Not true. They mined a private vessel in the middle of the night, with crew sleeping aboard, with the intention of scuttling the ship…regardless of who might be injured or killed. This is the military we’re talking about. They know what their ordnance does.
The passengers were murdered.
Remember that the vessel had not crossed any boundary. It had done nothing illegal. It was unarmed. If it had intruded into the French military zone, perhaps they’d have a valid case, but it did not.
The French government is guilty of acting unilaterally to destroy private property and cause loss of life. The attack was filthy, cowardly, and completely despicable.
I’m declaring my intentions to go rob the corner store!
If you shoot me now, are you a murderer? Of course you are. I have done nothing wrong.
If the French government wanted to stop the vessel from crossing into the military zone, it should have intercepted it at the boundary, boarded her, and arrested all aboard.
In any case, I sincerely doubt it. If I stated my intention, while in the United States of America, to cross into the waters of a foreign nation, would that foreign nation be justified in assassinating me on my own property…in this country?
But you sure can arrested for it. And in a store in many US states, probably shot for stating that intention inside the store in a mennancing manner. I’m sure that announcing your intention to seriously interfere with a country’s military in a highly dangerous manouver when you have shown yourself to be capable of doing so and have done quite similar acts past could definitely get one self killed. As is the case here.
Really? You intend committ a terrorist act. You plan for it. And then then you announce that your going to do it. And then you’re suprised that country against which the terrorist act is planned retaliates, and you’re mad about it. It seems that the insane one is you.
You left out the part about significant, dangerous harrassment of a foreign nation’s military conducting important national security matters. If I was a member of the foreign nation, I don’t think that I would have a problem with it from a philosophical point of view. We as a country have acted similarly in the past.
Practically, from a theoretical standpoint as a member of that foreign nation, I would think that the US is a dog whose chain you don’t want to rattle by interfering within its borders. NZ and enviromental extremist/animal rightist movement was a apparently not considered a big enough dog at the time. Though they have proved to be noisy barker.
It wasn’t a terrorist act. They were unarmed, as always. No destruction of life or property, prerequisites for the label “terrorism,” was planned. At most, they were guilty of announcing their intention of staging a protest in restricted waters. At the very most, their actions called for arrest…if they had actually crossed the line. As it was, they did nothing at all wrong, and were murdered for it.
Possibly, but probably not. After all, our embassies were bombed, and innocent people had lost their lives. No such situation existed in the case of the Rainbow Warrior.
What gun? They were unarmed. And they were quite a bit further away than “outside the store.” To stick with my analogy, I would have to announce my intention to rob a store (actually, I’d only have to announce that I’d cross onto its private property) several days away from where I actually lived.
So then you’d be justified in coming to my house and blowing it up? Is that about right?
Uh huh. Sure. And if they had actually engaged in any sort of significant harrassment, then perhaps the French military would have been justified in blowing them out of the water, but they never actually did anything, did they?
They would have even been justified in boarding the vessel and arresting everyone on board once they crossed the line, but again, they never actually did anything, did they?
Unregistered Bull – I have a policy of never, ever calling another Doper a “despicable cunt”, even in the Pit. It’s just not polite. Gotta say, though, you’re making me reexamine my policies.
As long as I live I hope that I never become amused by the death of others. If it is a fantasy such as dark humor in a movie – that I can understand. But what kind of human being finds even the death of one’s enemy funny?
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Two of the weakest arguments ever:
Everyone else does it.
You would do it too under similar circumstances.
Can’t the same be said for most heroes? It’s the choice that makes them heroes.
They were certainly taking a chance, all right. It must have taken an enormous amount of courage to have planned to sail into that zone. They had no way of knowing if the French would have halted the test or not. They were prepared to face the consequences of making that choice. It was literally a crime that they were unable to make their stand.