[lit-ideas] Re: When a civilized society fights a barbarous one
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:58:54 -0400
To be sure, the US constitution does set a very high standard. But it's only honoured in the attempt to live up to those standards. And I don't see any such attempt today. What I see , rather, is something along the lines of "We're both doing barbaric things but we're not barbarians because we know better." Barbarian is as barbarian does. The rest is rationalization.
I'm surprised that you see no national attempts to live up
to the Constitution. Granted you have an unhappy
relationship with the US, having been forced to flee during
the Vietnam years, but surely your dislike of Bush doesn't
extend that far.
If you are just talking only about war-fighting, and calling
the US barbarian, surely you realize that if we were truly
barbarian, by say Mongol Invasion standards, the wars would
be over. The Iraqis and all the Afghan resistance would be
dead, and any survivors would be serving as our slaves.
Even if we weren't barbarian by Mongol Invasion standards,
but just less scrupulous than we already are, a lot would be
different. Remember Mullah Omar? He was in sights of an
AC-130 gunship and the gunners were waiting for the
go-signal to take him out. This ambition was hampered by a
JAG, who questioned whether the act would amount to firing
on a civilian. And so Mullah Omar escaped.
If you want to see worse than the USA, you don't have far to
look.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,423551,00.html
China's Brutal Crackdown on Dissidents
By Andreas Lorenz in Beijing
China's Communist Party officials are employing brutal
methods in dealing with difficult citizens. The most recent
victim of what appears to be government-sanctioned brutality
was a farmer who suffered a broken cervical vertebra when he
was attacked by thugs.
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