In a pure ego move, I am going to bring a flame war to Outside the Perimeter (and get an innocent blogger out of the crossfire) by posting a response to some comments I had made at this web site. My opponent, Wade:
In all due respect, Blind Pig, your remark about “so, it’s all an energy plot” is a personality attack, amounting to, “Oh, so you’re a conspiracy nut. I gotta go.” In scholarship, human beings have long established, going back to the ancient Greeks, that if your premises are true and your logic is valid, then your conclusion is rational. Essentially, I’m saying that your conclusion is irrational because your premises are untrue. If you wish to reason together, engaging in an intelligent discussion, I would like to present my reply to (1) your attack on Simonton for not protesting Sadaam’s and al-Qaida’s barbarism, (2) your claim that the Abu Ghraib incident is a “media-induced” scandal and (3) your distinction that international law does not protect insurgents in Iraq because they are not “legal combatants.” My conclusion is that history demonstrates that the results of your argument, if enacted as public policy, is very un-American, both moralistically and pragmatically as a matter of the survival of our nation. After I’ve presented my points, I will consider your counterpoints. So, shall we proceed as reasonable human beings, or do you prefer to practice only personality attacks?To sum up my original reply, I don't believe in conspiracy theories, particularly when they are pushed by someone who did not originate them. So I had a little fun.
Anyway, to the reply:
First, I don't remember attacking (except when I poked a little fun at Wade) Simonton (the site's host) about her reply on Saddam and Abu Ghraib. But here is the link to the page, you let me know. I thought what I was asking is if the host had seen the Saddam Torture videos (here's the link, but I would not go there if I were you). My (unanswered) question was if the host expressed the same level of moral outrage over that then she was over the Abu Ghraib incident.
The second of Wade's question's can be answered by this absurdity printed on the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution last Memorial Day:
They are infamous memorials to the inhumanity of war: The Bataan Death March. Stalags. The Hanoi Hilton. And now, Abu Ghraib.I talked to several WWII vets and the WWII memorial and my cousin, a decorated, wounded Viet Nam vet, when I was recently in D.C. and they were a little incredulous at the comparison. For crying out loud, somewhere between 7,000 to 20,000 Americans and Phillipinos were killed during the Bataan Death March alone. The comparison is way off, and thusly is a good example of how the media is blowing Abu Ghraib all out of proportion.
Finally, it's a simple fact that the Geneva Convention only applies to uniformed combatants and to insurgents in narrow circumstances. It actually speaks well to President Bush's character that he insisted that Geneva Convention rules apply to Iraqi terrorists when he clearly did not have too. I'll admit that he is a much better man than I am. And I mean President Bush by that, not you Wade.
Oh, and I like Greeks, too. They make good salads.
Comments