>From: "James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Oct 22, 2004 12:21 PM >To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: Airport insanity
>All of the terrorists came from countries that were >beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia >was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and >they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would >be defending themselves. I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. McVeigh (not a branch davidian) wanted to strike back at the BATF for the Waco massacre, so he killed a whole bunch of people, a few of whom were BATF employees, but not, as far as I know, anyone directly involved in the decisions that led to all the deaths in Waco. The 9/11 hijackers wanted to strike at the US for a variety of reasons, probably mostly that we're a big, visible target, but presumably also that we're propping up states like Saudi Arabia. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. If McVeigh had used a sniper rifle to kill the specific BATF agent who called for the raid/media event on the Branch Davidians' compound, I'd still think he deserved to either die or spend his life in prison, but at least I could somehow fathom the moral decision to do what he'd done--like the pro-life terrorists (ah, the irony) who assassinate abortionists. They need to be locked up, but you can at least see what they were thinking. Blowing up a building full of random people because a few of them are associated with some action you really disagree with is just outside the realm of the sort of moral decision I can figure out. Just like flying planes into buildings full of people with almost nothing to do with what you're really getting at. > James A. Donald --John Kelsey
