Oh, so turn the other cheek only when it suits you? Just who exactly did Jesus suggest killing? The Romans? The false profits? The Jews? Jesus was bringing people back from the dead, not trying to send them there... So in your logic, pacifists are immoral, and war mongers are moral, and Muslims must also be moral following your logic....
While i agree we cant sit back and take it in the chin..I dont agree with the way we are doing it. Securing our land is more important than going after 1 or 2 thugs. "11:43 New leader of Iraq Al Qaeda vows vengeance against U.S.-led forces, Baghdad Govt, according to web statement - Reuters " so we kill 1 and 10 more pop up.. we have young soldiers dying daily ;we are spending trillions on another country when we cut funding to our major cities and we dont even have lower oil prices. How can Jem even imply the left would do a worse job. Not that i care who does a better job; but certainly to constantly go out on the limb and say the left would have done worse is absurd; as to suggest that whats being done is a good job...
Apparently not. Are you saying that because in his particular circumstances, Ghandi was a pacifist, that should be our defense policy?
Response to the second part: "Pacifists, for all their moral preening, are ultimately immoral. They sit back and carp, leaving others to do the dirty work. If they got their way, savagery would rule, the weak would be at the mercy of the strong and might would make right." Unbelieveable.
War mongering is not moral. Pacifism, however, is immoral, because it demands that nothing be done to stop a horrific condition when something can indeed be done to stop it. IMO it is wrong to do nothing when in fact we have the ability to do it. Pacifists consider the use of force to be worse than the condition that force is attempting to stop. To the pacifist, waging war on Hitler was worse than what Hitler was doing. Sheer idiocy. Though a well-intentioned ideal, pacifism is not applicable in the real world, which is a violent environment where human beings with malicious intent make war on and kill other human beings. In the real world, saving human life often requires the taking of another human life. If pacifism is a realistic ideal, why then does the absence of war not produce peace unequivocally? If Hitler had been allowed to conquer the world unopposed, and all the world's Jews, gypsies, and others he deemed sub-human exterminated, how is that "peace"? If we had not fought back against the Japanese and they were allowed to conquer all of Asia and brutally subjugate, murder, and rape their conquered victims, how would that be "peace"? If we had not intervened in Bosnia, and the ethnic cleansing allowed to go on unchecked, how is that "peace"? If we had not fought the North Koreans, and they took over the South, would the resulting extermination of the South Koreans been a condition of "peace"? Maintaining the status quo and allowing aggression and murder to flourish does not mean "peace" is the existing condition. At the end of the day, pacifism fails because it does not hinder those to whom "peace" is anethema to their ambitions and desires, and are willing to kill other human beings to accomplish it. Pacifism, in fact, aids and abets them. Prager: "...the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah yearned for the day that nations will beat their swords into plowshares. But another Hebrew Prophet, Joel, who is never cited by those who wish to read the secular value of pacifism into the Bible, said precisely the opposite: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!'"
You're comparing apples and oranges. I'm talking about this Berg guy and his opposition to killing terrorists. Or those who advocate a pacifist defense policy. Ghandi chose his adversary well. How effective do you think his policy would have been against, let's say, the Taliban?
I do not know why you are saying I said the left would have done a worse job. I pointed out that you can trust a liberal because too many think like Berg and Moore. My concern is that the left might have done nothing. Nothing at all and let al qaida get stron`ger, larger, better trained and more capable. I agree that if a democrat president had been in charge, had he chosen to act he might not have done worse. I would just be concerned he would have done nothing to al qaida.
You have to be really ideologically driven to believe that "al qaeda" (ie militan muslims) aren't stronger and larger today, with many more sympathizers than five years ago. As good as it might have felt to go in and take out the Taliban, we simply have to deal with the proposition that we may have actually made things worse. Ultimately, controlling militant Islam is a policework and border control issue. It doesn't require galavanting around the world bringing 'democracy' to muslim countries.
Everyone seems to want to change the point I was making instead of addressing it. If memory serves al queda was creating biological WMD in afghanistan and attempting to acquire radiactive materials for dirty bombs. OBL had all sorts of protection under the soverign rule of the Taliban - his relatives. Al queda had traing camps and recruiting. Do you think it could have possble have been better to let them grow unobstructed after 911. Does anyone. It is now more of a border issue because we took out their country. Now their leaders apparently have to hide like rats. Had a Jimmy Carter or another Berg like thinker -- odds are we would be facing a much more capable enemy.