Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil (Maureen Dowd)

[somone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/08dowd.html

Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil
By MAUREEN DOWD

...Many voices suggested that decapitating the head of a deadly terrorist network was some sort of injustice. Taking offense after Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said he was “much relieved” at the news of Bin Laden’s death, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, posted the Twitter message: “Ban Ki-moon wrong on Osama bin Laden: It’s not justice for him to be killed even if justified; no trial, conviction.”

I leave it to subtler minds to parse the distinction between what is just and what is justified. When Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she was “glad” Bin Laden had been killed, a colleague called such talk “medieval.” Christophe Barbier, editor of the centrist French weekly L’Express, warned: “To cry one’s joy in the streets of our cities is to ape the turbaned barbarians who danced the night of Sept. 11.” Those who celebrated on Sept. 11 were applauding the slaughter of American innocents. When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night to the White House, ground zero and elsewhere, they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more...

The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same. Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently. President Obama was prepared to take a life not only to avenge American lives already taken but to deter the same killer from taking any more. Aside from Bin Laden’s plotting, his survival and his legend were inspirations for more murder.

If stealth bombers had dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs and wiped out everyone, no one would have been debating whether Osama was armed. The president chose the riskiest option presented to him, but one that spared nearly all the women and children at the compound, and anyone in the vicinity. Unlike Osama, the Navy Seals took great care not to harm civilians — they shot Bin Laden’s youngest wife in the leg and carried two young girls out of harm’s way before killing Osama. Morally and operationally, this was counterterrorism at its finest. We have nothing to apologize for.

[EFerrari]

1. This is so embarrassing and on so many levels.

No wonder the NYTs is broke.

[Luminous Animal]

11. I remember the Bush years when Dowd was regularly ridiculed here for a slavish devotion to authority

Welcome the new boss. Same as the old boss.

[Art_from_Ark]

30. I have never liked her since her hit pieces on Al Gore

Screw her and the elephant she rode in on.

[coalition_unwilling]

25. It transcends embarassing to plumb the depths of inane. New flash, Maureen:

killing Osama when we could have instead captured him and put him on trial indeed does make us like Osama, but it would take a subtler mind than yours to get it.

Whatever. I haven't spent one red cent on the New York Times since they enabled Operation Shocking and Awful. Fuck the NYTimes.

[Timbuk3]

2. Beautifully Written

I agree.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. It's the same logic that says homophobia and being gay deserve the same level of respect.

In short, they don't.

Mo Dowd is right.

[leftstreet]

4. "Many voices" = some people say. Shoddy journalism there.

Does she not have any editorial help?

[Warren DeMontague]

5. No, actually she provided several examples.

"Some people say" is only ridiculous if there aren't actual people saying it, that you are willing to provide examples of.

[leftstreet]

7. Two. Meh, she's always been a crappy writer

She should probably be outright fired for "Navy Seal-gazing"

:eyes:

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Still, it's not the same thing as when FOX News says "Some people say" so they can put out something

that no one, except them, is saying.

I mean, there are people here who are saying the things Mo Dowd is talking about, so people- maybe not "many", but a few- ARE saying them.

She's not one of my favorites, but sometimes she gets a few good lines in.

[patricia92243]

6. I agree with her. n/t

[Fool Count]

9. But killing innocent certainly does.

And having little evil in the company of those innocent does nothing at all for redemption.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Canuckistanian]

18. +10000

Someody gets it

[JVS]

12. Maureen Dowd as moral authority? What has happened to our world?

[sibelian]

13. THIS is the wild lunacy, exactly stated.

"Good people can do whatever bad things they like because it's only bad people who aren't allowed to do bad things."

[Gravel Democrat]

14. !!! +100 it's a simple as that

[JVS]

22. These people never listened to Mr. Rogers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11HOw5oorDc

[mmonk]

15. Nor just.

[Vattel]

16. Dowd is dumb as a stump.

Dowd: "The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same."

Nice straw man Dowd. Assert that some of the second-guessing is premised on the belief that all killing is the same. Then ridicule that silly belief. Brilliant.

Dowd: "Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently."

Again, who says that we could? Dowd can really kick ass when she fights straw men.

Dowd: "President Obama was prepared to take a life not only to avenge American lives already taken but to deter the same killer from taking any more. Aside from Bin Laden’s plotting, his survival and his legend were inspirations for more murder."

I didn't know that a dead person can be deterred from taking lives. Setting that aside, who knows whether OBL's death will, on balance, save lives? Dowd doesn't. She says that his survival would inspire murder? Maybe. Of course his being killed might also inspire murder.

Dowd: "The president chose the riskiest option presented to him, but one that spared nearly all the women and children at the compound, and anyone in the vicinity. Unlike Osama, the Navy Seals took great care not to harm civilians — they shot Bin Laden’s youngest wife in the leg and carried two young girls out of harm’s way before killing Osama."

This is an important point to make. I too applaud the President for his choice of an operation that minimized risk to innocent bystanders. If only this were his usual modus operandi.

[Exilednight]

17. Doesn't surprise me. Dowd's a moron of the highest degree. Her defense of Bush made it

perfectly clear whose side she is on.

The only two opinion writers left at the times worth reading are Krugman and Kristoff. The Times needs to get some new blood and replace the Bush strategy apologists like Dowd.

[pipi_k]

19. Well. Now I know where I stand on the moral spectrum...

Not that I care what others think of me, but whatever.

I understand what she's saying and I agree in most part with her.


Too bad the moralists here can't just say, "I disagree with her and here's why" instead of calling her every nasty name they can think of, and while they're at it attaching those same epithets to people who think she might have a point.

We're all morons. Stupid. Immoral...or amoral.

Wow. Liberals. So-called "Progressives". Anybody who says something they disagree with doesn't just have a different viewpoint. Noooo....they're an asshole of the highest degree.

Awesome.

:eyes:

[Exilednight]

29. Where have I heard this: "Too bad the

moralists here can't just say, "I disagree with her and here's why" instead of calling her every nasty name they can think of, and while they're at it attaching those same epithets to people who think she might have a point."

Oh yeah, Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly often use the same line of reason.

[pipi_k]

31. It's not right from either side n/t

[Exilednight]

33. You're using a moral argument to defend immorality. Now I've seen it all. n/t

[EFerrari]

32. This column reminds me of student papers I had to review

that had so many problems, it would have been more efficient and maybe kinder to tell the writer to set it on fire and start over. It isn't really just a matter of disagreeing with her viewpoint. It's having to cringe your way through all the rest of her mess, too.

Forget about the morality or immorality of her position, or her sloppy recounting of the facts or her own uncivil dismissal of people who disagree with her or her misrepresentation of their objections or her underselling of her own position ("we have nothing to apologize for" is a retreat, not an affirmation). This is a person who uses her background in Shakespeare to call people "fools and knaves" and to compare that coke head draft dodger Bush to freaking Achilles. It's like sitting down at an elegant table and carefully choosing the right piece of silverware to pick your teeth with. It really is embarrassing and it's too bad she has to do it in public.

[Taitertots]

20. Only the simple minded can view the world as "Us good, them evil"

Are we not far more evil for murdering orders of magnitude more innocent people than Bin Laden could ever dream of killing?

[Enrique]

21. she misses the point

in the same way a lot of people are missing the point.

[UTUSN]

23. So... MoDo goes to the Great cocktail circuit Beyond, and... ?!1 n/t

[Drew Richards]

24. "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent."

"Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent."

[marions ghost]

28. Not about pity

of any kind.

[coalition_unwilling]

26. Killing evil, my ass! Kissinger is still a free man and there's a

certain resident of Crawford, TX still enjoying all the comforts of civilization.

Comparative body counts:

Kissinger: 2-3 million southeast Asians
Bush: 1 million+ Iraqi civilians
OBL: ???

[distantearlywarning]

27. This article pretty neatly summed up my opinion on the matter.

I approve.

[Warren Stupidity]

34. Bringing criminals to trial doesn't make us weak. nt.