Thursday, 13 September 2001 : "Heartening/Frightening thoughts"Some thoughts:24 hours after the attack, we knew much more about what happened. 48 hours after, we knew much more than that. This is good. I'm comforted somewhat by the speed with which we are finding things out, even in a news grayout like we seem to be experiencing. (Who's reporting about the truck filled with explosives that was stopped Tuesday night, or was it a false report? Weren't there other planes in the air Tuesday morning that were suspected to be hijacked, and what happened to them? And so forth.) What should we do? I believe we should attack whoever did this in a very focused way and not obey the immediate (and understandable) impulse to "make their whole country glass." If we resort to a nuclear strike, we will hasten the day when America is bombed with a nuclear device in retaliation or in sympathy for the victims of our attack. (I'm not saying it will never happen if we don't do it first, I'm just saying I will expect it much sooner if we start using them first.) I view being struck with nukes as a bad thing and to be avoided, just to be clear. I have full confidence that we can strike back effectively and convincingly without resorting to weapons of mass destruction (which would also kill at least as many innocents as just died, justifying return strikes on someone else's part); I just don't know if Bush and company will be that calm. Everybody talks about bin Laden the instigator, but various experts have also said that a nation-state almost had to be involved as a backer as well. Only today did I start hearing speculation about Iraq (though that was one of my first thoughts... did you know that we're still bombing them every few days?); before that, it was all Afghanistan and Pakistan. And what about China? Are they above this? It's not just the Middle East that doesn't like us. |  | Links, exploration and synthesis from Steve Bogart  photo by my wife If you want to be e-mailed when there's new stuff here, say "add me." Archives by week
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