Easy. We have folks doing their best to come here. Very few people want to move to the terrorist countries. People vote with their feet. Typically, this columnist focuses on the scattered warts of America instead of the virtues.
These are specious arguments not worth responding to.
I think it goes like this. A matter of definitions. If you carry explosives on bombers or missiles that is not terrorism. If they use cars or people to carry explosives, that's terrorism. Also our dead are 'innocent civilians' enemy dead is 'collateral damage'. I hope that clears it up.
Forget the 'we good - them bad' word games, get bin Laden, then over and out for good. George Washington was right.
Can anyone make the case that the conflicts we saw in places like Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia had anything to do with protecting the freedom of American citizens?
Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No. No. No.
While it is un-American (unpatriotic is redundant), the question is also stupid.
It wasn't the fact that the media gave us pictures of an airliner hitting a building that has us upset, it was the act itself! For the truly obtuse this is a difficult concept; for the rest of us it isn't very hard at all. This isn't a matter of perception, it's one of fact.
(d) the term "terrorism" means an activity that
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended
(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
There is nothing you or I can do to improve the Muslim world. Nothing. Just accept it and get over it. Part of being a Muslim is to choose your battles wisely. Even the Prophet left Mecca when he saw no more change could come. In the open and cosmopolitan society of Medina, the focus of the Muslims was in building a solid community which could live in relative safety. The Medinan situation is where the ideal of the community took form and flowered. We are now in the Meccan times today in the Muslim world and Islam, like so many Muslims, has made Hijrah to safer lands where it can work on regaining its strength.
Ok, I'll answer your question. What separates us from them? Easy. They are trying to kill my children, my neighbors (Americans) are trying to defend them.
Oh, not academic enough for you? You wanted some discussion about the meaning of words? Sorry. You wanted to keep this in the arena of word meanings, talking about the root "terror" in the words we use. Labels, like terrorism, are not perfect. Gee, how very intelligent of you to point that out. So lets move away from labels.
There is a group of people who want my kids dead and my neighbors kids dead. They want your kids dead too, if you have any.
So the label-less question to you is: are you with us in defending our kids or are you with those who want our kids dead. No labels, no root words, just the crux of the issue.
Are you with us or against us?
God Bless the USA.
I can't believe I'm still responding to this. Do people really don't have a brain or they just don't want to use it? Does the US ever conspire, pre-meditate, target to maximze murderings of innocent civilians simply for the sake of wanting to murder them?
People who can't see 9/11 for what it was are either without a brain or without a heart.
Yes, except you bore me Mr Shelton, so I won't bother.
For instance, this classic: Should we applaud the deliberate killing of over 200,000 Japanese civilians by our atomic bombs because it ended World War II
fallacy one - he asks the question, does not answer it, but finds us guilty anyway. fallacy two - it is counterfactual - we don't applaud this. Every sentient being regards this as the most terrible decision anyone ever had to make, and is just happy he was not in Harry Truman's shoes. We are also thankful that we had a President who called it straight and true - which politicians are generally not wont to do.
a few weeks ahead of schedule? fallacy - special pleading and speculation. -A few weeks, a few months, a few years? A few lives, a few 100,000 lives - who are we to say. WHO IS HE TO SAY. Also, maybe some folks wanted to get a war over with so 2 Billion people around the world could go about their business in peace. Fallacy two - irrelevancy - what happened in another time and another place done by other people is another case. These are not facts pertinent to this case - his case - whatever it is and we don't know.
Foreign civilians, unborn children, national integrity fallacy one (fallacy of composition)- these things are not of a kind. Fallacy two (inverted logic) - Being guilty of one is not being guilty of all.
— evidently these are the sacrifices with which we are willing to live fallacy one - it is not evident at all. Fallacy two - His assumption. I'm not willing to sacrifice national integrity, or unborn children (but that is irrelevant to his argument) or innocent foreign civilians (to the extent that they are not responsible for the actions of the government of their country).
Such a thing is to be expected when a society adopts an "end justifies the means" philosophy. Fallacy one - he asserts one thing and then concludes another. He has not demonstrated that we have adopted an "ends justifies the means" philosophy. What ends have we argued justify what means? For that matter what ends has he argued justify what means? Fallacy two - were he to demonstrate this, it would not support his argument. In moral philosophy, at some level, the ends are used to justify the means. The end - the good of society - does justify the means - our moral code. The problem is when one clearly desireable end requires that we override our moral code and thereby threaten some other greater social good. He has not argued that we are doing so, however.
In doing so, we have only succeeded in demonstrating that we are just as capable as any terrorist nation of committing acts of senseless violence with little or no regard for the sanctity of human life. This is his conclusion - but he has not demonstrated it. It contains the fallacious assumption that our acts of violence are senseless, though we have very well defined logic supporting them. If we had no regard for human life we would have flattened Kabul and Kandahar as the quickest means to the immediate end. After all, there is a long chain of moral monsters who have done just that sort of thing, from Alexander to Scipio to Caesar to Ghengis Khan to Hitler and Stalin to terrorists. Are we the moral equivalent of this crowd. Perhaps we are, but he certainly has not demonstrated it in this article.
I guess my first mistake was expecting more from my government than I would expect from the government of countries like Afghanistan. My second mistake was believing that it was still legal to criticize the government, something you collectivists have no problem with when there's a Democrat in the White House. Didn't some of you speak out against Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia? Weren't we "at war" then? What about the other undeclared wars I mentioned in the article? Is the U.S. morally right in every single conflict no matter who or what we destroy?
I thought I was quite clear that although there may be such a thing as a just war, we cannot adopt an "end justifies the means" mentality where anything goes. Would you all have been just as quick to endorse the killing of civilians in WWII if instead of bombing Dresden American soldiers walked around slitting the throats of women and children as they slept? Apparently, since "there are no innocent civilians in war," you would have been happy with that. I wonder why you don't ascribe that same philosophy to the terrorists? They, like you, believe there are no innocent civilians in war, and a war is exactly what they believe they are fighting.
I can only feel sorrow and regret that people believe the government can only be criticized during peacetime. I suppose if I point out the dangers of the new and permanent powers the government is claiming for itself I'm a bad American for that as well.
You must realize that a government that cannot be trusted in peacetime does not suddenly change when there is a war. You need to question. You need to stay vigilant. You must never let down your guard.
I challenge anyone to point out where I said that we shouldn't bring the terrorists to justice. The article merely posed a question, one that addresses our national morality. It was also a question that everyone avoided. You would obviously disagree with me, but I believe it's important for us to examine ourselves as a nation. Once this war is over, is it back to business as usual? Are the deaths of 1.5 million children each year less important now that we are engaged in a war? Would God want us to forget that? Has He forgotten? Just because we have a feeling of moral superiority now doesn't mean we won't have to answer for our sins in the future. If you think that what happened on September 11 somehow wiped the slate clean you are sadly mistaken.
Before you continue on your holy crusade of wiping out every last "diaperhead," pick up your Bibles, dust them off, and read Luke 12, paying close attention to verses 35 through 48.