Re: U.S. Military Becomes Peace Corp

A response to the last post ("U.S. Military Becomes Peace Corp") from a friend:

I agree with what you said. A couple of additional points. (If I repeat something you said, please excuse.)

1) There are no innocent civilians in a theocratic terror state run by a religious fanatic who has vowed to destroy the Western world (and then the rest of it, if he gets his way).

There are only civilians who are propping up that state. If there were people who were innocent, they GOT OUT and came here.

2) A key issue in Vietnam was that we fought the war with one (or both) hands tied behind our back. Whether we should have attacked Russia and China I leave for further debate, but we definitely should have, not just bombed, but eradicated North Vietnam, including flooding the whole country by blowing the ?dikes or whatever they used for flood contro, and flattening their cities down to the last scrap.

It would have finished the Viet Cong quickly. They didn't win the war. We lost it because of the moral cowardice of our political leadership, both Democratic and Republican.
Doug

And my response to him:

Doug,
I agree. Even when we bombed Hanoi, the point was to spare the dikes and only hit enemy gun emplacements that were ALWAYS put on the dikes. This was half the point of the new introduction of "smart" bombs. Not just to hit the guns with precision weapons, but keep from flooding the countryside killing the "innocent" civilians who were feeding and supplying the NV soldiers.

One thing that has occurred to me more than once is that altruism is not the only source of the problem. It also ties into the abortion debate (really). Over time, there's been this proliferation of the notion that the ending of life is ALWAYS bad -- even when the life that is ended is evil, supporting evil, promoting evil, passively allowing evil to exist.

For example, when Zarqawi was killed, I was SO tired of hearing people who were reluctant to say "I'm glad we killed him", or the even more idiotic, "It's unfortunate it had to end this way, but...", etc. Give me a break. This was from many commentators, newscasters (surely the stupidest creatures on the planet), and others. "Life is always sacred" is the notion they subscribe to. "WHY?" I kept wanting to scream at them. Bush himself, though absolutely elated at Zarqawi's death, could never bring himself to say "I'M GLAD HE'S DEAD!!!" The Christians, for one, are keenly attuned to the implications of saying that in some cases the ending of a human life is good.

But back to wars. If "taking a human life" is always bad, why should we think policy will stop with preserving enemy civilians? I would not be surprised if it eventually became policy to take all efforts to "unnecessarily" take the life of enemy soldiers.

Well, wait. Reality is already there. Remember the enemy soldier who was killed in a mosque during the attack on Fallujah? A marine was charged for putting a bullet in his head while the wounded man feigned death. Big debate over whether it was legimiate. Marine's life hanging in the balance.

Or the case of the soldiers who killed a mortally wounded enemy soldier to ease his suffering. I think 4 soldiers were charged, some convicted of lesser charges. Etc.

It's just insane. It's not just sacrifice (at least, as the only reason). It's this notion that you must always preserve "life" under Marquis of Queensbury rules. Created by ivory tower types with no connection to the real world.