I guess not -

[kyburg]

Do I need to see that video?

No. I know what it looks like.

Go read theferrett's take on it - verbose, to the point and perfectly spot-on.

My stance?

I knew this was coming last year. I knew it was coming, and it made me ill to think about it. Beheadings? Mass murder? Prison camps and abuses?

Yes. Because that's what wars do to human beings. It always has. That's why you avoid them. Honest.

Looking at the "frothing at the mouth, let's kill them all, yarryarryarrr" journals this morning, I note first that none of the writers in question have spent any significant time out of country.

Guys, I was in Switzerland in 1990. When there was still a Yugoslavia. I watched that war begin. On the news, in the papers. You got the news on where wars were being fought, who was doing the dirty that day - and what they did.

I watched them sit in their meadows full of wildflowers, cradling their guns and vowing they were ready to war with their own neighbors. But then, it was still only talk. That didn't last long.

Talking trash is about as deadly as depression. Nobody dies until someone picks up a gun and uses it. And then it's too late - and you can't go back.

You don't want Americans to die in Iraq? Well, what are they doing there in the first place? Don't tell me liberation and all that crap. Be a woman in Iraq right now - she'll tell you she far less "liberated" now that she's wearing a burqa and has to carry her water in buckets. When she can get it.

Look at how many other people aren't in Iraq anymore. They're not stupid - or cowards.

Don't ask the news. They're selling soap.

I never thought this was a good idea. I've been angry over a year now.

And now, we can't go back.

The only thing we can do now is stem the hemorrhage. Maybe.

Comments

[titos2cents.livejournal.com]

I note first that none of the writers in question have spent any significant time out of country.

I really wish that 6 months of living overseas ANYWHERE was a requirement for citizenship sometimes. We Americans have a very narrow view of the world outside our borders, and don't understand the rest of the global society.

It is so hard for some people to understand that we are not alone, that those outside our little isolated environments outnumber us and that their opinions do matter. Six billion people aren't American - true shock and awe.

Thank you

[turandot.livejournal.com]

As I said a while back, a lot of US newsmedia outlets aren't exactly objective, even liberal ones. There is such a polarization in US media that it has almost crippled any sense of perspective.

I've heard the media call this killing a "symbolic act" and then move on to other news. While it might be such (for in many religions the belief that the dead can only rest when intact, not mutilated, still remains), it's also a life that has been taken, one of many, on both sides.

What must it be like, I wonder, for anyone who has lost a loved one in this war, to hear barely an acknowledgement of their deaths, but rather just empty or ominous talk of retaliation? As if that would ever bring back the dead.

[lorriejharris.livejournal.com]

I've been ill since 9/11 and the talk of retaliation began. I've been ill over at the garbage being spewed about us being in Iraq is the "war on Terror". I'm ill at all the misinformation.

And I'm ill at all the hatred and brutality being done.

I just pray to whatever higher power is willing to listen, that it comes to an end, soon. No one is going to win this. All we can hope for, now, is to pull out, and limp home before someone gets pissed enough to lob a big bomb in either direction.

[fallofrain.livejournal.com]

That's going to leave me thoughtful for awhile.