Give the freedom or give them death
reality chick wrote:
Is this guy out to lunch or what? Now that he has expressed his compassion for the "lost souls" of the terrorists because they have been forced into violent acts, like beheading innocent, non-military civilians, can we get to the real truth?
Yea Its petty clear we differ here on morality models. It seems to me that your suggesting that the actions of the US government have no consequences for the “personal” acts of violence that people perpetrate. That is to say it is irrelevant to investigate the “personal” bad apples or moral digressions of the US military convicted against the Iraqis because it’s is each Iraqis personal moral responsibility to act moral and not kill behead innocent civilians etc. Furthermore all US solders that act unmorally are doing so because of their personal moral irresponsibility. You are correct each person does have a moral responsibility and what we call terrorist are people that have abandoned that personal responsibility. Although what you moral world view seems to downplay is systemic conditions. The context in which these morality volitions take place has to be considered. The terrorists rejection of basic humanity does not occur in a vacuum. Fitting with your world view, I would like you to consider that not just “Muslim” teaching plays a roll in constructing these violent acts. Many people really believe they are at war we were booming the Iraqis all the while imposing genocidal sanctions during Clinton presidency. Our support for repressive regimes in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey do not go unnoticed. Not to mention the Palestinian situation which we have chosen to address though violence. In war people in war tend to attack each other.
I do not condone the use of violence as revenge or reprocity. One can oppose both the attack on September 11th and the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan)
Horrific violence was committed in Iraq & Afghansitan on both sides that’s what war is. Just talk to doctors that have treated hundreds kids maimed and killed by cluster bombs. Last I checked terrorist where not dropping cluster bombs. Unless we broaden our definition of terrorist to include the slaughter of “innocent” civilians
To address the question of stated intentionality.
Clearly the US military as a propaganda tactic has clearly stated it wishes to have as few civilian casualty as possible, but its choices reflect a different on-the ground strategy. For example refusing to allow exile of men of a certain age from falluja before you smash the place is in essence directly committing a war crime in that peoples claims to be non-combatants are disregarded and they are slaughtered. (they could have taken them into custody but they just sent them back into the city which they proceed to destroy) (this is ofcousre not mentioning the countless woman and children who were killed and then the hospital which was taken by force to prevent the release casualty reports, ie preventing their murder from even being acknowledged or reported. This was rationalized in that the amount of people being slaughtered by the US may encourage more people to take up arms against them, but what this really does is protect the US population support for the war. No one want to hear that the noble quest of democracy involves slaughtering a bunch of people. Give the freedom or give them is basically our twisted ultimatum
Is this worse than the terrorist give them death or give them death no, but we don’t live in moral relativity land. Killing people is wrong.
If this was just acts of frustration and retaliation against America because of our war efforts to fight terrorism, why did 9-11 happen, or the previous bombings of embassies, ships, world trade center, etc.? History shows a clear 'jihad' against our country, or any other country that choses to fight terrorism, because we fail to conform to the way they think the world should be run.
This is false, but even if it were true we would still be going about it the wrong way. We don’t show a different world is possible by recreating the things we dislike about it. What does it mean to “chose” to fight terrorism? Occupy their land set up neoliberal economic model?
Let's look at facts, not feelings, (a very unique approach rejected by most liberals)by looking at what happened to Afghanistan. The same terrorist group that attacked us numerous times, took over this country. Afghanistan welcomed them at first because of the Russian attempts to take over thier country. They felt that the Taliban were thier hope for freedom. America also supported the Taliban (what a HUGE error in judgement on our part, we are certainly NOT perfect) because we felt that enemy of our enemy was our friend. Taliban enslaved the women and children through rape, violence and murder. They actually used the sports arenas for executions of women when they had committed such horrendous crimes like showing too much skin from under thier oppressive burkas, or having the courage to try and get an education. Prior to the Taliban taking over, some of these women had been teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc. Children were raped and kidnapped from thier families. The girls were then rejected by the tribes they were taken from and could no longer marry. Any men that tried to resist were killed. This is the level of tolerance that the mind set of terrorism has for any one disagreeing with the way they believe. Does anyone really believe that we can reason with this mentality? Perhaps the same mindset as the people that believed we should reason with Hitler?
Well then join me in rejecting our support for all the other countries that use violence on their domestic population and occupied lands. We can start by stopping the sale or at least requiring independent monitoring as a requisite of the sale of massive amounts of arms to countries with massive human rights volitions. Colombia for example is not using all those gunship to feed the poor. Israel is not using all its weapons to fortify is internationally agreed upon borders. (if Israel was really interested in “peace” they could build the wall on the 1967 border 3 miles high and put nukes on both sides, but what they really want to do is take more land and drive out the current occupants though collective punishment ect.
Also I am glad to hear you’re a crusader for woman’s rights. Lets work to eradicate domestic violence here at home. We don’t exactly have the best record on such things.
It is to our peril that we impose our values and morality on terrorists. They DO NOT think with the same reasoning that a free society does, nor do they tolerate our views or lifestyles. Just listen to thier own leaders to know how they think and feel about free societies.
Its hard to convince you otherwise since you so firmly believe they have such a dramatically different mindset. Perhaps you should listen to the stories of people from the other side. Rather than just assume that what we are told about their society is true.
While things in Iraq are not perfect by any means, I have two sons that have spent substantial time there and are very encouraged by the positive changes. The economy is improving, the Iraqi people finally have real freedoms, and they are making huge strides on securing a new, freer way of life. But, as was the case with our own country, that takes years to evolve. The people of Iraq understand that, why do Americans feel that things are not improving unless it happens immediately? Is that realistic? Perhaps it's our "fast food" mentality, but it's certainly not logical.
That’s great. Real freedom is important. Unfortunately the neoliberal economic models being imposed on Iraq have a dismal track record. But people always say “it take time to evolve” Thank you for your son’s honorable contribution. We need people of the highest morality to better the worse system choices ever. I mean that to seriously even the nazi occupation of france never went this bad. One should consider the images of that case example of “evil’. Look at the little happy Austrian children’s faces. The nazi solders had liberated them from their oppressive monarchy. Just because that happenings is genuine and the some of the people involved really did generally want to help people, people like Shildler did, this does not mean that the system in place is the best that can be done. I don’t mean to make a moral equivalence, rather a metaphorical one to better understand propaganda. Obviously we are not at the sate of the nazi occupation. What I am trying to explain is that other systems of evil did not functioned by everyone involved being genuinely evil.
I have kept abreast of what is going on in the Middle East, not through the main stream media (which only reports the latest tragedies, not the progress), but through newspapers (ours and foreign), books, radio and the internet. I will not rely on feelings, and certainly have no compassion for cold-blooded murderers, but on facts. Perhaps this writer would benefit by doing the same?
I agree we should base things on facts but this is difficult in this time and space. We have two versions of information. We have one from the hospitals and Iraqis that claim many people have been killed another by the Government that claims not many have been killed. Do we believe the occupier or the occupied. Historically I have chose to believe the occupied voices, but as I have been trying to explain that does not mean the individual occupiers are wrong they may well be genuinely helping people, its just the system which I am criticizing as horrific.
