Whatever happened to the McCarthurs and the Pattons

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It seems all sides will spin it however they like anyway; one can, for example, do a remarkable job of avoiding civilian casualities and still have whining, frightened people wringing their hands over invented ones. Kill them all or kill only the bad ones, the argument will be the same. So I'm with Walrus; separate politics from war, both will be more effective for it.

Hello? Come on, UT, you're conservative and I'm liberal. Much as we disagree on just about everything, I have always considered you to be a pretty intelligent person. You CANNOT seperate politics from war. You cannot seperate international law from the acts of war committed by commanders in the field. Sooner or later the final bomb will be dropped, the last soldier, the last civilian will die and the smoke will clear from the eyes of a watching world, and judgements will be made.

When it comes to civilian casualties, I agree to some extent, that a spin can be made either way - at least in certain cases. Take a communication center that is vital for the enemy forces. This communication center is actually the telephone company. Suppose you are a computer systems administrator for QWEST (or whoever the big phone co back East is). You are going about your work, making sure that Joe from from Indiana and Ma and Pa Kettle and all your friends and neighbors can jump on the telephone and share the latest gossip. The pentagon also happens to make use of Qwest's phone lines. An invading army sends a missle aimed straight at your office. Are you an enemy combatant or an innocent civilian? That's just one example and there are jillions of others.

I am going to share with you all some comments made by a friend of mine who is a veteran of the First Gulf War. I have mentioned this individual before. He didn't have some safe behind the lines job. He was in a tank that led the first wave of assault in that war. In the course of that engagement he saved the lives of the men in another tank crew. I read the letter those men wrote him afterward thanking him for his heroism, and every single man on that crew signed the letter. In other words, my friend is no wussie-boy and he also supported Bush in this past election.

A few nights ago he came over to my house to talk. He hadn't been able to sleep for two days. He told me, "I keep dreaming about a man who is a serial killer. I see him and look into his eyes and I know, and I know that he knows that I know. Everyone else can't see this person for who he is. Then in the dream I look into a mirror and I see the killer's face reflected back at me. I AM the serial killer. The military made me into a serial killer except that I have a conscience and a sense of right and wrong. I killed nine men in the First Gulf War. I wonder what their mothers' faces looked like. I wonder what their names were. I wonder if they left behind children or wives who mourn them. I am a veteran and I can tell you this much: No one wins in a war. No one."

This easy talk of killing some of you like to engage in is easy talk. Nothing more.