Hi jcook,
I'm on the fence as to how to get into this thread, Seeker, though more aligned with my views, just gets aggressive and reduces things to name-calling.. Saying people who don't agree with him are sheep.
I´d sure love to discuss this issue with someone who can leave out the personal stuff. I´m glad you offer. I notice you have "Military" in your usertitle, so I guess this is your job (correct me if I am wrong). If, despite being personally and professionally involved in these things, you have the ability to discuss unemotionally you have my full admiration. If not so, I can understand that, too.
I, on the other hand, accept that people have different views, but it saddens me that people won't get behind this for the positive things that we ARE doing in the middle east.
Allow me some - maybe helpful - clarifications, first.
I am not American,, so it´s not "we" for me.
I am not talking about a specific war, but about violence (and thus wars) in general. So I would like to avoid the strategic considerations of one particular party in one particular war.
Iraq is better off, and Afghanistan is an ongoing project, but we actually are doing those people a world of good compared to the regimes they WERE under. Does it come with a price tag of blood and money? Yes it does, and alot of people think it isn't worth it.
I am not thinking in terms of nations here. I am thinking of individuals. I don´t think of victims of violence as a price tag. I think of them as individuals.
Whether a certain war results in an overall improvement, is an interesting hypothetical question (although not really answerable, imo). These considerations don´t have anything to do with what I said, though.
If using violence for a (supposedly or putative higher good) we still use violence and we inflict harm upon individuals (and individuals who aren´t the authors of that which we try to abolish). No abstractions, no body count, no emphasis on the good intentions and the good results for others change that fact.
My cousin is in the Marine Corps, he deployed to Iraq and guarded the mass graves where Saddam used to throw the corpses of people who opposed him. Hundreds of thousands of bodies, and people want to complain about the casualties of war so far..
Yes, I complain about every victim of violence, and that there are other victims of other violence won´t keep me from doing it (they add up, and don´t level each other out). These comparisons have nothing to do with my negative opinion about slaughtering people.
Unfortunate things happen in war,
I´m sorry, but I find the term "unfortunate" for intentional, premeditated inflicting of harm on others to be a gross euphemism - no matter how good the intentions and how great the intended greater good is that people pursue.
and I'm not trying to downplay them, but it infuriates and saddens me when people try to downplay the fact that we do positive things in the middle east, and all anybody wants to do is talk about the reasons we are there and not the concrete results we obtain.
I am really not sure what earns me this discussion and these reproaches. I haven´t made any statement about this particular war, I haven´t made any statements to the effect that this war (and other wars) did not have positive effects for certain people. I haven´t made any calculations or statements concerning the question whether the positive outcomes outweigh the negative ones. I have said nothing that even only points in this direction, and hoping for your understanding, I won´t engage in such considerations.
All I said was: People who say they dislike violence yet engage in it obviously dislike something else even more.
I fail to see how any of the objections (neither yours nor anyone else´s) have even tried to address the statement. Instead I get a lot of objections to things that I haven´t said.
