Posted on 05/29/2006 4:46:05 PM PDT by Coop
...
In the meantime, my column had been posted on a well-known right-wing American website, where it attracted 119 comments. Oddly, none of them displayed any hint of disquiet over the behaviour of the Marines under investigation. Rather, their outrage was reserved for John Murtha and yours truly.
One poster's reaction was to "nuke the Middle East" adding "thank you very much Dishonourable Rep. Jack Murtha". He was later to write "if you can't stand behind our troops, stand in front of them".
A few of his co-posters rushed to the website of Murtha's Republican challenger Diana Irey to donate campaign funds.
The fact that this murdering troop has the support of even those 119 posters is worrisome. Surely, nobody should defend the indefensible based on some false notion of patriotism.
Military personnel should act as ambassadors for their country and behave according to international rules of law and the Geneva Conventions that were drawn up as a result of atrocities committed during the Second World War. There should be a difference between real soldiers and ruthless thugs with public opinion the final arbiter.
If the public, as represented by the 119 posters on the Free Republic website, condones such behaviour or seeks to excuse it, then not only is its members giving their country's soldiers a license to kill arbitrarily, they are altering the fundamental psyche of their nation.
To quote a well-known rationalist intellectual Felix Adler "Love of country is like love of women - he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good."
The "Freepers" - as members of the Free Republic website have come to be known - may also like to contemplate the words of theologian Howard Thurman who said "During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."
In short, people who glorify soldiers who purposefully assassinate women and small children are as misguided as those who glorify the blowing up of crowded buses, trains and marketplaces.
Does the donning of a uniform render its wearer impervious to justice? The Nuremberg trials indicate not...
"Danger is part of the friction of war. Without an accurate conception of danger we cannot understand war." - Karl von Clauswitz, On War, 1832.
Ms. Herd is incapable of understanding war.
I like your note to Ms. Heard. Short, sweet, and to the point...
Thanks. :-) Amazingly, Ms. Heard has not responded to my message (here and via direct E-mail to her), and she is apparently passing on the opportunity to interview a war-mongering cretin like me.
I think those people know, deep down, how very wrong they are. But they've become such greedy, headline hams, that nothing is beneath them...
An excellent idea.
Thank you for the links, very interesting.
My pleasure.
I hope one of mine was offensive to Ms. Heard, too.
I hope it was one of those posts where I refer to the media as a bunch of Marxist, cappuccino-drinking, loafer-wearing, lying, distorting, leftist-agenda-driven weinies who hang out in the bar of the Palestine Hotel making stuff up or getting their misinformation from that bitter, pusilanimous pismire Jack Murtha.
I hope it was one of those posts.
You used too many big words!! :-D
No rush to judgement here (since the investigation is still ongoing). If these troops actually killed all these innocents in cold blood, well, I'm sure they'll get what they deserve.
I suppose that means we should have a formal tea with the insurgents before killing them?
You have hit the nail on the head here, concrete is my business.
Ms. Heard - I missed Coop's original post (things move fast around here) so please add my name to those 119 who support our troops, through thick or thin, for better or for worse.
Oh, and just for the record, Jack Murtha is a disgrace. So are you.
Cheers - Dinah
Bingo!!!! Unarmed military support personel!
Of course in the slammy slimey book of war aka the queeranus, anyone not of the same dialect of satan whoreship as yourself is a legit target for assasination!
It's also highly irresponsible the way the AP and other leftist media are assuming so much credibility in allegations of US misconduct by people in the Sunni provinces of western Iraq. The Sunnis and former Baathists are the heart of the Iraqi insurgency. The Sunnis were the dominant minority under Saddam and they don't want to give up minority rule to the majority rule of a new democracy. That's why they're fighting this insurgency. So of course people in the Sunni provinces have a (barely) hidden agenda to do anything they can to push the US military out of Iraq so that the Sunnis can try to take power again and reinstall minority rule. That includes making false allegations in an attempt to undermine support for the Iraq war in the US. Therefore nothing that people say about the US military in the Sunni provinces can be assumed to be true. Instead, the media should assume that allegations against the US military made in the Sunni provinces are false until such allegations are proven true.
Once again, the AP is proving itself to be the de facto propaganda agency for the DNC and leftists throughout the western world. Very rarely does the AP report on the mass murder of civilians by Saddam's government or the ways in which life has improved in Iraq since Saddam was removed from power. Very rarely does the AP report on the bravery and heroism of US troops in Iraq. The lack of balance and fairness in AP reporting on Iraq is disgraceful.
Nobody should assume the guilt of troops based upon the reports from those organizations who oppose the U.S. in general either.
Nobody he said that or believes that.
Heard is just one of those America haters that can't wait to call our troops babykillers. She's probably getting wet just thiking about it.
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