Creeping pacifism ...

As we confront evil, we will always ask ourselves 'why'? or how better handled? We'll doubt ourselves and have recriminations. But it is better to confront evil and suffer doubt, than to turn a blind eye to what we hope 'just won't happen'. It is happening. They are trying to destroy the earth. They haven't thought it through, or they don't care if they have, but that is exactly what the terrorists are doing.

We'll bring it all down just because we have enough spite and anger - The terrorists. We don't Care about human beings.

It is we who do care about ourselves, each other, other lifestyles and cultures, who must be proactive. We must stop genocide. We will be insulted and refuted at every step. it will look 'wrong' nearly all the way through, it might even look hopeless, but if men and women living today believe in anything then they must believe in this. This is the cause of our current generation, and generations to follow.

Kill it all, or make it work.


munk
 
I'll heartily agree with one thing.

Pacifism is creepy.
 
aproy1101 said:
I'll heartily agree with one thing.

Pacifism is creepy.
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Say it again! I won't hit you!:D

Probably it was not the best choice of title - I do follow along with Just War thinking, rather than full-on pacifism. But someone will have to argue VERY hard to convince me when the death of a child is justifiable. When that's a risk or a likelihood ...
 
Tom, the current threat to humanity does not fit previous moulds. The threat is intrinisically different and cannot be confronted in a conventional fashion.

There is lots we could be doing that we are not.


munk
 
I agree Munk ... but I also suspect that we might disagree on some of the unconventional things to be done.

I'm all for taking down rabid animals (like OBL), but that's called "secondary prevention." Just like in health care, you get a better return through primary prevention ... promoting health instead of mopping up after illness.
 
I'll not try to justify individual deaths whatsoever. But I will say that civilians in S. Lebanon are complicit with Hezbola, as HD stated earlier. Complicit parents whose children die in raids they allowed themselves to be positioned near are responsible for their deaths.

The UN has had a peacekeeping force in S. Lebanon for years. They also have SC resolutions calling for the disarming of Hezbola. And yet, they allowed a weapons stockpile across the street from their compound, where, btw I saw a picture of the UN, and Hezbola flags flying side by side with no Israili flag present. Complicancy and responsibility are hand in hand. Cofee Annenenene came out right after that place got blasted and blamed the Irailis. I blame his dumb _ _ _.
 
No offense intended by my 'creepy' joke Tom. Just for laughs....

;-)
 
In Vietnam, the "other side" observed no restrictions on violence, and we had rules we observed at least some of the time -- perhaps most of the time -- but not always. Remember Brando's speech in "Apocalypse Now"? What was needed to defeat such an enemy? "Horror." But fighting that way extracts a price on those raised in a culture that values human life -- "horror."

HD, to your point about Hezbollah being native to the area, some of the recent Hezbbollah casualties are said by the IDF to carry Iranian papers. If so, this would seem to be simply another front in the war between "militant Islam" and the West rather than just extreme nationalism.


Homo Sap seems to have a hard-wired fear of the "other." The layer of "civilization" over that old beastly characteristic is pretty thin. :(
 
aproy1101 said:
I'll heartily agree with one thing.

Pacifism is creepy.
Click to expand...

Let me add that war is a frightening prospect. There are many good people among us who rather not face the notion that there are strangers out there who may wish them harm. They would rather blame the action of others, even sympathize with enemy, just to avoid that harsh reality. To them; they did not support the war, they did not condemn Islam, they did not vote for those who did, they did all within the power to call for peace. The futility of all this has yet to set on them; the terrorist will not be looking at their voting record, or political contributions, before pushing the pluger on the detonator.

n2s
 
n2s, I agree, but I also think that there are those who believe that peace is rewared with peace. I think they are naive in this particular case, but I believe that is what some of our passive brothers hold to. I just wonder if they are willing to martyr themselves, and us too, for that belief...

I recently heard a person say they were willing to fight when the war got to our shores. I am too. But, I'd rather take the fight to the sandy areas, and never have to push them into the Atlantic with my new WWII.

(BTW, the WWII is the shiznit. Chandan beautiful, blade shape beautiful. I etched it and the HT is beautiful. Bura is the man.)
 
aproy1101 said:
. . .I recently heard a person say they were willing to fight when the war got to our shores. I am too. But, I'd rather take the fight to the sandy areas, and never have to push them into the Atlantic with my new WWII.
. . .
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Well, there was this thing on 9/11.
 
Thomas Linton said:
HD, to your point about Hezbollah being native to the area, some of the recent Hezbbollah casualties are said by the IDF to carry Iranian papers. If so, this would seem to be simply another front in the war between "militant Islam" and the West rather than just extreme nationalism.
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If that's true. I've heard that a couple times but never from a reliable source. After the "babies ripped from incubators" and "Iraq Troops massing on the Saudi Border" deceptions I'm always skeptical.

Two of my favorites:

The Incubator Babies.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Americans were appalled by reports of at least 312 babies ripped from their life support systems by marauding Iraqi troops. More than any other story, it helped sway public opinion in favor of the war. When the Senate narrowly decided by five votes to authorize an invasion, nine senators referred to these atrocities as a reason for their votes.

Who could not have been moved by the testimony of a 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl known only as "Nayirah," before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus as she described the babies she'd seen who'd been "left on the cold floor to die" by indifferent soldiers looting a hospital?

At the time, neither Congress nor the public knew she was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., Saud al-Sabah, and had never been near these hospitals. Nor did the public know this "testimony" had been "facilitated" by a PR firm named Hill and Knowlton and financed by the government of Kuwait. These facts came out after the war, when hospital employees in Kuwait universally denied this atrocity story. But the tale had done its damage.
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The PhantomTroops.

In September of 1990 the Pentagon reported that 250,000 Iraqi troops with 1,500 tanks stood poised in Kuwait, ready to attack Saudi Arabia. These reports lent a real urgency to our need to send in troops.

One lonely newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times of Florida, pursued this story. They obtained Russian commercial satellite photos of Kuwait and then showed them to military experts. None could find a troop build-up.

Peter Zimmerman, a George Washington University satellite imagery expert reported, "all of us agreed that we couldn't see anything in the way of (Iraqi) military activity in the pictures" despite the fact that the images were "astounding in their quality." They could make out the build-up of U.S. jet fighters but few if any Iraqi military installations near the Saudi border.

The St. Petersburg Times contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney with their evidence of the non-existent invasion force, asking for refuting evidence. Their answer, as Harper's publisher John Macarthur reports in his award winning book Second Front, was "Trust us." The Pentagon would revise its troop estimates way downward -- after the war ended.
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Whats the point?
People get things wrong.
There are still a lot of folks who do not believe the twin towers fell just to airplanes, or that the CIA wasn't 'in' on it.

I don't think it productive to imagine the Right or Left 'knew' what really happened and have been acting in strategy ever since.



munk
 
Guys...the Political Forum *is* thataway.

I can just barely tolerate the stuff here...but I understand wanting to talk among friends, so I will allow it to continue a bit as long as it remains respectful *and* the language stays appropriate.

I know Andy...but folks forget that this is a family forum and in my book, family means no street talk.

Think Ozzie & Harriet or pretend that you are talking to your college prof and trying to impress him for the grade you need.


There's always the choice of taking it elsewhere...
 
Nasty said:
Guys...the Political Forum *is* thataway.

I can just barely tolerate the stuff here...but I understand wanting to talk among friends, so I will allow it to continue a bit as long as it remains respectful *and* the language stays appropriate.

I know Andy...but folks forget that this is a family forum and in my book, family means no street talk.

Think Ozzie & Harriet or pretend that you are talking to your college prof and trying to impress him for the grade you need.


There's always the choice of taking it elsewhere...
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I'll stop talking now:thumbup:
 
Shucks. I thought this was a good thread.
 
Nasty has a lower threshold of tolerance for these threads than I or Bill had.

Just remember to, 'Smile when you say that."


munk
 
I agree with cavetech and TomFetter, if I read them correctly. Regardless, my point is that if we're going to wage war, then wage war. To do less than that, is to prolong the agony of innocents. If you're going to invade a country, do so with strength, determination and an iron will. And that has to start at home, before you invade. After you invade, bend the country to your will in ways that everybody will understand and nobody will second-guess. Once everybody understands and is reading from the same page, then you can start reconstruction.
 
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