baltimoresun.com
2:00 PM EST, January 16, 2012
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Reading The Sun's pious outrage at U.S. Marines urinating on dead
Taliban fighters reminded me of Nietzsche's remarks on decadent
religions — cultures so wrapped up in the make-belief worlds of the
afterlife that they've come to devalue life in this world ("Despicable
and destructive," Jan. 13).
But instead of hand-wringing about the
sacredness of dead bodies, how about harnessing the new-found
appreciation of humanity among the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid
Karzai to draw attention to the barbaric and inhumane practices that are
accepted as the cultural standard in their region? (Unike slavery, women without voting or inheritance rights, indentured servitude, no social security retirement benefits for domestics or plantation workers, the imprisonment of members of the communist party, the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, making it illegal to teach a slave to read or write (even though they were so bakcwards they were incapable of reading and writing) the execution of Fred Hampton ... yeah, moral relativism ... it'll bite you in the ass EVERY FUCKING TIME!)
Those would
include the systematic de-humanization of women, the celestial rewards
promised to psychopaths for slaughtering women and children and the mass
murder of "infidels."
The intolerance and religious
discrimination that the Taliban died fighting for, and their concept of
genocide as a foreign policy goal (as in Iran's attitude toward Israel),
offer a far more worthwhile "teachable moment" than any temporary lapse
in judgment on the part of a few Marines.
J. Christoph Amberger, Towson
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
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