Bin Laden is DEAD!

[Boudi]

America took one of the soldiers of terror out and I thank the Lord for America.

But didn't the same country you thank the Lord for, actively support and - arguably make - Bin Laden the 'soldier of terror' that he became?  Do you thank the Lord for this as well?

Yeah, but at the time Bin Laden was working for the Lord killing people who were not of the Lord, then those people became of the Lord, so the people killing them were not of the Lord.

The Lord must get very confused and I have to take refuge in Bob Dylan lyrics

[Boudi]

Are my fellow Canadians targeting innocent civilians in Afghanistan? Are the Americans targeting innocent civilians, are you Brits? No, how foolish and shame on anyone who might suggest it.  Do the innocent suffer and die because of wars that have to be fought? Unfortuately that's the reality and horror of war.

I think that the the Americans have targeted innocent civilians.  Wedding parties and residential areas have been hit, many cruise missile attacks on 'enemy targets' will have killed innocent people who just happened to be there. OK they say that these were 'inevitable' mistakes and that in many cases there will have been non-innocent parties killed in the same offensive, but the sheer number of innocent people who have died shows a callous disregard for these people's lives.  Had these people been American citizens living in New York or Washington their lives would have been much more precious.  From the perspective of those who flew aircraft into buildings in the US, they were targetting the political structures in the US, hitting back at the capitalist system which has done much evil around the world.  As far as those who flew the aircraft were concerned, the civilians killed in the Twin Towers were merely the 'inevitable' casualties of such an offensive.

This is the problem with the belief that the end justifies the means - a belief held by both sides.  Often the end offers far less good than the harm done by the means to achieve it.   Is the world a safer or better place because so many have been killed? Does America have fewer enemies now than it did before so many innocent people were blown to bits, burned, blinded, maimed or bereaved?

Maybe it would help if we called the victims of 11th September 'collateral damage'.  It seems to help when thinking of deaths in the East?

[Boudi]

Just heard a very good thought for the day from radio 4 where the speaker spoke of the burial at sea of bib laden, and how this didn't constitute a proper burial in line with Muslim rites.  he also mentioned the work of Turuman at the end of WWII, and how he insisted that all the war criminals should have to stand trial, somethingh the other leaders were not keen on.  Even Jesus got his time in court, and apparently he was taking the rap for the sins of the world.  Odd when you think about it.

[AndyHB]

Are my fellow Canadians targeting innocent civilians in Afghanistan? Are the Americans targeting innocent civilians, are you Brits? No, how foolish and shame on anyone who might suggest it. 

Directly, maybe not - but knowing folk who work in Afghanistan for various aid agencies as I do, PW - they are making it clear that thousands are suffering from the effects of the fighting, and this is the responsibility of both Taliban and Allied actions.

However, that is rather a tangent from the topic of this thread - the ethicality/morality of the actions taken by the Americans in killing BL.  As a Christian (and all here will tell you that I ain't a liberal Christian), I believe that the nature of the action was immoral and contrary to Christian principles.  As I have said several times already, 2 wrongs (both BL's actions during his lifetime and the actions of the Americans both in supporting/arming him in the past and now in the nature of his death) do NOT make a right.  As others have said, the actions of the Americans in assassinating him have simply placed themselves and, by association those who are seen as their supporters (Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, ...), away from the moral highground that has long been claimed in these wars.

[ecuworrier]

i've a feelin am gonna be takin this line by line...so here we is

ecu,
I would never consider you an enemy. I hope you would never view me as one.

??? Bless you there are many ways of translating the word 'enemy' and i love that about GOD that GOD suggests we love our enemies whoever they are cos GOD well just loves them too! whoever they are and whatever state or circumstance they find themselves in... i like that GOD also suggests we check our own eyes our view to see if we ain't just a teeny bit colouring our own view by stuff that's clouding our vision whether its behaviour and tactics to avoid examining ourselves or being completely open and honest with GOD before we go wading in and accusing others of all sorts or deceiving ourselves... in other words GOD already sees that we can indeed be accusers of oursleves and deceivers of ourselves....   the embarrasing thing is we can at times be the last folks to notice! Love is a cloudless issue where GOD is concerned!
You know we have been with you in every war since our confederation and before.

Forgive me if i don't quite remembere that one....   

You had our total and absolute support when you killed Argentinians to regain a few wind swept bunch of rocks in the south Atlantic.

i found that one rather distasteful

We were bombing Iraq together during the first gulf war.

ah now that one i do remember it was my first taste of war where having found the previous one a bit distatsteful this one offended me greatly i am not suggesting Sadam Hussein was an angel by any measure .. but he was clever enough to offer the carrot of Palestine which the west shockingly and completely ignored .... nil points to the west in my view.... i went into a deep shock

We died and killed Japanese right along beside you when we were trying to defend Hong Kong etc, etc.

i don't recall that one either  and i ain't interested in killin no japanese either

War unfortunately has to be fought and won

you see i don't agree with that as a principle i don't see that you make friends with your enemy by killing him i find that war mongering even just war is just not JESUS

and the only way to do this is to kill and bring the enemy to it's knees. Canada, the US and yes the UK is in a war, a long war. Blood will be shed and lots of it. Do I wish it? Absolutely not, but I'm no fool. Nice talk and best wishes is weakness to our enemy.

Sorry the Power of the GOSPEL is far more Amazing and far more Powerful and far more Authority

Sadly there is no one converting these terrorists with your pacifist message.

I don't do passivism very well i'm afraid .... Jesus is even worse!  the lost opportunity of the GOSPEL is what GOD CAN DO

My aunt (my adopted family) told me about how my  great grandfather and his brothers would remain awake all night with loaded rifles right after the American civil war. The Irish finians wanted to liberate us fron the grips of the evil UK. We weren't going to go for that. We shot some and then the US government made those goons go back to their homes.i really am not entirely sure i understand where that is going

GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,

[ecuworrier]

Boudi,
Terror? Well I believe terror is what those poor souls who were so overcome with smoke that they threw themselve off the World Trade Centre and were desperately clawing at the air on the way to their death in a useless attempt to save themselves. Terror is how those people in the buildgs felt as they looked out the windows of the stairwells and saw these people shoot by clawing at the air. Terror is what made the citizens on the ground scream and run for their lives when they saw those buildings start to fall. Terror is in the voices of those trapped in the building desperateley pleading over the cell phone for their mom or dad to send some one to save them. No Boudi, terror is not the monster under your bed. Terror is how my cousin felt until she was assured her daughter, a flight attendant for United Airlines, was not working on any of those planes. America took one of the soldiers of terror out and I thank the Lord for America.

the dicitionary definition for terrorism changed between before and after the event of 9/11 which no doubt was influenced by the shift in usage .... the new definition exempted the US or the state from it's ability to create fear and intimidation by force and influence ... something like that ... i thought it was a constitutional right to believe that the US gov can go bad....  the US already had a bad reputation abroad for interference in other countries affairs

as for poor bib laden he was a monster manufactured out of the very own terror manual of the US ... happy for a few would be idealists to do the dirty wortk and bear the brunt of the consequenmces in Afghanistan..... but unavble to see the consequences.... yes there is a very perverse side to this whole story and as for me ... i cannot stand two facedness and hypocracy and denial of the truth ... bullying etc...  and and you know what i am not gonna allow the Bush dubya effect to hijack what seems a truely unconstitutional rearrangement of the english language.... the US has a proud history of terrorism of many forms and then even wants to terrorise english usage

GOD BLESS my enemies say i .. which is what a state that were authentically christian through and through would be doing


GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,


we is certainly no angels and that is a shame!

[ecuworrier]

I think the main difference - or THE difference, is that Bin Laden murdered thousands of INNOCENT people - whereas he was hardly that(!)

But innocent by whose standards, Eli?  Those of the West, whose actions over the past centuries have often been based on greed, power, pride even, in some cases, revenge all too often meted out on completely innocent people?  Think, for instance, of the thousands of Indians who were swept into poverty when the Manchester cotton mills destroyed the Indian cotton industry in the 18th century; or the 'Kenyans' who were herded into concentration camps in reprisal for the Mau-Mau uprising in the 1950s; I could go on.  Those of Western Christianity, with actions all too often identical with their political compatriots?  Or those of the Muslims who have so often been the butt of those actions in recent years?  Remember that Bin Laden, like that other bete noire Saddam Hussein, was armed and financially supported for many years by the very hand he finally bit in his various attacks.

When all is taken into account, who is really responsible for the actions of both Hussein and Bin Laden?

i got a bit lost here is this all about original sin or something?

you are blaming the low wage cotton workers in inngland for poverty in india?...  or something

or the people in the twin towers? for the actions of the C18?

i'm not sure if you are  supporting revenge attacks or what?


GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,

[Jan]

A friend shared an article on FB from the Huffington Post - the quote below is from part of the article, the rest you will find by clicking on the link 

"Celebrating" the killing of any member of our species--for example, by chanting USA! USA! and singing The Star Spangled Banner outside the White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets--is a violation of human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of "good" or "evil" in any of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life, any life, is a failure to honor life's inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama Bin Laden did not respect the sanctity of others' lives. To that I would ask, "What relevance does that have to our own actions?" One aspect of being human is our ability to choose our own behavior;  more specifically, our capacity to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While Osama Bin Laden was widely considered to be the personification of evil, he was nonetheless a human being. A more peaceable response to his killing would be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death and the thousands of violent deaths that occurred in the attempt to eliminate him from the face of the Earth; and to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play a role in killing another. This kind of compassion can be cultivated, as practitioners of many different spiritual traditions and humanistic philosophies will attest.

Article from here The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death
 

[Boudi]

Ta Jan.

I've been pleasantly surprised by some on here who have managed to mark the death of Bin Laden with a dignity I thought was lost in these days of red tops and twitter. 

[administrator]

[tranchiebabe]

Ta Jan.

I've been pleasantly surprised by some on here who have managed to mark the death of Bin Laden with a dignity I thought was lost in these days of red tops and twitter.

I don't think that piece of scum deserves any dignity in death whatsoever!

[JJ]

I'm thinking that Boudi was referring to the dignity of the posters on here.

[tranchiebabe]

If you say so!

[Jan]

[Boudi]

You were right Jan, I was talking about your own dignity!