Clearly the event was disgusting. I was searching for a way to respond when I found this post. The section on “Sophie’s Choice” is heart-breaking and I think conveys the abject hopelessness of the situation. From killing adults to making children acceptable and normal targets. How does anything justify this sort of barbarity?
Related Posts
Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture
Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…
McCain Loves Dead Americans
Let’s be clear, if you vote for McCain you may as well put up a bumper sticker that says “The only good American is a dead American.” His policies are guaranteed to result in more and more death, not only for Americans, but for people all around the world. I’m furious that he’s even considered a real candidate for the presidency. I offer as evidence of his blood-thirsty ignorance the following: McCain has repeatedly claimed that Iran is training Al-Qaeda. We heard this canard back in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Let us be clear: AQ…
Invoking Spinoza
Cornell West has a brave op-ed piece on the moral disaster that is the Middle East: As we witness another sad chapter in the Middle East — the loss of precious human beings, the presence of deep hatred and revenge, and the absence of Socratic questioning and empathy for all — the spirit of Spinoza haunts us. Where are the courageous thinkers who ask the hard questions that shatter our simplistic and sentimental frameworks of pure Israeli heroes and impure Arab villains (or vice versa) in the conflict? Is it possible for Jews to reject the ugly Israeli subjugation of…