Response to :
War, Sacrifice, and the Media
I was reading this Philosophy blog from the Stanford University and it struck me that neither of these philosophers - being in California - had been in New York or Washington on September 11, 2001.
Well as a foreign visitor, attending a course at Johns Hopkins University, I was there on that fateful day. I have a picture of the Pentagon one day earlier. I watched the news, saw the attacks, and marvelled with our professors at the ultimate depravity of that fateful turning point. Lawrence Klein had flown in to teach us and he was the most upset of all. It was a horrible day filled with doubt, fear, panic, and confusion.
It is nice to sit back in comfort and consider the deeper meanings of things from a tempered viewpoint. But on that day in September it was no laughing matter and still isn't to be taken lightly.
People may look back and accuse George Bush of all sorts of buffonery. He deserves his share to be sure. And we can argue in circles about the reasons over Iraq but that attack on Afghanistan was in my view light compensation. Frankly, I think most of the world would have understood had the Pentagon nuked Kandhahar. It would have been a heinous act but no less fitting the depravity that started it.
What people who have not been in the military do not grasp, and perhaps now that Islamic State has begun the Caliphate they can see, is that the people we are fighting do not see this as a fair contest between two nations locked in a struggle. They see us as vermin for not heeding the will of Allah. We are nothing more than condemned men awaiting final judgment. Ignore all the failings and misdeeds. There is a reason that the struggle is better over there than over here.
We are locked in a mortal struggle that will continue until one side is victorious.
On this level, there is no moral high ground, there is no greater good, and the human rights of those savages that reject society should not be a consideration. There will be no quarter for you or your family if these psychopathic mindless religious zombies win.
Why do you think there was no surrender by the Taliban? Because they only need to bide their time and we leave. They are not stopping to reevaluate they are stopping to reload and make ready!
In this context, there is a reason why you are in fact in more danger than in 1911.
Example, in 1911 no Prussian farmer was inclined to board a cruiseliner, sail to New York, find his contacts, strap on a crude suicide belt, and walk into Grand Central Station and detonate himself crying, "God is great!". There was no collateral threat from splinter groups or insurgent cells. A Prussian farmer had no Youtube to learn how to attack mass gatherings. Or blow up tanks.
In this day and age it would be a local kid that falls for the nonsense that is jihad, goes to Syria and learns all he needs and then returns to carry out a lone wolf attack. Killing 500 people would not be unreasonable.
We must not allow ourselves to "humanize" an enemy that is essentially running on autopilot and is not moral. Rules of society should not hold against anti-society sociopaths.
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