[Note: On this blog I plan on making all sorts of strong statements above my pay grade - statements I don't know enough to back up with erudition. I submit these claims to you in hopes that those of you who know more (ir who just think differently) will try to set me straight.]
We’re bombing Pakistan again, apparently taking the lives of civilians, against the warnings of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that these bombings only serve to increase the likelihood of the growth of terrorist activity, calling them “counterproductive” and “detrimental to America’s war on terror.”
Let me try to break this down in simple logic, because apparently we’re having a hard time getting it.
Premise 1: America (and everyone else) wants less Muslim terrorists to engage in terrorism.
Premise 2: When America bombs non-terrorists in the Muslim world, even unintentionally, more people are likely to sign on with the terrorists.
Conclusion: We probably shouldn’t drop bombs that will kill non-terrorists.
I know that we don’t “mean” to do this – that it’s collaterral damage, as the current doctrine teaches – but apart from the fact that “collaterral damage” is such an ugly idea that I can hardly utter the words without vomiting in my mouth just a little bit, at some point we’ve got to ask ourselves if this kind of foreign policy is doing more harm than good. I have tried to ask that question, which as I said earlier was one of the primary reasons I voted for Obama, not that he won’t disappoint me.
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