Good thing he's in Russia

[Star]

What a load of Muslim-inspired propaganda. Yeah, if the Palestinians were real lucky they could live in a real democracy like the one in Saudi Arabia....or Iraq....or Syria...or Egypt....or Iran.....or Libya....or Sudan. Yeah those fun-loving Muslims just create paradise where ever they are in control.

John S:

I couldn't have said it better! You go boy!

[Catsmeow]

You are making assumptions that Levi is one of "us".

[Guest Levi]

What a load of Muslim-inspired propaganda. Yeah, if the Palestinians were real lucky they could live in a real democracy like the one in Saudi Arabia....or Iraq....or Syria...or Egypt....or Iran.....or Libya....or Sudan. Yeah those fun-loving Muslims just create paradise where ever they are in control.

John S:

I couldn't have said it better! You go boy!

[Catsmeow]

You love to point out their evil nature but fail to see or admit to the wickedness of America and Israel which is very well documented.

Levi,

Excuse me...just a moment. Let me get this right...you think I'm excusing the sins of man in general? No, I plead the blood of Jesus Christ over the sins of man in general...that means the Blood of Jesus over the Christians, the Jews and anybody who's willing to accept God's grace. We're all sinners but that's not even the issue.

We aren't going around bombing mosques and murdering thousands of innocent civilians, and then laughing and dancing in the streets like the Palestinians did on television, after September 11th. They got a big thrill at seeing thousands of innocents civilians die; "Allah" got his revenge upon us, (a quote from Osama Bin Laden) ... have you bothered to read what their clerics think of us? We're good for slaves or to simply kill off...that's it. Just do the homework.

I promise you I have...my computer's gotten workout and I've researched the countless articles about what the Muslims think about Americans. I, for one, don't think I have a right to go and bomb innocent civilians and do suicide attacks or topple down buildings with hundreds of people in them...get it?

No one is without sin, (Jesus pointed that one out)   but when when a whole religious sect claims that their holy book, (Koran) says it's perfectly OK to kill off the "infidels" (that includes Christians and Jews, by the way)...well, you figure it out.

[Guest Levi]

You didn't answer my question. Maybe you aren't aware of the sins of your government but I assure you, America has comitted horrible crimes against innocents. Just look at the illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia that killed over 500,000 people in a small space of time. It was done secretly, because it was completely illegal.There was no war declaration against Cambodia and the American public wasn't even told. Bomber pilots were given co ordinates inside Vietnam and then given new co ordinates en route and they didn't even know they were bombing the wrong place. 500,000 people is an awful lot of people, most of whom were innocent. As a result of this, Pol Pot was able to take over the country. There has been some American glee over the bombing of Afghanistan in which over a thousand innocent people were killed, mosques were bombed there etc, and I still remember Congress having a vigil in which they were using verses to suggest that God would give America victory over it's enemies. I still remember how during Iraq's retreat from Kuwait there was a long convoy of vehicles going through the desert completely in the open and unprotected and threatening no one. America planes swooped down and fire bombed them mercilessly and killed them all and there were Iraqi civilians in the convoy who had been in Kuwait but were afraid to stay. It is estimated that over 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of American led UN sanctions because of shortage of medical supplies and food. The total is 1 to 1.5 million people. Americans glory over this and as if the country hasn't suffered enough, now they want to pre emptively attack because of what they imagine Saddam MIGHT do. Of course that's a smoke screen for the real agenda which is oil, but no doubt Americans will gloat over their success in crushing an already weak and destabilized country that has suffered greatly. Then there is Vietnam and the "free fire zones", napalm, agent orange, then there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, supporting brutal rebels in Central and South America, and all kinds of brutal dictatorships that favoured American business, etc,etc, etc. Now Bush is funding, supporting and arming a completely brutal assault and crushing of the already poor and defensless Palestinians. America and it's Jews and Christians are an extremely violent and brutal lot who have waged more war on the poor and weak peoples of the earth than anybody and the length and depth of their crimes are still being uncovered while some are hidden and may never fully be known. A few suicide bombers are nothing compared to the scope and scale of America's crimes.

[Guest Levi]

Empathy and the Logic of Murder

by MICHAEL ORTIZ HILL

The genius of the American Constitution is that it encoded a profound understanding of fundamental human equality into a viable way for a new country to understand itself and the world. Among equals nothing should impede life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The genius of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition is that it places the matter of equality at the beginning: Genesis. Into his image created he <them.Whatever> the temptations of hierarchy, equality is of our very being. It is irrefutable because it bears the mark of Divine fiat.

We hold these truths to be self-evident. Whether one is religiously inclined or a secular humanist, most would agree that the belief in equality is the quintessential American value without which the rest is incoherent. The insistence on it is in our bones and when we veer from its clarity we become a confused and aimless people.

In the spirit of equality and in a confused and aimless time, I suggest we adopt the World Trade Center as a standard of measurement. 2,795 people died in the World Trade Center. On television we watched people leap from the burning towers. Ash and the smell of burnt flesh lingered for months over the city. And around the gash in Manhattan, loved ones began making altars to the dead so when pilgrims arrive they grieve not only the unfathomable but this son, this mother or friend. Not mass death: A nation continues to grieve for each story cut short.

It is precisely this welter of individuality that makes the World Trade Center a useful standard with which to invoke empathy for the innocent dead in a death-dealing era.

To deprive the innocent dead of faces is to concede to the logic of murder. What if, in the name of the equality we hold so dear we were to risk that leap of faith into the obvious that the innocent death of, say, an Iraqi is in every respect equal to the innocent death of an American? What if instead of an eye for an eye we live from our values: for every I an I. The World Trade Center offers a standard based on ethics and empathy in a world where conflicting parties are eager to make civilians bleed. Until a single standard for the value of human life is honored we will forever be creating enemies and provoking them.

The twentieth century completely transformed the nature of war. At the beginning of the century ten percent of war dead were civilians. World War II was a spasm of violence that delivered the world into a routine heartlessness: ninety percent of the deaths were noncombatants. Human beings have maintained that quota ever since.

It must be remembered that this was fully a collective psychosis. During the Good War, long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. systematically bombed civilians, 100,000 dying within six hours during the firebombing of Tokyo. In 1937 the Japanese killed 300,000 people during the Rape of Nanking. In February of 1942 bombing cities became official British policy, a*oeto destroy the morale of the enemy civilian population and, in particular the industrial workers. A few months later, hundred of German bombers killed 40,000 in a single raid on Stalingrad.

The epic poetry of war and its underlying world of ethics that has persisted since the Iron Age has been made obsolete by sheer technological brutality. The cold profanity of this is illustrated by the celebration of the smart bombs during the Gulf War. In the ten days of the war, 148 American soldiers died and 100,000 Iraqi. Nowhere did Homer praise the ancient equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

September 11th placed American into the terrified recognition of what most of the world has known for decades: not only are civilians not spare but rather often they are singled out. This delivers us to an ethical geography very different from the one we lived in before. Because our belief in equality will always be the North Star of any moral reckoning the World Trade Center standard can help us find our way through a strange and dangerous land.

Lets apply it first and foremost to the current situation with Iraqi, this particular historical moment that teeters on the edge. I suppose one could go way back to when the West created Iraq after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Or one could go to the bloodbath that followed the CIA engineered coup in 1963 that installed the Baath Regime that Bush is eager to change. Perhaps one could apply the WTC standard to Saddam-the-ally who we armed against Iran (even as the Reagan administration secretly armed Iran against Iraq). But all of this really speaks only of the decadent state of what was once called the art of war. It doesnt speak of the killing of civilians the way September 11th does. Better to look to the brief slice of history in which we have tortured the Iraqi people since the end of the Gulf war.

By way of weekly bombings these last twelve years, by way of the ruination of sewage systems and water treatment plants, by way of the six fold increase of leukemia in a county covered with depleted uranium, in a hundred ways vicious and bureaucratic, an estimated 1,200,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed, half of them children and each as fully innocent as anyone who lost their lives on September 11th. Roughly five percent of the population.

One can see the possibilities of the WTC standard. That incomprehensible number a*" 1,200,00 is 431 World Trade Centers. But given that Iraq has about a twelfth the population of America it may be more accurate to multiply this figure proportionally. 5,041 World Trade Centers means the equivalent of one September 11th every eighteen hours for the last twelve years.

Remember the reliability of the WTC standard relies on the courage to risk empathy in a bloody time otherwise the numbers grow cold quickly. Not death but a welter of individuals: for every I an I. For every altar limning Ground Zero the grave of a child in Baghdad, her mother wailing, inconsolable.

Multiply that by 5,041 and one sees that Iraq is a country saturated in a grief that one hopes America never knows. The WTC standard makes abundantly clear that having visited mass destruction on the people of Iraq the United States is singularly unqualified to exact what will surely be a massively destructive war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. It becomes clear also that, given recent history, not a few Iraqis are likely to see Saddam Hussein as the lesser of two evils should America attack.

[Star]

Levi:  You are giving out the talking points that Muslims are giving out to their own.  Funny thing, but when you mentioned the "sins" of the United States (and I am not saying there aren't any, I just find it interesting what you deem "sin"), you left out a very important recent happening that only MUSLIMS rejoice over.  Why is it that you fail to mention all of the military might that the US showed in favour of Muslims countries as "sins"?  Uh-huh.....

[Lanakila]

You might want to get a little more recent on the sins of America too, Levi. Many of us weren't even born during WW2, and some of us were little kids during Vietnam. For goodness sake, America voted for Clinton after they knew about Monica. I think that is a great sin and recent, but of course it doesn't push your adgenda.

[Catsmeow]

You didn't answer my question. Maybe you aren't aware of the sins of your government but I assure you, America has comitted horrible crimes against innocents.

Levi:

I find it interesting that you refer to it as "my government". Star had mentioned previously that I was assuming that you were one of "us". Now, since you refer to this government as my government or let's take it a step further...my country - I think it's safe to assume you are NOT an American.

Look, first off...if you want to throw stones...look and see what OUR God...the Lord Jesus Christ says about throwing stones. If you or your people, (whoever they are) are sinless and have done no wrong...then by all means...knock yourself out. THROW STONES!

I sorta doubt you can say that and maintain a speck of credibility. We all know that all have sinned...that means you, me...and anyone who reads this. So, now that we've established that, let's go a step further and say that the forces of evil, (Satan, if you will) has infiltrated each and every government on the earth and that each one is a "pawn" of some higher decision making body that manipulates kings, presidents, and whole nations at a whim. Their aim: to turn us all in on each other. What better way to wipe out civilization that to turn people in on themselves.

Look, Levi...they use us all as pawns. Don't you get it. If you cut through all the smoke and mirrors they're using...(the "powers that be"...the ones I believe to be the real "beast" in the book of Revelation"), you'll see that all they have to do is cry, "Jihad!" or "Terrorist" or "Fundamentalist" or "Homophobe" or some other label, (the list is a mile long) and create wars and mini wars and all kinds of dissentions.

Some people write into these boards  - their sole aim is to cause dissention and create turmoil. They get off on that kind of thing.

Since you refer to it as "our" government, (as opposed to your government), why don't you see that we're probably all playing into their hands like a bunch of pawns on a chessboard?  

[Guest Levi]

Why is it that you fail to mention all of the military might that the US showed in favour of Muslims countries as "sins"?