Dear Platt,
I would have added to my 16/9 23:23 +0200 e-mail, had bed-time
not intervened:
Some germs (i.e. viruses) are notoriously able to use the systems
of the patient against itself. A virus, a bit of "dead" RNA plus
a shell of some protein, is an unlikely small bit of matter to
kill a human body. It does so, because human cells are induced to
reproduce them and -when there are enough- to react with fever
and other symptoms. If those cells would not reproduce them,
viruses would not kill and often it is the fever (meant to
destroy the virus) that kills the patient.
A couple of terrorists are an unlikely small group of people to
destroy or even to seriously harm the Western world or even 200
million plus Americans (even if they massacre 5.000 plus people)
were it not for the terror and the reaction they induce.
I was always very impressed by the story of Londoners ignoring
the V2 flying bombs nazi's sent to London in WW II. They refused
to stop public life and grant the nazi's therebye some of the
effect of the V2's that might have concluced the war. I wondered
if that mentality could have stopped the Netherlands from
capitulating after the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940...
According to the political theory of terrorism, terrorism depends
for reaching its goal on that ancient social pattern of value of
retaliation... The Western world and primarily the U.S.A. is may
only be worth prevailing over terrorism (seen as an intellectual
pattern of value) if it reacts as more than a social pattern of
value. The system value (an intellectual pattern of value that
feeds on and supports social patterns of value that feed on and
support biological patterns of value) that was being attacked is
more valuable (to me) than the system of value that attacked it,
because it is more advanced than a moral justification of
retaliation: the rule of law, protection of the innocent, not
speaking of victimizing unique human beings as "collateral
damage" as if they only were "things" and ... if necessary, if no
civilized reaction would work, just take the blow and ignore it
if retaliating would make matters even worse.
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
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