10/20/01 15:46:00

Comments:

Jacob, this is my response to you and all those who cringe at this country's overly violent mentality:

First: The point has been made often enough, but I'll make it myself just so you can hear: When punching occurs, it is true that the surest way to stop the fight is not to punch back--let yourself be beat to death, at which point it's logically impossible for there to be a fight. This, as has been already pointed out by many other authors, is the peace you, the pacifists, wish to achieve: death. If we wish to choose life, we must choose to live ourselves, and recognize that the only way to do so is to DESTROY that which openly threatens our lives (despite whatever cost in other lives--which, you might note, we cannot ourselves live). (Doing so before, by the way, is preferable to doing so after we are dead).

Second: Observe that while you advocate seeking root causes, you make no effort to seek them. You reject the suggestion that terrorist nations simply wish to destroy the United States, prating for as long as your breath lasts you to discover how we offended them--never trying to discover anything yourself, perhaps holding on to the sacred hope that as long as you never look at a history book it might turn out that it contains the mystic answer: in '57 we flew airplanes into their skyscrapers! (which is why they don't have any anymore).

Maybe you'd like to take note of something: we've yet to see a terrorist blow himself to bits screaming "remember the Islamabad!" They've suffered no injustice. Or are you more concerned with our differences from the terrorists--you know, the ones that need resolving so the world can live in peace? (Note irony of previous sentence.) No amount of ticking off justifies murder, and a world in which people think it does will be much more violent than a world filled with hate. No. You know we have not earned the death of 5,000 of our citizens, the pain of seeing an airplane plunge itself into a skyscraper, an entire floor of glass disappearing behind fire. Your only goal is hesitation. You haven't the least concern for root causes. You only support seeking them--and I won't say 'seeking indefinitely', since such a course is prompt suicide.

Third: Your precious cycle of violence. Watch as I show that eye for an eye does not make the world go blind: Man A removes eye from Man B. B, out for justice, removes eye from A. Now, if A wants an eye for the one that was taken from him, well, he already has it, damn it. If he takes another eye, then, he is not doing so under the principle of eye for an eye, but the principle of hostile aggression. ALSO, if B, seeing his sight is threatened, takes A's life before A takes his second eye, he is doing so under the principle of self-defense, and the world does not go blind. The cycle breaks at every instance in which the eyes are even, and aggression is necessary to resume the violence. Only the constant INITIATION of eye-taking could make the world blind. To rid the world of violence, you must rid the world of aggressors.

I ask you to consider history, to see that the destruction of hostile governments is the only policy that leads to peace. Are we currently at war, I ask you, (and if you have to look this up it is alright with me) with Japan? No. With Germany? No. We pummeled those two aggressive dictatorships to bits, and the violence has yet to boomerang back to us. AND, astoundingly, one can find plenty of resentment for the US in those two countries today (as in every other country and in you). But peace prevails, the citizens of those countries will never spontaneously stage coordinated terrorist attacks. And neither can the citizens of terrorist nations: only their governments. (As a footnote, it occurs to me that the only resentful citizens who can destroy this country are its own--but even that is only with the aid of their government, who listens to their demands for root causes).

Now, consider hostile nations, the real threats to our safety, that in the past we have not pummeled to bits. You will find that peace is impossible. We did not end the USSR, and for as long as that government existed after WWII we were on the brink of annihilation. Today, we approach that brink with China. And the terrorist nations that we did not end when we were first provoked: they are waging active war with us. These governments are impervious to pacification; what, if anything, bred the resentment that forged their bloody purpose is irrelevant: they will carry that purpose out with unyielding persistence. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE DICTATORSHIPS! An individual mind has choice. It can resent, it can be turned around. A dictatorship forbids choice; it hangs and shoots dissenters. It will never cease its aggression; it is the machine of aggression. It can only be overthrown. Destroyed. That is why war is our only choice for self-defense. To end resentment, we need to stand firm to our country's ideals. And this, sure, is a nice route to take towards making the world safer, more peaceful. But those dictatorships that already exist, we must destroy NOW. Not shooting back will not stop their shooting. They will not stop until they are stopped.

As for ending resentment, lets hope my response does something to end yours. (Though I do think you are being harsh in ruling out your emigration to a nice snug dictatorship: have you ever once considered what the alternative to freedom/capitalism is?) But if you do not move, try a simple exercise that will help you be a better American: desire to live. Yearn for life. Think how horrible governments that want to kill you are. Fear them; know they should be destroyed, so that you can live.

Fight the good old fight. 'Justify' them until they are wiped off the face of the earth.

Having brought my pseudo-essay to a neat close, I will tell you what you should really do in the meantime, because in your current state you will never be convinced by me: realize that it is you who are close-minded. You twist reality, take things out of context, equivocate, in everything you have written. Violence is bad, against good people or bad people, you say. Then what does make violence so evil, if it is not that it destroys the good? Well, because it is spelled with a 'v; and then that horrible 'n-c-e', duh. Only a demon or sodomite could have conceived of such a devilish word. Let me clue you in: violence is not the tool of the evil, it is just a tool. When it is used to harm innocents: evil. When used by innocents who wish to live: good. Separating acts of violence from context is absurd--is blasting holes through mountains evil? Stop equating those who seek to kill others as an end to killing others with those who kill others as an end to living. There is a difference. Period. You say: hate is bad; stop hating. Same deal. Hate is just an emotion. If you hate the bad because you are good, you do not become bad. Bad did not start being bad because of hate; they started hating good because they are bad. You say BOTH OUR COUNTRIES ARE IN THE SAME POSITION?! Fuck you. Afghanistan doesn't fight us to preserve themselves; they fight us for the same reason they started fighting: to destroy us. How long will you persist in ignoring this? How long will you just ignore the differences between good and evil and then claim to have shown they are the same? How long will you think that condemning this country for doing something it is not is reasonable? You are kidding yourself under the premise that it does not matter if one kids himself, especially as far as right and wrong are concerned. It matters. We are not trying to slaughter Afghanis, but to see tomorrow: AND THIS MATTERS. We are ending determined aggression with our determined resistance: AND THIS MATTERS. Nothing can be right or wrong unless it IS SOMETHING, so it matters just what that something is. You say: "Because obviously as soon as relatives and friends are being shot unnecessarily for actions they did not even commit..." This is you lying. They are being shot NECESSARILY. It is NECESSARY for those innocents to die in order to preserve ourselves, in order to stop the crimes that others are in the process of committing. And our war of self-defense cannot spawn hatred: anyone who is willing to think the US is killing innocents unnecessarily cannot react to it with more hate. They have already moved beyond reacting to reality; they are reforming reality to suit what they wish to believe. This is where you stand. Writing responses that make no sense to rationalize your pre-existing hatred of America. Pretty close-minded, no?

(Historical footnote: Germany's kaisership was ended in WWI, and the country provoked a second war. And the USSR did stop itself. But my main point still stands. Self-defense and eventual peace require war. And besides, a country can only roll the dice with arms races so many times.)