Casualties vs Martyrs

U.S. soldier killed in Afghan firefight
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. Special Forces soldier killed Sunday in Afghanistan was ambushed while taking part in Operation Mountain Lion, designed to locate, isolate and destroy al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Monday.

Buck Sergeant Vance, RIP, is the thirty-first American killed in action in Afghanistan. He fought and died as a warrior, and I do not mean to marginalize his sacrifice, or the sacrifice of any other serviceman killed in action.

I was going to write a long, researched rant, but I end up sounding like a jackass. So I'll skip to the question:

We're treating the Americans killed in Afghanistan like martyrs. We're ignoring the hundreds of Allied and associated troops also killed. We're also ignoring the thousands of other people who die of everything else in the world every day. What gives? Why are some people's lives depicted as more valuable than others?

Rant on. I'm just gonna sit back and watch the shit fly.

IMJack said:

We're treating the Americans killed in Afghanistan like martyrs.

Eh? I don't see how.

IMJack said:

We're ignoring the hundreds of Allied and associated troops also killed.

Well, the American press usually focuses on American stuff, same as German press focuses on German stuff, etc.

IMJack said:

We're also ignoring the thousands of other people who die of everything else in the world every day.

But that's old news, everybody knows that happens. Most people are just paying attention to the new stuff.

IMJack said:

Why are some people's lives depicted as more valuable than others?

Because they are.

by Lüt
IMJack said:
Why are some people's lives depicted as more valuable than others?
Because they are.

We focus on them, but they are what they are, flesh and blood, nothing more nothing less. Some have tremendous powers and wealth, even that will not alter my bank account if they cease to exist. The only important people in one's live are those who directly influence one's life. The rest are unjustly 'worshipped' in my opinion.
Everything from Osbourne to Chirac, from the Queen to Schwarzenegger.

There is little in British press about American soldiers deaths, apart from reporting, very little follow up, but there would be with British deaths, that's as it should be, your own troops are more important to you, their family lives in your country etc.
Deaths of soldiers are treated as martyrs because that's exactly what they are:
Martyr:a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
If they were not given the honours they deserve very few people would be inclined to risk anything in battle, the threat of being branded a coward or shot for cowardice isn't what keeps a soldier going in battle, it's the respect of his fellow men, family and country, that's why the treatment by the Americans of their Vietnam heroes was regarded as shoddy in the eyes of most of the world

It's all part of a bigger problem as Dr. Will Tuttle explains:

The Real Terrorism
by Dr. Will Tuttle

We in the United States should not be quick to retaliate against those responsible for the September 11 airplane attacks, or to feel that we are merely the innocent victims of irrational hatred or unwarranted evil.
In the scant three days between the attacks and George W. Bush's vow to "rid the world of evil," over 75,000 people died of starvation, and it was completely ignored by the media. Essentially, we kill 25,000 people every day because they could easily be fed by the abundance of grain we produce, but we simply do not care about them, and we kill them by withholding, stealing, and wasting the food they could eat. This is the evil terrorism we have committed and that underlies the retaliation we have experienced, and it is this terrorism that we ought to be devoted to ridding in our world.
Recognizing this evil is crucial to understanding the dynamics of violence in the world today, and against the U.S. in particular.
Because 5,500 of "our" people have been killed, we are in a delirium of outrage, and are motivated to do whatever it takes to stop the cause of this outrage. Why does the tragic and preventable killing of 25,000 people daily not outrage us? Why are they not "our" people also? We care about our people, but not about other people, and this narrow attitude is exactly why we have been attacked. It should be a call for us to examine our attitudes and actions in the world community, and try to see ourselves as others see us. It would be an enlightening, maturing, and humbling experience.
Right now, we ought to remember these things:
Eleven years ago, our Operation Desert Storm brutally bombed the people of Iraq, demolishing their public utilities, transportation, communications, health care, water distribution, and industrial systems. This devastating attack was motivated by our desire to assert control over the Middle Eastern oil supplies to which our wasteful lifestyle makes us desperately addicted.
We killed hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians, crippled their life support systems, and thoroughly despoiled their delicate desert environment. Then, over the past eleven years, we have applied sanctions against Iraq that have not allowed critically needed medical and repair supplies into the country. On account of this blatant cruelty, it is estimated that over 200,000 people, mostly children, have died; many of them painful lingering deaths due to inadequate water, food, and basic sanitation.
For this entire time, people in the U.S. have been indifferent to the
suffering that we are directly causing, while we mindlessly pursue a course of escalating consumerism, militarism, and global domination. There is thus absolutely no one in the Moslem world who is more hated than the senior George Bush who instigated the Gulf War, and to the tradition-minded Arab world, the son who continues the work of the father, which may help explain why they are particularly desperate, and alarmed by George W. Bush and the world-dominating stance he has taken since his inauguration.The United States, with only 4.5% of the world's population, has a military budget equal to 50% of the world's military spending! This same 4.5% of the world's people consumes 35% of the world's petroleum and other resources, and produces 35% of the world's toxic pollution. Americans tend to be amazingly blind to the consequences that their wasteful and arrogantly consumptive lifestyle forces onto people in the rest of the world.
Predictably, the U.S. response to the recent attack was to add even more money to the already absurdly bloated military budget, in an effort to destroy the evil we imagine is lurking somewhere out there. Perhaps the evil is within: our own insensitivity and lack of understanding and caring.

They aren't much better in every other country, so it's not only the US - it's probably every other country out there too.
I remember that three of our "boys" died together with two German soldiers a while back, and it was really sickening so much the media blew it up - the news had like ten-fifteen minutes about this shit.

I see that there is a reason for the massive media surrounding the death of a fellow countryman, but I STILL find it a bit sickening in a way. I usually try to ignore it.

Dr Will continues:

In order to ensure a continual flood of cheap products pouring through retail outlets, through ever-larger U.S. homes, and into over-filled waste dumps, the enormous transnational corporations of the world increasingly enslave populations of less-industrialized countries, forcing them off their land and onto industrial assembly lines, devastating their communities, and exploiting the land for resources while fouling it with unrestrained pollution.
It is well documented that U.S.-based corporations like General Electric, Coca-Cola, Amoco, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, and others pay repressive local governments to kill and torture people who try to organize labor unions or stop "development" to protect their lives, customs, and environment. These rich and powerful corporations! , whose only loyalty is to their own bottom line, are increasingly running the U.S. government at every level, as is common knowledge, and are directing policies that increase their profits and
spread their influence. We are told this is "good for America," and it is obvious that "President" Bush is their puppet. The corporate-dominated media keeps the U.S. public uninformed and distracted by trivia so that Americans increasingly live in a world completely divorced from the cruel reality their self-centered lives are causing. Until such a surprise attack happens.... Then we wallow in patriotic jingoism, self-righteousness, and phony religious rhetoric invoking God to be on our side as we rid the world of the evil that has just dropped out of the sky onto our innocent heads for no apparent reason. We ought to know that chickens will eventually come home to roost.

U.S. agribusiness is also an ugly reality behind much of the misery the U.S. inflicts on the rest of the world. If we continue to ignore this, we will just get louder wake-up calls, or perish by numbing ourselves to death. Of the fifty billion mammals and birds imprisoned worldwide in the appalling concentration camps for food animals called factory farms, and slaughtered every year to satisfy the human craving for animal flesh, ten billion are in the U.S.
This agribusiness industry is the largest and most powerful U.S. industry and its negative effect on world health and welfare is impossible to overestimate. In the U.S. alone, the breadbasket of the world, over 80% of all the wheat, oats, barley, soybeans, and corn are fed to livestock and thus mostly squandered. Thus, while thousands of people die of starvation daily, we feed most of our grain, and over half the fish that is caught, to fatten animals for slaughter. These unfortunate animals are fed enormous
quantities of antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs to keep them alive on the oppressive factory farms, which also use huge amounts of toxic chemicals to kill the pathogens that thrive in their overcrowded conditions. To satisfy the desire for cheap flesh, eggs, and dairy products, we thus waste most of the grain we grow, pollute the earth at an unsustainable level, and foster ever more highly resistant microorganisms in our war against them. This industrialization of food production has fostered our
second largest industry, the medical-pharmaceutical industry, which feeds and fattens itself on the huge number of sick and fat Americans eating the sick and fat animals the factory farms produce. With our heads buried in our feeding troughs, we don't ever look up to see the interconnections, to see the results of our actions.
It doesn't stop at our borders. We import millions of pounds of animal flesh every year from impoverished nations, and the grain and land that fed these animals was taken by our superior wealth from the local people, who are, therefore, hungry, poor, and in despair. The big U.S. agribusiness and food corporations and their cohorts in the drug business, like ConAgra, Cargill, Monsanto, Smithfield, IBP, Tyson, McDonald's, and others, along with the World Bank, IMF, and the world financial powers, are aggressively pushing animal diets and U.S.-style factory farming throughout the world. The U.S.
military, often working covertly with oppressive local regimes, enforces the corporations' agenda against displaced, impoverished, hungry people. The Pentagon and the World Trade Center have been symbolic and actual centers of oppression.
As rich people continue to buy vast amounts of grain by purchasing
hamburgers, pork, turkey, cheese, and chicken, those with less money are marginalized, and can afford no food, and face starvation. We rich Americans eat the fat of the land and pollute and despoil it for everyone else. We spread our system for our own profit so a rich minority of the world's population eats the wasteful luxury of animal fat while millions go hungry.
Now we want to build an even bigger fence to keep others out of our feedlot, and a bigger stick to hit them with. The rainforests are destroyed to provide land for cattle, the oceans are fished to the brink of destruction, the lands and waters are farmed into toxic desolation to fatten the poor animals we slaughter, and those humans unfortunate enough to resist our greed, we condemn with words of self-righteousness, anger, and revenge. The true terrorism is our overt killing of people to get the oil and resources
we crave, and our covert killing of people through enforcing an economic system that starves and exploits them.
Unless we curb these appetites for killing, and the arrogance, hypocrisy, and violence that go with them, we will author our own destruction, and probably the destruction of many others as well. The ancient wisdom ever holds: Violence begets violence. As we sow, so shall we reap.
Now is the time to sow seeds of understanding, patience, and inner
reflection, and to truly live more simply, encourage a more plant-based diet, and change our foreign policy, with a view toward caring for all the humans on this beautiful earth, all the precious creatures here, and all those of the future generations who depend upon us to be responsible for our actions.
As Gandhi said,
"There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed."

You are quoting this guy at us?




He needs to get his facts right this Will Tuttle, Bush snr didn't start the Gulf war, Iraq did by invading another country, a country that asked for help from NATO and the UN, Bush didn't start desert storm, it was mandated from the international community
The "unable to procure medical supplies etc" myth is that, a myth, under the oil for food programme, Iraq is able to sell oil and buy medical and food supplies, Sadam often stops this and does not buy the amount he is allowed to buy, I forget the figures, but you can go check, he has millions of dollars worth of medical aid he has not taken up, why? Because it makes good headlines, and fuels the lies Tuttle spouts. Sadam even shut off the oil for food programme during the last months in "protest" he says against the Israel invasion of the west bank, but who did that hurt? Only his own people, the same people he used chemical weapons on.
Lord save me from Zen's

Q: How do I become a Lama?

A: Go to a monastic university and study for twenty-five years. Begin by memorizing Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha with its commentary (500 pages or so). Then study what you have memorised by hearing lectures on it and debating the contents with other candidates until you can argue every side of every controversy equally well. Then memorise several works of Nagarjuna, along with their commentaries. Then memorise the seven treatises of Dharmakirti. In additional to that study, you must master several forms of meditation and study tantric rituals for about two or three years.

Alternatively, you can go to America and just call yourself a lama. Billions of nubile virgins will follow you everywhere and give you money.

Q: Why don't Buddhists vacuum in the corners?
A: Because they have no attachments

Q: What is the name of the best Zen teacher?
A: M.T. Ness

Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Tree falling in the forest.

Q: What happens when a Buddhist becomes totally absorbed with the computer he is working with?
A: He enters Nerdvana.

Q: What did one Zen practitioner give to another for his/her birthday?
A: Nothing.
Q: What did the birthday boy/girl respond in return?
A: You are thoughtless for giving me this meaningless gift.
To which the giver replied, "Thank you."

Q: Why are there so few Buddhist rhythm and blues bands?
A: Because Buddhists don't have any soul.

Q: What does a Buddhist wish someone on their birthday?
A: May you have many happy returns.

Phoenix said:

We focus on them, but they are what they are, flesh and blood, nothing more nothing less.

Well if you want to look at it as a giant biology party, then fine, but it's still based on what that one bundle of flesh and blood does for the others.

Scientist said:

Essentially, we kill 25,000 people every day because they could easily be fed by the abundance of grain we produce, but we simply do not care about them, and we kill them by withholding, stealing, and wasting the food they could eat.

Oh bah, we don't kill them. Granted we could help them but that doesn't make us responsible for their conditions.

Still the rest of that is pretty good.

/me saves.

OK...Are you people stupid or am I just really smart? JK.

Phoenix I agree with what you said for the most part. Now on to Lut again... : )

I think the fact of the matter is we'll go and blow up Japan, stick our noses in Korea, go fight a war in Vietnam, go save Kuwait from Iraq in sake of our oil interests, then spread democracy while killing all those commie bastards but yeah, despite the billions and trillions of dollars we spend on all that it isn't even remotely our responsibility to help the poor. Besides the fact most people look up to us to help them out in times of need but you know what, that's bullshit. We'll only help them if it suites us. Otherwise Fuck 'em. But that's just what I think. I could be wrong.

Black

Propaganda, currency, influence.

With these three things you can take down anyone armed with the gun, the tank, or the bomb, for they are far superior both in effectiveness and longevity.

This is how our leaders control the world. This is how it will always be.

Unless people learn how to think.

Ya know, no matter how long we can argue about these subjects, nothing is going to change because of it? That's pretty damn funny... HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

That is true... It is funny isn't it? Ah, what a waste of time. lol.

Black

The whole purpose on arguments is not to accomplish anything, but to have fun and expand your mind doing it.

The guys a vegetarian and therefor retarded.

Sorry, but Dr.Will is a meathead.

The guys a vegetarian and therefor retarded.

Just because you`re a vegetarian doesn`t mean you`re
retarded. Mahatma Gandhi was a vegetarian and he was
most definitely NOT retarted!

Sorry, but Dr.Will is a meathead.

That`s the first time I heard someone call a vegetarian a MEAThead. :)

fodders:

Bush snr didn't start the Gulf war, Iraq did by invading another country, a country that asked for help from NATO and the UN,...

Sure, like America didn`t have a choise. The Palestinians have asked for NATO/ UN help, so why isn`t America defending them against Israel? That`s right, because they made a CHOISE not to.
It all just a game of words. What we call a war is defined by what suits us to be a war. The West doesn`t care about the Palestinians so killing them is not concidered starting a war. We care about oil and money so endangering these things IS concidered starting a war.

Amen m0l0t0v...

Black

Palestine has no oil

Let me clarify, anyone who thinks that by eating vegetables they aren't killing all the cute little animals IS retarded. I mean, unless they live off stuff they find in the wild. They've still taken land that was animal habitat, they eat stuff from farms that kill animals to make vegetables. Have you ever seen waht a deer looks like when it gets sucked into a combine? A cute little skunk gone into the thresher?

If you live, it is at the expense of other life.

Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life...

Unless you are vegetarian because it's healthier, you are only deluding yourself that you're causing less pain and suffering to the world. Now you're just doing it indirectly.

If God wanted us to be vegetarians he would not have made animals out of meat

Rellik said:

Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life...

You see, Reverend Maynard, these are the cries of the carrots. Tomorrow is harvest day. But for them, IT IS THE HOLOCAUST!

fodders said:

Palestine has no oil

That's M0l0t0v's whole point!
He's saying that if Palestine had oil and supplied it to america the whole conflict would be called a "war" and america would support the Palestinians.
... but they don't have oil so america choose to do nothing. :(

That's M0l0t0v's whole point!

Wow, Scientist, can you settle my quarrel with
Rellik aswell? ;-)

Truth is, if Kuwait hadn't had oil/been so close to U.S. military interests in Saudi, the U.S. Govt. wouldn't have given that much of a shit about its being invaded; they didn't give a shit about the Palestinians did they? I wonder how the Israelis would have been treated if Palestine had oil...

RRROOOAAARRR said:

Truth is, if Kuwait hadn't had oil/been so close to U.S. military interests in Saudi, the U.S. Govt. wouldn't have given that much of a shit about its being invaded; they didn't give a shit about the Palestinians did they? I wonder how the Israelis would have been treated if Palestine had oil...

Very good point. Most wars that the US government stick their noses in are usually out of their own best interests. Vietnam - Russians were supplying the north, US backing the south. Conflicts of old re-emerging.
And they only got their hands dirty in WWII after the japs bombed pearl harbour and allied themselves with the nazis.
After Sept 11, their reactions were obviously plain retaliation, and the worst part is Tony Blair doddling along after Bush like a fucking puppet.
Maybe i'm wrong about a few points, so criticise if you must :)

Spike said:

RRROOOAAARRR said:...
Very good point.

Hey, that was my point first!
thanks for agreeing though ;-)

Sorry dude, i scan read :)

Spike said:

Very good point. Most wars that the US government stick their noses in are usually out of their own best interests. Vietnam - Russians were supplying the north, US backing the south. Conflicts of old re-emerging.
And they only got their hands dirty in WWII after the japs bombed pearl harbour and allied themselves with the nazis.
After Sept 11, their reactions were obviously plain retaliation, and the worst part is Tony Blair doddling along after Bush like a fucking puppet.
Maybe i'm wrong about a few points, so criticise if you must :)

Well, to be fair, Roosevelt was already Lend-Leasing stuff to us Brits before Pearl Harbour, which was about all he could do without alienating domestic voters in the U.S. who didn't give two shits about "the European War"...and as far as I remember the Japanese only allied themselves with Nazi Germany after the U.S. declared war on them...but I could be wrong on that.

You see, Reverend Maybard,

MAYBARD?!?!? MAYBARD?!?!?