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Thursday, November 24, 2005

Why does the ultimate precision guided weapon kill so many innocent bystanders?

Much has been made of the precision of American weapons. We can now destroy a building or a bridge with a single bomb; a job that took dozens - if not hundreds – of bombs in conflicts as recent as Viet Nam.

Yet with even these precise weapons, mistakes are made, bombs or rockets go awry and innocents are killed. Those opposed to the current war refer sneeringly to a term that the military coined for this: “collateral damage.” And every time it happens, it creates headlines.

Yet there is a weapon that are a great deal more precise than ours. In fact, this weapon can find the inside of a closed room, pick its spot, and blow up, killing everything in its range with both blast effect and shrapnel.

This is the suicide bomber: the ultimate precision weapons. The suicide bomber sees his victims face to face, assesses the situation and decides whether to kill or not. This is no precision guided bomb that – once it is released – will detonate since it is beyond recall.

The suicide bomber can walk into a wedding party and choose which side of the room he will destroy; which individuals he will kill. He can detonate his weapon in the midst of a crowd of schoolchildren gathered around an American handing out candy. He can enter a mosque and determine which worshippers he wants dead. He can target police recruits in a crowd knowing he will also kill the shopkeepers around him.

There can be no doubt that if we possessed a bomb that had this much discrimination, this much precision and this much judgment until the moment of detonation, we would not kill those children, shopkeepers and worshippers.

The question before the house is: if the US is condemned when one of our precision guided weapons kills innocents, why is there not condemnation (among the International Left) of the Islamofascists when their more precise weapons destroy vastly more innocents – on a daily basis?

Does the Left have any moral scruples at all? Did it ever?

2 comments:

Lone Ranger said...

No. And no.

Anonymous said...

You've hit the nail on the head Kemo Sabi(sp?)