For all the talk about honor, courage, duty, and so on, it seems to me that some basic human decency is missing from this discussion.
LiberalRakkasan and Mike Stark, both of whom served in Iraq, have come forward with their stories, and I respect them for their honesty...
But I ask myself, if we are about Honor, Duty, and Courage, then where is the evidence that we, collectively or individually, have shown or demonstrated anything of the sort?
From my perspective, as a Socialist, as a Parent, and as a human being with, in my opinion, plenty of honor, a strong sense of duty, and enough courage images like these:
and the rest of the horrific pictures of what we have wrought put the lie to the whole "honor, duty, courage" bullshit.
It is not courageous to hide in your armored vehicle and hose down apartment blocks with .50 caliber machine gun fire in response to sniper attacks.
It is not courageous to blast entire neighborhoods with 500 lbs bombs in response to mortar fire.
It is not honorable to hide behind flimsy justifications and lame rhetoric in order to justify the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.
It is not honorable to claim "they do it too" as an excuse.
It is your DUTY to die before committing such acts, for these basic reasons:
- Committing such acts is dishonorably and cowardly - death before dishonor - whatever happened to that?
- Committing such acts LOSES THE WAR. The purpose of killing the enemy is to WIN THE WAR, and if in the process of killing ONE enemy, TEN NEW enemies (or, to be more accurate, hundreds or thousands, if not more) are instantly created, you will LOSE the war.
Better to die than to kill a child. Better to be maimed than to indiscriminately massacre women, the elderly and infirm.
What would you do if those children were your children?
I know what I would do if someone, anyone, no matter what their rataionalization or justification, did that to my daughter.
I would do anything in my power, move heaven and earth, to find them and kill them. I would probably want to torture them before they died, and would want to record it and show it to the people who sent the killers...