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Re: your mail




> More importantly, ikt is surely wrong for Clare to suggest we send letters
> which say that any military action  against Iraq would justify the Iraqi
> people taking retaliatory action against our own countries.  This suggests
> that if military action is taken to enforce UN resolutions and destry
> weapons of mass destruction, this would justify terrorist attacks against
> outr country.  This is a disgraceful thing to suggest.  The very reason we
> need to destroy Iraq's weapons capability is that its biological and
> chemical weapons could be used for just such terrorist attacks. As many
> of our parents work for the government, and we go to a university which
> could be a high profile terrorist target, I am very angry that anyone
> thinks that members of the CASI list want to sign a letter which, when
> read in future months after just such terrorist actions may have occurred,
> would seem to have been condoning them.


can I suggest that perhaps taking out the "in whatever ways they are able" 
might somewhat remedy this objection, since it would remove the
implication that *terrorist* actions are justified...? Or else to go
further, the letter could talk about the threat to Britain etc without
mentioning whether such retaliation might be justified or not? While it's
true that the behaviour of the US/UK towards Iraq is hardly other than
state-sanctioned terrorism, I agree with Alan (on this one point, anyway)
that it is a bit dodgy to say that eye-for-eye retaliation (especially
terrorist) is therefore "justified": Iraq has no more right to kill
innocent Western civilians then the west has the right to kill innocent
Iraqi civilians. 

Abi

ps- obviously I haven't spent hours thinking the above through - more a
preliminary stab at it:  objections welcome!

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