I guess we don’t all have to fight. But if someone’s acting like an asshole and threatening to stab me with his knife what do you expect me to do? I can choose not to fight and attempt to talk him out of stabbing me, I can choose to talk to him but keep a knife handly just in case, or I can just go ahead and try to kill him before he kills me.
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I don’t think these topics are related but what the hell. Some people see food banks as serving only the lazy while defense is to protect us all.
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Well I hate to say it but snap out of it. I suppose you can dream all you want but you’ll have to face the reality sooner or later. There are already 6,000 dead because we didn’t deal with Bin Laden earlier.
I’m not talking about self-defense. I’m not talking about NOT going after Bin Laden and his people.
But what I AM saying is we need to be very discreet about this. Our war is NOT against the people of Afghanistan-it is against the Taliban and the terrorists.
Your concern is reasonably justified, especially given the number of “Bomb them to the stone-age”, “Kill 'em all”, “Turn Afghanistan into a Parking Lot” reactionary racist, bigoted BULLSHIT that’s circulating. Most of that is posturing, and it is a reaction to shock. Will we go to war? possibly. Will people die, innocents? yes. Will there be whole-sale slaughter of innocents in the name of getting the ‘perps’? Unlikely, unless the US has lost 90% of it’s military technology in the last 10 years. We simply don’t need to do that to acquire our goals.
Afghanistan’s people don’t particularly like the Taliban - the Taliban is not a chosen but an imposed government. So Strategically it makes sense for us not to hurt the population: they could help our cause.
I’m not condemning you, but I’d also say that your desire for no violence is a luxury of thought afforded to you by the place and time where you live. Life on the whole, however, tends to be ‘nasty, brutish and short’. Should we stop striving for better? No, but living in a fantasy world is the quickest way to be stripped of the fantasy.
Last note: I’m going to scream if I hear one more politician refer to them as “afghans”. They’re “Afghanis”.
Afghans are blankets. New-Clear, and Afghanis. Thank you.
I’m glad someone else brought this up. I’ve been making this point on a daily basis in Great Debates. And while good points like this are being made in the Pit, the level of debate up there is deteriorating.
We live in a cynical culture. We give cynicism the high moral ground. Why? It’s my experience that a cynic is a person who’s lead an easy life, and imagines they’ve lived a hard life. So it’s not surprising that this soft and easy society, cynicism is the fashion of the day.
Our ancestors didn’t just fight for our freedom. They argued and debated, built and struggled. And they didn’t do it out of base self-interest. There have always been ways for the purely selfish to rise through the ranks of society. They did it to secure a better life for everyone, and for future generations.
While political scientists and military experts analyse the logistics of combat and factor in human lives only as a PR concern, a second battle is starting within the NATO countries of people who are opposed to this war. You’re right – it is like kicking your grandmother, and don’t let anyone call you naive because you hold yourself to a basic standard of human decency.
We have inherited this peaceful world because people before us imagined it was possible. Now we have a responsibility to pass a better world on.
So what are your suggestions? I’m having difficulty understanding if you’d like us to put down our guns and invite Mr. Ladin to a nice round-table discussion about his needs and wants, or if you’re suggesting some kind of assasination that eliminates ONLY the (figure)head or what?
Or are you (Hamish,Guin) merely decrying the ‘violent solution’ for non-violence’s sake.
Also, Hamish, I’m having difficulty understanding your remark about cynicism: Are you saying that the acceptance that there MUST be innocent casualties in a war is cynical? Are you saying that the desire for physical response is cynical? Are you saying that “talking will get us no-where” is a cynical response?
I agree with you %150 percent that prior shortsightedness has had an inflence in creating this mess. With that same thought in mind, I’ll grant that we should be carefull what bedfellows we choose lest we put some other opressive hate-mongering twits into power.
Whether I have any faith that that’ll happen is an entirely different story, but anyway -
However, this long-term solution doesn’t really address what’s happening at this moment, does it? I don’t advocate jumping in with guns blazing and vaporizing large cross-sections of the world populace, nor do I believe that a non-violent short-term solution is possible or ultimately effective. Our long-term solution should be to eliminate terrorism by (if possible[sup]1[/sup]) not creating a breeding ground for it. But how does this handle the nest of vipers we’re dealing with now?
[sup]1[/sup]I’m also not at all sure that it is possible to NOT have terrorist elements, because there are always people who do not like the status quo, and are too lazy or to arrogant to try and create change through civilized means.