Minitruth

[chickenfeet]

 So once I had recovered from the first shock of what happened in Paris yesterday I started to think nd here are some thinky thoughts.

1.  Language.  In what dialect of English is a suicide bomber a "coward" while someone who operates an unmanned drone from thousands of kilometers away is a "hero"?  Suicide bombers may be severely misguided, despicable and many other things but to say they lack courage seems to show a lamentable lack of lingusitic honesty.

2. Theism.  "We all worship the same God so..." What's the truth test for "your imaginary friend is/is not the same as his imaginary friend"?  Note the absence of the first person.  I don't have an imaginary friend.

3. Ways and means.  Napoleon would, I think, have been horrified by the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.  I suspect he would have been no more impressed by the RAF, the Luftwaffe or the USAAF's defence of the practice than by ISIL's.  Sadly, combatants use whatever means they have to cause havoc.  Today the west kills civilians with fighter bombers and drones.  ISIL uses suicide bombers.

4. The myth of precision.  The western powers will argue that they don't aim at civilians (anymore).  They will tell you that their marvellous precision allows them to use massively deadly weapons in densely populated areas with minimum impact on civilians.  It's doubly bullshit.  First of all, the weapons aren't precise.  They always say they are (see RAF WW2 where "precision bombing" had a hard time hitting the right country).  Second the people who use them always fuck up.  Military intelligence?  Well you know the jokes.  The doctors and nurses in Kunduz and the others bombed in hospitals in Syria and Yemen are just as dead as last night's victims,  It's not an "accident", it's an inevitable, if (maybe) undesired side effect of what they are doing.

5. Starting wars.  Powers that go to war using methods that kill large numbers of civilians really shouldn't be surprised when it comes back to bit them in the ass.  Their opponents will use the methods at their disposal.  They have no others.  Wars may be worth fighting sometimes but to be surprised by the consequences is infantile.

Comments

[commodorified]

As a non-theist I think you will find that the most useful way to understand 2) is simply that it is an expression of or call for solidarity in use among theists, especially members of the Abrahamic religions, and that it does not, as such, possess or require a truth-test.

[sollers]

Looking at it historically I tend to see it as an optimistic attempt to keep followers of various religions from killing each other and therefore though I don't agree with it feel it should be encouraged.

As for suicide bombers: back in 2001 my reaction was that whatever they were, they weren't cowards

[commodorified]

I think that's more-or-less what I said, yes. Atheists, and I say this with love, often seem to put some odd sort of stock in understanding theists better than we understand ourselves. Since the explanations frequently start at "what benefit do these odd people gain from acting as if this obviously false thing were true", they tend to end up elaborate and weird.

I mean, what we actually mean by it is "We worship the same God."

Suicide bombers are not, whatever else they may individually or collectively be, cowards. Given how the whole grooming process for these mostly very young men and women works, though, I have a few unpleasant words for their recruiters.

[ironed_orchid]

Agree with pretty much all your points.

Don't have any good solutions.