Re: Understanding and understanding

[email protected] wrote:

>Just wondering if your desire to profile and empathize with mad bomber types 
>extended to Timmy McVeigh and company.
>
>And to those who pop abortion doctors.

Er, where did you get this idea? Are you referring to the part where I 
said "I empathise with people who kill thousands of civilians?" Because I 
didn't say that.

>Or is your horror and understanding reserved only for those folks who would 
>without question murder every last woman, man, and chillun in this country 
>(after, of course, the beneficient and compassionate chance for a 
>knife-point 
>conversion to complete submission to a 4th century stone idol.)

Who are these people of which you speak? If such a people exist, I'm 
certainly not adverse to trying to *understand* them, though certainly 
not to the exclusion of any other people. I fear, however, that you are 
making a baseless, racist characterization. Please try to understand the 
facts and reconsider your point of view.

>In other words, in a morally relative world, just about anything anyone does 
>can piss someone else off, or whole groups of someone else's, some of them 
>to 
>the point of killing based on the infuriating fact that no one else seems to 
>care about their gripe.

This sentence is relatively incomprehensible, but I suspect that's not 
what you're getting at.

>Does this absolve them from guilt in their horrifingly juvenile acts of 
>attention getting?

Does what absolve who from guilt? In the first sentence you talk about 
"anyone", and then what you're actually saying about them doesn't make 
sense. Please clarify?

>Of course, this isn't what your saying. It's just that maybe we as a country 
>should reconsider the awful things our government happens to do abroad.
>
>Like ending sanctions against Iraq.
>
>But think of all the wonderful things we DO let them get away with.

Who exactly do you mean by "them"?

>Like slaughtering, in a glorious 21st century invisible genocide, thousands 
>of Christians in Indonesia and various African states. And all of their 
>impressive state sponsored bondage for women. And tolerating their insane 
>religion, which calls for Jihad every time an American offers to shake with 
>his left hand.

I suspect this is mostly inaccurate, though I'd be interested in any 
references you might provide. I agree that their oppressive practices are 
reprehensible, but I wonder what that has to do with any point that 
you're making. Should we bomb them for this, too?

>Come on. We attacked Iraq wrongly. No questions. Kuwait belonged to them 
>anyway. Lies, distortions, etc.

Kuwait belonged to Iraq?

>But we like the oil. Don't mess with our oil and we won't bomb you. That may 
>not be right, 
>but at least it's clear.  

Ah, and how did clarity become a virtue, in and of itself?

>And Sudan?
>
>How about the holocaust by Khartoum against Sudanese Christians? The jihad?
>
>So we blew up a pharmaceutical factory.

Yes, we did.

>Their own civil war has led to nearly 2 million deaths.
>
>Oh well.

Weren't you just ranting about moral relativism?

>We're the real terrorists.

Are we? If "we" is the US govn't, then sure, we sponsor terrorist 
activities and commit terrorist acts all the time. But I don't see how 
this is any more "real" than flying a plane into a building. "We" 
certainly cause more deaths than any other terrorist group, but I think 
the others are still quite real.

cheers,

Dru Jay    ||    http://www.dru.ca    ||    dru-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]