In response to a posting from Shock and Awe on 21 May 2003 - 05:37, I called him a snot-faced dipshit. Then he called me an idiot pig dipshit.
If i were a more noble man, i wouldn't bother with this, because its not fair to pick on people so much weaker than I. But i am petty and argumentative. So i post.
In response to my criticism, SA said:
"You think I laugh at men killed in battle? No I don't. I rejoice and give thanks to God that these evil men serving an evil regime are dead. The whole world has seen the atrocities these men have wrought on their people and humanity yet PIGS like you still defend them and call them honorable! Yeah I Celebrate the death of those pigs! Lets set the record straight too. I never laughed at those evil pigs that thankfully lost their lives in battle. I was laughing(you idiot )at the methods!"
First, its obvious that the point of SA's original post was to ridicule the Iraqi soldiers, to laugh at them, to gloat at their defeat, like a sore winner. Its not an honourable thing to do, and it came as no surprise to me that SA served time in the armed forces, given what i consider to be his disregard of human life. Not that i have a problem with soldiers per se...its just that such an attitude is highly correlated with men in uniform.
But don't take my word for it -- let the 5 smiley faces in the original post speak for themselves.
In many ways, this is the classic Ugly American: the worlds strongest military power, by far, attacking a country which didn't stand a chance, due in small part to the sanctions spearheaded by the victor on the vanquished for the preceding 10 years. Then gloating about the victory, as though it were a fair fight, as though there was any other outcome possible. As far as I'm concerned, the operation in Iraq should be treated like a bone-marrow extract: a painful, and (possibly, in the case of Iraq) necessary operation for the long-term health of the corpus. It's not something to laugh about. Like I said, sore winner.
Second, i don't find at all convincing the distinction SA later made between laughing at the Iraqi's and the methods. I think he's backtracking.
Third, I wonder whether it ever occured to SA that many of the Iraqi soldiers were compelled to fight on pain of death - of themselves, or their loved ones. As he so adamantly insists, after all, this was an "evil" regime.
Fourth, does SA really operate day-to-day with such a reductionist perspective of Good-Evil, Black-White? Does he believe that the complexities of reality can be so easily compartmentalized into polar opposites? Does he appreciate the concept of "shades of grey"? Is he willing to concede misdeeds of his own country?
Or is he just a stooge?
