SCN: WEB: National Day of Mourning for the pitcher

[David Barts]

er-chan <er-chan at scn.org> writes:

> [...]
> Now for the homerun?  Why have you and Rod CLark not addressed
> the issues ?

A few sentences later you mention that we're at war.  In war, the first
commandment is "know thy enemy".  I seem to recall Rod and JJ both
mentioning investigating what might be the motivations for individuals
to engage in the kinds of terrorist actions we've seen this week.
Often that means asking questions that are not pleasant to ask, and
which have even less pleasant answers.

War is not pleasant.  Those who feel uncomfortable even with the first
basic step of "know thy enemy" should seriously reconsider if war is
what they want in the first place; the subsequent steps are far, far
less pleasant.

>               Today is National Day of Mourning.

True.

>                                                   Got anything
> on the website that mentions that these innocent people died and
> you are sorry about it?

Have you put up anything yourself?

>                         Get with it, in a war there are sides.

True enough, but a pretty obvious point that we're probably all aware
of anyhow.

> Which side are you on?

I think a more germane question might be "do you really know what war
entails, how likely it the post-war situation is to bring about a
lasting period of peace and security, and if the likely benefit of that
peace and security is worth the likely cost of the means you advocate
for achieving it?"

And I'm not talking about a vague "war on terrorism"; I'm not even sure
if "war" is the right term to use in that phrase.  War typically is
something pursued against an identified and declared enemy nation;
there doesn't appear to be any such clear-cut nation this time.  The
response to Pearl Harbor was much easier to determine: we knew whose
planes attacked, and they were unambiguously the direct agents of
another nation.  "Japan" and "the Axis" were easy, sharply-defined
categories.  "Terrorism" is a much vaguer and murkier thing; empowering
the government to pursue what are commonly regarded as war measures
against it amounts to pretty much a blank check to do anything it wants
that it defines as "terrorism."

>                         If you're not with us you're against us.

There's more than two sides to every issue.

-- 
         David W. Barts (davidb at scn.org) / http://www.scn.org/~davidb
      "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and
     demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of
                     justice and mercy." -- Wendell Berry
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