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The New Transparency of War and Lethality of Hatred
Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Wright says that if you had asked him a few days ago — before news broke that American soldiers had urinated on Taliban corpses — if such a thing were possible, he would have said 'probably.' After all if you send 'young people into combat, people whose job is to kill the enemy and who watch as their friends are killed and maimed by the enemy, ... the chances are that signs of disrespect for the enemy will surface — and that every once in a while those signs will assume grotesque form.' War, presumably, has always been like this, but something has changed that amounts to a powerful new argument against starting wars in the first place. First, there's the new transparency of war as battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details, so 'it's just a matter of time before some outrageous image goes viral — pictures from Abu Ghraib, video from Afghanistan,' that will make you and your soldiers more hated by the enemy than ever. The second big change is that hatred is now a more dangerous thing. 'New information technologies make it easier for people who share a hatred to organize around it,' writes Wright. 'And once hateful groups are organized, they stand a better chance than a few decades ago of getting their hands on massively lethal technologies.' It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you. 'I think we should reflect on that before we start another war.'"
No, the problem is our enemies do not fear us. We obsess and worry about whether our enemies like us. We allow our enemies to put propaganda in our legacy media. They don't.
If they truly feared us they wouldn't do the crap they do. Do ya think they would behead our people, desecrate their corpses, etc. if they feared us? Would they blow up a block of downtown NYC if they feared us? If they really though we would get seriously pissed off and go Add Coulter on their primitive asses and "Bomb their cities, kill their leaders and convert them to christianity." The answer is obvious.
Democrat delenda est
Given the reports of Christian fundamentalism in the American military I would have to wonder whether this was a religious motive behind the action by these marines.
You may actually be the dumbest person I've ever seen post here. Please take you fanatic, jingoistic hatred for any political stance that you disagree with and post it to Fox News. They welcome loud mouth bigots with open arms...you may even get you own talk show out of it!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
You have no idea what i think should happen to them. Peeing on them after they were dead is pretty tame.
People like you, who apparently are too weak to do what is needed is why we are in the mess we are today.
---- Booth was a patriot ----