My thoughts on stuff....heck, it may even turn into a rant, who knows....
When I am looking at a situation that I have emotions tied up in, I like to draw an analogy to another similar situation that I do not have emotions tied up in so that I can have a more objective view. Gonna try that with the approach that the U.S. takes with our military reaction to the attacks two weeks ago.
I believe that something has to be done militarily, the big question is the "collateral damage". I am all for killing actual terrorists as well as anyone who knowingly supports the terrorist activities. My motivation isn't about revenge or retribution, it is simply about removing a threat to the personal well being of me and my loved ones. I don't think that rehabilitation is possible and incarceration invites further acts of terrorism to gain the freedom of their compatriots.
But how do we do this without killing innocent people? or if we do kill innocent people, in which circumstances is it acceptable? The question to me becomes "at what point is it the innocent person's responsibility to look out for their own well being"? At what point do they need to take responsibility for removing themselves from harm's way?
The terrorists have declared war on the people of the U.S., and we have declared war on the terrorists. We are a pretty well defined group where our enemy is a bit harder to identify from other people who look like them and live in the same areas that they do. How do we differentiate between the bad guys and the good guys (or at least "not-bad" guys).
And I think it goes back to an obligation on our part to declare war on "somebody". Once we do that, anybody who doesn't want to be the target of the military response has the responsibility to get the hell out of the way.
Now to my example:
Let's go to a riot in the streets of L.A.....Florence and Normandy. There were a bunch of people that got attacked there who were in essence "innocent" because they 1. had done nothing wrong and 2. didn't know that war had been declared. But if I was watching the news and saw Reginald Denny get beaten with a brick and then went down to the corner of Florence and Normandy to check out the action, though I may still be innocent by way of the fact that I have done nothing wrong, who would say anything but "what the hell did you expect, you went into a declared war zone?".
To further the analogy....Let's say that the cops decide to break up the riot, so they bring in a bunch of cops on horses and cops in riot gear and they move en masse into the area. Now, if you go back to the videos of Florence and Normandy, you can see that there are a lot of onlookers who are not doing anything wrong. There are even some people who are trying to do good things like save people who have been hurt. So keep them in the picture when our hypothetical riot squad comes marching in. They are declaring that intersection to be a war zone by their very presence. They are saying "disburse or get your head smacked with a billy club, lungs filled with mace and body pummelled with rubber bullets". They aren't going to try and make the determination that you are a good guy or bad guy. If you stand there and do nothing, you are going to get your head cracked just as meaningfully as the guy who throws the brick at the cop. If you are a good guy, at this point, you have a responsibility to get yourself out of harm's way or suffer the same consequences as the bad guys. |
