Up To That Moment I Thought We Were Speaking The Same Language

[selenite0]

[I]t may be necessary to be proactive about the enemies of civilization. I don't have anything against war, providing nobody gets hurt.

Mike Deering - comment on Responsible Nanotechnology blog

Comments

nobody

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

This is the situation in which only friends, neighbors, family and fellow citizens count. "Us", in other words.

"We" can go to war from 3 miles up, drop bombs, destroy infrastucture, sometimes make a tiny little mistake and kill a few people at a wedding, a neutral embassy, that sort of thing. "We" launch cruise missiles from miles offshore. "We" can, thereby, "put pressure" on those who fail to embrace the modern progressive enlightened transnational rule of law. Under that pressure, some of "them" may get "hurt", but that doesn't count. That kind of war, as in Kosovo, or strikes against Iraq in the (late) 1990's, or even against Libya -- that may be necessary, sometimes, and can be supported. "Nobody" gets "hurt".

On the other hand, if an eeevvill illegitimate dictator accidentally comes to power in the United States and should happen to order "our" troops to put "boots on the ground" on the sovereign soil of some "neighboring" nation, that is likely to provoke retaliation. "We" -- that is to say, "our guys" --will get shot at, and some of "us" might even "get hurt". Worse, "our guys" ( which now are sort of a new kind of "they") may, you know, actually see the faces of some of the people they've been sent to kill, which will unavoidably cause severe mental, emotional, and even -- if you subscribe to such concepts -- spiritual damage, from which they can never recover. THAT means "somebody" DOES "get hurt" and so would be so wrong "we" would HAVE to protest against to protect "both sides" -- the "them" who are "our troops" (whom we ALWAYS support, even when we spit upon them and yell babykiller! ; and the "them" who are the troops of our neighboring nation, with whom we would be at peace (or bombing from 3 miles up) except for the incompetence, religious delusions, and megalomaniacal stupidity of accidental dictators.

I'm sorry this all has to be spelled out for you in such detail, but it's your own fault but being so conservative, I mean stupid, which is really the same thing, isn't it?