Al Qaeda Is Out of Baghdad, U.S. Says

[Michael Tee]

<<It takes God to create a man , but no more than a worm to destroy one.>>

I think you really opened a can of worms.  First of all, the man was already destroyed before the worm picked up its knife and fork.  Secondly, even if it was the worm who destroyed the man, who do you think created the worm?  Third, isn't it blasphemous to suggest that anything built by God can be destroyed by worms, without giving God the same credit for creating the worm as for creating the man?

<<Destruction has a the huge advantage over creativity and construction.>>

What's that, the motto of the U.S. Army?  and what's the "huge advantage?"  The everlasting gratitude of Bush, Cheney and the Zionist Lobby?

I think I'm gonna start a new thread on the ethics of Destruction (real destruction, by which I do NOT mean well-justified criticism of the U.S. military, but the conversion of real, live human beings into twisted, charred lumps of meat, courtesy of those who engineered the invasion of Iraq) versus the ethics of creativity and construction.  But from time to time I'll check into plane's new thread about the glorification of those who actually brought the carnage to Iraq just to see how he's doing.)

[Plane]

<<It takes God to create a man , but no more than a worm to destroy one.>>

I think you really opened a can of worms.  First of all, the man was already destroyed before the worm picked up its knife and fork.  Secondly, even if it was the worm who destroyed the man, who do you think created the worm?  Third, isn't it blasphemous to suggest that anything built by God can be destroyed by worms, without giving God the same credit for creating the worm as for creating the man?

<<Destruction has a the huge advantage over creativity and construction.>>

What's that, the motto of the U.S. Army?  and what's the "huge advantage?"  The everlasting gratitude of Bush, Cheney and the Zionist Lobby?

I think I'm gonna start a new thread on the ethics of Destruction (real destruction, by which I do NOT mean well-justified criticism of the U.S. military, but the conversion of real, live human beings into twisted, charred lumps of meat, courtesy of those who engineered the invasion of Iraq) versus the ethics of creativity and construction.  But from time to time I'll check into plane's new thread about the glorification of those who actually brought the carnage to Iraq just to see how he's doing.)

"Third, isn't it blasphemous to suggest that anything built by God can be destroyed by worms, without giving God the same credit for creating the worm as for creating the man?"

Not according to Soloman who wrote "Ecclesiastes", and points out that the human body is prone to infirmity while alive and decay once dead , so that our body is an animal much like other animals.

There are worms that can cause fatal injury and even lesser creatures than worms that can .

Did God create such things as the Guinea worm which infests human beings exclusively? Yep but the worm is an humble creature none the less.

[Michael Tee]

<<Yep but the worm is an humble creature none the less.>>

Sounds like you need to get more of that worm's-eye view.  What's humble anyway?  Didn't Jesus say the meek would inherit the earth?

My zoology teacher, explaining Darwin's theory, would ask the students to determine which was best fit for survival - - tiger, elephant, cockroach?  And a lot of the kids who didn't get it snickered at the cockroach reference.  Of course, cockroaches were around long before tigers and elephants, are much more numerous and ubiquitous, and will be around long after the tigers and elephants are gone.

I suspect the humble worm is in pretty much the same boat.

[Plane]

<<Yep but the worm is an humble creature none the less.>>

Sounds like you need to get more of that worm's-eye view.  What's humble anyway?  Didn't Jesus say the meek would inherit the earth?

My zoology teacher, explaining Darwin's theory, would ask the students to determine which was best fit for survival - - tiger, elephant, cockroach?  And a lot of the kids who didn't get it snickered at the cockroach reference.  Of course, cockroaches were around long before tigers and elephants, are much more numerous and ubiquitous, and will be around long after the tigers and elephants are gone.

I suspect the humble worm is in pretty much the same boat.

The worm has little that a man should aspire to , other than evolutionary success.

Imagine the development of a man kind as simple and endureing as a worm, would tradeing in our other attributes be worthwile for the sake of  success in evolution?

An argument that is destructive requires less intelectual energy than a constructive one because enthropy takes the side.

Thre may still be times that tearing down something  is appropriate , I would say it is apropriate when there is a more contructive alternative , but even then it behooes one to point out why the alternatve is actually better.

[Michael Tee]

Seems to me that it would take a lot of energy to tear down a complex and well-defended structure.  The war against Nazi Germany took almost six full years and was a very difficult enterprise.  Many good men and women lost their lives in the struggle and we shouldn't demean their efforts of destruction.

Nobody is trying to tear down the U.S. Army BTW.  What needs to be torn down is the scourge of militarism - - the blind worship of the army, the readiness to treat any attack on any mission to which the Army was assigned as an attack on the Army itself and/or the belief that the Army and its personnel are "sacred" or beyond attack, or that it can be attacked for some things but not for others.  Any non-realistic appraisal of the Army, which is used to discourage or invalidate criticism or outright attacks is a form of militarism.

As I've said on other occasions, every society needs an army, just as any junkyard needs a guard dog.  The problem is not that we have a guard dog, the problem begins when we treat the guard dog as our superior or our boss, something that WE have to support in whatever it chooses to be doing.  Gotta keep in mind who the dog works for, who pays its salary and puts its food on its plate.  We don't exist to serve the guard dog, the guard dog exists to serve us.  And that's the way it's gotta be.

[Plane]

Seems to me that it would take a lot of energy to tear down a complex and well-defended structure.  The war against Nazi Germany took almost six full years and was a very difficult enterprise.  Many good men and women lost their lives in the struggle and we shouldn't demean their efforts of destruction.

Nobody is trying to tear down the U.S. Army BTW.  What needs to be torn down is the scourge of militarism - - the blind worship of the army, the readiness to treat any attack on any mission to which the Army was assigned as an attack on the Army itself and/or the belief that the Army and its personnel are "sacred" or beyond attack, or that it can be attacked for some things but not for others.  Any non-realistic appraisal of the Army, which is used to discourage or invalidate criticism or outright attacks is a form of militarism.

As I've said on other occasions, every society needs an army, just as any junkyard needs a guard dog.  The problem is not that we have a guard dog, the problem begins when we treat the guard dog as our superior or our boss, something that WE have to support in whatever it chooses to be doing.  Gotta keep in mind who the dog works for, who pays its salary and puts its food on its plate.  We don't exist to serve the guard dog, the guard dog exists to serve us.  And that's the way it's gotta be.

I take this as true , but where could the US military be any more loyal or well behaved ?

WE have a lot of reason  to appreaiate our officer corps for their loyalty and our enlisted for their service.

[Stray Pooch]

You're already too open-minded for me to waste effort on mind-opening, and not open-minded enough for me to persuade to abandon your convictions.

I think I just broke something in my brain. 

I remember the 1960s like they were yesterday.  (Come to think of it, they WERE yesterday!)

Alzhimer's a bitch, ain't it?

And it was the most outrageous tactics, the wildest rhetoric, that shook Americans out of their sleep and brought them to see the absolute horror of the deeds that their Army was committing in their name.  "Baby killers"  "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"  Was it literally true?  Did each returning GI have to wash the blood of at least one baby off his hands?  Did LBJ really kill kids?  But there was enough truth in the taunts and chants to convince a generation of young and not-so-young Americans that abominable crimes were being committed in their name, and this created one of the factors making it impossible for that criminal aggression to continue.

Yes it did work back then - but we learned to be aware of the technique and reject it.  Because the cure was as bad as the disease.  You went after men who had been through hell and kicked them while they were down.  In your zeal to correct one wrong you perpetrated another - and you justified it in much the same way that soldiers justified torching villages - the end sanctifies the means.  We see through that now because we have had four decades (yeah, dude, it's been THAT long) to process it.  Vietnam veterans are deeply respected today, in spite of the fact that far more people view Vietnam as a mistake now than did in the sixties.  Fortunately, very few people who act as you do exist today - and the ones who do are publicly ridiculed.  I would even bet that you would avoid actually walking up to a soldier and calling him a baby killer (provided, of course, that you didn't have actual knowledge of a war crime he committed, in which case all bets are off).   Most protestors today (MOST, I said) are more careful about how they get their message across.  At least in public, Peaceniks don't talk about "baby killers," Racists don't call African-Americans "niggers" and Evangelists (crazy Westboro weirdos excluded) don't call homosexuals "Faggots."  (And folks don't call protestors "Peaceniks" either, but whaddayagonnado?)

"Gott mit uns"

Sounds like an ad for gloves.

. . . if they engage the idea, debate with it, debate against it, they will come out knowing more than when they came in.  Which ain't all to the bad.  Some of them, if they are smart enough, will actually come to see, here and through wider reading and investigation, what a shocking mess of lies and criminality this whole Iraq thing is.

But Lanya and others do exactly that in a manner that is far more likely to succeed.  THINK VOLUME, MAN!

One last point:  I said earlier in another thread, that in a debate forum like this, where the subject is basically current events, and some of the participants in the forum also may have participated in the events themselves, that an unspoken but implied phrase, "present company excepted" should always be read into every post to avoid giving offense and so as not to inhibit full and frank discussion.  If it makes you feel any better, "present company excepted" went implicitly into all my prior posts.

I'm not talking about you directly accusing me of killing babies - hell, I've never been anywhere near a battlefield.  I'm talking about the insults you throw at soldiers collectively.  That means a lot to me, MT.  If I called your mother a whore I wouldn't be insulting you, but I'm pretty sure you'd take offense.  I know you don't mean it this way, and I truly appreciate the gesture, but in a sense that "present company accepted" has the same ring as calling me one of the "good niggers."  You want to divorce yourself from the offense by qualifying it.  But the people you are accusing are just as human as the ones you are defending - and often just as innocent.  I guess my point is that you are dehumanizing soldiers as a group, and I want you to remember that they are human.  That's exactly what you are trying to do for the people in Iraq and elsewhere who are becoming "collateral damage."  It's like they are accident debris to be swept up after the insurance photos are taken.  You want to remind people that there are real humans there dying as a result of US actions.  I get that - and it's valid.  But I also get that an awful lot of perfectly decent human beings get sent into hell and have to decide whether to kill or be killed - and then live with it.  I'm glad I didn't go to the Storm or any other battle not because I never got shot at - though I ain't knockin' it - but because I never had to decide whether another human being lived or died right there in front of me.  For those who did, I'm going to have to think hard before issuing a judgment.

Anyway, I appreciate the thoughts on your part, and I will let it go for now.  This dead horse is starting to smell like my old gym shorts - and I haven't been to a gym since 1998!  Feel free to respond if you feel the need.  But no more "open-minded" to the third power sentences like that first one.  I've only got so many working brain cells left!

[Stray Pooch]

WOW.......that's some might fine assessements in that last post, Pooch.  I was especially impressed with the sections I pulled from it above.  I hope I'm paying attention to them in my responses, so as to maintain a certain level of credibility despite my obvious partisan ideology         

Sirs, you are - as always - too kind.  It would be even better if I actually followed my own advice!   Thanks for the kind words.

[Michael Tee]

<< . . . but we learned to be aware of the technique and reject it.  Because the cure was as bad as the disease.  You went after men who had been through hell and kicked them while they were down. >>

The "hell" they went through was as nothing compared to the hell they inflicted on the innocent people of Viet Nam.  Many of them still celebrate their time together in Nam as the best time of their lives - - unlimited dope, booze, whores and best of all, the power that grows out of the barrel of an M-16 pointed at families of helpless peasants and a total lack of responsibility towards anyone or anything other than their brothers in arms.  Your sentimentality towards these guys is getting a little cloying at times, Pooch.  Most of them came out unscathed.  My kids were young at the time - -  I think if it had been YOUR kids who were napalmed, you might have looked at this a little more realistically.  I'm sure as hell happy that at least the Nuremburg prosecutors didn't look at all this as indulgently as you have.

<<Vietnam veterans are deeply respected today, in spite of the fact that far more people view Vietnam as a mistake now than did in the sixties.  Fortunately, very few people who act as you do exist today - and the ones who do are publicly ridiculed.>>

That's the result of an unrelenting revisionist campaign waged by spinmeisters whose objective was to rid Americans of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome" which made the foreign policy of the ruling class almost impossible to pursue for many years after Vietnam.  It's no credit to the Amerikkkan people that they succumbed to this bullshit campaign.  Books on Vietnam revisionism have been written and I wish I knew a little more about it.  Basically a number of conservative think tanks went to work on the problem and of course the politicians came on board in an interesting sequence - - the Republican hard-liners first (if they had ever left the train in the first place) then others and then finally the Democrats, mainly out of their usual cowardice, scared as ever of being labeled as unpatriotic by those who outflank them on the right.  Apparently the demonization of Jane Fonda was a milestone in the campaign - - her "apology" to the vets that she had "offended" shocked the socks off me and was my personal epiphany as to how deeply the campaign had struck.  Her advisers must have figured that her very livelihood was at stake.

<<I would even bet that you would avoid actually walking up to a soldier and calling him a baby killer (provided, of course, that you didn't have actual knowledge of a war crime he committed, in which case all bets are off). >>

What would be the point?  If he had a shred of decency, he would long since have repented of his "service" and given himself hell for it, and if he didn't, he'd punch my lights out.  No, I'm not a superhero, I'm not even a bar brawler, and my instinct for self-preservation is as strong as the next guy's  - - these guys are trained to kill with their bare hands, and I'm in no particular hurry to put their "skills" to the test.  That you'd even consider such a course indicates to me how much you have underestimated the viciousness and the danger that these guys represent.

<<THINK VOLUME, MAN!>>

I do, but there's room for more than one technique in fighting the good fight.  Different strokes for different folks.  I might get some of the minds that the Lanyas don't.  I'm the guy with the broom following behind the street-sweeping machine.  (Actually, I don't think the soft-core approach has worked out that well either, but I couldn't resist the metaphor.)

<<I'm talking about the insults you throw at soldiers collectively.  That means a lot to me, MT.  If I called your mother a whore I wouldn't be insulting you, but I'm pretty sure you'd take offense. >>

Well, that's where I think you're being entirely unrealistic, Pooch, bizarre even.  I think most posters here (myself included) have enough basic decency not to insult one another's family.  We all can recognize the emotional bonds of family and we respect that.  But when you attempt to compare that bond to the emotional bond you feel for an institution and its members, I gotta draw the line.  It's (IMHO) absurd and unhealthy.  Particularly when the organization itself is a bunch of highly trained killers.  An organization that, necessary though it may be, is actually an indictment of our own inhumanity and failure to resolve our differences peacefully.  Now I don't expect everyone to share my opinion of the military and in fact I've somewhat overstated it here for argument's sake.  I buy a poppy and wear it proudly every November, in fact it's still on my raincoat as we speak, because the 11th fell on a Sunday.  And I get pissed off at those who don't.  But I would never compare the mother-child bond with the citizen-soldier bond.  I consider such comparisons sick and even dangerous.  You have to come to a realistic assessment of what the army - - particularly the all-volunteer army - - really is.  They are a bunch of trained killers who we as citizens must keep on our payroll to protect us against our enemies.  Why we should have enemies is of course a whole nuther thread.