Herc, you’re using a typical propaganda trick that the Arabs use constantly. Display a picture that will arouse emotion in the viewer, but don’t explain what happened before or after or even what the picture really shows.
Yes, it’s horrible to see the face of a victim of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the way you deal with it is just to show the picture out of context, and we’re just supposed to think that the whole Japanese nation was sitting around, minding their own business when suddenly the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on them just to be evil.
The United States stayed out of World War II even as the Japanese were attacking and taking over countries in a large part of the Pacific. China was our ally at the time, so we should have defended them, but we just stood there while the Japanese invaded and eventually killed more than 20 million people (35 million, if you believe the Chinese) and made refugees out of 95 million people. (If these statistics sound high to you, look them up.) FINALLY, in 1941, when the Japanese air force attacked the US navy in Hawaii, we entered the war. We lost a total of more than 11 million soldiers in World War II, not to mention the number of soldiers lost by Australia and other allies, and an attack on the Japanese mainland would have cost too many more lives. The decision was made to use one nuclear bomb. Hiroshima was destroyed, and the Allies requested that Japan surrender. They refused, and so the second one was dropped. The injured face of the man in the photograph doesn’t give any indication that the Japanese government had been responsible for the deaths of more than 50 million people by the time the bomb was dropped, and that no one had provoked them. It also does not indicate that the bomb got Japan to surrender (which talking did not do), and that Japan became a peaceful democracy after that.
Just because one side of a conflict has more power doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
As for the Abu Graib pictures, I think it’s interesting that you probably imagine that I have not seen them. They were in our newspapers and on TV day after day, and in a very negative light, of course. You probably don’t know (or don’t care) that the media only got the stories and pictures after the US military had begun investigating the abuses. The American soldiers who performed those atrocities have been arrested, tried in a court martial and are now in prison. In contrast, Arabs don’t arrest people like Mr. Al-Zarqawi or others who kidnap people and cut off their heads, or who send 14-year-old girls with bomb belts to blow up pizzerias. In fact, Muslims praise them, and send them more money. Those Muslims who don’t praise them say it’s a tragedy and then say “BUT” and proceed to defend their actions.
In another matter: Notice that in 1978 Egypt concluded a peace agreement with Israel in which Egypt was given back land in return for peace. There has been no war between Egypt and Israel since. In 2000, an accord was signed between Lebanon and Israel in which Israel would withdraw from Lebanon and that a cease fire would follow. After the Israelis withdrew, Hezbollah kept lobbing rockets into Israel, more than 1,000 in six years. The Lebanese government didn’t do anything to stop Hezbollah from doing that. Finally the Israelis had to make it stop. Like the Nazis, Islamic militant groups, don’t want peace, and they only use peace negotiations as a tool of war.
Muslims do not live as brothers with Christians in most Muslim countries, especially those ruled by Shariah law. I read plenty about their situation from eyewitnesses, and I meet a lot of them and hear their stories face to face. This whole idea of Islamic tolerance of other religions is a lie, as are so many other things that so many Muslims tell me. Certain individual Muslims may be tolerant, but Islamic society in general, and especially Shariah law, is not. Muslims can’t convince me otherwise, because years of day-to-day experience with Muslims from the Arab countries have conditioned me to assume that I have to check everything an Arab Muslim tells me, because there’s about a 50 percent chance that he’s lying – not just about politics or religion, but about anything. I find certain Arabs trustworthy, and I have never had a problem with Muslims from places like Indonesia, but those from the Middle East are big on lying and various sorts of scamming, in my own personal experience.
And don’t even get me into Muslim religious propaganda. The religion was spread through violence right from the time of Mohammed, and they continue to spread it by threatening people or killing people to spread fear in others. There are quite a few writers who are very critical of Christianity, and they do not have to hide. Many writers who criticize Islam get death threats and have to go into hiding. And, as with other things, I find that Muslims lie about their religion when it suits their purpose.