Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (134685)	5/28/2004 12:57:33 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So you'd appreciate and admire a man who would kill his own daughter, therefore depriving her of basic human rights, yet still prosecute him for murder?...So I guess I have to ask if you appreciate and admire those soldiers who committed those abuses in Abu Ghraib, based upon their following their conscience and belief systems?...And what right do you have to coerce people into obeying your personal laws of civilization when honor killing is clearly within the permits of their culture? Nuances Hawk, nuances. You just don't see them, do you? If you really want to get outraged I'll make it even more clear; I admire the courage of those that flew planes into the towers even though I detest their values and their disregard for the lives of the innocent they murdered. If they had survived I'd have been cheerleading their execution but I'd have disagreed with anyone that said they were cowards. In that same sense I wouldn't have admired the hypothetical Arab "honor killer" for the murder of his daughter but I would have recognized that he was a man that honored his convictions and, no matter how misguided, did what his conscience required of him. Did you forget the "honor" given one of our own biblical figures who was prepared to sacrifice his own son? I bet you did. As far as those who "committed the abuses in Abu Ghraib," what makes you think those were acts of "conscience and belief systems?" Maybe they were at the Rumsfeld level but it seems to me that there wasn't a lot of "patriotism made me do it" at the lowest levels. If they were, however, I'd have to say once again that I admired their courage in following their convictions and then I'd have cheered their punishment because we can't allow such wholesale torture to become an accepted policy in the treatment of prisoners of war. You see Hawk one of the principles of civilization is that we cannot allow each individual to follow his own contrary laws, even when those contrary laws are based upon the genuine and well considered beliefs of that individual. That doesn't mean that each of us should never exercise our option of breaking the law when our conscience requires that we do so. In the final analysis society is well served by a thinking, independent public that is willing, as a last resort, to disobey rules or the particular application of rules in ways that are perceived as unjust or unfair. Pesky shades of gray and nuances; don't you just hate that?