Bill O'Reilly sez you're unpatriotic if...

[Sava]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Nuking them was the humanitarian thing to do. Yeah right.

In terms of WW2-Japan... I think nuking was the right thing to do. There's no telling how many more civilians would have been killed (not to mention American soldiers) if the US would have been forced to invade the home islands.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Sava
There's something wrong with people always making judgements about other people's "patriotism". I guess such people feel inferior and therefore need to label others as "unpatriotic" to make themselves feel better.

Discussions of patriotism are basically a big ad hominem and don't contribute anything to any intellectual debate.

It helps them draw you liberals into conformity. That's why we have a one party, oops, two party system.

[Berzerker]

Aggie -

There simply isn't any reasonable dispute about it, so it strikes me as odd that O'Reilly should think that patriotism necessarily requires commitment to an obviously false belief.

Bingo!

Imran -

How is this an issue? Of course you can't be considered patriotic if you think your country is a terrorist state. DUH!

That's true. I guess it depends on what the speaker means, which sometimes can be difficult to discern in things like this.

So it's possible to love your country and still recognise and despise that the government employs terrorism?

Kontiki -

I think the bigger question is why does Berz have such a bug up his ass about Bill O'Reilly?

Shall I count the ways? Immoral people who portray themselves as moral do that to me. He's pompous, rude, obnoxious, pretentious, thin skinned (welcome to the thin-skin zone), hypocritical, a wold in sheep's clothing, and deceitful. All this and he criticises people who aren't good role models for children.

DD -

He refuses to put his letters on the air.

Actually he read 1 of my emails on air, but apparently they have a rule where if he reads 2 they send you his book.

MrFun -

. . . . . and Reagan supported regimes in Central America that did just these things you find to be immoral.

Hmm...so if Dinodoc acknowledges that these tactics were employed does that mean he's unpatriotic?

For you guys who think O'Reilly is right, do you deny the US has employed terrorist tactics? If not, according to O'Reilly, you are unpatriotic, true?

Oh, in the past O'Reilly has claimed the far left "secularists" hate Jesus because he was highly judgemental. The irony is that recently a woman was on his show debating "permisseveness" in the US and she quoted Jesus, "judge not lest you be judged", and O'Reilly immediately responded by calling that a "secular" point of view. So Jesus went from being a Bill O'Reilly "traditionalist" who judges to a secularist?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Sava
There's something wrong with people always making judgements about other people's "patriotism". I guess such people feel inferior and therefore need to label others as "unpatriotic" to make themselves feel better.

The something wrong comes in not defining patriotism. Based on my understanding of the word's use I am not patriotic and glad that I'm not.

[MosesPresley]

Nuking them was definitely in our best interests, but to try to cloak it in terms that it was best for the Japanese people, as MtG was insinuating, is disengenuous. We nuked them because we could and we were pretty sure that they would come to the table afterwards. Some people have said that another reason we nuked them was to show the Russians what we were capable of doing.

When you are the only kid on the block with nukes, you can pretty much do what you want.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Shall I count the ways? Immoral people who portray themselves as moral do that to me. He's pompous, rude, obnoxious, pretentious, thin skinned (welcome to the thin-skin zone), hypocritical, a wold in sheep's clothing, and deceitful. All this and he criticises people who aren't good role models for children.

You mean he's a troll?

[Sava]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Nuking them was definitely in our best interests, but to try to cloak it in terms that it was best for the Japanese people, as MtG was insinuating, is disengenuous. We nuked them because we could and we were pretty sure that they would come to the table afterwards. Some people have said that another reason we nuked them was to show the Russians what we were capable of doing.

When you are the only kid on the block with nukes, you can pretty much do what you want.

yeah, it's definitely a debatable subject... I just lean more towards the "it was necessary/right thing to do" camp.

[Tattila the Hun]

"Terrorist is someone, who has a bomb, but no airforce"

From "Rogue State", by William Blum. Gets me thinking, not many books do that.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


It depends on the definition the pimply pedants want to use for "terrorism." It's ok to cause millions of people to starve, if you don't do anything active, but bombing military targets (and there were plenty in Hiroshima) is "terrorism" if you happen to kill a bunch of civilians, or don't happen to like the method, whether or not there is any feasible way to minimize those casualties.

Were did the issue of OKness enter the discussion? An act of terrorism doesn't magically cease to be terrorism if it's the least bad option in the situation.

Terrorism would have been to drop the bomb over the densest population centerd remaining after the April firebombing of Tokyo.

That would have been maximizing the body cult. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen, partly, because it was thought that wiping out relatively intact cities would maximize the psychological impact.

A basic rule of thumb for terrorism is that it's better to kill ten people spectacularly than to kill twenty in dull ways.

[Kuciwalker]

Were did the issue of OKness enter the discussion? An act of terrorism doesn't magically cease to be terrorism if it's the least bad option in the situation.

It does, though, if your intent is to minimize civilian deaths, rather than maximize.

It's not terrorism if, for instance, we drop a bomb and accidentally kill some civilians, or if we target someone knowing that some civilians will probably die too but try to minimize the civilian casualties.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Kucinich

Were did the issue of OKness enter the discussion? An act of terrorism doesn't magically cease to be terrorism if it's the least bad option in the situation.

It does, though, if your intent is to minimize civilian deaths, rather than maximize.

I think "intent" discussion is pretty much a strawman. Intent is such a personal issue, that its really unprovable to say what someone's intent is. Frankly, if someone is reduced to defending the intent, it means they can't legitimately argue other points.

[Kuciwalker]

I think "intent" discussion is pretty much a strawman. Intent is such a personal issue, that its really unprovable to say what someone's intent is.

Not really. Otherwise we couldn't distinguish murder from manslaughter, for example.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Indeed. Saying 'intent' is a strawman means that you think the entire criminal law is a strawman .

[Sava]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Indeed. Saying 'intent' is a strawman means that you think the entire criminal law is a strawman .

I don't think I need to point out that criminal law is irrelevant when talking about war... or else (for instance) Bush would be liable for the deaths of civilians in Iraq. But if you are saying Bush is guilty of a crime, by all means I won't object.

basically... apples and oranges...

[Straybow]

O'Reilly is right because what the US is doing isn't terrorism, period. Some people who have found that their arguments from logic have failed choose to switch to rabble-rousing instead and call it "terrorism."

Bah.