Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)
Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...
Mr. Pavone writes:
ReplyDelete"But we can rejoice nevertheless, because the war on these radical terrorists is real, and it is a war we must win, period. Together, we must protect our nation, and removing bin Laden from the scene brings us closer to that goal."
As usual, Mr. Pavone misses the real point. While we must thwart terrorism, I don't believe that sinking to the same level as terrorists is a very effective way of combatting it.
What I find very disturbing is that bin Laden may have been assinated. The inconsistent stories now coming out of the US military and the White House suggest that there was no serious attempt to capture him and to actually try bin Laden in a court of law for his crimes.
Even more troubling is that most Americans seem to have absolutely no problem with the possibility of assination - even if it proves to be true. Indeed, what I have seen suggests that Americans are overwhelmingly motivated by vengence as a way to address their sense of wounded national pride.
I would argue that it would have been a far better example to show terrorists that western democracies honour the rule of law - not just pay lip service to it. I would argue that the west lost an opportunity to expose bin Laden's crimes in public and to clearly demonstrate his evil. I would argue that a lynching is never "justice" - no matter how guilty you believe the perpetrator to be.
I certainly understand that capture attempts sometimes go wrong, and that the hunted are sometimes unintentionally killed, however, I am getting the distinct impression that this was not really a serious attempt to arrest bin Laden. If I am correct, this is just one more strand of evidence demonstrating that the terrorists have already won the war - not through superior tactics and cunning, but because we become just like them. We suspended civil rights, we imprisoned people without habeus corpus, we sanctioned or participated in torture, we illegally and pre-emptively declared war on sovereign countries on the thinnest of pre-texts, and now we may have also murdered a man (a very bad man) in cold blood. Some victory...and precious little cause for rejoicing.
Cheers...Martin
Correction: assinate = assassinate.
ReplyDeleteI rely too much on spell check and your comments box does not have it. There are other typos too...just hope folks can read through them.
Cheers...Martin