Yep. This might surpass Grenada for "feel good"

Post #88,853 by mmoffitt 3/17/03 4:49:42 PM Reply	Yep. This might surpass Grenada for "feel good" Me, I keep seing those two little Iraqi girls entombed in the rubble of their homes. I don't know what makes me more ill; those pictures or the seemingly endless stream of old retired US Generals on TeeVee talking about how "smart" our bombs are, how we can "put one through a window and leave the house next door standing." Makes me wonder WTF kind of a threat 8 year old and 10 year old Iraqi girls are when they're asleep in their night clothes, in their own beds. I mean, with all our spectacularly accurate weaponry, we must have targetted them, no? Or could it be that our Generals are lying to us? No, no, perish the thought. bcnu, Mikem Osama bin Laden's brother could fly in US airspace 9/15/01, but I had to wait for FBI and CIA background checks, 'nuff said?
Post #88,863 by deSitter 3/17/03 5:06:28 PM Reply	Re: Yep. This might surpass Grenada for "feel good" We like to lionize our military (including me) - but don't forget they are trained killers, not white-hat fantasy men. Pilots in all wars report a (real, justified) kill-or-be-killed attitude. Anything that moves, gets hit. There are WWII gun camera films from P-47s on low-level raids, shooting up civlian-driven horse-drawn carts of no military value (8 Browning .50s and rockets against a horse and cart), weeks before the war ended and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The road from Basra to Kuwait City is another example - a stalled caravan of people beating it back home - defenseless and massacred (many deserved it, but that's not the point). The Germans did it - a crippled bomber without defense, straggling along - target practice. Crew bails - more target practice. "The worst decision I ever made was choosing to pursue a military career" - said R. E. Lee some time after the surrender. When bands would play marches, he'd deliberately march out of step. The point of the military is to kill things and people. It is wrong to iconize and idolize the military. I think Americans WANT this war, because it's the only thing we're any good at. I always feel bad at a time like this. I want us to win - as long as it happens, let's hope something good comes from it - but the relish Americans feel in killing and destroying things makes me shudder. We love cops, firefighters, and soldiers - all of whom put themselves in danger by choice - but can't be much concerned with teachers, programmers, iron-workers etc. Why should we bother ourselves with little Iraqi girls? -drl
Post #88,900 by Ashton 3/17/03 7:13:39 PM Reply	And yet.. There is that story, better attested-to than most war stories - of the German fighter pilot gesturing? (somehow communicating) to the pilot of a wounded bomber - the direction to head, to "get out of there". I might be able to find the details somewhere in my eclectic filing system; my trust is that the pilot/narrator damn well knew whether or not he had been 'helped' - and obv lived to tell. Clearly the fighter pilot could have easily finished off the lame duck; as clearly he chose to introduce a moment of simple humanity into a cauldron of reptile-brain destruction. And it was his country being bombed! Logic is never enough, in authentic humans. There are other such precious jewels within every massive display of homo-sap-as reptilian throwback. We must cherish every one. I believe that such events aid the conclusion that, while there will always be around the vicious, soulless digital black/white primitives like a marlowe - humanity only ever advances via the tiny percentage of persons possessing (wise hearts?) And just One of these cancels out the mob in its blood-lust, as Gandhi cancels out the Rumsfelds, Cheneys and the really Stupid, easily seduced and obsessed ones - like the Dubyas. My 2 DMarks, Ashton

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