"If thou fearest that a man might someday raise his hand against thee and thine, then hasten thee to his house, kick in his door, and smite him before it goeth too far down that road. Better thou be safe than sorry."
(From the Gospel according to St. Attila, The Book of Huns, 16:12.)
Or "He that shootest first and asketh questions later is most wise ..."
( St. John the Wayne, The Book of Paranoia, 3:17)
Now, you know these are made-up books, chapters and verses, only meant to prove a point.
Then again, I have real trouble believing that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, who said turn the other cheek, was in any way for the kill-'em-all-God-will-know-his-own philosophy. So any time I see somebody claiming to be a good Christian espousing this attack-first-is-okay stuff, I am not convinced that what they are -- good Christians.
I must have missed the part where Christ said, "Smite thy brother if he giveth thee a dirty look."
How starting a war over there will make us safer over here escapes me. If you can go there and shoot them, then that means they are justified in coming here and shooting us, that's how it works, and our government has not demonstrated an ability to do much about it. They make a lot of noise, and sure, they get credit for trying, but just watch 60 Minutes and the story on chemical or nuclear power plant security, and pray that the terrorists missed that one.
Sure, there's the claim, that since the War on Terror started, there haven't been any more attacks on American soil. The logic is specious -- there weren't that many attacks from foreign terrorists before 9/11, either. Only two major ones come to mind, and those were mostly home-grown loons doing the dirty work.
Claiming credit for stopping terrorist is like claiming credit for the sun coming up -- you don't really have a lot to do with that, now do you?
And do I feel safer now than I did five years ago? Sheeit ...
The federal government has spawned the Transportation Security Administration, an agency charged with providing effective and efficient security for people and products traveling in this country. A multibillion dollar organization staffed with trained folks, and sporting high-tech machineries that forces little old grannies at the airports to remove their shoes and sometimes subjects them to full body searches, which demonstrates how thorough they are. And yet, recently, a nine-year-old boy who wanted to go see his grandfather in Dallas managed to board a plane at SeaTac all by his lonesome, get to Arizona, where he hopped another flight and made it as far as San Antonio.
I sure sleep better knowing how hard it is to get past the thorough TSA, yessiree. One bad nine-year-old.
How safe does that make you feel?
Jesus spent a large part of his time advising his fellow Jews to knock off the violent uprisings against Rome, or Rome was gonna kick their asses. And Rome was doing some pretty nasty things to the Jews.
ReplyDeleteRome ended up kicking their asses.
I'm a strong proponent of self defense; violence for other reasons needs to be strongly questioned. But I don't think self defense includes tracking your attackers down, murdering their family and friends, and then taking over their government.
Starting a war with questionable motives thinly veiled in "self-defense" and then attaching God's name to it? Not sure that makes it an upright, holy endeavor. From what I've read of Jesus, he would probably frown on that.
How safe do I feel now?
Let's see, I live in a country that has pissed off a large portion of the world and put itself in extreme debt. A country that if it is ever retaliated against I can see the other world powers thinking, "Well they kinda asked for it, that's their problem." I don't feel too safe.