Posted by pancho (148.244.221.149) on November 04, 2001 at 11:08:39:
Let’s see how you answer this spot quiz. Here are two cases in point…see where you come down.
There are two groups of soldiers…we’ll call them soldiers because they fight for a nation or an ideal, we don’t care what the nation or the ideal…we’re trying to take the measure of the two opposing sides in terms unrelated to morality and right or wrong…as there is none in warfare.
One side is the most powerful military ever to roam the earth. It has weapons that have weapons…everything you could imagine and many you couldn’t begin to. It has radar, electronics, missiles launched from the ground, missiles launched from the sea, missiles launched from space, missiles launched from trees and bushes and the backsides of four star generals…you get the idea. For the last forty years it has tested this weaponry on the poorest nations on earth, or those it felt certain it could knock out in a matter of hours…cause that’s all that’s left. It has fought nations of children and woefully underequipped armies that never once raised a finger to it, or came looking for any trouble on its shores…countries whose people uniformly looked up to it when they weren’t terrified of its firepower and its willingness to use it against civilians and baby civilians.
The other side has rags for uniforms, begs, borrows or steals whatever weapons it can lay hands on, and none of them of one tenth the capacity and without the sophisticated support systems that would make that one tenth, one tenth as effective. They usually resort to suicide missions because they can’t get near the armed might of the other without sending a boy or girl dressed in dynamite…and they do find these children, even if they have to train them to it…as the other side trains its boys to kill these boys and girls…without a fair fight.
Now the side dressed in rags has managed to sneak into the armed camp that is the country of the other, right under the noses of the FBI, CIA, National Guard, State and Local Police, Federal Marshals, The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, the Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Air Force, Sheriff’s Departments…to get past all of these barriers and sophisticated armed guards…and their dogs, to study how to fly jet planes. Then they managed to slam three airplanes into two targets within minutes of each other, killing a mere fraction of the deaths they had been suffering for years past, while the world twiddled its thumbs. And in the process ending their own lives.
The other side , the side with all the weaponry and advisors and radar and satellites has gone to Afghanistan, a country so poor it makes your jaws ache, and is bravely and courageously blowing up holes in mountains, the mountains around those holes, and busses and huts and rags and bones…in Afghanistan where there isn’t a pigeon left alive to stop them. And all of this after killing five thousand children a month for 12 years using the unsophisticated, but light on the budget, weapons of starvation, pestilence, disease, and that other horseman of the Apocalypse, outright war, when the folks back home needed it.
Now…in terms of sheer courage, raw guts and determination…which side do you suppose showed more. We aren’t talking about right or wrong now…don’t get befuddled. We’re just talking about determination, grim determination against the odds…against all odds. Which side faced the more daunting task, proved it has the resources, the character if you will, to plan and execute and succeed with the least amount of actual stuff…while making up for what it lacked in material sophistication with sheer brains and cunning and heroism. What has history taught you happens when powerful Empires come up against their own moral rot…when confronted with a physically weaker people filled with a single minded determination the rich and spoiled people of the Empire lost long ago.
If it isn’t heroic to kill five thousand children a month…even when you get someone else to blame for it…then it also isn’t heroic to kill five thousand businessmen. But if one action is okay, then so is the other one…the rich side started it and laid down the rules, and the rules are that civilians, children even, are fair game. The poor side have recently arrived at the point where they want to play the same game, even though they are far less well equipped…materially…it would seem they lack nothing in daring or courage. Both sides of course give up even more of their humanity, but the aggressor began it and from that day, the weaker side was doomed, it only remains for them to forestall their doom, to fight the inevitable annihilation they face…for they are damned one way or the other…might as well strike a good blow as you go down…a concept lost on real Christians who believe they should sustain one MORE blow as they go down.
Only a fool walks up to a tank with a rock in his hand…and while America would prefer to do battle against fools and children, the wise person will go around at night and kill the tank commander’s children. I know it sounds unpleasant, but what do you suppose Madeleine Verybright and Bush and Kissinger and Clinton have been doing, even saying out loud that they were doing, with nary a peep from the Churches, the Assyrians or the UN. Didn’t they say they couldn’t manage to go into Iraq and get the tank commander…get Saddam. And didn’t they say they were going to impose Sanctions in order to make the lives of the Iraqi people so hard and miserable, miserable enough to kill Iraqi children in pain and agony…so that the distracted and half crazed parents and widows and widowers would topple what they called the worst tyrant since Hitler…a man so clever and wiley that they themselves, with all their weaponry and means were afraid to go after. Is that not advocating the killing of the tank commanders children.
At least America can consider itself fortunate that children have not been specifically targeted, yet…although if you starve a group of people where children are included…who do you suppose is gonna die first. What will you do when the other side becomes as cruel and cold as America has been and goes after five thousand children. Tell me something…Desert Storm didn’t end it…this wont end it either…are you prepared to go further down this road. Of course not…America will eventually pull out and declare a victory as it did in Korea and Vietnam…the right price hasn’t been paid yet that’s all. By the time that price is reached, America will withdraw, you can bet on it. And by then there will be some terribly more wealthy people than there are now, and there are way too many now…but you know what, they’ll just hire you all at very good salaries and benefits so you wont mind too terribly much when you visit the cemetery on the five minutes you’ll get time off…cause you’ll be working even harder to buy those goodies down at the Mall that are supposed to compensate you for the hole that’s left in your soul when you bury that child.