[quote]pushharder wrote:
Oh sheeeeeeit. Here we go again folks.[/quote]
Hahaha! You started it! I miss the old Pirate Harem thread. That was a good one.
Any thoughts pertinent to the topic of this thread, Push?
[quote]Blkwolf wrote:
So become a policeman[/quote]
Wrong…
[quote]tekgrl wrote:
I would if given a good reason. The only thing that stops me is my father-he’s doing life for a triple murder. Knowing that I have “killer blood” gives me pause when I get pissed off-but I would never want to be on the inside. Visiting a prison is bad enough, but at least you get to go home after a few hours.[/quote]
LOL @ “killer blood.”
[quote]malonetd wrote:
tekgrl wrote:
I would if given a good reason. The only thing that stops me is my father-he’s doing life for a triple murder. Knowing that I have “killer blood” gives me pause when I get pissed off-but I would never want to be on the inside. Visiting a prison is bad enough, but at least you get to go home after a few hours.
LOL @ “killer blood.”[/quote]
If I have kids they will definitely be raised as warriors, even (or especially) if I have any girls. They will learn to enjoy the taste of blood.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Maybe your idea of “killing” should be defined a little further. Does it include being the bombardier that releases the 2,000 lbs.'er from a B-52 high over Afghanistan? Or the one who operates a Predator from thousands of miles away? Or do you mean just those up close and personal type of killings with a knife, handgun or bare hands?[/quote]
No bombardments, no artillery fire, no pressing the button that launches the ICBMs. I mean mano a mano, up close and personal, look your adversary in the eyes as you squeeze the trigger, stab him in the belly, or snap his cervical vertebrae type of killing.
Which really is the only kind of killing you can do for love, money (or perhaps there are mercenary artillerymen and bombardiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t know) or defence of your country (an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1865. And anyway, when one drops a bomb, he is usually attacking, not defending), your home, your family or yourself.
Of course, the entire twentieth century and all of the twenty-first up until now has been one long litany of long-range, impersonal killing in the name of political ideals and religion. With artillery, cruise missiles, air strikes, land mines, biological and chemical weapons, unmanned aircraft and improvised time bombs, you can kill thousands of people who don’t hold similar political or religious views as the folks in your government or guerrilla organization, without ever having to see a single one of them die.
As for revenge, we have been dropping plenty of bombs since October 2001 all over Afghanistan and Iraq as payback for September 11. And killing for fun? Well, who knows? I imagine a decent number of men truly enjoy leveling cities, towns and villages from a safe distance using high explosive and incendiary devices. It’s always more fun when you don’t have to smell the charred and rotting corpses afterward.
But no, for the purposes of this topic, we are only talking about close- to medium-range (let’s say, near enough to see your adversary’s blood) killing.
All right, Push, I’ll concede that firing depth charges at German U-boats in US territorial waters maybe constitutes “defence of one’s country.” But I concede no more than that.
As soon as I posted that line about Americans not dropping bombs or firing cannons to defend their country since the Civil War, I knew someone would give me shit for it, and also knew that someone would would bring up Pearl Harbor and the Aleutians. So here is my (somewhat weaselly) answer: inasmuch as Alaska and Hawaii did not attain statehood until 1958 and 1959 respectively, unless there were native Hawaiians and Eskimos at the cannons or in the planes, the men who were firing the antiaircraft guns and dropping bombs on Japanese positions were defending their ships, their planes, their bases, and their ports… but not their country. So there!!
And if attacking a country and bombing the training camps of an organization that you suspect of bombing your buildings can be called “defending your country against further attacks”, then breaking into the apartment of a man whom you suspect of raping your daughter and murdering him in his sleep must qualify as “home defence.” Not in my book, it doesn’t. That’s revenge killing, brother.
Attacking and defending are two different things. A counter-attack might be thought of as a defence, but a preemptive strike does not.
You do realize that if it were anyone but you, Push, I would have conceded the points a good deal less grudgingly.
(For everyone else but Push, I amend my above parenthetical statement to read, “an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1945.”
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
(an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1865.
You mean those that manned anti-aircraft cannons that fired back at Japanese bombers from American soil on 12-7-41 weren’t defending their country? I bet that’s news to their widows.
Varqanir wrote:
(an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1865.
You mean those that fought in the Battle of the Aleutians in 1942 weren’t defending their country? Hmmm…
Varqanir wrote:
(an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1865…
You mean those engaged in bombing and firing cannons at Al Qeada camps that trained and equipped the 9-11 terrorists in Afghanistan were not defending their country against future attacks?
Varqanir wrote:
(an American hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a cannon in defence of his country since about 1865…
You mean those that dropped depth charges against German subs in the North Atlantic from 1941 - 1945 after those subs torpedoed American merchant marine ships weren’t defending their country?
[/quote]
[edit]-Damn post delay![/edit]
For the sake of argument- and what better cause is there when bored late on a sunday night?- I’ll take the other side.
If we define defense as being defense of the territorial integrity or political independence of the United States, then we can strike three and four down right off the bat and the first two soon after.
For number four, we were defending ships delivering war supplies to a foreign state while on the high seas. Even if Britain had been lost, we still wouldn’t have realistically faced a threat to territorial integrity or political independence due to the impossible logistics involved in a cross Atlantic invasion-- consider that we needed Germany at war with the USSR, spread all over occupied Europe, and a friendly base with the largest (at the start of the war) merchant fleet in the world just a few miles from Nazi territory in order to mount an invasion-- and the presumed unwillingness of the bulk of the American populace to voluntarily install fascism.
Number three follows the same logic as four; it’s the fight for freedom against potshots and minor (by major war standards) attacks rather than defense against conquest or something of the sort.
The first two would be argued that Alaska and Hawaii were overseas territories throughout WWII rather than part of the United States. An attack on one’s colony isn’t the same as an attack on one’s home territory. If one took the opposite view, that territorial integrity of a states colonies was the same as the territorial of the “homeland”, then one could portray the Philippine-American War as the Second Civil War, as the Philippines fought for independence. This is clearly preposterous though. The homeland clearly is not the same as colonies, overseas territories, and protectorates.
These could be argued from other angles as well but I’ve fulfilled my objective of wasting time until I was ready for bed.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
…Of course, the last hundred years have been one long litany of long-range, impersonal killing in the name of political ideals and religion. With artillery, cruise missiles, air strikes, land mines, biological and chemical weapons, unmanned aircraft and improvised time bombs, you can kill thousands of people who don’t hold similar political or religious views as the folks in your government or guerrilla organization, without ever having to see a single one of them die…
Are you implying that had Genghis Khan possessed the above weapon systems he would have “honorably” refrained from employing them? Or Alexander the Great? Or Che Guerra? The Mayans? The Zulus?
I think I know what you’re trying to say here but the “last one hundred years” is ultimately irrelevant and fails to draw an honest distinction. Man has ALWAYS been a killing machine and would’ve ALWAYS been more than willing to unemotionally kill at any range.
[/quote]
Similarly, only the wars fought involving industrialized powers have featured such a significant contribution from impersonal means. As we all know, many wars to this day are fought primarily with AK-47s and machetes.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Are you implying that had Genghis Khan possessed the above weapon systems he would have “honorably” refrained from employing them? Or Alexander the Great? Or Che Guerra? The Mayans? The Zulus?[/quote]
No, I’m positive they would have all jumped at the opportunity to use the most effective weapons available. All I was implying was that before the 20th century, warfare took place at a much closer range than it does today.
Willing but not necessarily able. Again, all I was stating was that only in the last 100 years has mankind had the technological capability to kill without ever having to see his victims.
You apparently missed my point, or I failed to convey it in a way that you could understand. Of course men in all wars, even 20th and 21st century ones, have to smell the stench of death and scrub the blood of their enemies off their hands. That will never change.
HOWEVER, you asked if my idea of killing (as it applies to this thread) also includes killing using bombers and unmanned attack aircraft. I said no, and then went through my list of possible reasons to kill, stating that bombs, missiles and other long-range means of killing could be used in only a few of these circumstances.
Two of these happened to to be political and religious warfare, and I made the observation that the last hundred years has, thanks to advanced weapons technology, been characterized by the depersonalization of killing. Far more people were killed in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq by high explosives and incendiary devices launched from a distance, than from wounds inflicted by bullets, knives, bayonets and bare hands. [/quote] In every other war before 1917, this was not the case.
Again, every advancement in weapons and tactics has been with a view to kill more efficiently, and at less risk to one’s own soldiers. Fortifying the front lines and giving them longer spears was the Macedonian answer for this problem. Encasing the machine gun crew in a heavily armored, tracked vehicle was the British answer, two thousand three hundred years later.
But tank warfare and air strikes are not what we’re talking about now, is it?
There’s a big difference between killing someone and consciously killing someone.
Anyone can point a gun at a distant blob and squeez, same with dropping bombs and launching missles with the touch of a button.
But most people would be petrified if ever faced with real conscious murder.
[quote]Roy wrote:
But most people would be petrified if ever faced with real conscious murder.[/quote]
You are right. I couldn’t and wouldn’t murder someone as far as I know. But I will defend. I will defend my home, my rights, my ideals, my family and my person. I will defend it with every ounce of strength and every recourse available to me. I don’t care if I have to kill 1,000 people to defend my family or my home, I would do it.
Most definitely I would kill someone.
Especially if I had a long hard day at the gym. The type of day where you see an old man’s balls hang out of his shorts. That would definitely make me go postal, hell I would shoot up everyone outside my gym who was smoking, but I would not stop there. I would definitely have to kill all of the first born children of those smokers as well. I can not handle that much inconvenience in my day.
In all seriousness, for self defense I would have no problem putting someone down.
I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die.