Quote:
"Raining 500 pounders on a foreign country where the majority of its population are at the verge of starvation and disease is self-defense?"

" But the US is carpet bombing Afghanistan. No doubt abt that too, do you?"

That's a lie. If you're originating it, you're a liar. If you're repeating it, you've been lied to.

And please -- it's as much a surprise to us XGAs as it is to you. In the first place, over on another forum one of the planners in the logistics of all this is reporting that everyone's complaining that the bombs are too big! -- they don't even have 500 pounders any more; 1000 lbs and up is it! And in the second place, even the action they are taking is not by any stretch "carpet bombing". "Surgical Strike" is a stupid term -- we're talking about explosives here, and explosives are messy -- but within the constraints available, what they're doing is putting bombs exactly where they want them. Even Ashton ought to see the irony here -- they don't want to waste bombs (which cost money) blowing up people whose death doesn't help. Corporate war, with the bean-counters in control. Takes all kinds to make a world --

I've posted this before: Not everybody in the United States loved Fulgencio Bautista. During the mid and late Fifties, Castro's group had operatives all over the U.S. South, soliciting help -- and getting it. There weren't many people who starved to support the insurgency, but we didn't get a new car in '58 after Dad had promised Mom... I was in the room when the TeeVee showed Fidel's speech: "I am a Communist. I have always been a Communist." Dad's face, and that of his friend Jimmy (who was in much deeper) had to be seen to be believed. The Americans who supported Castro were betrayed, and they will remember that until they die.

You might recall that, in addition, it was Cubans who gave us "airplane hijacking" as a profitable pastime. Not a good way to make good PR.

When the last American who remembers that betrayal dies, we will resume diplomatic relations with Cuba, on a "let bygones be bygones" basis. If Castro dies before that happens, we will resume relations, etc. etc. But the people who were betrayed by Castro are now the elders, with at least advice-giving powers, and for thirty years were the power structure; it won't happen until they go.

As for the Palestinians -- another poster has noted the relevant point: The Arabs offer only one solution to the Middle East: Kill the Jews and destroy Israel. Unfortunately, they brought it up first at a time when somebody else with a similar policy was green in the memory. It doesn't help that they've consistently chosen stupid policies over the last half century, or that every time they've tried the Final Solution it blew up in their faces. The West Bank is held by Israel by precisely the same method whereby Canada holds Newfoundland or Italy holds Sicily or any other you can name. The method is called by the quaint French phrase force majeure, and every state (whether or not it is a nation-state) uses precisely the same method. [It's pretty easy when nobody wants to take it back, which is why Canadians have no problems :-) ]

Until very recently, you could find pockets of sympathy for the Palestinian people (though not Arafat and the force structure) throughout the United States, on the same basis as anti-Bautista sentiment in the Fifties. I know several Israelis, some expats, some not, and the continual refrain they sing is that the United States bullies them into letting their people be killed to advance some nebulous and doomed "peace process". The reason we have been doing that (and we have, since at least '67) is that we would strongly prefer not to have to kill people in job lots.

That consideration just went away. The photos of Palestinians rejoicing at our dead in the WTC just ended it. Congratulations, Yasser -- here's your gift from Osama bin Laden: nobody in the United States gives enough of a damn to protect you from the IDF any more. Wear it in good health.

Nicauragua? A mistake, for which many of the relevant people have been canned. But if you wanted it repeated, bombing the WTC would have been a real good place to start. Personally, I think the biggest mistake the U.S. made was failing to support Ho Chi Minh when he asked; backing the Froggies got us in ridiculously deep, for no result whatever. However, if you want to make a list of U.S. foreign policy mistakes, the list is long. Have a ball.

Yes, the Pentagon was a valid military target, and the dead on the airplane were collateral damage. Too bad you don't seem to pay much attention: that's precisely the official position of the U.S. Government. Next accusation, please.

"And didn't the CIA has a office in WTC? So that's another combatant-stationed target, with non-combatants casualties, no?"

Did it? Cite, please. Oh, I'm not saying it isn't so -- but keep in mind that the people who bragged about it didn't even have enough sense to emulate Timothy McVeigh and bring that up! (Note that McVeigh said he was after the Federal offices -- FBI, IRS, etc.) Even so, the WTC was a civilian building. The braggarts specified that it was a civilian building!

"It does to me cause a life is a life, whether combatant, non-combatant, American or Afghani."

Unless, of course, they happen to be American soldiers, American embassy guards, or Americans just standing around when somebody you approve of wants to make a point, right? Then they're "valid targets."