Turn the Other Cheek?
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14817480/detail.html
This story made me think of those people who say the “Christian thing to do” is to always “turn the other cheek.” They use this to justify their opposition to the Iraq war, their opposition to helping Israel, their oppositon to any violent situation they have no personal familiarity with.
Well, what about this recent church shooting, the one at the New Life Church? The guy had two handguns, an assault rifle and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition. He shot four people at that church, killing two of them. He had also killed two other people twelve hours earlier at a missionary building. But then a female security guard, named Jeanne Assam, shot and killed him at the New Life Church before he he could shoot any more people.
Should she have “turned the other cheek” and done “the Christian thing”? Should she have let him use up all thousand rounds, and just tried to talk him out of doing what he was doing?
Sounds ridiculous, huh? But asking her to do that is the same thing as asking our government to ignore terrorists, to not go to war with them, to do all these stupid things the neocon haters say we should do. Most of the visible battles against terrorists are now fought overseas, in places most Americans are not familiar with, places they have never seen, and somehow this makes people think it okay for them to expect us to use a selective application of the “turn the other cheek” principle.
The woman who shot that man at the church is a hero. Just like our troops. But the same argument used by jackasses who go online and say our troops deserve no thanks and call them paid stooges for Bush also says that she is a killer, too, and that she deserves no thanks.
You can’t have it both ways. Everyone who attacks our troops and our efforts overseas to keep the people here in America safe also spits on this woman, and what she did. The ones that call our troops killers also call her a killer, and the ones who sympathize with terrorists also sympathize with this guy who was going around in Colorado killing people at random.
Any excuse used to try to humanize a terrorist and their motivatons and desires can also be used on this random killer in Colorado. He is the same thing as a terrorist. A senseless killer. I’m sure he had motivations, and felt picked on and was frustrated, just like the terrorists from the middle east who murder whenver they get an chance. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t create any reason at all for siding with them over the people who protect us. Again, the exact same argument, yet it gets used differently depending on the place and time.
And what is the main diffeernce between the Middle East and Colorado? the reason the same argument for the same situation gets applied differently? Familiarity. Colorado is closer, people understand it better, are more able to put themselves in the shoes of the people in that church. So they side with the guard, and say she’s a hero (which she is). Few have beeen to the middle east, seen the fanaticsm in a terrorist’s eyes, been shot at by them, or seen the maimed, shredded bodies of children they have killed. So it is not familiar to them, and so they apply their selective bullshit application of the “turn the other cheek” principle.
It’s fucking wrong.
Published by CoyoteDKM on December 11th, 2007 | Filed under War Commentary, War News
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.