Living and dying by the sword
Submitted by heuer on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 9:38pm
(Submitted to the CHH 6/4)
In “Islamists live by the sword” (Other Opinions, Chapel Hill Herald 6/2) Cliff May puts words in the mouths of Iranian leaders who, he claims, call for world domination and the murder of infidels. May continues: “The terrible conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries caused most Westerners to treasure peace and regard war as a hellish, last resort.”
Oh really!
The only “resort” to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was the Genghis Khan impulse toward world domination and the murder of infidels. This, amid cries to “Remember the Maine” siren call of 9-11. In regard to 9-11, the Bush administration was either criminally negligent or criminally complicit. In either case, 9-11 was most convenient for launching their war plans.
The deaths of countless women and children in the course of our hellish war-making are shrugged off as “collateral damage,” the unfortunate result of our despicable enemies hiding among innocents, in other words, in their homes.
If Islamists live by the sword, they die in great numbers from US Tomahawk cruise missiles, at about $1 million a pop. I’m glad somebody’s making money, but it saddens me greatly that my country makes war (and war toys) so casually.
In round numbers, the US accounts for 5% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of the world’s resources, and manufactures 50% of the world’s weaponry. How do we justify this gross misallocation of resources?
During the 1st Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush declared: “The American lifestyle is non-negotiable.” This sounds to me like a recipe for world domination, and the murder of “infidels.” (How did our oil get underneath their sand?)
As Jesus admonishes us, ‘remove the plank from your own eye before you complain about the speck in your neighbor’s eye.’ (Matthew 7:3.)
Cliff May declares that “…it is senseless to attempt to engage them (Iranians) by holding out the prospect of “peace.” His thinly veiled assertion is that it is our duty NOT to talk to the Iranians, but to wage war against Iran. As a last resort, naturally, because we treasure peace.
It was propaganda that launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. That propagandizing pundits like Cliff May are still given a platform in the Chapel Hill Herald is a disgrace.
John Heuer
Pittsboro, NC
- heuer's blog
- 1476 reads
Nice letter
It's less likely to fall on deaf ears in Chapel Hill.
For Republicans to be such a small minority in this country, they sure do suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room, don't they? (They get too much press coverage.)
***************************
Vote Democratic, the ass you save may be your own.
I don't know what is really in the heart
of the leaders in Iraq but her people are complex, mysterious and unfathomable by Western standards or so I've read. Sword rattling seems to be more of the style of the political and religious heads of state than the wielding of swords.
Americans would do well to try and learn about another culture before condemning it.
Progressives are the true conservatives.