[Austin-ghetto-list] new yorker

[telebob x]

Hell if this gets any worse..anyone who doesn't volunteer to die for their 
country could be branded a coward...  american pilots who won't come down so 
the missiles can get them....soldiers firing from behind rocks and 
foxholes....why don't they just strap bombs on and run at the enemy like the 
brave Muslims on the buses?

This is the kind of twaddle I have come to expect from the Susan Sontags of 
the world.


telebob@hotmail.com
00 506 224 4858 Costa Rica
512 440 1862 Austin, TX



>From: James Holland <jhollnd@swbell.net>
>To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
>Subject: Re: [Austin-ghetto-list] new yorker
>Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 19:33:20 -0500
>
>T
>Susan Sontag wrote:
>
>And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to
>those who kill
>from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those 
>willing
>to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a
>morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of
>Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.
>
>
>Obviously the word "cowardly" is immediately false with respect to the
>suicide bombers.  "Cowardly" has come to modify "attack" by reflex, and
>several commentators noted that from the beginning.  Whether the bombers 
>had
>the guts to ask themselves at any point whether they were doing the right
>thing, however,  is a question Susan Sontag chooses not to address.  There
>are people who are physical but not moral cowards, and vice versa.
>
>But it's when she, and of course Maher, start primly making comparisons 
>with
>the overflights in Iraq that the remarks become totally ridiculous.  It's
>another example of a presumably rigorous series of statements which really
>beg the question.  She's saying that we have no business flying over Iraq 
>at
>all, because if we do have that right then we can obviously retaliate
>against anti-aircraft missile sites (that's the "ongoing bombing") that
>shoot at the planes.  In a military context to use the word "cowardly" in
>this way is stupid.  I realize that quoting General Patton here is not
>likely to warm the hearts of everyone, but where this is concerned he 
>summed
>it up: "your job is not to die for your country, your job is to make the
>other son of a bitch die for his country."  Sontag and Maher seem to think
>that it isn't sporting for the U.S. planes to fly so far up.  Just not 
>fair.
>They ought to at least fly within missile range.
>
>
>
>


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp