Fun Stuff > CHATTER
The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever
Carl-E:
--- Quote from: GarandMarine on 16 May 2013, 18:06 ---...That said I still refer to hadji as hadji, though I make a point of distinguishing (as do most of my mates) between Iraqi and Afghani civilians and hadji. Hadji is the bad guy who kills your friends, wants to kill you, and murders women and children on the regular, he has no honor, no self respect and only deserve swift violence visited upon him and his ilk. Dehumanization? Yes absolutely. However an enemy who rigs an ice cream cart with an IED in downtown Kabul specifically to target children does half the world on that himself.
--- End quote ---
I'll be honest, my real issue with the nickname "Hadji" is that it has a meaning - had one, rather, before it was appropriated for dehumanization. It was originally the title given a person who goes on a Hadj, the obligatory visit to Mecca that all Muslims attempt make at least once in their life. What we're doing is calling these people devout Muslims - and that's just so fucking far off the mark that it makes me crazy. I know our language is an everchanging wonderland, but the military machine has taken the name of a peaceful group of pilgrims representing the vast majority of devout believers and given it over to a small bunch of crazed terrorists. And it's caught on, to the point that a person taking the Hadj may well, in the future, have severe difficulty if referred to as a Hadji.
I mourn the loss of the original meaning of the word in this country (and probably much of the west). More so that the new meaning has probably spread into the occupied areas as well, changing the language it came from through nothing more than willful ignorance.
None of this is your fault, of course. Who the hell knows how it started. But I try and tell anyone I hear using it what it really means. Not just because it makes them think a little, but because I'd hate to have a term of pride and accomplishment, of devotion and inner peace, turned into a slur. It's essentially bullying at its worst. And that's the last thing we need given the might of our military. Like the letter you linked says, we are, and need to continue to be the good guys.
Good guys don't do shit like that.
Akima:
Good guys don't do shit like that? Good guys have done a great deal worse.
Terrorism is not a tactic of strength, but of of weakness. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda etc. are rank amateurs in the killing-women-and-children stakes compared to the forces commanded by, for example, Albert Kesselring, Arthur Harris, and Curtis Le May, and the last two, at least, were "good guys", right? On the single night of March 9/10th 1945, a fire-bombing attack on Tokyo burned out about 42km2 of the city and killed approximately 100,000 civilians. The conventional bombing campaign against Japan may have killed as many as half a million. The appalling effects of the nuclear weapons deployed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known now, despite considerable efforts at the time to conceal and minimise them, presumably to make more credible our claim to be "good guys".
I will make no comment on the military necessity of any of these acts, or on the men who committed them, but I will point out that all combatants in WW2, "good guys" and "bad guys" alike, did not hesitate to target women and children in pursuit of victory, often explicitly and always implicitly. I don't know how one could compare the beastliness committed by terrorist groups in Iraq, with the hideous burns suffered by one of the "lucky" survivors of Hiroshima, and decide which is better or worse. I don't actually think there are any good guys, but only bad guys and worse guys, and you just have to support the lesser evils.
TinPenguin:
--- Quote from: Akima on 18 May 2013, 03:19 ---Good guys don't do shit like that? Good guys have done a great deal worse.
--- End quote ---
I think perhaps you need to reconsider the meaning of the term 'good guys' in the context of Carl-E's post.
Is it cold in here?:
In this case, I read "No true Scotsman" as a call to action, urging the "good guys" to act better.
Kugai:
War is an ugly business Akima
A sense of honour and fairness should exist, and can exist in it, but it's hard to maintain in the middle of an engagement when you're nose to nose with your opponent(s) and ankle deep in gore with the guy in front of you trying to take your head of before you do the same to him/her.
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