unspeakable horror in pakistan.

[wesw]

what the hell does the world do about the islamists? damned if I know.

harden our hearts and girdle our loins?

turn the other cheek?

damned if I know what s right.

I realize that they have suffered too, but jesus Christ, children targeted?

anyone have any idea what s right? god help us.

[wesw]

well malala says we all need to go get the MFs (I m paraphrasing of course)

[oldr_n_wsr]

Fry em. Alive.

Catch a few, torture the crap out of them. If they yield good info, go after the rest. If not, they deserve it anyway.
My morality takes a back seat when dealing with these pigs.

[MajGenl.Meade]

My morality takes a back seat when dealing with these pigs.

Why... that's exactly what they said!

I have no idea what the OP is about but the subject line seems to speak for itself

[BoSoxGal]

what the hell does the world do about the islamists? damned if I know.

harden our hearts and girdle our loins?

turn the other cheek?

damned if I know what s right.

I realize that they have suffered too, but jesus Christ, children targeted?

anyone have any idea what s right? god help us.

It's actually 'gird' our loins, although to gird is a derivative of the concept of girdling.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Lord Jim]

Here's what the OP refers to:

In Pakistan school attack, Taliban terrorists kill 145, mostly children

slamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- "'God is great,'" the Taliban militants shouted as they roared through the hallways of a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Then, 14-year-old student Ahmed Faraz recalled, one of them took a harsher tone.

" 'A lot of the children are under the benches,' " a Pakistani Taliban said, according to Ahmed. " 'Kill them.' "

By the time the hours-long siege at Army Public School and Degree College ended early Tuesday evening, at least 145 people -- 132 children, 10 school staff members and three soldiers -- were dead, military spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said. More than 100 were injured, many with gunshot wounds, according to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani.

The death toll does not include the terrorists who attacked the school, bursting into an auditorium where a large number of students were taking an exam and gunning down many of them within minutes, Bajwa said.

"They started shooting indiscriminately," Bajwa said, "and that's where maximum damage was caused."

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurrassani said the militants scaled the school's walls around 10 a.m. (midnight ET), intent on killing older students there.

The Taliban had "300 to 400 people ... under their custody" at one point, said Khurrassani, whose group is called Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. But Bajwa said there was no hostage situation, as the attackers' focus was shooting to kill rather than taking captives.

They were eventually met by Pakistani troops who pushed through the complex building by building, room by room. By 4 p.m., they'd confined the attackers to four buildings. A few hours later, all the militants -- seven of them, according to Bajwa -- were dead.
World leaders condemn Pakistan attack

Pakistani authorities spent Tuesday night inside the school in Peshawar, a city about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the country's capital, Islamabad, looking for survivors, victims and improvised explosive devices planted to worsen the carnage.

As they searched, they discovered that the school's principal was among the terrorists' victims.

The attack drew sharp condemnation from top Pakistani officials, who vowed that the country wouldn't stop its war against the Taliban.

"We are undeterred. ... We will not back off," Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told CNN.

But he said the ambush at the school is another example of how great his nation's sacrifices have been in fighting that's raged for more than a decade.

"Even the children are dying on the frontline in the war against terror," he said. "The smaller the coffin, the heavier it is to carry. ... It's a very, very tragic day."

Minister: Most of the dead were 12 to 16 years old

On a typical day, the Army Public School and Degree College is home to about 1,100 students and staff, most of them sons and daughters of army personnel from around Peshawar, though others attend as well.

Their nightmare began in late morning, when a car exploded behind the school. Pakistani education minister Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman explained to CNN that the blast was a ruse, meant to divert the attention of the school's security guards.

It worked.

Gunmen got over the walls and walked through where students in grades 8, 9 and 10 have classes and fired randomly, said Dr. Aamir Bilal of Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, citing students. They came in with enough ammunition and other supplies to last for days and were not expecting to come out alive, according to a Pakistani military official.

Seventh-grader Mohammad Bilal said he was sitting outside his classroom taking a math test when the gunfire erupted. He fell into bushes before running to the school's gates to safety.

Ahmed, the 14-year-old student, remembered being in the school's auditorium when four or five people burst in through a back door "and started rapidly firing." After getting shot in his left shoulder, the ninth-grader lay under a bench.

"My shoulder was peeking out of the bench, and somebody was following," Ahmed recalled. "They went into another room, (and when) I ran to the exit, I fell."

Bajwa told reporters that Pakistani security forces reached the school 15 minutes after the attack began.

They found, he said, "the children ... drenched in blood, with their bodies on top of each other."

Most of those killed were between the ages of 12 and 16, said Pervez Khattak, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital. But some adults in the school also were targets, like a 28-year-old office assistant who was shot and then burned alive, police official Faisal Shehzad said.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/world/asi ... ol-attack/

I sure hope if the Pakistani's find the people who were behind this that they don't water board them to try and find out what similar plots may be planned...

Since that would make them even worse then the people who did this....

Since the population of Pakistan is 182 million, 132 murdered children is really tiny; infinitesimal in fact...

Nothing to get worked up over...

[Big RR]

Come on Jim; that's beneath you.

[Lord Jim]

How is that different from drawing a moral equivalence between water boarding senior plotters of the 9/11 attacks with the people who planned and carried out the attacks?

As some have done here; ("descend to their level" etc)

Or even characterize the water boarding as morally worse then the 9/11 attack... (as rube did)

Those comparisons should have been beneath anyone...

ETA:

And how is this:

Since the population of Pakistan is 182 million, 132 murdered children is really tiny; infinitesimal in fact...

Any different from this:

a minor attack ...

0.00095 % casualties is tiny. Not even "small"...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Pakistani's... you did that just for me, didn't you LJ?

Yes, I located the story on the worldnets earlier today - dreadful people. Their spokesthing even tried to make it a little less dreadful by indicating that the task was to kill 'only' older children and not little ones..... words fail.

Numerically - yes, well spotted. 132 is a very small fraction of 182 million. Must be that Core Curriculum working well again.

I think it's quite a lot to get worked up over.

ETA LJ, it's this way (and I know you have trouble with this equivalence concept).

We expect assholes who announce they are assholes to be assholes.

But some people we expect better of because they say that they are better - then they disappoint us by acting like assholes.

Taliban kid killers are in the first category. CIA torturers - that's kind of the second category.

[Guinevere]

Wow LJ - what BigRR said. I'm pretty sure we are all aware of what happened and both saddened and angered. For me, I couldn't even listen to the description of the terror in those classrooms (it was on BBC radio this morning in graphic detail) without being absolutely nauseated. I'm sure all of us had flashbacks to Newtown (the second anniversary was Sunday).

I wish I had an easy answer. Unfortunately, I don't.

[Lord Jim]

I wish I had an easy answer. Unfortunately, I don't.

I'd be happy if somebody would just take a stab at answering the question I raised in my last post:

How is that different from drawing a moral equivalence between water boarding senior plotters of the 9/11 attacks with the people who planned and carried out the attacks?

[Guinevere]

You mean the "when did you stop beating your wife" question? No one condemning torture said there was moral equivalence, so no, I'm not even going to try because I do not accept the premise of your question.

[Lord Jim]

I'd also like to ask where the people were who are rushing in to chastise me for making a statement that was obviously not reflective of my sincere views but made only for the purpose of illustrating a point, when this was said with complete seriousness and sincerity:

0.00095 % casualties is tiny. Not even "small", no matter how easily you are personally frightened. Not enough to justify degrading ourselves and acting like worse animals than the ones who attacked us.

The answer to that question is "nowhere to be found"...

indeed...

[Big RR]

Jim--if you were trying to draw an actual moral equivalence between the perpetrators and the waterboarders/torturers, you might be right, we might have something to talk about. but I don't get the idea you were doing that--you were trying to be sarcastic or funny.

I just don't think the death of children is a laughing matter. Nor do I think you do, which is why I said the comments were beneath you. and FWIW, I do think there are people that those comments would not be beneath.

ETA: the same applies to the small number of casualties quip.

[Guinevere]

I don't give a crap about the "tiny" comment - I've ignored it from day 1 and I will continue to ignore it because other than mathematically, it's idiotic. I ignored your comment when you wrote it here, too.

My comments were solely directed at the portion of your statement that you quoted.

[Lord Jim]

No one condemning torture said there was moral equivalence,

Well Guin, then perhaps you can explain this to me. In the discussion about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on senior al-Qaeda operatives, you said this:

What happened on 9/11 was appalling -- I said it then and I'll say it again -- it still doesn't justify stooping to their level,

What does "stooping to their level" mean, if the intent is not to draw an equivalence?

I don't get the idea you were doing that--you were trying to be sarcastic or funny.

Big RR:

I absolutely assure you I was not attempting to be funny ...

Any more than Johnathan Swift was trying to be funny...

if you were trying to draw an actual moral equivalence between the perpetrators and the waterboarders/torturers, you might be right, we might have something to talk about.

I'm not doing that either; (I understand quite well that no such equivalence remotely exists) others did that in the enhanced interrogation thread...

That's precisely what my satire is aimed at..

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'd also like to ask where the people were who are rushing in to chastise me ... etc. etc.... The answer to that question is "nowhere to be found"...

I'm here and I was there too. I agreed with the statement with the possible exception of the final clause.

I understand "worse animals than the ones who attacked us" thusly:
a. our country (the USA) depicts itself as morally superior to terrorist scum. We do not torture people as they do. Quite right too.
b. when our government (thru its various organs) actually does torture people, the USA proves that it is not "better"
c. when our citizens applaud torture they prove that they are not "better"
d. this is not equivalence - it is worse than that

If I misunderstood rubato's point, then I stand, sit down and generally wobble from side to side awaiting correction.

One immoral act does not excuse another. A society of laws is rendered null and void when the lawless take over and are applauded. Today it's a terrorist (none of us like them) - tomorrow it'll be homosexuals. You OK with that? Because I am not

[wesw]

well, I don t think we can avoid killing the perpetrators , but I wouldn t torture them. a bullet will do. they aren t worth our souls.

[rubato]

One thing we have not done well and should do better is to use the power of the media to show the people of Pakistan that the Taliban are enemies of all mankind. All we have to do is tell the truth and frame the facts clearly, consistently and persistently so that the people of Pakistan have a clear picture of the moral and practical stakes for them. The Taliban murder children. They can never be supported nor hidden. It might be that the message should come from Pakistanis but we can urge the government there to push this forward.

There should be billboards updated regularly with the totals of women and children murdered by Taliban. Totals of school bombings. Totals of rapes.

We need to do the same in Nigeria with Boko Haram.

Both of them survive in part* because when people are in fear any moral uncertainty 'freezes' them from doing the right thing; and the right thing is hunting them down and killing them.

The Taliban and Boko Haram are evil and need to be hunted down and killed. The populations around them need to understand the moral stakes clearly so that the 'stand-up-guys' in those communities are given the heart and the means to kill them.

I'm astonished that we have done this so poorly in so many places. When people are alone and in fear they are frozen in place and do not act. When they are given moral clarity a few of those people will understand their duty and even though they are still afraid they will rise up and kill them. We need to enlist the 'ordinary heroism' in the mass of good people in each of these places.


yrs,
rubato

*Corruption is a big part as well.