Who wants to be a moralist?
Here's today's question:
What is the difference, if any, in terms of morality, or if you prefer, which is more barbaric? Killing someone by beheading them in cold blood, or dropping flaming jellified petroleum on them from thousands of feet in the air, burning them to death by dropping white phosphorus on them, dropping hundreds of thousand pound bombs on their homes, or shooting them from afar and leaving them to die a lingering painful death? Why?
posted by The Inside Dope @ 6/23/2006
3 comments
3 Comments:
I cannot imagine any death more painful than the phosphorus. It's not fast and the cell destruction gets to every single nerve ending before it's over.
On a more pleasant note, a guy a served with in the 60's (who unfortunately did not survive the experience) was fond of creating "acceptable death" scenarios. His favorite was he would be in the middle of wild but missionary position sex with Ursula Andres and, just as he makes that all important final move, an elephant elimanates him by stepping on his butt. His second favorite was to be walking in a garden of 18 year old breasts when he trips and is smothered. He had hundreds but those are the only two I remember.
I concluded it was healthy for a soldier to think about sex but not sex and death at the same time.
Dook,
Yes, those choicse make my head hurt. I don't like the game either. (Your sarcasm noted.)
BUT... the reason I asked it to begin with, of course, is that there are obviously those who feel that the beheading of the two U.S. soldiers were somehow more barbaric than anything the U.S. would do. That is somehow shows that those that did the grisly deed are more immoral or beneath us, more like animals, etc.
Are they?
Tough? Perhaps. Though there's several ways to fall on the issue. One is that doing it face to face, so to speak, requires more committement and assumes more responsibility than pressing a button from 40,000 ft. and never seeing the human suffering and toll of that action.
One is standing behind your actions and it's consequences, one is not having to deal with it much at all.
Any other opinions?
Post a Comment
<< Home