dear friends:.
ive taken a few days to post, having a need to sort out my thoughts and watch the coverage along with my co-workers, family, and neighbors.
ive also read your posts over the past 48 hours and seen many of the same reactions as the population in general.
Naeblis,
Everyone else in this thread seems to have either wandered off to bed or to the adult forum.
Would you care to dance in the pale moonlight? I have some Beanie Babies on the grill. Or perhaps I can just watch you work in your usual attire, eh?
My name is Ginny.
dear friends:.
ive taken a few days to post, having a need to sort out my thoughts and watch the coverage along with my co-workers, family, and neighbors.
ive also read your posts over the past 48 hours and seen many of the same reactions as the population in general.
DannyBear,
I do not "disdain" killing, i.e. refuse or reject it with aloof contempt or scorn. I do respect life, so I hope that there will be as little killing as possible.
Ginny
i appreciate the words of another poster who commented that he felt it unwise to post in anger.
i have tried to hold calm and keep my anger in check, but that started to change with my nato posting yesterday.. i am set back over 30 years: i was raised to respect all races, and not to be prejudiced.
i was also raised a proud american, and that it was important not to tolerate bullies.
Amazing,
I am not suggesting that the U.S. talk, meet, and negotiate for decades. I am pleading that the U.S. target the criminals as closely as it possibly can.
There are certainly times when one must kill or be killed. I do not wish to live in a society in which the power to kill is used indiscriminately and without regard for what is just.
Ginny
dear friends:.
ive taken a few days to post, having a need to sort out my thoughts and watch the coverage along with my co-workers, family, and neighbors.
ive also read your posts over the past 48 hours and seen many of the same reactions as the population in general.
DannyBear,
I prefer the phrase as a whole, just as it is presented between semicolons in the verse:
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
As I said to Amazing, I think the difference between us is that you want to quickly amputate a whole leg. My hope is that all involved will use surgical precision and try to heal the rest of the leg.
Ginny
dear friends:.
ive taken a few days to post, having a need to sort out my thoughts and watch the coverage along with my co-workers, family, and neighbors.
ive also read your posts over the past 48 hours and seen many of the same reactions as the population in general.
DannyBear,
Ah, I see. You were just presenting a "simple fact."
I like the version in Ecclesiastes better.
Good luck with your Bible rewrite.
Ginny
dear friends:.
ive taken a few days to post, having a need to sort out my thoughts and watch the coverage along with my co-workers, family, and neighbors.
ive also read your posts over the past 48 hours and seen many of the same reactions as the population in general.
DannyBear,
Just for the record, it's not:
"A time kill or be killed" [sic]
but
"a time to kill, and a time to heal".
Ginny
i appreciate the words of another poster who commented that he felt it unwise to post in anger.
i have tried to hold calm and keep my anger in check, but that started to change with my nato posting yesterday.. i am set back over 30 years: i was raised to respect all races, and not to be prejudiced.
i was also raised a proud american, and that it was important not to tolerate bullies.
Amazing,
If we human beings deteriorate to a kill-or-be-killed mentality, you may kill me first. I would rather die than live with such barbaric terrorism. It's as Gen. Merrill McPeak said, "You have to ask, `What's the endgame?' You want to come out with a safer, more secure environment," not just brute survival.
How can you swing your saber at "turban-heads" and yet say that you are not thinking of all Arabs? American Arabs are good but other Arabs are bad? What if in the future the United States harbors criminals? Will you accept a bombing of the U.S. as your due for being a citizen of this government?
Terrorists are criminals, whatever their ethnic, religious, or national affiliation. I hope that those who have aided and abetted these criminals will be brought to justice.
As I see it, the difference between us is that you want to quickly amputate a whole leg. My hope is that all involved will use surgical precision and try to heal the rest of the leg.
I happen to have been born in the United States. I still consider myself primarily a citizen of the world. I refuse to use arbitrary national borders to collectively judge large groups of people.
Ginny
a few paragraphs from the elements of love by sam keen.. ginny.
the flower of compassion can bloom at any moment, even in the ambience of enmity.. a friend told me a story of a kind that has been repeated countless times in the history of warfare.
"we were in a firefight not too far from da nang.
A few paragraphs from The Elements of Love by Sam Keen.
Ginny
The flower of compassion can bloom at any moment, even in the ambience of enmity.
A friend told me a story of a kind that has been repeated countless times in the history of warfare. "We were in a firefight not too far from Da Nang. Charlie had us surrounded, and we were taking fire from every side. We called for air support, and the choppers came and rained death all over his parade. I got a clear shot at one gook and saw him fall. When everything was quiet, I went over to look at my kill. He was about twenty or twenty-five--it's hard to tell with slants--and he had on the black pajamas, so I knew he was pure enemy. But then I started going through his pockets, and I found a little packet of pictures, wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, of him and his wife and a couple of kids. After that it was a lot harder for me to go into combat. Sometimes, if I had to, I aimed for a leg or an arm, or if we weren't in danger, I just shot into the bushes. I've never been able to get that guy out of my mind. I can't get over the feeling that he was just like me. He didn't want to be in the goddamned war, and he didn't have anything against me except that I was in his country."
Compassion is apocalypse, the true revolution, the end of warfare and the politics of power. It destroys the hierarchy of values, the mythology of superiority, that is the basis for tribal and national society. It dissolves our political loyalties as citizens of (self-)righteous nations and gives us a new identity as members of a commonwealth of sentient beings. No more S&M, top and bottom, superior and inferior. The true revolution in human affairs can never come by armed violence because those who live by the sword will continue to live by the sword ad nauseam. The power game, in any of its forms, destroys the compassion that is the only basis for lasting community.
i appreciate the words of another poster who commented that he felt it unwise to post in anger.
i have tried to hold calm and keep my anger in check, but that started to change with my nato posting yesterday.. i am set back over 30 years: i was raised to respect all races, and not to be prejudiced.
i was also raised a proud american, and that it was important not to tolerate bullies.
Amazing,
I understand your need to express your anger. Anger is a part of grief. Angry feelings are not bad. You cannot control the feeling of anger but you can control what you choose to do when you are angry.
I urge that everyone be careful and not fall prey to the Us vs. Them thinking that causes terrorism in the first place:
"We are innocent.
They are guilty.
We tell the truth--inform.
They lie--use propaganda.
We only defend ourselves.
They are aggressors.
We have a defense department.
They have a war department.
Our missiles and weapons are designed to deter.
Their weapons are designed for a first strike.
The most terrible of all the moral paradoxes, the Gordian knot that must be unraveled if history is to continue, is that we create evil out of our highest ideals and most noble aspirations. We so need to be heroic, to be on the side of God, to eliminate evil, to clean up the world, to be victorious over death, that we visit destruction and death on all who stand in the way of our heroic historical destiny. We scapegoat and create absolute enemies, not because we are intrinsically cruel, but because focusing our anger on an outside target, striking at strangers, brings our tribe or nation together and allows us to be part of a close and loving in-group. We create surplus evil because we need to belong. . . .
If we desire peace, each of us must begin to demythologize the enemy; . . ."
from "The Enemy Maker" by Sam Keen, an essay in Meeting the Shadow
Consider, too, these words from an article in today's New York Times (bolding mine):
Moreover, air strikes by cruise missiles or manned aircraft would not destroy the religious fanaticism that fuels many terrorist groups and could create martyrs, military and counterterrorism experts said."Air power is not well suited to respond to this kind of threat," said Gen. Merrill McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the Persian Gulf war. "You have to ask, `What's the endgame?' You want to come out with a safer, more secure environment, and it's not clear that a massive air attack, unleashing the dogs of hell, will result in an aftermath that's more secure."
Ginny
when nato invokes article v, it is more than just one member asking for support from the other member states, but article v invocation means all member states view the attack as an attack on them all.
in other words, nato aliance is at war with those responsible, and will support the us lead, which will now hold not only the terrorists responsible, but hold those nations that host them as equally responsible.. "brussels, belgium (cnn) -- nato has unanimously declared the hijack attacks on the u.s. to be an assault against all member states.".
"it is the first time in 52 years that the alliance has invoked article v -- the nato self-defence charter that says if one member state is under attack all other member nations would defend it.".
Jelly,
Your simplification is very self-serving. The government of Afghanistan uses its resources to back terrorist groups; this action makes them accomplices. This is much different than a group of people, NOT AFFELIATED WITH THE GOVERNMENT, providing support.
Suppose that the governor of Florida and his colleagues went crazy and became ultra-fundamentalists. (Maybe it would be more appropriate to use as an example Mississippi, one of our poorest states. According to the U.S. Department of State, the per capita income in Afghanistan is $280 per year.) Anyone who disagrees with this fanatical government is executed. People who try to flee Florida on boats are sometimes turned away by neighboring states.
Meanwhile, this new fanatical government aids and abets terrorists.
If the citizens of Florida were in a situation similar to the one in Afghanistan, would we be so quick to want to bomb a whole state to teach the accomplices a lesson?
Should we use the same methods as the Taliban?
"The Taliban used swift summary trials and implemented strict punishments according to Islamic law . . ."". . . the Taliban used a scorched earth policy during its summer offensive . . ."
"Taliban forces were responsible for the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas."
"The continuing internal conflict resulted in many instances of the use of excessive force."
"The Taliban claimed that opponents conducted attacks from the homes of civilians in the Shomali area, making them legitimate military targets."
from http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/afghanis.html
Also, let us not forget:
In the absence of a decisive Japanese reaction to the Allied demand for an immediate and unconditional surrender, the second, plutonium-type bomb was dropped on August 9, not on its primary target, which the pilot could not find, but on its alternative one which, by a cruel irony, was the Christian city of Nagasaki, the nearest thing to a center of resistance to Japanese militarism. Over 74,800 people were killed by it that day.from A History of the American People by Paul Johnson
"A government should not mobilize an army out of anger, military leaders should not provoke war out of wrath. Act when it is beneficial, desist if it is not. Anger can revert to joy, wrath can revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot be restored to existence, and the dead cannot be restored to life. Therefore an enlightened government is careful about this, a good military leadership is alert to this. This is the way to secure a nation and keep the armed forces whole."
from Art of War by Sun Tzu
Ginny
