I think about this a lot. When I hear the number of deaths in a war it really boggles my mind. But what gets me the most is people's selfeshness towards their own.

My feelings are...this is hard to come up with in words...like, I don't think that Americans dying is any greater a heroing action or a better thing than our enemy dying. I'll probably get flamed a lot for this, but what I'm saying is...I don't feel, while i believe most do, that the death of an American is any more sad than a death of our enemy.

It's really hard to explain. I know that we're fighting for what we believe is right and we're fighting as a nation, and a family.

To sum it up I just don't feel that Americans are greater than anyone else whether it be Iraqis, Canadians, or Germans.

The degree of human suffering is, at any given moment in time, devestating. When we can give this suffering a name....war, famine, or some disease....then it becomes easier to think about. We can think about something we can name. When it isn't so centralized, so singular in nature, then it disappears and we are blind to it.

The fighting back is nice, and it tends to alleve our undeserved, but very real, guilt for living comfortably. When the suffering is in some new form, the fighting back gives us new names so that we can continue to think about it and worry for it. The fighting back might even save a few lives.

Take it for what you will, but we are always, always at war.

Would you rather your family die or another family? I know this is not the situation, but the feeling is the same.

Good point, thank you. But really all i'm saying is that I don't feel that mine is any "better" or deserves to live more than any other, but of course I would pick mine anyhow.

you hit the nail on the head.

we're not better than any other people on this earth. we're all animals living on this globe. it's that simple.

but over the last, say, 10,000 years or so, some humans have decided they are better than other certain humans. this group thinks they're more advanced, smarter, better...and so on.

so they force themselves upon others. sort of like the U.S. has done, and germany and hitler did, and other countries and peoples have. this screws up the entire equilibrium of earth. let me give you an example.

for the most part, animals in nature (think lions, or hell, think indians pre-columbus) don't kill because they like killing. they kill for food. it's that simple. lions and gazelles share the same field. lions are hungry, they're not attacking. this way, there's always a stable gazelle population and food supply, right?

now, let's say one day the lion decides 'i love killing gazelles, i'm gonna go kill a bunch today for the hell of it.' so he goes out and kills ten, instead of his normal one. the surplus of food creates, now, more lions. as more lions are born, and more gazelles are killed...what happens? gazelles are extinct.

and what about the animals gazelles fed on? let's say gazelles eat rabbits (i don't know what gazelles eat). now there's a surplus of rabbits. and what about what rabbits eat? that's going extinct now.

do you see what i'm getting at? you can't go around deciding what's best. for a long, long time, things worked ok. for some species, peoples they do. but once humans decided they were better than just another animal, it all went wrong.

i think somebody has read ishmael

For me, there is a short pecking order of who I'd be more sorry to see die, but nationality would not be one of those deciding factors.

so like, those animals in iraq and afghanistan would lower because they're animals, right?

So . . . we should stop killing more Iraqi's than we can eat?

But how can we know for sure until we've eaten them ALL?

Such cultural relativsim..... given the choice between shooting and Iraqi child or an American child, it seems simple to me. And I as said in another thread, I no longer feel the Iraqi's are worth the lives of our soldiers. When the war started, I hoped beyond reason, that the common Iraqi would realize the oppurtunity given to them by Bu$h's twisted logic. They didn't and worse, they no resent those who made the sacrifice for them. So I say, it's time to leave. Let them earn their freedom and maybe then they will appreciate the sacrifices our servicemen and women made.




Wouldn't that depend on your definition of "greater"? If one of the following nations were to disappear tomorrow, which do you think would cripple the world more: Canada, The USA, Germany, Iraq?

none of these questions are even all that relevant. a life is a life is a life - yes. the issue is more about what the countries involved in conflict represent.

to me, when you inspect what it is that America fights for, as compared to what radical Islamists fight for - it's really a pragmatic matter to allow some leeway in that fight. are our people "better" than their people - no. is our society and way of life "better" - i think the answer to this is quite clearly yes.

Isn't a democratic society a representation of it's people? So if your society is superior, wouldn't that imply that the people that make up that society are superior?

*puts on flame shield*

The nation as a whole may be superior, but the people's right to live is certainly NOT any greater than anyone else's.

That's where you're wrong; Americans are way better than Canadians.

I diagree that we are just "animals on the globe." A human being is not an animal, and (hopefully) never will be.

he agrees

He wouldn't have lived past the age of one if we were animals, thanks for proving my point.

you never heard the famous quote eh?