Letters to the Editor
-
we need more elite snipers
I'm glad we have some, brave young men doing their duty.
Funny how you liberals are just panting for atrocities. There are plenty in Darfur and the Congo and Somalia and Tibet.
-
And all this for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
Chaumont, you're quite right of course that in wartime men who would be perfectly decent and law-abiding people in civilian life do unspeakable things, partly out of fear, partly for "payback," partly from a sense of entitlement (the rapes of French women that you describe, for example; I imagine the thinking went, "we liberated them, they should be grateful, they owe us.") But in World War II, at least there was a legitimate casus belli. If we weigh the cost-benefit ratio of American involvement in the war, with all of the deaths, war crimes and moral degradation that it involved for our men, it was still worth it to help defeat Hitler. In Iraq, there is no legitimate casus belli, it's a war of unprovoked aggression, and the men who set the horror in motion should answer for it at the Hague.
-
@Fender
The atrocities in Darfur and the Congo and Somalia and Tibet are deplorable. They are not, however, being committed in my name, with my money, but my countrymen.
-
Was Wright right?
This column supports the book written by Dahr Jamail, "Beyond the Green Zone," in which he describes the atrocities committed by the U.S. and the terror the Iraqis are exposed to on a daily basis. Women and children and older people are their principle targets according to this non-embedded war correspondent.
Americans are becoming terrorists. Will this behaviour be implemented in the states when these hired killers return home?
The enlisted men are captives of their government and must do the Pentagon's bidding. This is what happened in Fallujah.
Read it. Jamail is a legitimate non-embedded war correspondent whose home is in Alaska.
Americans are not Americans anymore. We have been converted into a barbaric nation who take killing very lightly indeed.
Thanks, George Bush.
We will never win because we have already lost.
-
This story raise some serious concerns, but...
...what about the regular, planned, daily savagery involved in the insurgents' planting of roadside bombs and supply of suicide bombs for places like pet markets, banks and police stations?
Couldn't Salon spare just one writer the time to do a body count on the thousands of Iraqi civillians killed by jihadis?
-
re. thesaurus
WTF? Check your dictionary; logic and tautology are NOT the same thing. And nebulous has a different connotation from vague. Do you actually care about what the piece says, or are you just interested in nitpicking other people's completely valid word choices? If you don't like big words, there are plenty of other online mags that might please you more.
-
@ sequoiap
I'm really not trying to be mean, but have you been living in a cave or something. Nebulous and ostentatious are quite commonly used words. Tautology is not, but you didn't get the meaning correct. It does mean logic. It is an element of logic. A tautology is a compound propositional form in which all instances are true - as in 'Obama will win or Obama won't win'. For the moment, both are true. It can also be used as a rhetorical device - endless repetition of a single idea to skew a discussion.
With regard to 'hors de combat', that expression is a diplomatic expression that has been used by most countries for hundreds of years. It is the phrase used in the Geneva Convention. It is precisely the correct phrase.
-
Typo alert
Tautology does NOT mean logic.
-
What's better?
What's better? A low body count, or a seat in front of a War Crimes Tribunal?
The very phrase "body count" tells me we're fighting the wrong war. Again.
-
Re: Fender
Dear Fender:
Obviously, you can't envision the horror that both our troops and the Iraqi civilian population experience daily as a result of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of our leadership.
And we're not talking about Darfur, Tibet, Somalia, etc. here ... we're talking about what you probably see as the most "moral" nation in the world.
Vietnam ended a little more than thirty years ago, and we're making the same mistakes we made there, only this time, those mistakes are going to haunt us a lot longer. The people of the Middle East are not like the Vietnamese. Take that from one who has experienced both places.
Hope you are around to see the judgment of history on this.
-
They had other choices.
Anyone who has been in in the shit and kept their head and yes, heart about them without succumbing to "war time rationale and justifications" to perpetrate cold-blooded, inhumane, gutless and heartless killings will agree with me when I say these soldiers--all of them--blew the call.
What they did--even by war-time, insurgent intensive, flexible, fuzzy, relaxed and "off-the-grid" rules of engagement was murder pure and simple. The commander on the ground coldly, calculatingly, and with premeditation killed plain and simple. They had options,many of them, all of which wouldn't have pumped up their kills but solved the problem in a more humane, responsible, courageous manner.
It's one thing to be surprised, have to make a split second decision and it's you and your buddies in the shit and your lives may be--or not--on the line but you have to make the call in an instant and you don't want to be wrong on that one. War sucks. It sucks in unimaginable ways when you are in it. You make decisions in the heat of the battle and you can't second guess.
But when an enemy,--even a confirmed enemy-- is lying on the ground in front of you, he is compliant and, he would likely surrender if given the options and you just met his son, saw his son, and you know in your head and heart that this is a surreal situation that has real consequences, then God Damn It, you don't shoot the man in cold blood. You don't.
You keep your shit together and you remember that you are human being, in a soldier's uniform and you do the right God Damn Thing and that does not include putting a bullet in his head.
How are we even debating this? Have we lost our minds, our souls.
I hate to read this shit. and yes, their are two sides and we weren't there. but the facts as related in the article make me ashamed in so many ways.
And the soldier who gave the command is now training special forces for his leadership out in the field. That's great. That's just great.
Why Army leadership loses their balls and their minds and their common sense at the expense of human lives as they move up the chain-of-command is left for others to debate They don't do the right thing in war-time. They give up their soldiers for dead with so many dumb, suck-up, decisions they make in a vacuum and when they do they betray the uniform, the flag, and they dishonor so many brave men and women who have honorably, bravely and with much confusion, fear and courage served our country.
This is sickening to me.