Equitist wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 3:28pm:

"War on terror" is not an oxymoron... It's another way of saying "fighting fire with fire" and while that might be ironic, it ain't oymoronic... As opposed to, say, "warriors for peace burning down the village in order to save it."... Which is what the US ended up doing to Iraq... well... they burnt it down, anyway... The chances of its razing being its salvation... Pretty slim.

On the Iraq catastrophe, I was watching a recent video of Canon Andrew White... A man clearly being driven into madness by his enduring hope for Iraq and his unfailing respect for the Iraqi people in the face of the country's unprecedented destruction.

It is never pointless to stand up to oppression and brutality.  Disbursement of resources, and prioritisation though, are other matters.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 9:56am:

True, but let's hope our coalition of the peacemakers don't inflict the same fate as has been imposed on Iraq - Burning down the village in order to save it.

Which is what? Killing them all?

How do we know which ones are the enemy and which ones are civilians?

Soren wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 8:32pm:


Ah - I see you were on the advisory board for the Vietnam war too, dear. Of course, the carpet bombing there went much further. The enemy were hiding in Cambodia and Laos, and would have been sharpening their bamboo spikes in China too, if the Chinese didn't have all those nasty nukes and a million soldiers to back them up against the US's shag piles. I guess we can't carpet bomb everywhere...

Or can we?

Can I ask though, old boy, apart from assisting the shareholders of companies like Lockhead Martin, what purpose does carpet bombing serve again?

Apart from destroying villages and crops and jungles and fostering groups like the Khmer Rouge, or encouraging the "enemy" to work in ingenious underground tunnels, or creating a resistance that will, as history has shown, become harder and stronger and more mean when you eventually leave a country, say, in 2011?

Don't get me wrong. I love a good carpet bombing as much as the next person. Guernica is one of my favourite paintings of all time. I love the sheer beauty of mass aerial destruction, the dazzling display of technological supremacy, the sight of all those backward, tinted peasants running into the jungle and, just as they get there, being felled by machine gun fire.

I like to watch it on TV.

But apart from the all the pleasure we receive from carpet bombing, what purpose does it actually serve?

Big Donger wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 11:12pm:


It's educational.