Antlurz ~
You ask what the difference is? Might it not be "who started what" as opposed to who is going to finish it?
If only it were that simple!
See, here's the problem: America
is better than this.
We don't drag hacked-up pieces of people's dead bodies through the streets, tearing off souvenir body parts. We don't desecrate dead bodies. That's not the way we do things.
There's a reason we don't do things that way, and it isn't because we don't sometimes feel like it (see the posts earlier in this thread for a good example). Everyone in the whole world sometimes has the urge (as Mencken pointed out) to hoist the black flag and commence slitting throats. So it is not a lack of desire.
Nor is it a lack of
power. Hey, we're
Americans. The world's superpower, right? We can do anything we durn well want to do, and the rest of the world really can't stop it. The best they can do is to whine about it over their cheese-tasting parties at UN conventions, and pass endless resolutions that have no power over us whatsoever. It isn't as though world opinion ever has or ever will hold us back from doing whatever we really want to do.
It isn't sheer wussiness, as some would like to claim. The fact is, back when Men Were Really Men, we
still didn't do things like this. We didn't bash the brains out of other people's babies or urge our soldiers to do so on our behalf. We dropped bombs on civilian populations who were clustered around military objectives, but we followed it up with food, medical supplies, and humanitarian relief. We treated our prisoners of war with as much mercy and compassion as we were able, and sent them home healthier than they came to us.
That is the proud record we share as Americans, a record few countries in the world can equal and none can better.
Of course, we messed up sometimes. Ask the villagers in Mai Lai what atrocities Americans are capable of! But those soldiers weren't lauded for their horrific acts; they were
rightly condemned for going beyond the pale.
So why don't Americans do things like this? Why shouldn't we retaliate in kind? Why shouldn't we desecrate the bodies of the killers we kill? Why shouldn't we raze entire cities to pay for the actions of a few?
Because we're Americans, that's why not. Our heritage is worth more than that and our freedom is more precious than that. We're the Last Best Hope for human rights on this planet (
who is doing better -- and which country inspires their attempts?). If the candle goes out here, it goes out everywhere, and for a long time to come.
It isn't enough to say, like a five year old caught giving his brother a bloody nose, "He started it!" It doesn't
matter who started it. We're civilized, and we'll stay that way. We're human beings, not animals, and we won't fight like animals. We'll fight like men, and die like men if we must. But we won't stoop to that level.
So hunt down and kill the perpetrators. Wipe them out without mercy, without pity, and without remorse. But do not desecrate their bodies, do not slay their children, do not rape their women or pillage their homes. This isn't for their sake, but for ours. Because we're better than that. We're Americans, and we'll live and die by what America stands for.
pax
And man, whose heav’n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn,—
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn! -- Robert Burns
