You didn’t say “kill” civilians, squirbel, you said “slaughter.” Two very different words. It is a soldier’s job to kill, when required. Slaughter is something else entirely. I return to my prior position. You should be ashamed to suggest that your neighbors are committing atrocities. I suggest you apologize here.
Oh, you get automatic exceptions when you speak? You can just self-absolve yourself of all liability for your word choices? Don’t be coming here and thinking you can use charged language, which is provably false, not back it up with anything, no sources, not even statistics, and get away with it. You are intellectually and academically dishonest. Further, you are wrong, and you know you are wrong.
Hmmm. . . one might suggest I should be insulted by your comments about my teaching, but since you have no idea about my teaching, I will let it go as a feeble attempt to attack me rather than restore your own credibility. I am attacking what you say, not you. Learn the difference. I suggest, squirbel, you examine my body of posts here objectively. My students gain the benefit of thoughful, reasoned, AND FACTUALLY SUPPORTED argument. You are just repeating what you have been told is politically correct. I point you to my response to you on another thread, where you blindly asserted as “conventional wisdom” a statement that is upon the slightest due diligence, OR BY JUST BEING CURRENT WITH REAL NEWS SOURCES, provably false. You obviously are a creature of whatever pundit currently has your ear. I suggest you learn to look up primary sources yourself, rather than relying on what some news outlet is saying.
Perhaps you missed many of the stories about soldiers being accused of atrocities that were later dismissed because on investigation they were untrue. You may have missed them because the accusations are on page 1, the dismissals on page 30.
Squirbel, you still have no facts. Here and elsewhere, you rely on “conventional wisdom,” whereas I have bothered to find credible sources. I will rely on the other users as to which posts have greater credibility, but you DON’T get to claim an automatic exemption. Talk about weak rhetoric. You wouldn’t survive my classroom with that.
Perhaps most offensive about your post is that you still, although grudgingly stating “I don’t mind being wrong,” STILL slander our military service. You still use phrases like “each of our warriors suffered in having to kill civilians.” Either you are completely careless in how you use words (which I suspect, because you evidently need an “automatic exception”) or you STILL are trying to leave an untrue perception in the minds of readers.
You are right, America DOES have a track record in war. You are completely wrong about what it is. We do NOT commit atrocities as part of our routine actions, as opposed to, say, Chinese, Soviet and Japanese armed forces have done. We investigate complaints, and when we determine a soldier has committed atrocities, they are severely punished. Our media constantly monitors our conduct, our society has free and open debate. Generals are fired, soldiers do life sentences.
Yes, America has a track record. Despite our soldiers being repeatedly tortured by the Japanese as a routine matter, we rebuilt Japan and protect it today. We rebuilt Germany. We permitted the countries we liberated in WWII to determine their own governance, the Soviets did not. Perhaps the fastest way to develop a country’s infrastructure is to lose to our military, because we rebuild what we have destroyed. We now try harder than any other military in history to reduce collateral damage, spending additional millions of dollars and risking our lives to avoid civilian deaths whenever possible.
You have a completely erroneous view of slaughter if you think that is what we are doing in Iraq. It is within our power, and would have been easier, to simply level the country and install a puppet government. We have not done that. As you know, because I provided you the information, we are permitting countries that opposed the deposing of Hussein to get valuable oil business at the expense of our own country’s businesses, because we have not exerted undue influence on Iraqi business.
Our country has been as careful as possible in this war. You can disagree about why we’re there, or how long we should stay, but to accuse our soldiers of slaughter is shameful. You are correct, our boys don’t want to be murderers, and they are not. You appear to prefer a very few anecdotes about atrocities. Perhaps you have failed to see where several of these “soldier’s accounts” have been proven to be complete fabrications.
Perhaps you failed to notice many of these “anecdotes” you evidently rely upon are outright lies. Even some of the most vehement anti-Iraq War organizations, ONCE THEY HAVE BEEN CONFRONTED WITH THE TRUTH, have had to admit they are relying upon false statements. PEOPLE LIE. Just one example of these anecdotes you relish because they support what you WANT to believe:
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/05/18/breaking-anti-war-fraudster-jesse-macbeth-arrestedupdated-with-statement-from-va-whistleblower/
Yes, indeed, some people want to believe something so badly, want to accuse our soldiers of atrocities so badly, that they will commit a felony by forging documents. And as we know from the Bush AWOL forgeries, the media will go ahead and report based on documents that are obvious forgeries. You state “Unlike you, I have a snide distrust for statistics.” Unlike me? I spent most of my prior post attacking the civilian body count in Iraq. Clearly I distrust statistics as well. Unlike YOU, I look for the facts underlying the statistics.
I really doubt, squirbel, you analyze anything. You certainly don’t bother to provide any of your sources here. You say “My statement is based on a broad array of accounts,” but can’t seem to come up with them. You want to reserve “automatic exceptions” for yourself. You have zero credibility. To use a sports analogy, don’t be bringing that trash talk unless you got game.
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