Expect an addendum to the previous post sometime after 7am PST. It was a hastily written post because I have to get to sleep for work tonight and there is a lot I feel compelled to add. Sorry for short-changing you in the meantime, Robot Arm.
No, they aren’t. There are times when people start to take actions that have worse consequences than they expect, such as the example you posted above, but they did start those actions. To be “held responsible”, you must be “responsible”.
Sometimes people are wrongfully convicted, or otherwise mistakenly held accountable. If it happens by accident, we should do what we can to make it right. If there’s no remedy available, that’s a tragedy. To deliberately seek out innocent people to punish is evil.
The federal workers in Oklahoma City were not accountable for the actions at Waco or Ruby Ridge. Timothy McVeigh was accountable for blowing them up.
McVeigh thought his actions were worth the lives of 168 other people, but not one second of his freedom. He had a getaway car waiting a few blocks away. I see no message there, only senseless slaughter.
That sounds like doublethink to me, with regard to my example. If no murder is committed, no one should be held accountable for murder. But I notice that you don’t seem consider it wrong in this instance. It’s just an unexpected consequence - something that could be said of what happened in Oklahoma City.
McVeigh was certainly accountable for what he did. The federal workers in Oklahoma City were held accountable for the actions of the government, the entity for whom they worked. One cannot hold a government responsible for its actions without encompassing other parties because a government is an abstract entity where the responsibility for anything and everything it does is widely dispersed. One cannot effectively combat an abstract enemy, so concrete targets must be chosen.
McVeigh saw the government as the enemy. Those he killed were not innocent people to him, even though he probably recognized they were not involved in Ruby Ridge or Waco. Violence is one of the few effective tools available when someone without significant political power is angry with the government. At the very least, it brings public attention to their cause. Being willing to kill for something gains a lot more attention than any angry billboard or newspaper editorial.
Yeah, he probably assumed that he would be more able to further his cause on the outside rather than the inside of jail. Notice, however, that once confronted McVeigh did take responsibility for his crimes - he did not lie to police or from the stand, nor did he appeal his conviction or penalty.
Again, I refute your notion that in order for a message to be effective that the party responsible must take own up to it. Note that the participants in the Boston Tea Party never allowed the British to punish them for their actions - but the Tea Party was still a major factor in motivating the Revolutionary War.
You also note that McVeigh sowed only fear - that was a major part of the message, that the government should fear its people and all that. One can’t very well incite fear peacefully.
To address your second post in this thread directly, the quote from a Letter from a Birmingham Jail doesn’t apply to terrorist actions. Terrorists generally aren’t protesting a set of laws, they are protesting an institution. Furthermore, one has to have some popular support in order for civil disobedience to be effective - otherwise, one just sits in jail alone.
Where we don’t seem to be meeting eye to eye is that while you seem consider violence on the part of disgruntled persons wrong in any and all circumstances, I believe that - right or wrong - violence is sometimes the only way to get particular things done. Therefore, I don’t hold it against any particular party solely because they resort to violence. While I wish it didn’t work this way, I don’t think we (as Americans) have much room to complain when violence is used against us, especially if we allow our government to use it against others. An abuser doesn’t stop abusing others in response to pleas or cries of injustice; an abuser stops when he has no other choice.
Whether or not our government is an abuser is a matter of opinion. I personally believe our government abuses the environment, other nations and its own people (especially minorities) quite frequently, if you must know.
I made a factual error in the above post. McVeigh did make appeals.
A much greater factor was the Declaration of Independence, with 56 names at the bottom.
But, as you say, a government is an abstract entity. Abstract entities don’t know fear. The fear McVeigh created was in the minds of his fellow citizens, we the people.
If his desire was to send a message, then he must have been out to drum up some sort of popular support.
Was McVeigh any less disgruntled (more gruntled?) after the bombing than before?
I can see cases where violence gets things done, but it is a terrible way to send a message. What result did the Oklahoma City bombing leave us with? I didn’t see any groundswell of support for McVeigh, no rush of converts to his way of thinking who weren’t there already. And what if other people had taken up his banner; could the militia movement ever be a true military threat without such force of numbers that they could just vote for what they wanted? No, McVeigh’s legacy is metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. And that’s why I say it was senseless.
Sure, but I think we can acknowledge that both the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence enjoyed the luxury of much popular support.
No, but government employees know fear: you pointed this out in your OP. Without employees, no government exists.
He had some; more important, I bet he was counting on copycats.
Probably not.
Fair enough. But no, I don’t think even a popular militia movement could produce a majority vote, much less a viable candidate in any office. Similarly, we probably won’t see a (real) Muslim acting as commander in chief any time soon. Both Muslims and militia sorts are vilified minorities in today’s America. True, this is partly due to the actions of terrorists “representing” them.
Sorry, I didn’t answer your final question. I do believe a formidable military force could be created by the militia movement before an adequate voter base could be achieved.
The question was meant rhetorically. Could the militia be formidable enough to ruin a lot of lives? Maybe. Could it be formidable enough to win a signifigant military victory against the United States? No. So they delude themselves into thinking they’re doing something, but if they really took up arms they’d be wiped out as fast as we could count them.
And thank heavens for that. What was McVeigh’s wildest dream of success; that he’d bring down the government so he and his friends could run things the right way? Was he trying to draw a line between us and them and make me choose which side to be on? I have less to fear from the government than from a mass murderer.
C’mon. You’re assuming that soldiers have the stomachs to run a full-bore campaign against their own countrymen who would necessarily be engaged in guerrilla warfare. As an ex-soldier (11B), I can attest that the military almost certainly does not have that sort of fortitude. We lost in Vietnam because we couldn’t handle the implications of what we were doing to foreigners; I cannot even imagine if anything similar were to happen on the home front.
Most soldiers and Marines would rather see chaos.
So US soldiers wouldn’t have the fortitude to fight traitorous militia members out to destroy our country, yet traitorous militia members would have the fortitude to fight American soldiers?
If American soldiers were involved in tracking down militia members who were engaged in a systematic bombing campaign, they’d be enthusiastic about hunting down terrorist and traitors and murderers. And the American people would be behind them 99%, the 1% being the aforementioned traitors and terrorists and murderers.
You’re living in a dreamworld if you don’t think American soldiers hate the kind of scumbags who set off bombs that kill innocent people.
Not to mention that the alternative was an invasion, which likely would have led to millions of Japanese civilians jumping off cliffs, wading into the ocean to drown, or hiding in caves and succumb to disease as they did around Saipan and Okinawa. Why? Because it was drilled into them that Allied forces were monsters who would torture, rape, and/or kill them as soon as look at them so they’d rather do themselves in lest the “monsters” get them. Some 80,000 civilians perished on and around Okinawa, about one-sixth the entire population. The population of mainland Japan was about 72 million in 1945.
It’s astounding that you use Vietnam as proof of this with a straight face. US soldiers had the stomachs to kill over a million Vietnamese in an unpopular war on foreign soil. More to the point though, the Vietnamese had the stomach to run a full-bore campaign against other Vietnamese all the way to the fall of Saigon. Americans ran a full-bore campaign against other Americans all the way from First Bull Run to Appomattox Courthouse. The idea that US soldiers and Marines would rather see this country dissolve into chaos than hunt down a bunch of loons setting off bombs and running around the countryside dressed in camo is delusional.
You know who else was an ex-soldier and was delusional along similar lines? I’ll give you a hint, you like posting pictures of the building he bombed.
Hitler?
Wait…
Robot Arm and I were discussing a hypothetical; the point I was making is that it wouldn’t take millions of homegrown combatants to be an effective force against our government. I would go so far as to say that it wouldn’t require much more than 100k, possibly even fewer.
I was referring to intestinal fortitude; it would be a helluva lot different fighting people who speak your language and look just like you and your buddies.
I never said dropping the bombs wasn’t effective; quite the contrary. Nevertheless, it was a tactic that targeted civilians in an effort to terrorize them into submission.
Evidently you have a poor grasp what guerrilla warfare means. Although not necessarily a part of the term’s original definition, these days it also involves attacking and then blending back into the civilian population.
The Civil War, by the way, was primarily conducted conventionally. Up until WWI, even sniper tactics were considered dishonorable.
Yes, I have no idea what guerrilla warfare means. Clearly the US military doesn’t either, I mean they didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to kill a million Vietnamese in a largely guerrilla war. Which makes you using Vietnam to prove US servicemen are too pussy to go full-bore against a few delusional militiamen work somehow. Or something. Let’s face it, 100,000 brave militiamen are never going to take arms against the (feel free to insert spooky voice) evil tyranny of the Federal Government. It would take an act of God to get 1,000 to do it.
Which is of course proof that “it would be a helluva lot different fighting people who speak your language and look just like you and your buddies.” I mean 600,000 Americans killed each other in the bloodiest war the US has ever fought. It must have been a hell of a lot different since they were entirely too pussy to fight each other. The Vietnamese must have been as well, they too clearly had issues fighting people who spoke their language and look just like their buddies.
Little hint for you: violence between in-groups is usually more savage than violence between groups who view their opponents as the ‘other,’ not less.
And the alternative was to terrorize them into mass suicide. Which do you think was the better option?
Jesus, you’re pathetic. It has nothing to do with being “pussy,” it has to do with being human. Most people - even members of the military - don’t like killing innocents, dipshit.
Remember: we lost in Vietnam. The number of casualties on either side are not germane to this fact. The US was clearly the superior force, but the results of the war have to do solely with motivation.
And no, I don’t think 100,000 people foisting arms against the US government is likely.
Because the Vietnamese are culturally the equivalent of Americans :rolleyes: Or do you pretend to understand all of the motivations of an entirely different society?
The Civil War was fought for economic and racist reasons. The North was seen as an aggressor that wanted to destroy the economy and lifestyle of the south, evidenced by the election of a “black Republican.” People tend to react differently when they believe their chosen method of survival is at stake.
But that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand because a militia starting a revolution would also put the lifestyles of the vast majority of Americans in jeopardy. The difference is that a militia force would capitalize on the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure (the major one being our reliance on hydroelectric power); something that the vast majority of Americans could not do a thing about.
For idealistic reasons, maybe. There was a very distinct divide between North and South in the Civil War. When the enemy doesn’t make himself visible, it makes things a lot harder.
Have you ever been in a life and death situation where you can’t easily tell friendlies from hostiles? Nevermind; your arguments prove that you have not.
The bomb, of course. But invasion doesn’t necessarily involve killing or otherwise terrorizing civilians. Suicide is optional, having a nuclear weapon dropped on your home - not so much.
LOL have you?
I joined the Army in 2003. No, I won’t tell you where I was deployed; 11 Bravo is a combat arms MOS. ETA: What are your qualifications? REMF extraordinaire?