The "not invented here" syndrome

I haven't given it much thought Ed. Just guessing I'd say it's half practical/guilt and half vindictive but I just don't know. I'll say this, if an week in the LA County Lock up doesn't cure you, you probably ought to be removed from society somehow.

Why do you support the death penalty (as I do, in principle, if

Closure for the victims families and as an indication of the absolute nature of our laws. It's important for society to draw a line.

We just don't do it well.

Nope. When nobody is looking, I watch "South Park." I love it.

-- Ed Huntress

To show how old you really are, what was the show that was on Tuesday nite at eight pm?

John

When did the term revenge get such a bad name ? :-) ...lew...

Pretty much when God claimed it as his. There isn't anything wrong with it specifically until you meet it out. Then it has consequences.

I'l add to that "good night Gracie" also. And what is wrong with being old. ...lew... (74+)

What's wrong with nostalgia ? :-) ...lew...

Don't know about any specific Tue. night at 8 PM but I do remember radio pgms. like "Twenty Questions" and "Can You Top This" . We didn't have TV and only one or two radio stations. ...lew...

I think it was when they invented the word "euphemism." One new word, and viola! No more wars, no more nasty words for bodily functions, no more vengeance...

-- Ed Huntress

This could get lengthy. I'll try to avoid it. d8-)

When we give one guy a year in prison, and the next five years, and another one 25 years to life, what connection does that have with "correcting" him? Is there some evidence somewhere that one year will cure this kind of criminal behavior, and five years cures another kind? Has anyone correlated it with recidivism rates?

Not in any serious way. These are our ideas of what's "fair." "Fair," meaning what? Sufficient psychic pain to express our anger over the crime in question? Hmmm...that sounds like it's getting warm.

The most edifying way to look at this, and maybe the quickest, is to sit down with a good dictionary and start looking up some of the key words: justice, correction, fairness, punishment, retribution, vindication, vengeance... It isn't a clear circle but you get the feeling of circular argument in a real hurry.

We've sanitized it, sublimated it, euphemized it, and woven knots out of it until it's almost impossible to recognize on the basis of words and their definitions alone. But there are ways to get at the core idea behind all of this sophistic nonsense. One is to think honestly about how you feel about all of this "justice" business, and do it entirely with concrete words. No abstractions. We "kill," we don't "impose capital punishment." And so on.

I'd like to know what this kind of "closure" really means, if not vengeance. I'd like to know what "absolute nature," which is an abstract idea, has to do with the very concrete business of killing a man or woman. I'd like to know what "line" it is we're drawing, and why it's so important that we kill people for its sake.

But there are a lot of things I'd like to know. I don't think I'll ever understand how we can commit people to prison or kill them for the sake of such abstractions. We commit them or kill them because we're very angry and we extract vengeance to assuage our anger, through the socially acceptable, abstraction-laden, group-irresponsibility process of "legal justice." "It wasn't me, it was society as a whole that put that man to death."

It sounds to me like the makings of another chapter for Stuart Chase's _The Tyranny of Words_.

I think the real answer is that people do the best they can with what the have on an individual basis. As a Nation, The United States has put forward something unique. We alledge to be a nation of laws. Fortunately or not, America - An Idea - is populated with emotionally charged, carbon based units.

What that means to me is that the world is a daily wrestling match between pricnipal, our constitution/laws, and humanity. There are a lot of things I'd like to know as well and as many that I'm as pleased not to. That's wisdom. Not knowing it all and knowing that I don't is good enough.

You raise an interesting question. Given that you're retired, and given the resources we have today through the Internet, DVDs, and the various History Channels, how close can you come to cocooning yourself in a '50s environment?

Quite close, I'd think. Of course, you'd be completely ignorant of what's happening in the world, but maybe that's not an excessive price to pay for _Father Knows Best_ and _I Love Lucy_, anytime you want it.

-- Ed Huntress

clue

The Texaco Star Theater?

John

???

I'm old, but not stupid. What year? What network (Dumont?)? What state? What county? Too many variables to even venture a guess. Besides, I was a teenager with a full compliment of hormones------chasing skirts and working on my fast car when I finally got one. I watched TV, but not regularly. Way too many things to do to spend my time watching daily.

Harold

Uncle Miltie?

H

That's where the ball gets dropped. If society has laws against killing (we do), and has included in the statutes the penalty of death should you violate said laws (that's how it is in most states), the perp is the one that condemns his/her self to death. Society simply carries out the execution. Surely, you wouldn't stand by and expect the perp to do so?

Never, ever lose sight of the fact that each and every person makes choices about the things they do. They could just as easily have chosen to not break the law. We no longer have penal, or correctional institutions, with rare exception. What we have is relatively comfortable vacation places for criminals.

Harold

You're assuming that the criminal accepts society's laws. If you lived under the Taliban's regime, you may well have violated their laws and committed a capital crime -- one that was duly enacted by the recognized government. You probably would not have accepted their law. So "society's," or government's laws do not automatically switch the blame to you. They just impose society's required norms of behavior upon you.

We've had people right here on this NG (well, maybe cross-posters from misc.survivalist.nutballs) who have said explicitly that they don't accept many laws. So it's socially imposed. And when they violate our laws, we impose pain upon them, usually psychological pain, because we're angry about their violation of the laws we impose upon everyone.

I think your argument fails, therefore, for two reasons: If he doesn't accept the law, then he doesn't condemn himself to death. We do, because we demand that he act within society's norms, and he didn't do so. This becomes a question of individual moral judgments and it could be argued -- and has been -- that the criminal can ONLY act according to what he thinks is right at the time. That is always why we act, even though we may change our mind later. When we incarcerate or kill him, we're reinforcing the fact that society has the power to decide which behavioral requirements will be observed.

Second, society has a choice about whether it will execute people. Hardly any civilized countries today have made the choice to execute anyone. We're the exception. So it's our choice, not the criminal's choice.

None of this is intended to excuse the criminal in any way, nor to argue against killing convicted murderers. It's just an attempt to focus attention on what it is we're really doing.

I'm told that this is largely a myth, except for the lowest-security prisons. Nevertheless, I don't think that prisons now or in the past ever were very successful at "correcting" criminals. I do think they've been effective at impressing them that we are angry about their behavior, but many of them don't care. The issue for them is how to avoid being caught again.

government's

Of course, you're right in what you say, but that's somewhat extreme. As it is, we don't live under the Taliban's regime, and our laws are not as unreasonable as those they had imposed in Afghanistan.

All of us that were born and raised in the US and other civilized countries know and understand that there are certain things that are not acceptable. Whether we agree, or not, isn't the point. We are aware of the regulations, and should understand that there is a price to be paid if we ignore them. Based on your position, because a guy thinks speed limits don't apply to him, he'd be exempt from speeding tickets, even when doing 140 mph on I-5. He could argue, in court, that because he didn't recognize the law, it didn't apply to him. Should we then allow him to speed as he wishes? That's more or less what you're saying. You're one of the smartest guys I've ever talked with, but not necessarily one with the best wisdom.

Only in his mind. Society has other views. Swing your fist all you care to, but when you park it on anyone's nose, you've gone too far and must answer to society. You (the criminal) don't like that? Choose a different route, because you should be held accountable.

This is the type of individual that must be reigned in, Laws are written for the good of all, not a select few (or so I'm told).

When an individual chooses to pick and choose which of the laws he cares to uphold----he places a serious burden on his fellow man----the ones that live by the law. When his crime is series enough, and his contempt for the law continues to be a problem, as it often is, there is no good reason to not carry out a death sentence. Better we lose the finger than risk losing the entire arm. Again, if it can be carried out without pain and discomfort, fine-----but if there is pain and discomfort in the process------tough. That rabid dog needs to be dispatched------by one means or another.

And the perp has the power to involve himself, or not, to that end. It still falls on the perpetrator. But for his/her actions, there would be no crime.

Somehow you insist on removing responsibility from the criminal. I insist he be held responsible for his behavior. As I said, he was informed of the risks-----and chose to gamble. Sometimes you lose. When you do, sometimes it gets expensive.

I understand what you're saying, and what's been going on of late is that the criminal is relieved of his responsibility for his actions. It's particularly bad in Washington State. Criminals that have killed more then ten people each are being excused for what they've done. Lesson learned? Kill a lot of people-----that makes it acceptable. Is that what you'd like criminals learning?

It's going to be interesting to see how the issue in Vancouver, BC shakes out. The guy that killed a large number of prostitutes and fed the corpses to his pigs. I can see how a nice guy like that should be forgiven-----perhaps given a few years in prison, watching TV, enjoying three squares/day. He may have offed *only* prostitutes, but somebody, somewhere, lost a sister, aunt, mother, friend, daughter---and likely loved those people. Why should any of them sit back and suck it up, while the perp pays almost no price? What message is being sent to other potential criminals?

My honest feelings: If you deserve the death penalty, you should be put to death. How, makes no difference. If, in the process of dying, you may suffer a little, tough! . Unlike your victims, who had no choice but to endure your punishment, you had choices. You could have exercised options that would have kept you from facing execution. You could have chosen to obey the law.

Exactly why they should be executed.

Harold

From another newsgroup:

Wrong question.

Of course you meant "in what way was Saddam's Iraq an important key to the Global Jihad?"

Obviously, an actual or imminent attack on the United States isn't necessary to the casus belli.

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace."

--John F. Kennedy October 22, 1962

Sure, a great many idiots believe that America declared war on Osama bin Laden in 2001, and, as is the way with idiots, they've been befuddled by every new development ever since.

I'll assume you're not such an abysmal idiot.

For instance, when Japan attacked the American fleet at Oahu in 1941, the United States responded by sending 10% of her military to the Pacific, and 90% to attack the French and Italians in North Africa. Only by ignoring the broad issues would one conclude that this was incongruous with casus belli; i.e., "how had Italy attacked or threatened the United States?"

It was not incongruous for the US to have attacked the Italians and French in 1942.

The War on Terror is not "The War on bin Laden" nor is it "The War on so-called 'al-Qaeda'." It is a war on the Global Jihad (of which bin Laden is not, and never was a majority player--though he had long been a key). This wasn't declared in the darkness of ignorance, but in a shrewd cognisance of the nature of the threat which confronted the US on 9/11/01. And had, in fact, confronted her long before that date.

And it requires a basic understanding of the Global Jihad to discuss these issues coherently.

The misplaced nature of your question belies a serious (yet too common) lack of this understanding, and I've not got the time to throw away.

Suffice it to list the following data:

Saddam Hussein had long been attempting to position himself as the third crown in a Triumvirate of Major Jihad Sponsor States.

First among these is Iran, who even holds an annual conference of jihad leaders from all over the world. These annual conferences are not clandestine affairs, but they might as well be since they are so loudly ignored in the Western Press. This year, the conference is timed to coincide with the Iranian "10 Days of Dawn" celebration (February

1-11).

Tehran is the primary benefactor of Hizbullah, a revolutionary jihad group she founded in Lebanon (1982) in response to the growing underclass of Shi'ites there, and Israel's Operation: Peace for Galilee. Ali Khamene'i is the Supreme Jurisconsult to Hizbullah, just as he is Supreme Jurisconsult to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hizbullah receives something more than $2 billion annually from various official and unofficial sources inside Iran.

Ali Khamene'i has a long history of strategic cooperation with bin Laden's group. He also has dispatched IRRG personnel, money, supplies and arms to Bosnia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and to many other areas where revolutionary jihadis operate, regardless the prima facie differences between Shi'ite and Sunni salafists.

Syria, perhaps Iran's most important strategic ally, is the next greatest crown in the Triumvirate. If you're unaware of the nature and achievements of HAMAS, then there's no point to continuing this conversation.

And then there was Saddam Hussein. While largely considered a "secular" dictator, he had developed deep relationships with some of the most prolific Islamic jihadis in the world. Foremost among these was Abu al-Abbas and Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal). Abbas was captured trying to slip out of Iraq in April of 2003. Al-Banna was assassinated by Hussein in 2002 when it was reported that he had contacted British Intelligence--evidently in an effort to exchange information about Saddam's connections with the Global Jihad for medical treatment in the West (for his advanced Leukemia and heart disease).

Al-Banna and the Abu Nidal Organization even became a kind of personal hit squad for Saddam during the 80's, especially when Saddam wished to have someone assassinated outside of Iraq. This was all well publicized at the time.

Abu Ibrahim (15 May Organization) was another beneficiary of Hussein's patronage, and lived in Iraq as an honored guest, and Ibrahim used Iraq as a base of operations for a number of years.

Iraq had its own terrorist organization called the Arab Liberation Front. This was closely connected to Fatah, and even as late as March of 2003 was blatantly writing $10,000 checks to the families of martyrs of the Palestinian Intifada. There are credible reports that ALF-trained jihadis were involved with both the Moscow Theater Attack (October 2002) and the Manchester-London "al-Qaeda" cell which was raided by Scotland Yard in December '02 and January of '03. ALF was connected to the secret training facility at Salman Pak, where Fedayeen Saddam was trained, as were foreign Arab salafist jihadis.

Of course, Saddam was also the primary benefactor to MEK, but these are considered a "good species of terrorist" since they are a revolutionary jihad group actively working against the Mullahs' regime in Iran.

Saddam's intelligence service, Mukhabarat. had a specialized branch whose sole function was liaison to HAMAS. HAMAS also had an office in Baghdad, and HAMAS publications had long praised Saddam's regime, especially in the face of criticism from the Clinton and Bush administration's.

Saddam had achieved complete rapprochement with Syria in 1997, when a para-687 Sanctions oil pipeline was built between the two nations. In

1995, Saddam had initiated sweeping religious reforms inside Iraq. While he had a long history of token concessions to orthodox Islam before, these were far more sweeping. Hussein Kamal, chief of the Ba'athist Military-Industrial Complex, felt compelled in 1995 to defect to the West in order to bring an end to Saddam's deceptions to IAEA and UNSCOM, which he believed would also end Saddam's unwise and dangerous policies.

"The Government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country. This is of concern for Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait. It is against Europe and US. Now Baath Party members have to pass a religious exam. This would strengthen Iran. It would be detrimental for the whole region. (The interpreter remarks that Iraq and Iran would have the same mentality) This will be another world war. Every party member has to pass a religious exam. They even stopped party meetings for prayers."

--Hussein Kamal UNSCOM/IAEA Briefing (August 22, 1995)

Saddam's intentions with these reforms seems to have been groundwork for his rapprochement with Syria, and seem to have had the desired effect.

Saddam, before the commencement of OP: IF had also made inroads towards rapprochement with Iran, as well. He attempted to purchase Shahab III missiles from Iran in 2002, offering to yield up the Mujahidin e Khalq organization.

Every indication that can be imagined seems to have confirmed that Saddam was a key threat in the Global Jihad. And as time wore on under the 687 sanctions, he only became more and more dangerous.

The reason you haven't become more acquainted with these facts is certainly due to your personal laziness, or an unrealistic expectation that the Shrub's administration should have spoon-fed this information to you all along.

Certainly if Bush's primary concern was his approval ratings, these issues would have been hammered into your skull by saturated dissemination. But since Bush has been extremely reticent in reprising or elaborating the United States' justifications for Op: IF, you may have fallen prey to the notion (enthusiastically fed by the opposition party) that there was no justification.

The problem with Saddam's connections to the Global Jihad is that they predominantly point to Israel and the Palestinian territories. For obvious reasons, Israel has been kept on the periphery of the War on Terror.

Which may be the reason that you believe that bin Laden's organization is called "al-Qaeda." Which is only a nickname given to it by the CIA in the early '90's.

Bin Laden, himself named his organization "The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders."

And, in the Global Jihad, the Jews come before the US (The Far Enemy, or "the crusaders"). Which is why hysterical pacifists here in the states would gladly throw Israel to these ravenous wolves.

In the cowardly hope that this would satiate them. Which has no corroboration in the annals of the long, sad history of Man.