Something about September, I guess...

[etherial]

It's been seven years since the last terrorist attack on U.S. soil, but it looks like that's over. This time, they're targeting our children. Let's make sure the perpetrators are caught and executed - but not tortured. Write your Congressman. We won't take this lying down but we won't devolve into an angry mob.

Comments

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

How much of your post is literal and which parts are sarcastic or hyperbolic? Without vocal cues and body language, I'm lost on this one.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Something about September

Sardonic.

It's been seven years since the last terrorist attack on U.S. soil

This one is hyperbolic. Numberous activities over the last seven years, especially some of those conducted by the U.S. Government and Media, could be considered "terrorist".

executed

Hyperbolic. I don't know what penalties this attack should carry under international law. I don't know if the perpetrators believed they were attempting to kill (or if this agent could kill) 300 people.

Write your Congressman.

Deadly serious. Releasing toxic agents into a nursery should be national news. If the media will ignore it, those we employ more directly should be contacted.

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. :-)

I don't know what penalties this attack should carry under international law.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure this would be covered by domestic, not international, law. For that matter, it's probably covered by state law, not Federal law, since now state lines weren't crossed, though I'm less sure about that part.

Even if it were Federal, both investigation and prosecution are under the authority of the executive branch, so writing your Congressman is unlikely to be fruitful.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Genocide and War Crimes are covered under International Law.

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Both terms only apply to actions committed by a nation (or an official of a nation acting in his or her official capacity), or possibly by organizations that aren't nations but have enough clout to have their own military.

There's also the issue of scale. Genocide typically involves the murder of tens of thousands to millions of people, systematically. This cannot credibly be called an attempt to eliminate an entire people.

This incident doesn't even have enough evidence for attempted murder, yet.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

According to the agreed upon U.N. Definition, Genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

From wikipedia's Genocide article, discussing the interpretation of the UN document you refer to:

The phrase "in whole or in part" has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law.[13] The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic - Trial Chamber I - Judgment - IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001)[14] that Genocide had been committed. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic - Appeals Chamber - Judgment - IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004)[15] paragraphs 8, 9, 10, and 11 addressed the issue of in part and found that "the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole." The Appeals Chamber goes into details of other cases and the opinions of respected commentators on the Genocide Convention to explain how they came to this conclusion.

Furthermore, the UN document is primarily an international treaty stating that signatory states must enact laws making genocide illegal. In the US, we have 18 U.S.C. § 1091, which states in part:

Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) and with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such—

(emphasis mine)

[etherial.livejournal.com]

writing your Congressman is unlikely to be fruitful

It will get it bandied about in a public forum.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

As I see it, there have been quite a few terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the last seven years. Abortion clinic bombings count. So do the D.C. snipers, and the anthrax letters. There have been arsons at churches, synagogues, and mosques...

I'm tempted to conclude that terrorism doesn't "count" if it's committed by Christians.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Anthrax letters were all in 2001. D.C. Sniper's definitely a good case, though.