| Subject: I'll take your knee-jerk, and raise you one knee-jerk. |
Author:
Rob Dog Bastard
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Date Posted: 04:30:34 05/12/04 Wed
In reply to:
Ray
's message, "War" on 22:51:50 05/11/04 Tue
Sure, I saw the video too. Pretty nasty stuff. To tell the truth, I was more bothered by the beheading than I thought I would be and it even kept me up a bit last night as I thought of it's reasons and ramifications. For some reason this one killing seemed deeper entrenched in my mind than any of the others. Reminds me of "Watching TV," a song by Roger Waters about how a chinese girls death was the most important in Chinese history because it was filmed and shown to the world.
Which is exactly why it was videotaped, of course.
The problem, Ray, is that this is only one of many killings and even though it was horrendous, I doubt it was much more horrendous than when those British troops shot that 9-yr. old girl for no apparent reason outside Fallujah (as reported by the ICRC, not a group terribly prone to lying). From what we are being led to believe this was not likely much worse than some of the alarmingly abusive beating deaths suffered by U.S.-held Iraqi prisoners (some of them also non-combatants, by the way).
The thing that makes the British and U.S. killings worse, however, is that we are over there under the pretense of 'help' for the Iraqi people. Nobody with a half a brain believes that for a minute, of course, but if we ever want to win over the Iraqis and end the bloodshed then we cannot be abusing and killing prisoners.
I expect radical Muslim extremists in Iraq to kill people - that's what radical Muslim extremists in Iraq do. Any civilians who went to Iraq were aware of that and took that risk voluntarily. While the video was digusting and their behavior beyond explanation, the fact is that this is what we can expect if the U.S. Military refuses to conduct itself as a proffesional organization rather than the loosely organized gang we see before us today.
Two wrongs do not make a right, as the old and tired saying goes, but certainly three don't, and 'eradicating the disease entrenched squalors of cities like Fallujah,' would not only be a third wrong but more importantly it would let loose even more anti-American sentiment in Iraq and the whole of the Muslim world.
We have gone into foreign territory uninvited and we should not be surprised that we are not welcome. We have technically won the war we came to fight and now it is our duty to put out the remaining fires. This will not be done via tit-fo-tat violence, but rather through diplomacy and measured action.
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