Posted on 09/28/2002 7:43:05 PM PDT by Askel5
I have always advocated linking such photos.
Additionally, where I've come across something gruesome -- such as a beheading I found posted while searching Google for FR articles one day -- I've alerted Jim in the past.
The question remains why IwoJima' "this guy" can be used like some cartoon character to flesh our her snide retort.
Could it be that that "soon to be dead body" represents a Husband and father that just by going to work is now just a name on a headstone? You can only see horror when it is a baby ripped from the womb and until that is stopped then all other expressions of horror are illegitimate. You are so unyielding in your sanctimony that you actually work in favor of the very forces you fight.
Askel, I wasn't using the man in the photo as though he were a cartoon character. I know he's real. What I was responding to was the suggestion you and another poster made that his death was somehow justified because abortion is legal in this country. And you know that.
If the AM wants to pull it, I'm fine with that. But don't suggest that it makes anything other than perfect sense, given the course of the conversation. It relates to something you yourself brought up.
Evidently, folks have gotten so used to seeing all the flying and burning dead bodies of a year ago on this forum, the images have lost their shock value and your "husband and father" can now be used as an illustration for cheap flamebait.
Your and Iwo's respect for life -- particularly "this guy's" is duly noted.
To be honest every post you make is flamebait, that is when intelligible. If you think your approach is an asset to the pro-life movement you are sadly mistaken.
I realize I'm supposed to draw some distinction between those whose loved ones Grieve for them and those whose would-be loved ones Killed them but I cannot.
I find each death a horrific and terrible crime. I suspect the Author of Life does too.
My sister can tell you that each funeral she's attended this past year was absolutely unique in all respects. It's their uniqueness, that the unborn are EXACTLY the same as the born who died on 9/11.
He who knows the numbers of hairs on our heads likely knows precisely what Potential, what children, what joys, what inventions, what love was lost in every human life killed in the womb.
We have become so desensitized to all that, it appears we can only appreciate the loss of innocent life once it looks and acts and is "more like us". That's always the way, though, isn't it? Else how could we be so cavalier about "collateral damage" or speak of "misting Muslims" simply because the patently secularized Arab radicals who perpetrated 9/11 claimed to be on some Holy War mission.
It did truly stun and anger me to see you use the image of some dead man as a punctuation mark on your stinkin flame.
This is precisely one of the reasons I always have argued that images of the dead unborn were not to be posted lightly. It appears an overdose of the images of the dead from 9/11 has ended up a lesson for all in how easily folks are desensitized and can even use such images for cheap Effect.
It will mean more to me that way.
Let's see 20,000,000 vs. 3,000. That is a tough one. Come to think of it, you're right, it shouldn't be a zero sum issue. There should be more outrage over the deaths of our nation's 20,000,000 most innocent who have been slaughtered in the womb.
Again, obviously you can't stand the fact that some cultures put value on self-sacrifice and bravery than other cutltures do. I have battled your form of racism for many, many years. To you, it is an embarassment that it the most decorated American fighting unit in the entire war was a JAPANESE unit, the 442 CRT.
Hah! First you imprison them and their famlies, take away all their private possessions (talk about blatant racism run rampant in the supposedly "democratic" United States) and than they have to show your all-white units how to fight! I won't mention the cover-up the white US Army spent over the next 50 years trying to hide the truth about the brave men of the 442nd. Some groups are heidonistic and others aren't: deal with it.
Well, we're even then, Askel. Because a lot of the things you say stun and anger me, too. Like stating that the Taliban was actually demonized - that in reality, they did good things - all the while slapping President Bush in the face, ridiculing him and judging his heart and motivation at your every opportunity.
Now you suggest that we "pray down destruction" on ourselves because we're just as guilty as Osama bin Laden. I respond with five little words and a photograph, apparently provoking your outrage.
At least I'm efficient.
[Raised eyebrows.] Well. It didn't take long for you to fling that word my way.
You assume a lot. Believe me when I tell you I am not a racist. (And before you even try to go there, neither was my father, FYI.) I'm just a little surprised to see someone in this forum celebrating the fiery death of American sailors.
Every time you post, you keep upping the ante. I'm going to give you a chance to stop hyperventilating - but believe this, also: I know something about Japanese military culture during the Pacific War, and I am fully prepared to discuss the "bravery and self-sacrifice" you hold so superior to that of Americans with you or anyone else who comes along. Trust me on that.
The point Dr. Keyes was making is that when you pray to God to bring down destruction on ANY AND ALL who would evidence the same lack of disregard for innocent human life as was brought home to us on September 11, 2001, you should be careful.
Unlike you, God may be CONSISTENT in his righteous anger over the wanton destruction of human life and hold EVERYONE accountable who -- like President Bush did a mere fortnight before 9/11 -- speak of human beings as "Excess" or highlight the Utilitarian Uses of "already been killed" innocent human lives.
We are not EVEN in the least, you smooth-brained banshee.
You, on the one hand, lap up and fling about propaganda with all the abandon of CNN and the New York Times' who have no problems dragging our Rangers through the dirt in prime time. You also engage in the cult of personality and the rabid nationalism necessary to use Clean Hands Death on innocent and guilty alike whenever some "regime" or "dictator" or "Hopeful Research" requires it.
I, on the other hand, place a consistent and respectful value on human life. As far as Self-Evident truths go, the right to life is Supreme for me. The rest come only when that right is secure for all.
This causes me to view each human life with dignity ... even President Bush's "excess" ones ... regardless of what stage of development or perfection that human life has achieved and whether or not his conception was Wanted, Planned, an Accident or the result of some diabolical intent to manufacture perfectly unique or inhumanly cloned human lives for use in Human Destructive Research.
I cannot sort between them like you.
This also causes me to have some objectivity where strangers are concerned. It is not for me to judge foreigners -- however decidedly different they may be -- as Subhumans simply for their religion, their poverty or the desperate circumstances under which they live wherein a cruel and certainly sometimes brutal regime like the Taliban is the "lesser of two evils".
I figure the Afghanistan people should have the option of choosing -- as do Americans in every election -- the "lesser of two evils" and I have no problems whatsoever pinpointing what telltale signs exist that may have led those people to that conclusion where the Taliban were concerned ... including their crackdown on homosexuality and their efforts to stop the production of opium by the old Evil Empire's friend the Northern Alliance which drug production our efforts have unfortunately ended up enabling once again.
Additionally, as one who has studied the conditioning tactics of both the revolution and the Interlock and whose thinking is not a product of propaganda (even if it's the sort of government lying we cheered upon the announcement of the Defense Departments Ministry of Truth in the wake of 9/11), I cannot help but take note of the propaganda on the Taliban which started on the left among Feminazi shrews well before it started on the right ... which right included our own decided support in the past for the Taliban as well as our training and funding of Osama and others.
It was in 1995 that I became curious as to why the concentration on the Taliban was so pervasive among radical leftist feminists ... bellwether babes that they are.
If I didn't think I'd be nuked on the spot, I'd be happy to post a thread detailing for you our own nation's flip-flop on the Taliban and -- in addition to citing the few instances of rationality evident in the regime -- treat you to our own pro-Taliban propaganda which, when it served our purposes, made them out to be far better folks than I would EVER do. Clearly, the truth lies somewhere in between our glorifying them and our demonizing them. I fail to see what's so hard to understand about that.
Perhaps if you and the other simpletons who have the leeway to hijack threads and throw around inflammatory and baseless accusations on a regular basis would get together and start a Salem Trial sort of thread on which to grill me, I would be within my rights to defend myself therein.
Give it some thought.
But be prepared, will you, to address the reason the subject came up at all: my belief that regardless how horrific the regime may be, the wickedness of the Taliban is not our affair and in no way should be used as a compelling foundation or belated excuse for our aggression.
France came to our aid in rebellion only after we had declared our independence and stated quite clearly the moral grounds on which we claimed the authority to declare our independence and the right to engage in bloodshed. We had no business excusing for a moment our actions as 'liberating' the Afghanistans who had neither declared their independence our sought our aid with an appeal to the Principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence.
By rights and all principles of human justice, all human war and bloodshed should meet these conditions.
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In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because – at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of … we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven. And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result … I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war. And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose. And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty. And so those words in the Declaration of Independence – "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone. |
I am particularly uneasy about the chest-beating over our eradicating the Taliban and "Democratizing" Afghanistan because
and
I certainly hope that's not the case. I certainly hope that we'll not be foregoing the principles of our own national birth or our Christian heritage ...
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2309. The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. |
For if we forego both our heritage as Americans and our morality as a Christian nation, I do not believe things will go well for us in the future.
I do not believe in an angry God who metes out punishment or uses evil to achieve a good, but I do believe it's true He would withdraw his special protections from us were we to abandon his Law as written in the consciences of every man.
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I remember I was at the UN years ago, representing the United States for Ronald Reagan. And one day, one weekend, I was out with my son. And, as usual, it was in the midst of one of those times we were always at war in the United Nations with some element or other of the Soviet bloc—this one or that one—at the time. And we were out and we walking along that plaza where they have all those different flags of the different countries and I was explaining to him what this one and that one was and we finally got to what was, at that point, the flag of the old Soviet Union. And he points up to it – he's very young—and he says, "Well whose flag is that?" And I said, "Well, that represents the bad guys," I said. And, obviously, I still believe that I was quite right about that. And then, we got to the American flag, which was quite close [and he asked] "if that's the bad guys, what does that one represent?" I said, "Well, that one represents the good guys – that's us." But, you know something my friends, if we keep going the way we're going, persisting in the path that we have persisted in … then we, the very country that more than once in this century has saved the world from the shadow of the worst evils will no longer be there in the 21st Century to save the world from the shadow of evil. And worse than that … we won't save the world from that shadow because we will be casting it. I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it. For we've had an administration that has aided and abetted and promoted and coerced the culture of death in every continent and toward every nation on the fact of the Earth already. Using our capital and our money and our clout they have forced other nations to take the same ungodly stance toward innocent life in the womb that they take now. So my friends, don't think that this is just some future that we are talking about. We are already far down the road toward the destruction of our republic, our conscience, our decency. The question isn't whether we will choose that road but whether we will turn back now before we pass the point of no return. |
Given President Bush's use of "Excess" human life on August 9, 2001, using Scripture as part of his address to the nation announcing the FACT that all men were no longer created equal but that some were fit only for the garbage, I will admit I believe our nation has passed that point of no return.
Ever hopeful, however.
Well, certainly not in volume.
| Kobyashi1942 said: "...talk about blatant racism run rampant in the supposedly "democratic" United States) and than they have to show your all-white units how to fight! I won't mention the cover-up the white US Army spent over the next 50 years trying to hide the truth about the brave men of the 442nd.". |
Are YOU really calling someone ELSE a racist? You have GOT to be kiddding! You need to check a mirror, bucko!
Yes, your post remains intact to that effect.
But the "white" business tells me a lot.
I'm an American. My race does not come into play when I'm discussing these things. It doesn't come into play for me at all. But if we're going to talk about Japanese military culture in 1942, I'm ready to go.
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