Absolutely. This never happened.
Posted on 05/25/2005 7:43:18 AM PDT by Revenge of Sith
The current episode of "Star Wars" is dynamite for the duplicitous Bush administration. Palpatine, a Sith Lord masquerading as a galactic Republican, becomes Chancellor of the Galactic Republic through deception. Palpatine uses wars that he instigates to elevate security over the power of the Senate and to become dictator.
In a moment of triumph, Palpatine tells the Senate, "In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society." The senators respond with sustained cheering and applause. Padme says, "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
Sith lords use the powers of the dark side of the force. Jedi knights use the power of the good side. The Jedi are selfless and use their incredible powers to protect the Republic. Sith are evil and crave absolute power. Palpatine, who is really Darth Sidious, manipulates the Senate and enlists the Jedi Council's patriotism to "defend" the Republic against a "separatist" army that he secretly directs. The purpose of the orchestrated war is to erode liberty in the name of security. The naive Jedi catch on too late and are decimated. The Republic falls.
Bush's "war against terrorism" is no less orchestrated than Palpatine's war and has led to the same result: a society dominated by security concerns.
The top secret British government memo that was leaked to the London Times proves beyond all doubt that Bush invaded Iraq for none of the changing reasons that he has given a too-trusting public. Bush did not invade Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction or because he wanted to bring democracy to Iraq.
Why did Bush invade Iraq? No one, least of all the Bush administration, has come up with a believable reason. Yet, there is no shortage of patriotic Republicans who sincerely believe that Bush has made America safer by turning the Muslim world against us and stirring up a hornets nest of terrorists united by their hatred of America.
Moreover, like Palpatine's war, Bush's war in Iraq appears to be interminable. U.S. military commanders say the United States will be fighting in Iraq for years to come. Forecasts are that the war will have cost taxpayers $600 billion by 2010.
Meanwhile, Bush, like Palpatine, has brought civil liberties to a crisis. In the United States, civil liberties are everywhere biting the dust. Not content with the Orwellian-named "Patriot Act," the Bush administration is pushing for expanded secret police powers. Even conservative Republican Bob Barr writes in the May 17 Washington Times that provisions of the "Patriot Act" go far beyond fighting terrorism "and undermine our constitutional freedoms and Fourth Amendment rights."
Barr is chairman of a coalition called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances. In other words, dear readers, the checks and balances are gone. Bush has enabled the police to bypass the courts. Executive power rules, and there are no Jedi knights.
The Sith, however, are everywhere. In our day, the Sith masquerade as neoconservatives. Neocons deal in absolutes. They believe the end justifies the means. As the Jedi master Obi-Wan tells Anakin, who is turning to the dark side and emerging as Darth Vader, "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes." Anakin to Obi-Wan: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy."
Palpatine is able to manipulate the Galactic Senate with the clever use of words that play upon emotions. People want to feel secure. They want their side to prevail and will do whatever it takes to win, including trading their republic for an empire. Palpatine prevails because people deceive themselves.
Republicans have become adept at self-deception. They will believe any argument that justifies Bush and no news report that casts doubt on Bush's war. The leaked British government memo is dismissed as just more anti-Bush propaganda from the liberal press, like Dan Rather and Newsweek.
Newsweek's retraction of its story that U.S. soldiers flushed a Quran down a toilet proves to Republicans that the only problem is an anti-American liberal media. The fact that Newsweek was absolutely correct in reporting desecration of the Quran by U.S. troops -- and only got wrong the particular way in which the holy book was desecrated -- has been totally ignored by Republicans.
Republicans believe everything Bush says. When he tells them he needs a police state to save them from terrorists, they believe him.
Who will save us from Bush's police state?
Just as Child Protective Services has had to frame innocent parents and child-care providers as child abusers in order to justify its budgets and a massive bureaucracy, the vast Homeland Security apparatus will have to "find" terrorists. Otherwise, there is no point to all the expanded police powers and the huge budget.
Just as the indignities of airport security and its assorted searches fall on loyal American citizens, the police state measures will also fall on loyal American citizens.
With the courts bypassed, a terrorist is whoever the secret police say is a terrorist. The U.S. government is already committing the crime of kidnapping people mistakenly identified as terrorist suspects and flying them to brutal regimes to be tortured.
Police states have an insatiable need for enemies. In Stalin's time, the secret police conducted "street sweeps." People waiting for buses and shopping for food were carted off to prison, where they were tortured until they implicated others. Thus was the Gulag filled with innocents.
"It can't happen here," but the beginnings of it already have. The U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is full of mistaken identities and people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- including, according to The Associated Press, a chicken farmer and an invalid. Bush's brand of democracy -- a regime that holds people in prison for three years without charges -- does not have civil liberties at heart.
Republicans are cheering. According to news reports, Congress has passed -- and Bush is about to sign -- a law requiring a national identity card (Real ID) containing invasive digital information about the person.
How long will it be before the card specifies whether the person is a gun owner? If it is dangerous for air travel to permit a passenger to have a toothpick or nail clippers, how can a terrorist-threatened society permit mass gun ownership?
If the constitutional protections of civil liberties can be suspended in order to better fight terrorism, the Second Amendment doesn't have a chance. A government that spies on its citizens will not trust them with guns. When gun control becomes an essential feature of Homeland Security, the National Rifle Association and talk radio conservatives will be as astounded as Bail Organa and Padme when they hear Palpatine declare "an empire ... and a sovereign ruler chosen for life."
ok, the verses you are referring to are where God has sanctioned war, using his army as an extension of his arm, to deal out his wrath and justice on the wicked. these are people that can be saved.
the verses i refer to, are for when dealing with people that have such a deep seeded hatred of the children of God, as part of their religion, that there is nothing for them.
ah, the beatitudes. the beatitudes are personal. HOWEVER, there are different rules as set down for a government. Romans 13 deals with the government. that a government should be the hand that deals out justice (goes to war) on a national or international level. i don't recall seeing any rules of engagement anywhere in the new testament, so i assume that the OT rules of engagement are still law.
at least that's how i interpret it. please feel free to send me any verses that would dispute my interpretation. i know only what i have been taught, but am always looking for new teachers.
Your interpretation of the verses you noted makes a huge assumption that your enemy's children are incapable of anything but hatred of you and therefore must be slain. I think you are mistaken. The chapter is discussing the practice of dealing with one's enemies during war. Destroy your enemy by killing the men and abolishing their practices. Claim for yourself the women, children, cattle, and all your enemy's treasure.
IMHO that's how the libs see their "reality"....by relating fantasy to fact. To them fantasy is their reality. They don't allow facts and reasoning to cloud their feelings.
then it seems that the only point of contention we are left with is whether or not the children can be saved.
my guess is that we will find out in years to come. because we both know that bush won't wipe out a nation, so we'll see what happens when the children grow up.
Yes. I think it is a gross error to unconditionally assume that your enemy's children cannot be saved and therefore must be killed.
my guess is that we will find out in years to come. because we both know that bush won't wipe out a nation, so we'll see what happens when the children grow up.
I think there is enough evidence in past conflicts to put forth examples of potential outcomes that are both positive and negative.
I've enjoyed your input and look forward to more. For now, however, I'm off to do a little work. Have a good day.
Is Paul Craig Roberts really Maureen Dowd?
I've never seen them in the same room.
Absolutely. This never happened.
Given a Christian's duty to rightly appointed authority as laid out in Romans 13, how is a Christian to conduct himself in a war between two or more Christian governments-acknowledging that the reasoning behind it might be open to doubt, and thus, honestly supportable under the obligation to authority as gleaned from Romans 13?
please feel free to send me any verses that would dispute my interpretation.
I'll reason from the verses at hand alone (specifically Romans 13). Answer the above question, and we can proceed logically from there to the right way for a Christian to conduct war. But the question above must be answered, before we can move to any theoretical war between Christians and Pagans.
i don't know if i've answered your question or if i've just become repititious...
the way i've read it was, romans 13 tells us that we are to follow our leader where he directs us. our leader is supposed to pray first (Deut 20:1-4, 1 Sam 30:8, Psalm 108:12-13, and if you know the story of jehosophat(sp?) he fasted and prayed and LISTENED when the lord spoke, and his armies turned on themselves) and do what he is told. hopefully Bush prays and listens.
as far as rules of engagement, as i interpret it, Deut 20:12-13 is in reference to other christian nations and nations not religiously bent on conquor and convert. its the national equivalent of punishing an unruly child who won't listen. a little swat to get their attention, then make them listen.
when its a nation where the children are raised hating us (as a couple of articles regarding the schools over there depict) there is little hope for them. they will continue their hatred and keep coming back as they grow and constantly be bringing us war.
if ti makes a difference, i'm not condoning the wholesale slaughter of women and children by the army sweeping and gunning them down, i am, however an advocate of dropping a nuke.
He is more like Luke Skywalker, the reluctant hero who sets everything straight. ;-)
if ti makes a difference, i'm not condoning the wholesale slaughter of women and children by the army sweeping and gunning them down, i am, however an advocate of dropping a nuke.
Yes, nuclear weapons make things so much less personal don't they. I suppose then that your advocacy would collapse if we did not have such weapons.
if the city surrenders as in verse 11 then we accept surrender and try to teach them what is right. but we both know that the islamic nation won't, for they think that their god has sent them to kill all of us.
nuclear weaponry makes this kind of genocide much easier on our (collective) conscience, but without this technology there would have to be a much tighter discipline of soldiers to commit themselves with this kind of resolve. i do not know if this kind of warfare would even be possible in this society.
i wish i had been able to ask german soldiers 60 years ago -or any soldier that has be ordered to commit genocide- how they were able to send people into their deaths. does it come to those soldiers merely following orders, were they fanatics that truly believed that this was right, or were they of the (atrocious-imo) mind set that enjoyed the killing?
i believe that we've given them plenty of chances. we have take war to their homes and they have run. we have followed them and they have run again. all the time committing more atrocities in the name of their God. perhaps its not been an organized fight, but it has all been done with the same justification. imo our wars have become too humane. if you punish a child with a rod they will learn, if you punish with a feather they will forget the punishment and continue to do wrong.
Are you kidding? Seriously, you don't think genocidal warfare is possible in this day and age? How can you even say that and then mention the Nazis in the next sentence, are you that much of a moral relativist?
imo our wars have become too humane.
Warfare has become too clean and easy, nothing to do with humane. The guillotine is a relatively clean and easy way to kill someone, and many viewed it as a human way to kill serous defaulters. But, can it be argued that the Terror of the French Revolution was, in any way shape or form, humane? Other than the technical developments of warfare the only major difference between the ways modern secular states fight war, and the way Christian counties used to, is that ever since the introduction of conscription by democracies, warfare has become an affair of society in toto. The stander surrender condition offered is the ridiculous unconditional type. Modern warfare is the most clean from a technical point of view, and the most barbaric from a philosophical one, as it is tribal in nature.
By your logic attacking the civilization of the enemy through the killing of none combatants means that the terrorist are theoretically justified in their actions. After all, a terrorist is just a thoroughly democratized fighter.
I say let the Jews and Pagans fight they way they will, but Christians are called to a greater honor. The ideal (though lamentably not always the practice) of the Christian warrior is succor to none combatants, and gentlemanly respect to his enemies.
"... The stander standard surrender condition offered is the ridiculous unconditional type..."
"...Christian warrior is succor to none non combatants..."
There are others I for sure. I apologize.
when i said i didn't know if we could do it, i meant "could our soldiers do it up close and personal?" as you said, its easy to say "drop a nuke".
the reason i brought up the nazis, is because they knowingly commited genocide, and they would have stood there and watched. i am curious to know how *anyone* can do that. my point on that was wondering if there was a specific type of soldier (ultimate fanatic, extreme predjudice, some sort of mentally twisted type, or just an order follower) unless it was the last type, its easy to see how they justified it to themselves, its the last one that i would like to hear from, the ordinary guy.
and when i say humane, its the idea that the bomber goes thru drops a bomb, blows some stuff up, then his buddy comes behind in a bomber dropping food and medicine, that a significant amount ends up in the aggressors hands anyway.
The answer to your question is simple. They were human, and as such capable of committing evil, and compounding it with a perversion of the intellect which allowed them to rationalize it.
It is easy to say "drop a nuke" and that is what makes it all the more terrible. If you think genocide is an appropriate response to Muslim terrorism I say you should be the one who has to do it. Further, if you want it done, you should be forced to do it with as much honesty as possible. I don't care if you would prefer to simply nuke them, if you are unwilling to put a bullet in each and every Muslim child's head yourself, then you're not only obscene but a hypocrite on top. If you support such a policy you're no better then the terrorists, indeed you'd be quite a bit worse.
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