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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Bilow who wrote (124452)	2/10/2004 6:28:42 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 281500

Also how many of those killed are civilians and how many are hard-line baathists or fanatical terrorists?" It is a universal custom of the human species for occupying powers to declare anyone they kill to be fanatical terrorists. True, but that statement neither answers my question, or changes the fact that many of the people we have killed in Iraq are indeed hard-line baathists or fanatical terrorists. There death is not a wonderful thing but killing members of these specific groups is likely to reduce human suffering, and yes that is including their own suffering in the balance I am not calling them "something less then human". You missed the point of the whole calculation. Most people do the calculation you have done (which is awful enough) that is, from the point of view of those who are killed. My calculation was instead made from the point of view of our soldiers, those who must do the killing. No I did not miss the point I directly addressed it and agreed that the killing is not a good thing for the killed or the killers. But your whole calculation had little or nothing to do with this point. If the number of American soldiers in Iraq and the number of Iraqi's killed stayed the same but the population of the US changed your numbers would also change, even though the chance that an American soldier would have personally killed and Iraqi would not have changed. To point out how silly your calculation was I made a similar calculation for the DC police force. I get a similar large number when I multiply the number of people killed per cop by the entire population of the US, but that calculation like yours does not have any real point behind it. I'm going to guess that you've never killed anyone, and so do not understand the horror of the experience. No I haven't killed anyone, but I think I have as much understanding of the horror as someone who has not killed someone or watched someone violently killed. I'm going to guess that you didn't read through to the end of my post carefully before your replied. At the end of the post I directly agreed with your point that - "Killing is not a good thing to have to be a part of. The sacrifices of our soldiers are more than to just their own KIA and WIA. They must also sacrifice by being in a position where they are forced to kill other men." I am not and was not attacking that point as wrong. I think it is true and I think those 3 sentences state the point well. I am rather saying that the calculations made before the direct statement are silly and meaningless and for some people they might be seriously misleading. Tim

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