Reply #32: Are we worried they'll kill more women than us?

[Prism]

I understand Americans have a proprietary feeling in war, that some enemy somewhere is doing the killing rather than us. We kill a thousand civilians, well, these things happen. The Taliban do, and suddenly it's "Look at these barbarians!" Technology does not civilization make.

I don't understand the point. Yes, things are rough in many place in the world. Can we be in all those places? No. Is the argument we can save more lives than we destroy with war? What if, instead, we used all that money for universal health care. Wouldn't that, in the cold hard calculus, result in more lives ultimately saved? Are we going to kill them into compliance? How many net Afghan women do we have to kill in order to save them?

Yeah, the Taliban are theocrats. They don't like women. That's what theocrats are like. Should we occupy every country with a backwards religion? We'd be awful busy.

This reminds of the Republican argument. They wanted a war, they got one, and then they retrofitted it with feminism, as if George W. Bush was suddenly some kind of heir to Gloria Steinem. It was silly then on its face.

Your appeals are similarly silly now.

I don't understand why the Democratic Party thinks co-opting the neocon war-dream of democratizing the world was such a bright idea.

Oh, right. I forgot. Now President Obama likes this. Well, that changes everything.

Do people realize how, in the effort to defend war, they are now in the position of adopting the exact same Republican rhetoric from 2001-2009? That if you posted this exact same rationalization during a Bush presidency, people would call it what it is: right-wing justification for eternal war?

Now, we must pretend it is different.

Be my guest. Pretend away. Pretense is all we have left anyway.