Jerry Smith

Happy New Year!

This has become a thoroughly depressing thread. To those who say that under some absurd or absurdly unlikely set of circumstances, it might be (justifiable? necessary?) to carry out deeds we would normally consider too hideous ever to undertake - call me hard headed, but I still have to argue.

I would, of course, hope to 'god' that I would never find myself in one of those absurd sets of circumstances, but if I did, I think I would have to consider whether the absurdity belonged to the situation, or was in my head. I would have to reason that no enemy, however full of malice, and capable of whatever kind of evil, could be stopped or defeated by what I will abbreviate with the term "terrorism". I believe that if terrorism should become the only viable choice for stopping or defeating such a threat, I would still be bound to forgo it, lest I wake up and realize that I had become an Osama or a Hitler myself, and realize that my justification was wrong. In short, I would have to consider myself no longer mentally competent.

To the person who posted the horror story from Vietnam: I cannot criticize those who fired on the children. The kind of action that I am speaking about here is deliberately singling out children or the innocents for torture or deliberately targeting people who are not engaging you in combat. The children in Vietnam (although innocently), where in combat with those soldiers, and it is worth crying over for longer than I will live, but the soldiers had to do what they did.