Visionaries,
I am sure that part of this is an ethos problem. If I said it, it must be outlandish and subversive of the republic. But nobody in this quarter said anything about medals for bravery or heroism. I believe that men such as this are wicked, and those who do not die in their attacks should be tried and executed. They are nutcases, pure and simple, or, to use the medieval phrase, cakes of fruite.
You are on a destroyer in the South Pacific. A kamikaze is headed straight for your ship. You shake your fist at the plane as it approaches. What epithet comes to mind?
“Adulterer!”
“Tax-evader!”
“Runs with scissors!”
“Sluggard!”
Such things are in fact moral failings, but they do not happen to be on exhibition at that moment. And neither is cowardice. We cannot say the action is cowardly because the victims are defenseless and had no way of fighting back. The presence of weapons among those you attack makes the attackers’ death a possibility. But on these missions, the victims don’t need weapons to get us to that outcome. The attackers know they are going to die.
I do not praise this — I hate it. But I think that we will continue to be ineffective in fighting it until we know what is going on. Calling such actions by our enemy “cowardly” is a good way to keep ourselves clueless.
Cordially,
Douglas
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing