QandO

April 03, 2004

The Kos aftermath
Posted by McQ

Wandering the blogosphere after the Kos "thing" I happened upon Ryne McClaren's blog, where he demonstrates that even in the face of those despicable words by Kos, there are still those who defend his statement.

I've identified Ryne's words with RM.

RM: Update II: Heh, nevermind the above update. The Kos "explanation" post for his "Screw them" comment is gathering its fair share of stupidity.

Some examples:

Jaime Schulte:

"That clears it up for me. I agree that although any death is regrettable, the mercenaries are the last people we should be concerned with in Iraq."

RM: The above comment is made without one single shred of proof that these four men were doing anything that could be called "mercenary" work.

Now this is simply mealy-mouthed crap. It is the same thing that is done by those throughout history who relegate people to 2nd class status so they can marginalize them.

They become something OTHER than a human being which then makes it OK to hate them, or at least not waste their compassion on them ... afterall, they've denied them their basic humanity by classifying them under some perjorative term ... like "mercenary". Extend it to "greedy", "rich" or "right-winger' and you get the idea.

a gilas girl:

["We mourn those whom we have lost or with whom we have solidarity. When we mourn collectively we mourn as part of a collective identity, we mourn those with whom we share some very important dimension. Otherwise the mourning and the grief is a private affair. ]

The job these men had in Iraq was "private" (that's the meaning of privatization) meaning they weren't there on behalf of us as a nation they were there on behalf of their employers and the stockholders of their employers companies. That means any mourning for these folks should also be "private". They have no claim on my grief as anything shared or public in that matter. I don't know about you but I identify with "ordinary folk" but I don't identity with war profiteers and mercenaries. Their deaths are sad for their friends and relatives, but their deaths are also a part of the context of their employment and are foreseeable and private."

RM: What the idiot named "gilas girl" means is that everything about this should be "private" except for the gloating on a political weblog that has thousands and thousands of visitors and rakes in thousands of dollars for emocrats.

I disagree slightly Ryne, and I added part of her statement that was left out above in the []. She makes the statement "we mourn those with whom we have solidarity."

What she's saying is being an American isn't enough in terms of "solidarity" for her to mourn an American's death. It must be a certain TYPE of American before she will deign to "mourn" for them.

So she wraps up her classification of these dead men as "others" by claiming all that BS about "private" vs. "collective" mourning. Its patent nonsense on a stick. She, like this Jamie character, have decided these men being Americans isn't good enough for them to mourn their deaths. That they simply aren't worthy of her compassion because of that crap she's used to rationalize her marginalization of them.

ogre:

"Saddam's family probably grieves the deaths of Uday and Qusay, too. But anyone over there sucking up big money is... well. Everyone has a price. Or so they say.

I have only the minimal human sympathy for their deaths and their treatment... and the pain that their kin are in. "

RM: These guys are like Uhaul and Queasy, and greedy too.

This is simply disgusting. This Ogre clown makes this outrageous comparison between two butchers, the sons of a butcher, to 4 men who's job it was to safeguard food shipments and then blithely blows them off as deserving of "minimal human sympathy" because this blatant sick-ass class warrior has written them in the "other" category. Why? They were "sucking up big money".

Yeah, ogre ... what a freakin' HORRIBLE crime that is ... easily comparible to Uday and Qusay's crimes against humanity.

BrooklynBoy:

"They were risking their lives and willing to kill for a big paycheck, thats as morally reprensible as one can get in my book. Doesn't mean they deserved to die, but does demand the question as to why the media hyped their grisly deaths and daily ignores the deaths of our underpaid and underprotected cannon fodder."

RM: That's the liberal spirit, BrooklynBoy! We don't want any pretense of compassion any more, just outright hatred of the "cannon fodder" and the "mercenaries."

As with most of the left, Brooklyn Boy has no idea what the difference between those who are engaged in security work do and what a 'mercenary' is. In his world, anyone who goes into a war zone and isn't in the military is a 'killer' and a "mercenary' ... like those Baptist missionaries who were murdered I suppose.

Regardless, he's classified these guys so now he can blow them off as not worthy. Additionally, he marginalizes the soldiers over there as 'cannon fodder' although I'd bet he'd tell you he "supports the troops".

Again ... the usual marginalization of these men as mercenaries and thus not deserving of compassion. Add to that this idiot's inability to understand that the REASON this made so much news vs. troops being killed is because of the absolute savagery, caught on camera, these men's corpses were subjected too after they'd been murdered. No need to look for logic or reason with Brookly Boy ... it doesn't exist.

And under the heading of "my tiny mind's made up, don't confuse me with facts" we find Paper Tigeress who's simplistic and completely assinine defense consisted of ...

Willing to kill for a big paycheck

Blackwater Agent 007

Paycheck to kill

Quite simply the most uninformed and most stupid "defense' of the bunch. Paper Tigress needs to get out more and quit watching James Bond movies.

I'm reading a book right now entitled "The Nazi Conscience" by Claudia Koonz. Now before everyone gets excited and begins accusing me of playing the Nazi card, that's not the point here ... I'm not accusing them of being Nazis. Instead I'm interested in the psychology of this thing, as Koonz was concerning the Nazis. I can't help it if the points to be made are found in a book about Nazis.

One of the points Koonz makes is that what the Nazis did was make cultural values relative. But unlike those who used cultural relativeness in the service of tolerance, they used it to vindicate their own superiority. That is part of what you see going on here.

Secondly, as Koonz notes, "althought every major culture honors the injunction to treat others as you hope they will treat you, the ideal often collapses in practice because the meaning of 'others' is not really clear." [emphasis mine]

Obviously in the case of Nazi Germany, ideology defined the "others" in a certain way (as a threat to the whole of the "Volk") and marginalized them (Jews, gypsies, the retarded, homosexuals, and eventually political enemies like communists, etc.) so they could rationalize hating them. That of course then led to other excess of which we're all aware.

In the above examples, we essentially see the same sort of pathological ideology at work, marginalizing some Americans as "others" because they were seen as 'greedy' or "mercenaries' or in a warzone for a 'paycheck', etc., etc.

And interesting case study, if you ask me.

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