OCCOM BILL wrote:Theollady: I see you have already been sufficiently chastised for your sweeping generalizations, so I'll simply answer to what you meant in the first place. 1,000 years of brainwashing is little different than 100 or 1,000,000 years. Suicidal fanatics can not be reasoned with... They must be eliminated. I'll shed no tears for people who will fight to the death the "right" to stone their women to death. It matters not, to me, how great their numbers might be.
This is a specious arguement.
Quote:A crime against humanity is a crime against humanity regardless of how many people feel it is their "right".
So how do you explain your support for military intervention as a first choice method everywhere?
Quote: In many cases (most?); I believe that once people witness, experience and understand things like freedom, liberty and compassion; they too will desire it, not only for themselves, but for there loved ones as well.
Including the freedom to have a from of government different from yours?
Quote: I don't think it matters if someone has been taught to be bloodthirsty from birth: Inside, they have to know it's wrong. How many "Saints" were mass-murderers before seeing the light? I believe that every human being on the planet knows the difference between right and wrong. Some just don't understand it
yet.
Really?
Quote:Those "on the fence" on the other hand; can be deterred. I've never been as eloquent or as articulate as this author when trying to pose this point, so I'm grateful that someone who is did. I've tried repeatedly to express my belief that the ability to help comes with an inherent responsibility to do so.
But what about when "help" turns into "meddling" as has happened with the US?
Quote: Like no nation in history, the US has an overwhelming military power edge.
Except of course for Rome, Britain, Russia, etc.....
Quote: If, like the author suggests, we use that power to grant basic human rights to every citizen of planet earth; who would still be willing to die to kill their brothers?
Except, of course, that the US has not done and is unlikely to do any such thing. Instead we seem to prefer supporting dictatorships that abuse human rights, like Pakistan, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, etc...
Quote:Modern civilization eventually has to succeed in spreading itself to all the nations of the world.
Who says it hasn't?
Quote: I believe this is the first Nation in history to have enough power to accomplish that feat.
Wrong again. See the list above.
Quote: Certainly there will be some carnage in the process
but I submit; not as much as if continue to turn a blind eye to the plight of our fellow man.
And since you won't be one of the victims, who really cares, right? Besides, war is fun, right?
Quote: Why wait another generation or 2 or 10 while millions, even billions of people suffer unnecessarily because we choose not to help.
True, lets kill em all now.
Quote: I'd like to believe that once we convinced the world that world peace is our true objective; that other nations would join in the fight
Fortunately the rest if the world is not as naive as you are.
Quote: And, that it would eventually become the universal goal of all mankind.
You've watched too much Star Trek.
Quote: As I have stated before; I'm not suggesting world domination like other would-be world leaders of the past. I'm suggesting world liberation!
Which I believe was the ralying cry of Stalin, Hitler, the Japanese War Cabinet, and, ironically, Osama bin-Laden.
Quote: We have the money. We have the military might... I only wish we collectively had the desire to see it through.
Fortunately, most of us understand that war for the sake of some nebulous sense of "national pride" is horribly evil.
Quote:Ps. I sure wish more of you would request the audio file mentioned in my signature line. Regardless of you political views; it will move you.
Whatever.
