Justifying slaughter...

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, this is somewhat related to my earlier thread, but I’m just trying to wrap my head around one thought:

I’m a rather peaceful sort. I think I have a somewhat calm head on my shoulders. Thus, while reading all these reactions to the attacks, I’m having a really hard time imagining what goes through some people’s heads. And the scary thing is, I see this all over, even from domestic sources:

“Your government caused me pain. Thus, I am glad that women and children like those in my own family died horribly. No, no, I don’t particularly care that they’re dead. In fact, I’m rather glad. It’s payback. You should come to us on your hands and knees and beg our forgiveness for making the world react to you like this. Oh, and even though I don’t know you, and you have little role in what your leaders do, I would rejoice if you were to die a painful, fiery death.”

When does life become so cheap that you don’t even twinge at its passing? I mean, I didn’t break down crying, but I wasn’t indifferent, either. I guess it’s the indifference that gets me…

HOW do you get to be like this?! (Actually, I think I can imagine how; it’s a half-rhetorical question.)

2

Just watch some of the reactions on this board, with people calling for the total annihilation of the Middle East. “Nuke the fuckers”, etc. It’s the same thing.

I understand the feeling of need to strike out at someone. However, that type of response is no different. They see it “Hey, that’s what has been happening here to us for a long time, because of the policies by your country. Glad to finally see some of the misery directed back to you.” They see us as the cause, so it seems like justice.

I’m not saying I agree with it, but I understand at least a little why they could feel that way.

3

I don’t recall anyone saying, "nuke the fuckers."I am in favor of military action against Afghanistan, but that is not the same thing.
It’s a tribute to the inherent goodness and decency of the SDMBers that few of you can really believe that you can be hated by a group of people. I know that most of you imagine that the sympathies for terrorists are only held by a minority, and that there is no anti-West bias in the Arab world. Here’s some context:
1972 Munich Olympics
Seizure of the US embassy and hostages held, 1979 Tehran
The Entebbe hijacking 1979 Uganda
The assassination of Anwar Sadat 1980
The Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon 1982
The US Embassy bombing in Beirut 1983
The Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer 1985
The TWA hijacking in Lebanon 1985
The Pan Am bombing, Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988
The death sentence on Salman Rushdie 1989
The World Trade Center, 1993
The Khobar Towers bombing 1996
The US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi 1998
September 11, 2001

I’m sure that most Muslims must be good people and just want to love peaceful lives, but to say that there is no hatred towards the US is just willful blindness.

4

gobear, there’s been plenty of ‘nuke the fuckers’ sentiment right here on SDMB.

c_goat said we should turn the Middle East into a wasteland.

Bluepony said he wants to kill the terrorists, their families, their friends, everyone in their country and everything they hold dear, for the good of his children.

When I told Bluepony that killing innocent people was not the answer, Manservant Hecuba told me to shut up and that I was moot.

This is off the top of my head.

–John

5

Cites for Bluepony’s comments:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=86464&pagenumber=1

–John

6

What?

Tell me how you can equate our middle east policy (no matter how bad it is) with flying two jet airliners into a couple of the largest buildings in the world?

All over the news I see people claiming America got hers for not stepping in and interfering in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Basically a “you didn’t help us, so were going to kill a bunch of you”.

That is suspect logic to begin with.

7

Overheated rhetoric borne of anger in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy of this proportions is not “the same thing” as the concentrated, cold-blooded, premeditated hatred that produced the tragedy in the first place.

8

As I’ve noted in a GD thread, our country’s prime directive must be to protect itself.

If you are a citizen of a government whose nation is causing us harm, or threatens to cause us harm, or allows terrorist groups to thrive there and cause us harm, we cannot and will not be responsible for your well-being. We will protect our citizens by eradicating the threat against us. If they are cowards and choose to hide among you, I’d suggest you find them for us. Really, really quick.

(Listening, Taliban?)

If you are a citizen of a government that is causing, directly or indirectly, terror, the slaughter of innocents and hostile threats to other nations, it is incumbent upon you to do something about it.

9

No. But actually “nuking the fuckers” would be.

10

To address the OP, my SO had a perfect answer for this a few weeks ago. We were watching Top Gun, and she made the comment that the Soviet pilots all had face masks and goggles on, while the USAan pilots often had their faces exposed. This is to remind us that Americans are human beings, while those dirty commies are nothing more than bloodthirsty animals that need to be killed.

Countries for millenia have done this – if you paint the enemy as less than human, then it becomes acceptable to kill them. This is standard war propaganda, and is very effective. Remember the (false) story about Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and throwing them to the floor? Who wouldn’t mind killing such monsters?

So why do some mid-easterners hate us so? Same reason. They are told that we are sub-human monsters.

Watch the media over the next few weeks. Notice how whatever enemy we choose will be dehumanized until acceptance of violence against them increases. Then we can have a nice, justifiable war.

11

Uh, tdn?

Have you been watching the TV? Did you see the craters where the World Trade Center used to be?

Do you really think the media needs to fan the flames of hysteria until the country is ready for war? No, the country is ready for war right now, with absolutely no help from the media. The fucking media doesn’t need to fucking manufacture some fucking false fucking story about some fucking fictional fucking atrocity.

Unless you don’t consider killing thousands of innocent people to be an atrocity?

You are an idiot. I suggest you keep quiet for the next couple of weeks and let the intelligent people discuss things without your fucking interruptions.

12

I believe tdn does consider the killing of thousands of bystanders to further a political agenda atrocious, and was pointing out the irony of clamouring for the killing of thousands in vengeful retaliation.

13

Lemur, thank you for the kind and well thought out post. Nothing like getting flamed for trying to contribute. Let’s see if we can sort through some of your diatribe.

First off, let me state that I was attempting to answer the OP in a helpful way. My bad, apparently.

Um, sort of hard to avoid, actually.

In many cases, yes. This is historical fact. In this particular case, of course America’s ire is up, and justifiably so. But fanning the flames would do well to get support for a sustained war upon Arab citizens. Which hopefully won’t happen, but we’ve already seen some people that are wishing for that.

Hmm, refer to your own comment above about watching TV. The media is what brought this atrocity to our attention.

As far as speaking for what the country is up for, have you read the minds of all 250,000,000 of us? That’s rather impressive.

That’s quite an impressive vocabulary you have there.

But let’s look at history for a second. There were manufactured stories about the Iraqis that made it more acceptable to bomb them in the Gulf war. And it was the US government and the Kuwaitis that manufactured them. Are you saying that that could never happen again?

Pelicans have polka-dots. (Ask a stupid question…)

Of course it’s an atrocity. Would you consider the bombing of innocent women and children with no reason an atrocity? What if they were E-vul A-rabs? More acceptable to you? This is my point.

How kind of you. I try to shed some light on the OP, and you insult me. Very big of you.

Since when is being part of the discussion an interruption? Your ad homenim attack on me was an interruption.

But I concede the point – if your type of post is indicative of your idea of discussion, I will leave with enthusiasm.

Putz.

14

Thank you Cajo. Though the irony is not lost on me, that’s not, in fact, what I was trying to point out. But it’s a good thought anyway.

What I was trying to do was strictly address the OP. “When does life become so cheap?” is easy to answer if you see how some people are charactarized. Classify a group of people as baby killers, rapists, or (insert evil religion here), and killing them becomes more acceptable, even dutiful.

Lemur, does that clear things up? Or am I still an idiot?

15

I would say that most people don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of people that die every year. If you go to sluggy.com it says
“Note: Donations to the Salvation Army should be marked : “for terrorist victims” or they may not make it to that fund.”
because it would be such a tradegy to help a non terrorist victim.

16

Thanks for being so reasonable about my careless misinterpretation. Though we weren’t on the same page, we’re obviously on the same chapter.

All this “bomb the ragheads” talk is scaring me to death, and I fear it’s just a matter of time before some schmuck walking down the street minding his own business gets beaten to death for being of Arab descent.

17

No problem. The point you raised was a first cousin to the one I raised.

In this area, Arab-Americans are refusing to go to work for a few days. For the president of the Arab League of New England (or something like that), today was business as usual. Good on him.

18

The views given to us repeatedly on television certainly strike a kind of numb horror to the viewers.

tdn is correct in that we’re casting about for an enemy to hate and hit, in that order. We’ll find one, real soon. And they’ll have dark hair, brown eyes and olive to dusky skin. Just like the comics of the 40’s featured buck-toothed Japs wearing Coke-bottle bottom glasses, you can bet we’ll find some ‘creative’ way of labeling ‘Abdul Raghead’. And a whole group of people will be labled as death-dealing hate-mongers because of that.

But people like Lemur are very hurt and very stressed. They’re blowing off steam, and I’d rather have them act like an asshole here than get a gun and shoot up a mosque.

19

Bullshit. I’m not irrational, and I’m not letting off steam. I am just offended by tdn’s claim:

Are you saying that we don’t have justification for war? Of course we have justification for war. We do not need to be manipulated by the media to go to war. We have been attacked, thousands of people have been killed.

I am angered by his knee-jerk assumption that Americans are easily manipulated idiots who dance to the tune of the media. The media is not manipulating us into hating the people who bombed the WTC. We do not need to be manipulated into retaliating against them. His word reveal a disdain and contempt for American citizens. He believes that unless we are brainwashed by the government and the media we won’t respond as programmed.

Bullshit again. There is no need for brainwashing for the American people to accept violence against the terrorists. The American people don’t need to be tricked by the media into responding to this.

I find this kind of media criticism tiresome and insulting.

20

And desensitize us after a while. Suddenly, that kind of violence seems normal, and thus we would be willing to use it ourselves. Not surprising that those in the Mideast have few compuctions to use it.

Well, I wasn’t going to Godwinize, but now that you’ve opened the door :wink: – Remember the charactarizations of the Jews? Or our WWI image of Germans? And I can only imagine what Arabs think of us. Spoiled, Godless, beer drinking, baby killing, self-righteous Satanists. From that viewpoint, yesterday was a Good Thing™.

Yes, you’re right. Sorry Lem. It has also come to my attention that you may have interpreted my post as saying that the attacks were media inventions. Not what I meant at all.

To illustrate my point, let me advance a theory: Bush called the attacks an act of war, not terrorism. War is much worse. Protection from war requires more guns. Knowing that we are At War makes us more willing to use military force. Bush’s comment was not a mere description – it was a calculated attempt to ready us for the worst, and to go there happily.