I hope and pray we don't get hit again, like we did on September 11. Even one life lost to the violence of terrorism is too much. If I somehow knew an attack was coming, I wouldn't pause for a second to report it in order to prevent it from occuring.
| The guy's a lib, so there's got to be a "but..." |
But on the other hand, I remind myself that without the ultimate sacrifice paid by 400,000 U.S. soldiers in World War II, tyranny could well have an iron grip on the world, and even on this nation. If the Nazis had prevailed, tens, if not hundreds of millions more would have been killed.
| Sounds like all the more reason to hunt down terrs and kill them without ruth... |
That realization has led my brain to launch a political calculus 180 degrees removed from my pacifist-inclined leanings. An entirely hypothetical yet realpolitik calculus that is ugly, and cold-hearted but must be posited:
| This being from the Huffington Post, we expect rather more politik than real... |
This is a type of calculus that Pentagon war games planners and political consultants do all the time- a combination of what-if actions and consequences that are unpleasant to consider but are in the realm of plausibility.
| The Pentagon does it all the time, huh? |
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
|
Hmmm... Good question. It reveals a certain lack of depth and principle in the writer, to whit, would a high death toll within the United States advance the writer's partisan political aims? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like living in a country where the leadership thought like that. |
I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has "kept us safe," and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.
| Since the Dems are doing no job of combating terrorism, that's not saying much. We're not safe somewhere, Binny and Ayman and their boyz are plotting and planning, wanting nothing more than to bring death and destruction to random points within the U.S. The major difference between the two political parties is that the Publicans take that as a given and the Sinners take it as a political tool. |
If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under. If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate
| If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under. |
Not necessarily. There would also be a certain percentage of Dems who would pop their sleepy little eyes open and cry "Maybe the Pubs are right!" They'd end up voting for the party that takes the threat seriously and even supporting it until attention span deficit disorder kicked in again. The writer's proceding from the assumption that people think like he does, when he's demonstrably not thinking like most of us. He's not even pausing to wonder if perhaps Bush's approach to the WoT is better than his. |
and be in a position to:Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;
| Blocking supreme court appointments? To protect abortion? Many of us are against abortion, but ambivalently so. But neither do we live in a world where the right to have an abortion is the most important issue there could ever possibly be. With aircraft exploding and bodies burning, with Islamic heroes gunning down people in the streets, most of us wouldn't even be thinking of abortion. It's a separate issue that can be settled in the normal course of political argument. Terrorism isn't susceptible to argument. |
Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008.
| In other words, to get more people to vote for the writer's political party... |
A regime change that would:Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;
| Does this crap come out of some talking points factory? Are there people with lunch buckets and cloth caps lining up at the factory gates at 7 a.m. every day, to toil on assembly lines that turn out this sort of yip-yap? |
Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;
| Like universal health care, this has nothing, naught, zippo, nada to do with the fact that our nation and our culture are under attack. |
More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;
| I guess that'd give the terrs more buses to boom, but he's still so far off topic he might as well be in Singapore... |
Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;
| And leave us with nothing with which to shoot back at the terrs when they're rampaging through Fond du Lac or Milpetas... |
Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;
| I'm getting the idea now, dense though I am: a mass casualty attack on the United States would advance the Dems' domestic agenda they don't have an international agenda that goes further afield than Turtle Bay... |
Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;
| Nobody ever mentions cutting the minimum wage or even abolishing it. Since it goes nowhere but up, up, up, why not get the next few hikes out of the way at once and set it around $30 an hour. But when you do so, make a mental note of which marginal businesses wink out of existence. |
Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.| The Dems would be less inclined to launch any wars, foolish or otherwise, unless somebody important was about to be indicted or impeached. |
I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered anything else but evil and hurtful.
| You really shouldn't be proud of yourself. I find you small minded and despicable, a person who confuses the national interest with his own opinion. |
And I know that when I weigh the possibility that such an attack- that might, say, kill 100- would prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from dying who otherwise would- I am exhibiting a calculating cold heart diametrically opposed to everything I stand for as a human being.
| You're also estimating pretty low, bub. A hundred dead would be Iraq-level terrorism. Try thinking in terms of Nord Ost-level casualties, or Beslan-style atrocities. Picture the recent plot to boom 10 airliners simultaneously as a success, or another 9-11. Accepting such things as the breaking of the eggs to achieve your Democratic omelette tags you as either a dipshit or as a person without any scruples at all. |
A human being, who, just so you know, is opposed to most wars and to capital punishment.
| But not if they achieve your political ends. |
But in light of the very real potential of the next two American elections to solidify our growing American persona as a warlike, polluter-friendly nation with repressive domestic tendencies and inadequate health care for so many tens of millions, let me ask you this. Even if only from the standpoint of a purely intellectual exercise in alternative future history: If you knew us getting hit again would launch a chain of transformative, cascading events that would enable a better nation where millions who would have died will live longer, would such a calculus have any moral validity? Any at all?
| In a word: No. In further words: None. Zip. Zilch. |
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