"AES" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Gary Drescher" wrote:

"AES" wrote in message
...
To quote someone I overhead yesterday: "If there's a 2% chance, based
on all information known at the time, that the guy is a suicide bomber,
and 50 people in the subway car -- well, the choice is unfortunate, but
very clear."

I see several problems with this proposal.

As the one who quoted -- not made -- the assertion above,

Distinction acknowledged; however, when you present a quote without further
comment, and nothing in the context of the presentation suggests
disagreement, then you are reasonably understood to be quoting approvingly.
(The preface "To quote someone..." further affirms the quoted sentiment, as
opposed to the more neutral "I heard someone say...".)

I recognize the merits of essentially all the points made in the
reply appended below.

Thank you.

Simply quoting Ben Franklin's "better that 100 guilty escape punishment
than 1 innocent be convicted" -- an aphorism that validly applies to a
very different situation or set of circumstances -- and concluding from
this, as some apparently do, that the bottom line is clear: the police
should never shoot in any suicide bombing situation, is not a conclusion
I find acceptable.

Nor I; that's why I didn't include that as one of my reasons. (And I've
seen no one conclude that police should *never* shoot in such a situation.)

We're faced, however, with a new and very difficult situation in the
suicide bomber phenomena.

Mass-murder for political ends is hardly novel; it's been going on for at
least millennia. The suicide aspect is perhaps more recent (a quirk of
current technology), but has little bearing on the moral or pragmatic
ramifications of the attacks.

The fact that it's primarily based in, caused
by, and supported by religious fanaticism (not primarily anything we do)
makes it all the more difficult to cope with.

Although the attackers' motivations aren't directly relevant to operational
questions of how to counter a suspected attack-in-progress, I should at
least mention in passing that I disagree with your analysis of those
motivations. Yes, there is a large faction that supports terror bombings for
reasons of religious fanaticism. But among the recent notorious suicide
attackers, many or most had a secular upbringing and lifestyle, and appeared
to be motivated primarily by political opposition to US policies (e.g. in
Saudia Arabia and Palestine, and now Iraq). Moreover, even fanatical
religious motivations, to the extent that they thrive in a given culture,
tend to do so only to insofar as they promote the culture's mundane
(political and economic) goals, which therefore are properly seen as the
ultimate motivators, I believe. (Mystical fanaticism that is substantially
decoupled from mundane interests--e.g. mass suicide to rendezvous with the
mothership--is freakishly rare.)

Again, these considerations don't particularly bear on the tactical choices
under discussion above, but I think they're important to a broader
understanding of the situation.

--Gary