Hawke wrote:
"Gus" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Greylock" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:16:54 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:
This is funny as hell. Bill Mahar is a riot.
Opions vary.
Personally I sorta think referring to American soldiers as "cowards"
is way beyond the pale.
That he wasn't taken off the air permanently is a travesty and a
damned shame.
Whoa. Let's get this straight. He didn't call American soldiers
cowardly. He
objected to the (stupid) remark by Dubya that the Qaedas who flew planes
into the WTC were "cowards." Mahar was right. They weren't cowards. They
were murders and nutbags, but not cowards.
What he DID say, in response, is this: "We have been the cowards lobbing
cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the
airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not
cowardly."
He's right. Flying cruise missiles into a foreign country at no risk to
ourselves, simultaneously puffing ourselves up for courage and moral
certitude while calling suicide attacks "cowardly," is
self-congratulation
going over the top. Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza also
objected to
the characterization of the WTC attackers as cowards. Stupid is stupid,
and
self-congratulation is self-congratulation, no matter which side of the
political spectrum you're on.
Let's make it clear again: Mahar did NOT say American soldiers are
cowards.
He said the leaders who flew cruise missiles into the enemy are
(relatively
speaking, or absolutely, as you choose) cowards. And he included all of
us
in the indictment, because it's our government.
--
Ed Huntress
Since a coward is one who turns tail and runs, neither flying airplanes
into buildings nor lobbing cruise missiles is cowardly on the surface.
But in my opinion, the killing of innocent people in pursuit of a goal
is more cowardly than killing the guilty. And killing the innocent is
exactly what terrorists do. Mahar's strategy is to put the terrorists
on a higher plane than our government for his own political purposes.
Gus
No, he's not. What he is doing is pointing out the hypocrisy of our
government. At least the terrorists are honest, he's saying. They are out to
kill, just like we are, but they purposely kill people who we say are
innocent. We, on the other hand, also kill people we call innocent but then
claim we are different because we aren't doing it intentionally. That
supposedly lets us off the hook.
I don't know how you can say you are different from a terrorist when you
know your actions will result in the deaths of innocent people yet you do it
anyway. For instance, when we dropped bombs on Baghdad we knew that we were
going to kill people that we were not specifically trying to kill. But we
killed them just the same in the pursuit of our targets. The terrorists kill
innocent people too, and on purpose. To some people there is no real
difference, like to the people you kill and their families. If you kill
innocent people, you kill innocent people, period. In fact, if you want to
add them up you will find the we have killed the most innocent people. What
Mahr does is point out that the truth is the US government is on an equal
footing with the terrorists when it comes to killing innocent people. Both
sides do it. The difference is they have a different attitude about it than
we do, and that's about the only difference between the two. That and the
fact that we are better at it than they are. That's what Mahr was getting
at.
Hawke
I get the point but I see a difference between a terrorist trying to
kill as many innocent people as possible and an army doing everything
they can to try to minimize innocents being hurt and still get the job
done. The intent has got to have something to do with it.
Your "brave" terrorists are the ones who like to hide among women and
children so that if they get their butt blown away the others will too.
There's only so much of this "bravery" that I can take.
GW