11/03/2003 11:35:00 AM by Rob

The sloth of uncouthness

My younger son, who watches an awful lot of "educational" TV, this weekend referred to my elder son as a fat sloth. So I mumbled under my breath, "Yes, but he's not the Uncouth Sloth." At least, not yet.

All is quiet on the Cubs front, and while we eagerly await the triumphant coming of young, powerful men of Latin heritage to fortify the offense, I gotta go to a place that may seem political, but to me is more of a moral issue. The current government is not the first government to engage in such behavior, so my beef is not just with the administration currently in place, but with any government that confuses 'defense' and 'offense'.

Anyway, 16 American soldiers, on their way to their 2 week R&R trip back home, died when their helicopter was shot down in Iraq.

Once again, let's look at some semantics. It is referred to as the 'Department of Defense', not Offense. The soldiers we keep sending out there keep saying that they are proud "to defend their country". The Constitution refers "...to provide for a common defense...", as we all know from our Schoolhouse Rock episodes.

Now, when we think of "defense" in sports, we think of the position and the act of preventing the other team from committing harm (scoring) on us. Take that one step further, to war, and wouldn't "defense" be something where some other party tries to commit harm to us, and we try to stop or prevent that from happening.

I know, 9-11, 9-11, 9-eleven. Yep, let's look at that for a second. In MY mind, "defense" means that a mechanism is in place to PREVENT a bunch of zealots from assembling here, training here, hijacking planes and crashing them into heavily occupied and highly visible buildings. BUUUUUT NOOOOOO, our resources are spread so thin in creating an Offensive army, we don't have anything in place to Defend against terrorism.

When we send our armies to Iraq and Afghanistan, presumably to "catch criminals", but in the process we turn the countries to rubble with our stealth bombers and hot-rod tanks, that is Offense, friends, not defense.

"But they are the people who did 9-11," you blubber. Well, a few of them did. Not to mention some others in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Egypt, and here at home, who we ignore. But many, many others who had nothing to do with 9-11 died because of our offensive action.

If, in fact, you think these people DID have anything to do with causing harm to us, do you think they are going to be less angry, or more angry, after we laid waste to their country?

For all their faults, the Israeli army is a more of a defensive army. You don't see Israeli troops going off to Bosnia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, etc. They defend their own land, and they commit war actions in areas that may or may not be their land in actuality, but in their minds is in fact their land. Rarely are they ever caught more than 50 miles from home. Yes, getting in, around, and out of their country suggests a whole society living under a siege mentality. Gotta admit, not without cause.

All I know is, most of the world is mad at us today. This is not the fault of the soldiers following orders, it is the fault of those on high issuing the orders. And now, today, there are 16 new families here in America grieving the loss of a loved one, to go along with the 3 or so families from yesterday, and the day before, the day before that...all the way to when we first decided to strut our conscience overseas. I feel horrible for anyone who has lost a loved one to this war, and I feel even worse knowing for what these brave people died for. Thank God my children are too young to be there.

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