The Surrender Option - The cry of the Paleo.

National Review Online ^ | 09/12/2001 | John Derbyshire

[537 Votes]

Only a coward strikes at defenseless civilians.

Then our B-2 pilots who dropped bombs on defenseless civilians in Serbia were cowards. All the more so, since they didn't dare go below 24,000 feet for fear of being shot at, and so their bombs often landed wide of the mark and killed even more civilians.

The terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center towers may have been evil and insane, but they were not cowards.

[Publius6961]

Then our B-2 pilots who dropped bombs on defenseless civilians in Serbia were cowards.

I do hold those pilots responsible.

Can you imagine the service they might have done the country had they refused the mission?

And it would have identified the generals that should have retired when Clinton slinked away.

[junta]

While I regret the loss of life, this ain't my war. We are in an evil cycle in itself, we bomb they bomb over and over this is repeated.

[Snuffington]

oderint dum metuant: Let them hate so long as they fear.

[habs4ever]

Stop the world, I want to get off.The world you guys live in only happens in a textbook, but why let reality get in the way of your fantasies.

[gnarledmaw]

But the most hideous evil of all is the traitor who protects his global portfolio by sacrificing his innocent countrymen.

[Pelayo]

This is a F*cked-up argument any one who thinks America can just mind here own bizz and won't get attacked by the Muhammadans has no sence of history! its not just about our interfering in there country we stand in the way of the JIHAD! people they want to start it up again after 1000 year! they really want to make war on all the would. We (the US but also the west in general) are in there way.

[dennisw]

Our pilots avoided killing civilians in Serbia. Here the COWARDLY terrorists tried their best to kill civilians. Big difference, eh?

I was opposed to the war against Serbia by the way.

[BlueLancer]

Hey, guy, I answered your "I just want to be left alone" spiel in #12 ...

What do you have to say to my examples that prove you wrong?

[Anochka]

Targeting television stations, foreign embassies, residential housing blocks, refugee columns, passenger trains (twice!), etc. is not "trying to avoid civilian" deaths. Get real.

[Torie]

None of those were TARGETED, except the TV station. That is a great big fat LIE.

[BurkeanCyclist]

Before we loose the word
  That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
  Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
  Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
  Hopeless of God and Man.

Rudyard Kipling, "Justice," 1918

[Inyokern]

While having foreign agents enter our borders and wreak destruction is distasteful -- I can't fault their targets

You can't fault their targets? The Pentagon??? The White House???

This is over the line. You paleos seem to be going over to outright treason.

[Paleo-Con]

I agree with you, sir. You are a voice of reason.

How many times has the dov't used or rather created a crises to get us in an escalating war that can have no satisfactory ending? How about, every war I can think of??

[Paleo-Con]

Make that Gov't not dov't. Whoops

[DugwayDuke]

"It is one thing to oppose evil in it's numerous manifestations throughout the world. It's quite another to try and justify to an American mother why her son's body was drug through the streets of say, Mogadishu, Somalia. Our role as a sovereign Republic is to be the shining light on the hill, not the world's policeman."

I can only conclude that you don't mind opposing evil as long as you don't have to get your own hands dirty doing it. I guess we should just be true statesmen and diplomats, sit on our arse on that hill, and dispatch a "stinging letter of rebuke", couched in the "strongest terms" of course, to those who commit terrorism? I remind you that those same early leaders of this country also dispatched warships to the Med to counter the terrorists of that day, the Tripoli pirates.

[DugwayDuke]

"Then our B-2 pilots who dropped bombs on defenseless civilians in Serbia were cowards. .... The terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center towers may have been evil and insane, but they were not cowards."

Anyone who attempts to equate the men of the United States Air Force and those who directly and with premeditation attacked innocents is misguided and a fool.