All of rukidding's Comments + Replies

Caledonian, joking in which way?

If you can't make the argument that the invasion is saving lives, and if you can't make the argument that it's costing lives, you don't belong in the argument.

As to the separate "cowardice" debate in this thread--relevant to bias because the label is being rejected because of political bias--let me ask this.

A man loses his job, can't find another, can't support his family, and so kills himself. Bravery?
A woman gets divorced, fears being alone, kills herself. Bravery?

Now, that's "personal" suicide, you'll be saying. Not "political" suicide. As if mass murder of civilians changes it from cowardice to bravery. As if killing yourself in the attack, so that you don't face the conse... (read more)

A few points.

I also, on 9/11, thought, and in fact could see, that we'd overreact. I was in a bar where the average opinion was expressed as "just bomb'em, just bomb'em to pieces." I was there saying "bomb who?" I would have said "bomb whom" but it wasn't that kind of bar.

But the point of my post is that no one can calculate the ramifications of actions, or inactions. Did Hiroshima/Nagasaki cost lives, or save them? That's one of the clearest examples of "saving by killing" I can imagine, and I mean saving Japan... (read more)

Cowerdly does not simply mean bad. Saying that sacraficing your life to achive a goal is cowardly is nonsense.

They suppressed there fears, that's what bravery means. You can be brave doing horrible things. Mao was brave, Hitler was (at times) brave. You are falling into the halo issue, saying that if an act was bad it must be bad in all ways.

Labels such as "freedom" and "enemy" are relative. Attributes such as "cowardice" and "courage" are likewise relative. If soldiers from "our side", fighting for "our cause", sacrificed themselves on suicide missions that inflicted serious harm to the "enemy", all in the name of our "freedom", we'd call them courageous. The "enemy" would call them cowards.

Were the 9/11 attackers cowards? Were they brave patriots? Such labels, formed in the biased eye of the observer, are meaningless.