Mahir Ali: Collateral damage in war on quails (Cheney hit)

[Bhaisahab]

This guy has it spot on. I can never understand the brutality of hunting for leisure, and when it is a heartless war hawk doing the hunting, the brutality is taken to another plane altogether.

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Collateral damage in war on quails
By Mahir Ali
http://www.dawn.com/2006/02/22/ed.htm#4 (Pakistani national newspaper)

AT LEAST it is out in the open. Everyone now knows what the vice-president of the United States enjoys doing for rest and recreation. He likes to shoot defenceless little birds. And sometimes, just sometimes — okay, let’s not be unfair, it’s only once in a while — he aims for elderly lawyers.

The violent pastime conforms to what is known of this inveterate hawk’s character. Unlike many other Americans of his generation, Dick Cheney has no combat experience because he had “other priorities than military service” during the period of US aggression against Vietnam. Unlike Bill Clinton, Cheney didn’t dodge the draft because he opposed the war: he was quite happy for it to be fought, as long as others did the fighting.

His philosophical position evidently remains unchanged. He is remarkably enthusiastic about young American men and women risking their lives in the Iraqi quagmire, for all the wrong reasons. He personally prefers to go after easier quarries. Ducks and quails, unlike Iraqi insurgents, don’t fight back. And hardly anyone objects to canine involvement in going after the prey.

Besides, there appears to be little skill involved in the sorts of hunts Cheney participates in. For instance, an account of a Cheney-led pheasant shoot in Pennsylvania two years ago says that when the shooting party arrived, gamekeepers released 500 pen-raised pheasants from their cages. Not long afterwards, 417 of the birds lay dead; 70 of the kills were attributed to the vice-president. After lunch, it was the turn of mallard ducks to face the wrath of the gunmen.

Frequent participation in “canned hunting” expeditions — so called because the birds or beasts in question have little chance of escape — may explain why Cheney finds it hard to understand the inability of tens of thousands of heavily-armed American troops to “pacify” Iraq. Had he spent some time in Vietnam, he may have acquired a sharper appreciation of how foreign military occupation motivates those at the receiving end to resist and retaliate.


(continued at link above)

[Demeter]

1. The Truth Hurts

Don't bite that tongue curled up in your cheek, now.