On The Third Hand

Wednesday, 09 Jan 2002

A female pilot is suing the military. According to the Washington Post: "Last month, she sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, contending that the abaya policy is unconstitutional because it discriminates against women and violates their religious freedom by forcing them to adopt the garb of another faith. The suit seeks no monetary damages." The abaya policy applies in Saudi Arabia, along with some far more restrictive policies. I would back this woman if she were suing over the policy that women cannot drive, or the policy that women must always have a male escort. That is not what her lawsuit declares. She objects to the dress code.

Dress codes are a matter of modesty, whether or not they are the "law of the land". The Saudis think western dress is immodest. This is cultural, whether or not they claim religion behind it. In a matter of cultural modesty, the most cover wins. A European in the US who wants to strip on the beach will be arrested, no matter what the dress code is in their country.

There may be a point of compromise here, where western women could wear western styles that cover them just as completely. But... until all the US states allow women to go topless, as they do men... I am not going to fault the US government for following Saudi standards of modesty for womens' dress.

I really do think those who write viruses for computers should be subjected to the most ingenious forms of non-physical torture we can devise. I say we lock them in a cell with a wide-screen TV showing nothing but the purple dinosaur for the rest of their lives. The latest one targets Flash. (Thanks to MommaBear for the heads up.)

I send messages out to our servicemen through e-mail. I'm glad I do it, because they are in a dangerous business. We've just lost some more of them. In the 'old days', non-combatants could knit bandages, or send packages. Knitting bandages has long been out of style, and after the anthrax scare we can't even send packages. We can still; however, send warm words. They risk their lives, the least we can do is tell them we appreciate it.

Perhaps Reuters is right to not use the word 'terrorism'. Everyone seems to have their own pet definition of the word. I've been looking at the various definitons because of the disagreement over whether the kid in Tampa was a terrorist. My definition basically is concerned with violence directed at civilian targets that is not committed by a state (in that case, I consider it a war crime -- and yes, I do think the US has committed war crimes in the past), and aims to cause terror and harm to a state.

Thus, I would call ObL and 'the kid' terrorists (even if the kid's primary motive was suicide, the act was intended to be a terrorist attack). I would not call the guy who was threatening his co-workers at a nuclear plant a terrorist, even if he could have been far more dangerous, had he actually attacked.

Most governments go through all sorts of semantic contortions in their attempts to define as 'freedom fighters' those they like, and 'terrorist' those they don't like. Maybe we should just drop the word entirely and use phrases such as 'murderer' and 'suicidal murderer' and 'incompetent wannabe suicide bomber (Reid)'.

That makes the kid a suicidal would-be (and luckily unsuccessful) murderer. OK? But that doesn't change the fact that he succeeded in crashing a plane into a building, and that we non-suicidal-non-murderous civilians need to remember that the government cannot protect us, and keep on the alert.