FreeDuck wrote:I don't see it your way, Fox. If a majority of Americans really found non-American deaths as acceptable (or not) as American deaths then we wouldn't have gone into Iraq at all.
The operative term was
unjustifiable non-American deaths. That is an important distinction.
Quote:When you hear calls to leave Iraq, the motivation is that we don't want our soldiers to die for nothing and not that we have killed too many Iraqis.
That's not the motivation I hear. I hear that George Bush (presumably single handedly) put us into an illegal and immoral war - and/or - we have lost the war and we now think it was a bad idea, and we don't want to invest any more in it. The first motivation is blatantly dishonest, and the second unbelievably defeatist and/or insulting to our fighting forces.
Quote: How many politicians or leaders even mention Iraqi deaths when they argue for a pull out? If they thought we gave a **** they'd sure as hell bring it up.
Exactly. Which is why I think the motives for pulling out of Iraq have absolutely nothing to do with Iraqi or anybody else's deaths. The motive is to embarrass and discredit George Bush.
Quote:Why, as a country, did the majority of us support an invasion of Iraq in the first place? Because it is more acceptable to us that Iraqis should die in an invasion than that Americans should die in a terrorist attack at home. (I'm offering this as a motivation for public support and not defending the rationale for the war or even stating what the rationale was.)
Baloney. We did not for a minute believe our fighting forces would target innocent men, women, and children, and rational people don't believe we ever did or are doing that now or ever will.
We believed the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, key members of Congress, the CIA, virtually all members of the UN, virtually all UN weapons inspectors, virtually every head of state in the free world, and virtually all the heads of state in the Middle East who declared, based on the available evidence, that Saddam had WMD, was working on bigger WMD, and would use them on the innocents when the opportunity presented itself. And we believed all of these who also presented a case for Saddam committing terrorist acts as well as funding and supporting terrorism. We were willing to trade off what we believed would be short term hostilities against massive loss of life that otherwise appeared to be most likely.
Quote:We think it is perfectly fine to treat non-Americans in ways that we would not accept for Americans, just have a look at any Guantanamo thread to see. And even if there are plenty of us who do not feel this way, it is clearly the policy of our government, which is by the people, for the people, of the people. Meaning, if a clear majority of us really thought the way you say we do, our government would adopt different policies.
Be careful how you use the term 'we' here as I think we go the second, third, fourth, and fifth mile to not mistreat prisoners at Guantanamo and I think there are many many of us who don't support criminality from anybody no matter what country they are from, even ours. A great many of us think everybody, American or other, who intentionally target innocent people, should receive equally harsh penalties allowed by the law. We certainly don't want any kind of terrorists running around loose no matter where they're from.
Quote:I noticed one thing in your post. You inserted the word "unjustified" when speaking about whether we find killing of Americans equal to killing of non-Americans. Justification means nothing to dead people and their families. Do you think that the "collateral damage" thinks to himself, after losing his family, "I'm so sad that they are gone but I know it was justified." Justification is what we do to make ourselves feel better and to pretend that we didn't just weigh some number of lives (American and otherwise) against some presumed strategic benefit and find that the lives hardly tipped the scale at all.
Rational people know that in war people, including innocent people, are likely to be killed and there will be much damage that will inconvenience or devastate the innocent along with the guilty. That is what makes war so disgusting and immoral and unconscionable and why any sane person should deplore and condemn it. The only thing more disgusting and immoral and unconscionable are actions and activities even more reprehensible and that sometimes make war necessary.
At least some Americans know the truth of that. And some prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it is not so.
Quote:And you know how I feel about the good guy/bad guy thing.
Yes, you seem to have a great deal of difficulty recognizing the difference between accidental and/or untended deaths of innocents versus deliberate and/or intentional deaths of innocents.
The good guys do not intend to kill or injure innocents. That's us.
The bad guys do intend to kill or injure innocents. That's the terrorists.
If all Americans could understand that distinction, again, I think this war would be over by now.
. But my purpose here is to carry the message that the invasion is counter-productive and badly managed, but above all immoral and illegal. I am pleased to have the chance to do that.
