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quote:More along the lines of "if you don't stop hitting my wife, I will shoot you". Guy keeps beating her. "I'm warning you. Hit her again and I will shoot you." Guy keeps swinging. Guy gets shot.
That's a fascinating analogy, actually. Because it displays exactly the kind of disparity of response which is noticeable in Afghanistan (and by the way I did think that the 'the Afghanistan' slip was interesting).
You could punch the guy. You could choke him out. You could take your wife, leave, and call the cops. But no. You're going to shoot him.
Why? I would suggest because you're not responding to the attack, you're responding to the moral outrage the attack engenders in you.
How dare this guy hit your wife? How dare he fuck with you in this way? You've got a gun. You're the biggest guy on the block...
You don't want to know, for one second, why this guy's hitting your wife. Did she hit his wife? Did she steal from his house? All that matters is that she's your wife and she got hit. History starts there.
So you shoot this guy, and he maybe dies. He's got brothers and sons and a wife of his own, and now they're furious with you. That's okay because you're stronger than them, too. Although you may take some flesh wounds along the way. But you know what? Maybe it would have been smarter to hit the guy and call the police.
Trouble is, you're a bit worried that if the police come by, you might have some explaining to do about some of the stuff goes on in your house. You don't really want people to get in the habit of thinking too much about the rule of law. And you really don't want the Boys In Blue to go on a recruiting spree, which is one of the reasons you never quite get around to paying your taxes...
The 11th September was the most horrible single day the developed world has seen since the Second World War. That does not make what happened after it much better. Afghan refugees streaming over the borders, never having seen a skyscraper, half of them not knowing why their country was being raised to the ground...again...; the biggest and most powerful country in the world shattering the smallest; the US news agencies refusing to show Afghan casualties because it was not 'appropriate'; Israel, with US support, trampling the peace treaties of recent years; the UN sidelined; the Arab monarchies strengthened by their support for and from the US, hated by their people, opposed (rightly) by increasingly popular fundamentalist muslims within, who identify the monarchic oppressors with their sponsors in Washington; India and Pakistan in a pissing contest, again; the US demonstrating once again that it requires the rest of the world to play by the rules it will not obey itself.
How is all this a good thing? Except that it satisfied the moral outrage you felt when you saw your wife get hit? Is this what all the people who died trying to fight the fires and save the victims of the twin towers deserve? More conflict? Or an answer, a solution which is fair as well as just and stern, which would demonstrate that the most powerful nation on Earth is also among the wisest?
[ 19-02-2002: Message edited by: Nick ] |
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