The people who are defending the video pilots would likely not be doing so if they weren't Americans

howard112211

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Thu Apr-08-10 10:35 AM
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The people who are defending the video pilots would likely not be doing so if they weren't Americans

The bottom line is, a person can support troops all they want, but at the end of the day, the mindset is just as good as anyones who is supporting soldiers or irregular forces that are waging war against American soldiers. Which side one supports is ultimately an arbitrary choice. To claim that one choice is universal is akin to claiming that one Religion is better than the other, just because one happened to be born into this particular one.

People on this board are making excuses for what the pilots in the video did. Fair enough. I suppose this is a point of view that one can hold. Now let's assume however a foreign agent managed to kill a large number of American soldiers. By the same logic, the same people who are making excuses for the video pilots should remain silent, because this foreign agent would simply be doing his job as a soldier. And if this foreign agent "accidentally" killed a large number of American citizens in the process, then that would be unfortunate, but a person who claims to be supportive of soldiers would have no right to criticize this. I find it likely however, that it would be the same people that are the most apolgist now, who would be screaming the loudest. There is a screaming hypocricy to it.

I'm sure no one here has forgotten the "Highway of Death". Here is the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death

On the night of February 26–27, 1991 retreating Iraqi military personnel were attacked on Highway 80 by American aircraft and ground forces resulting in the destruction of 1800 to 2700 vehicles, resulting in the death of thousands, including a great number
of civilian refugees.

These were retreating soldiers. Where is the support for them, by the same people that claims to be supportive of soldiers doing their job? Absent of course. Instead, what we get is comments like this

General Norman Schwarzkopf commented in 1995:
“The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy.

Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught."

So they were all rapists, murderers and thugs. What a broad brush statement, made towards a group of people that were likely
drafted. One could make the same accusation against the Americans who are running the extra-judicial prison camp. However, there would be howling from the rooftops if one did so.

Personally, I hold the opinion that a person who has some knee-jerk reflexes to side with "his side" is not different from the racists who are saying that whites should stick together against blacks, or whatnot. Sure, support for a soldier doing their job is fine in theory. But one has to ask oneself whether one would have the same amount of respect for a soldier of some particular "other side", if they did their job to kill American soldiers well. If one cannot answer this question with "yes", then one is a hypocrite.

(If this gets me banned, then best wishes to the great number of nice people I have met here)