclusion, I though it would be a good time to point out that Moussaoui was charged with a crime. Therefore, the other 9/11 perpetrators would logically be considered to have been criminals, too, not soldiers.

I think it is very important to decide what to call 9/11-type attacks because if someone is later accused they have a right to know immediatley if they are a prisoner of war or an accused criminal.

 There should not be a "third way" charge in a free society in which one is accused of being a "whatever" and stripped of rights as in a dictatorship.  For those that said that 9/11 was an initiation of war, how do you rationalize that with Moussaoui's trial?

 Is the "war on terror" a real war?

[K Frame]

"Therefore, the other 9/11 perpetrators would logically be considered to have been criminals, too, not soldiers."

Ever hear of war crimes tribunals?

Crimes against humanity?

[Guest]

"Therefore, the other 9/11 perpetrators would logically be considered to have been criminals, too, not soldiers."

Ever hear of war crimes tribunals?

Crimes against humanity?

Yes, but I don't like them, Mike. I don't like the idea of residents of one continent trying residents of another continent in bogus world courts.

[Perd Hapley]

As an anarchist, you presumably don't agree with the idea of having laws (and therefore criminals) or soldiers, so what's your point?

[K Frame]

As fistful says, your problem. Certainly not mine, although I have to admit that simply hunting them down and excising their brains with a 9mm slug at point blank range is far preferable.

[Art Eatman]

Anybody read up on the Aztlan notion of, "We'll out-breed you, then out-vote you, then take over!"?

Think "France".

Note that where there are large groupings of Islamics--England, Canada, e.g.--there is a peaceful call for them to install Sharia in those areas.

In France, during the riots and car-burnings, the French police were told, "You can't come here; this is OUR territory."

Consider the will to impose Sharia in some African countries, over the non-Arab portions of the populaions.

Consider that US foreign policies don't create the Islamic unrest in Indonesia.

I look at the totality of all this and figure it's a resurgence of the Islamic expansionism of the middle ages.  The Moors into Spain, the movement into the Balkans.

It's a war against western culture.  The methodology is different from any of those of the past, insofar as the word "war" itself is concerned.  And, actually, it's a collection of different methods.  Some of it's killing, some of it's just like what was done in the Texas of the 1820s and 1830s:  Immigrants from the US came to outnumber the Mexicans, and the new majority wanted a cultural and political change.

Art