REVIEW: Sensational ‘Unthinkable’ Provides Window Into Soul of Nihilistic Left
by Charles C. JohnsonThe movie of the summer won’t be in theatres, going instead straight to DVD on June 15.
That’s a shame, because Unthinkable, a ripped from the headlines suspense thriller, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Ann Moss, Michael Sheen and Brendan Routh, asks the sorts of questions we should be asking in our era of terror. It has all the hallmarks of an excellent 24 episode, save one — the threat seems far too real and it isn’t clear that the FBI is tough enough to save us.
—–
The movie opens to grainy footage of Sheen in a warehouse. The camera flickers on, Sheen stammers something, grows dissatisfied and the he turns the camera off. At first blush, these seem like outtakes, until he regains himself. “In the name of Allah, the merciful, and his Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, my name is Yousef Atta Mohammed. My former name is Stephen Arthur Younger.”
It’s a scene we’ve seen before – on the news, but never from Hollywood. Younger is all American: ex-military, a Muslim convert, and a nuclear weapons specialist, who has placed three nuclear weapons in three American cities. Paid by Iran to smuggle fissionable material out of Russia, he went rogue, surfacing once more in America where he allowed himself to be captured. He is our very worst fear, a fear which seems all too plausible after Ft. Hood.
If Younger is our worst fear, then careerist FBI Agent Helen Brody (Moss) is his greatest enabler and black ops interrogator “H” (Samuel L. Jackson) our best hope. Tasked to find the three bombs, Brody and H lead an interrogation team to get Younger to talk. Their approaches couldn’t be more different. To get to the truth, H tortures him, while Brody coddles him, revealing, at last, America’s schizophrenic position on torture and self-preservation. This is not a conflict with radical Islam; it is a conflict over to what extents we will preserve our civilization against its most nihilistic enemies.
**MAJOR SPOILERS**
Which, as H reminds us, is not the terrorist, but Agent Brody. She has the kind of impeccable credentials that the ACLU would love for every FBI agent to have. She’s a careerist Harvard Law graduate who chose career over family. She exudes multiculturalism, telling Younger that she admires the Koran, and that, after one torture session, he is “one of the bravest men I know.”
Consistently, she waxes about the Geneva Convention, the illegality of it all, and she, along with her boss, promise that when it is all over with, they’ll bring a civil rights prosecution against H and the government for torturing a guy who wants to kill millions of Americans. Indeed, her first encounter with Younger, she tells him that his “situation here is illegal” and that she’s “going to get you out of here so you can talk.”
In lines that could have been written by Andrew Sullivan, Moss tells him that he’s not “going to get any “information” anyways, “You do this and he’ll say anything and none of it will be true. Physical torture doesn’t work.”
To which H, dismantling the fashionable “torture-doesn’t-work” lie, replies, “So I guess that’s why they have been using it since the beginning of human history, huh? For fun?”
H tells her, “It’s not about the enemy. It’s about us. Our weakness. We’re on the losing side, Helen. We’re afraid, they are not. We have doubt, they believe.” He asks her how many lives our values have cost. Later, she tells him that everyone wants to be free, only to have H rebut, that not everyone wants to be free.
How right he is.
That, unfortunately, is the closest the film gets to seriously considering the morality of torture or our tepid response to evil.
The film doesn’t seriously consider that H might be doing good. He is, instead, seen as something of a necessary evil, sanctioned by the government but never applauded for being essential. At times, he even accepts this role, easily, telling Younger that there is no good in the world, only defeat and victory. As the clock ticks down and the bombs seem ready to go off, H asks the only decent person in the room – Brody – if he can torture Younger’s children to find the location of a probable fourth bomb.
She tells him emphatically, “We can’t do this. We’re f—ing humans. Let the bomb go off!” H nods and the final scene shows the bomb counting down to zero and then fading to black.
Never has a better argument been made for the essential nihilism of the Left. They tell us, “We’re so civilized that we’re willing to let our civilization go up in a mushroom cloud.” And go up in smoke it will.
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66 Comments
YE SPOILERS BE AHEAD
That's how I saw the movie as well. It presents the question even though the only sucker punches it takes is against the right's point of view. A scene, I thought, that called out the left's moral relativism exceptionally well was the scene where everyone confronted H and he asked, "Why am I the bad guy? He just killed 53 people, some innocent women and children, but I'm evil?"
And while Brody's morality won out over the lives of Americans, I appreciated the fact that the filmmakers took the other side seriously enough to at least pose the questions. In other words, similar to your own thoughts, you may save your own humanity, but will it destroy humanity itself?
Because wanting America to win is automatically "racist," you see.
“We’re so civilized that we’re willing to let our civilization go up in a mushroom cloud.”
You see this pacifist attitude on the individual level, someone that would rather die than commit a violent act. That's fine on a personal level, it's only you that suffer the consequences, but it's not all right to decide this for millions of others.
Fortunately, it's only a movie…right?
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!!! Based on the previous sucker punch review, I wasn't going to see it. And based on this review, I already have.
Yah, I believe our job as storytellers, is to invoke a sense of pride, honor, duty and patriotism… with smatterings of humility of course. I find, on the academic liberal side, if this film be that, to make us always question… At this point in my life, I prefer the company of firefighters over professors.
To me H was the good guy, not some one I'd want mad at me but someone who I'd want asking the hard questions of those who want to kill us all.
While the movie is far from perfect I still liked it, as shinsnake says it does let both sides have their say. The scene mentioned above is pretty dam good and you can feel H's frustration and you really hate the weak people running our countries who shouldn't be left in charge of running a raffle let alone a country.
Sounds like a movie version of Terry Goodkind's "Naked Empire." Some people refuse to acknowledge that evil exists.
I've always posed the question like this: If we give up everything that we are in order to survive, what have we saved? And if we can condone certain things for the sake of society, where will the line eventually be drawn? If we're willing to abandon any standards as a people, then what civilization are we saving? What lives are we saving, if every life is reduced to a monstrosity? "H" seems just as doubtful, but on a different point, which is about the worth of holding any principles at all.
However, I think it's a bit of a false dilemma. It assumes that is the only method interrogation that will extract intelligence. It also doesn't question why we would've allowed things to get that far; we were dumb enough to allow Jihadists to obtain nukes and plant them in our cities. So, now, we torture a man to find out where they are and allow the whole conflict to linger on, always falling back on questionable methods to keep the lid on things. Smarter strategies allow you to avoid thuggery. The far more effective and ultimately humane thing would be to make the hostile Islamic powers our footstool and then leave behind pacified and more civilized nations; Japan and Germany certainly benefited by defeat, in the long run. With Islamic nations, we've seen that strong-handed nation-building works in Iraq, while a reversal of those strong-handed policies under the current administration has arrested progress.
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"To which H, dismantling the fashionable “torture-doesn’t-work” lie, replies…"
The problem with torture is that it's unreliable. Any information you get still has to be verified. The target could be telling the truth, or he could be feeding you disinformation or making things up (especially if he doesn't know anything). 24 made torture seem easier, faster and more reliable than it really is.
Agreed, when results are needed, you want people who can get them. A friend of mine was injured in a work accident and ended up suing three groups for damages.
He told me he couldn't stand his lawyer, thought he was scum. But that's what you need occasionally. Some who who will get the job done.
And the lawyer won big time.
To the left yes. Its a price America pays for its success. Simple thinking have the luxury to sit around and blame others because they aren't happy. Couldn't possibly be their fault. So it must be America.
Agreed. The hard left keeps wishing problems would just go away. But they won't. These problems aren't caused because America is evil. These problems are caused by the human condition. It's called life. Deal with it.
"I've always posed the question like this: If we give up everything that we are in order to survive, what have we saved? And if we can condone certain things for the sake of society, where will the line eventually be drawn? If we're willing to abandon any standards as a people, then what civilization are we saving?"
David, I couldn't help but ask these same questions just now concerning Congress and SCOTUS over the past 50 years.
I think it will take about 25 – 50 years to see if Iraq really worked. There's still a lot of violence over there, but there always has been. Just because saddam's media didn't report it does not mean it didn't happen. Peace is not the absence of violence. North Korea is a perfect example of that.
But I think humanity stands a better chance with democracy and capitalism that with tyranny and repression.
I think the point being made is what do you do when you don't have time for more reliable methods.
That's the kicker that throws everything off kilter.
Say 25% of the time, the information is right. Do you have a solution with a better success rate? If so, then put words to it.
If we knew of a better way, we'd use it. Torture is not perfect, and it's morally reprehensible. But is saving one guilty person some mental and physical pain worse than saving thousands/millions of innoncent people from death?
Say it was personal. Some thug had kidnapped your daughter, locked her up in some hidden bunker with no water or food. If you don't find her in a few days, she'll die. How would you take it if it were your daughter, and the police said "We asked him nicely, but he wont' tell us where she is. We've done all we can."
The far more effective and ultimately humane thing would be to make the hostile Islamic powers our footstool and then leave behind pacified and more civilized nations…
Agreed. But the mandarins of popular culture would bombard us with images of dead soldiers and civilians until popular opinion was turned against the war.
If we give up everything that we are in order to survive, what have we saved?
Who says we have to give up everything and why permanently? What have we saved? The lives of our citizens and our way of life.
And if we can condone certain things for the sake of society, where will the line eventually be drawn?
The line is drawn exactly when and where the enemy is defeated.
I love your first question – it should be the first thing that is asked of every puke leftist before they begin their flying-spittle tantrums.
"If we give up everything that we are in order to survive, what have we saved?" Ask them and don't let them go until theyve answered….
MINOR spoiler ahead:
I tuned out when Carrie Anne Moss's character told the terrorist: "I read the Koran — I respect it."
One wonders if this independent woman read all these parts of the koran — ya, know … the ones about women being only a quarter of a man's worth in court, the ones where women HAVE to have sex with their husbands … all the things that make this plucky little death cult so quaint:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/010-women...
Despite Obama, we have much to be proud of.
It is possible to reach a point where survival is all that matters. Where it's literally your life or the other guys's and due process is no longer relevant. I have no problem with anyone who, at that point, chooses his own life over someone else's. That's a positive response, a natural response – at that point.
The problem is knowing whether you've actually reached that point. Do you act, for example, when you *think* a guy's got a gun? When he *says* he's got a gun? When he *shows* you the gun? When he *aims* the gun at your head? When you're absolutely certain it's a real gun and not a fake gun? When the look in his eyes tells you he's serious? When his trigger finger starts to move? When you hear the "bang?" When, morally speaking, is the actual "it's him or me" moment? How do you know you're at that moment – not too early and not too late? And is the guy actually "innocent" until he actually pulls the trigger?
The leftist answer is: The thug has rights too, so your daughter has to be sacrificed in the name of law and order and everything we hold dear. Sorry about that. We'll do our best to prosecute him for murder if we ever find your daughter's body.
Same thing with terrorists. Innocent people will die, cities will burn, but it doesn't matter as long as we keep our principles intact.
I would suggest that Brody was wrong. It was wrong for her to decide the fate of millions of people based on her own moral doubts. There was no time to take a vote – to ask those millions whether they'd rather torture a guy or die in a nuclear explosion. If there was the *slightest* chance that torture could save those people, it was her job to do it. Survive first – then ask whether you did the right thing.
Incinerate millions of innocent American men, women and children or be mean to a terrorist?
A no brainer. Hence the liberal position.
Hi Tugboat Phil- off topic here but -your name caught my attention. My father's name is also Phil, and he worked on tugboats and towboats on the Ol Miss for many years as a young man. He's passed on now. I was just wondering if you did the same thing at some point. I've spent about 1/3 of my life on the water in some fashion or another, and hope to retire there some day.
Repeat a lie enough and they'll make a movie about it.
Perhaps there's a producer out there that will tell the truth about what the US really did to terrorists
and exactly what it achieved. Torture or enhanced interrogation, which ever you prefer, does work.
From a WaPo article by Mark Thiessen:
"…the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti...
In my movie it would have gone like this:
SLJ: “So I guess that’s why they have been using it since the beginning of human history, huh? For fun?”
Moss: "You're right H, can you pass me those pliers? I have a few questions of my own…"
I did my tug driving at Naval Station Norfolk right before I retired from the Navy. I've seen the length of those barges on the the big rivers and don't think I'd want to tackle that. I'm far from salt water now and not really missing it.
Gotcha- okay. Yes, those barges are a bugger to maneuver in that strong river current. Well, thank you for your service and thanks for replying.
For a group that holds Darwin in higher esteem than God, they sure missed the boat on Darwin's teachings. Survival of the fittest assumes that each organism will protect itself and its offspring–its genetic code. Mama bear will always protect her cubs. Animals that gather in herds do so for mutual protection. The lion may grab one gazelle, but the herd ensures the survival of the gene pool. Territorial animals will fight members of their own species, in order to keep the interlopers' genes out of the pool in that area.
What the left thinks, however, is contrary to all of this. "I would rather see a whole city destroyed than torture one bad man?" When a population believes that, they join the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Eastern Woodland Bison in the history pages.
…the essential nihilism of the Left. They tell us, “We’re so civilized that we’re willing to let our civilization go up in a mushroom cloud.”
I SAW this film on Netflix two days ago. Unfortunately, Johnson's review is correct – the film is disgusting Leftist nihilism – excuse me – self-righteous, arrogant nihilism from start to finish. Within two minutes of popping the DVD into the player, I was fast-forwarding to the revolting end. Then I jammed the stupid DVD back inside the Netflix cover, resisted the impulse to stomp on it and threw it into the mailbox. Afterwards I took a bath – and thanked God this film was a warning but not reality. Yet.
Well OF COURSE you have to verify! Duh!
It's no different than getting your news from the various shill outlets. You want to make MSNBC illegal? Go for it.
The admonition not to beat women about the face but only where bruises won't show is particulary heart-warming.
Detonate a nuke in an American city and see Mecca, Medina and the Kaaba destroyed and turned to glass. Then we start razing all of the mosques and Islamic centers in American cities.
Never happen. Don't you know that if the winds shifted against the Islamists, BO would stand with his muslim brothers? You'd be imprisoned in a New York minute if you even thought about doing something like that….
Agreed.
I would further suggest that torturing a terrorist is, for the torturer, the moral equivalent of throwing yourself on a live hand grenade to save the people around you. If there is such a moral equivalent, anyway.
I don't know – there's a really obvious piece of the moral puzzle missing. I can feel the hole in everyone's logic somewhere. I just can't put it into words. Maybe your second paragraph comes close. There's just something…unnatural about the whole argument. Survival is good and it's right. When I hear people saying "we" don't deserve to survive if "we" torture someone – what does that mean? That you and I and even people who had no idea it was happening deserve to die?
I'd like to see a scene where agent Brody finds out the fourth bomb is in the city where her family resides. Then she starts cutting pieces off the guy. An awful lot of people are willing to sacrifice others for ideals…until they are the one's doing the sacrificing.
Too late!
I'll even top it off with "… and all the Muslims realized they had been hateful jerks, and converted to Christianity or Judaism."
CS Lewis deflated the pacifist rationale over 60 years ago, when he pointed out that pacifists can only be successful in ennervating those nations which tolerate them, allowing violent, totalitarian societies which don't to triumph.
America's successful response to past crises has always involved setting aside the rules until the crisis is over. From the Alien and Sedition Acts under President Adams , Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus, the internment of Japanese-Americans under FDR, to the Homeland Security Act, civil rights have been put to the side to better face common threats.
It speaks highly of the American character that these restrictions have always been repealed after the crisis has past, and that we condemn the loss of liberty from the safe distance of a few decades.
Refusing to bend our current Progessive ideological interpretations of liberties and human rights in the face of nihilistic Islamo-nazi terror is truly defining the Constitution as a suicide pact.
Of course torture makes perfect sense in contrived scenarios, such as those found in 24 and this movie. But I'm talking about real life.
I really think people here have watched too much television and movies.
The point of a story is usually to simplify and clarify things. Granted, life is never that simple, but the question still stands–is it really better to make sure you treat one man humanely, even if it means millions must die brutally? Who are you to make that judgement for the millions?
Stalin said that one man's death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic. That's unfortunately how many on the left see the world: the guilty individual's pain is a tragedy, but the thousands or millions who suffer because of him are just abstract numbers.
The truth, of course, is just the opposite. It is the millions of innocent deaths that are the flesh-and-blood tragedy. It is the terroroist whose humanity should be reduced to an abstraction that can be discussed dispassionately.
A necessary evil in this day and age.
You should have watched all of it. I did not think that it made the Left look good at all. Brody kept having all of these self-righteous ideals, only to give in time and again when faced with reality.
You're right – I should have watched all of it. But I didn't have the stomach for it. Once the first two minutes showed me the God awful mindset of that film, I couldn't summon the stamina to endure every minute of it in real time.
What people are arguing is that torture works because in real life law enforcement and intelligence agencies are regularly racing against the clock to prevent a nuke from going off in one hour. I am simply saying that in real life torture isn't as reliable, easy or necessary as it is in movies and television shows, and that's why people vote down my comments in anger.
With the Manchurian President in charge? Reel might come to real soon.
I keep asking my liberal friends "How many dead Americans are acceptable?" They never answer, but they do by omission. They would rather see thousands of Americans die than have "their values comprised". God help us until 2013 when the grown-ups are back in charge.
Won't happen with Obama in charge. He would give the medal of freedom to the guy who sat off the nukes. Then Bill Clinton would say something like "Well, they were going to die anyway, sometime."
Besides, the Islamics think if they die in battle with infidels, they'll go to nirvana and get their 72 virgins. We are scared to die (a good thing), to them, to die is a fulfillment of their faith. It's hard to fight that with kind words.
The idea seems to be that any information extracted through torture must surely be the straight dope, so no verification is necessary (and when a nuke is about to go off in an hour, who has time for that anyway?).
I rented Unthinkable last night, it was GREAT!!! One of the most realistic movies I've seen in a long time. Samuel Jackson was terrific!!The debates seemed authentic and the characters believable. I may go and buy a copy to re-watch later.
No, the idea is that torture is the ONLY option – in this admittedly contrived scenario. Bomb's going off, asking the terrorist politely where it is hasn't worked, so why not try a little harder? If the info is bad and you end up looking in the wrong place, so what? The bomb was going to explode anyway. If the info is good and you disarm the bomb – yay! Torture worked! This time, at least.
As you pointed out elsewhere, it is an unrealistic scenario. It's like we took our real-world issue – torturing terrorists to find out about the workings of their organization, command structure, whereabouts, and future plans – and turned it into an abstract, philosophical discussion about ethics. This is, in fact, what "Unthinkable" is – the ideal, abstract, ticking-time-bomb scenario, NOT the situation we're actually in. It makes for good drama, but it doesn't really help us decide what to do with those real bad guys we have locked up at Gitmo and elsewhere. They don't have ticking time bombs – just information that we'd really like to have.
When we get off on this tangent, it helps to ask ourselves "What are the actual chances that we would ever a) have a hidden nuclear device set to go off at a certain time, b) know that the device exists, and c) have custody of the guy who has all the information we need to stop the explosion?" Again, it sounds all dramatic and everything, but I'd have to say it will probably never, ever happen. So the discussion is kind of pointless except as a classroom exercise in ethics.
Is it ok to torture a guy who knows where the bomb is hidden? I say, "Sure! What have we got to lose?" Is it ok to torture people we capture in Afghanistan or Iraq because they *might* know something useful? I don't think so.
I think we're discussing the movie and the question it poses in its own terms. As you point out, the situation is contrived and not likely to occur in real life. In real life, we don't get to ask anybody where the bomb is. It just goes off.
The real-life torture scenario seems more like: There *might* be a plot to set off a bomb or do some other act of terror and we've got a guy here who's pretty high up in the terrorist organization and he *might* have some information we can use to disrupt any plots that might be in the making. So – under those circumstances, is it ok to torture the guy? Just to be on the safe side?
Definitely not as clean-cut as the "where's the bomb?" scenario. I think we go abstract because the real situation is too vague, too hard to discuss and – especially – to make a clear, unambiguous policy about. That's what people want: a clear, unambiguous policy that tells them what to do all the time, regardless of the situation. They want that policy to be in line with American values, but they also don't want it to get them killed.
Trouble is, there is no such policy – nor can there be. Sometimes it's wrong to torture a guy, sometimes it's the only right thing to do.
" I am simply saying that in real life torture isn't as reliable, easy or necessary as it is in movies "
Maybe, maybe not. But it has worked over the millenia. There's no denying that. If chatting, reading Harry Potter, and building rapport with the bad guy were enough, torture would have ben dropped a long time ago. The fact is that rapport building, good cop/bad cop, etc., have all been used since the beginning of time as well. They all have their place. As does turture.
Torture was not used against KSM, only waterboarding, which is effective. Waterboarding is terrifying and harsh, but it is NOT torture. Torture (cutting of fingers, peeling off fingernails, etc.) is what everybody else does. Toruture wasn't necessary to get info out of KSM. But maybe in another scenario it would be.
"We're losing…. We're afraid, they're not. We have doubts, they believe…"
–H from Unthinkable
If it is so easy for us as a society to define a human being in the womb as a "non-person," why is it so difficult for us to make the same definition for human beings who slowly saw our neighbors' heads off with a dull knife? The former we can dismember slowly, or punch holes in their skulls and suck their brains out, and many in our society even take pride in the option we have to do that.
But to protect the latter we are willing to sacrifice thousands–even millions–even our entire way of life.
Have we lost already?
As long as people like you come up with such tortured non logic pretending to be profound, then we have!
We are not facing such a crisis now, Some random attacks, most of them unsuccessful, where the perps are in jail, are hardly in the same league as the antagonist & his nuclear bombs in this movie.
Sounds like sound teabagger logic to me, you make tons of sense. Nice to see that such devoted pro-life people are the ones first to pull the trigger on cities that had nothing to do with the attack
Darwin was a scientist, not a moralist or a political philosopher, Only a total theo-hypocrite, you know those gun toting ready to bomb the evildoers Jesus loving types,. would insult our intelligence with such a braindead red herring.. I have a way more respect for Darwin than any two bit crap head on the right these days
True, I admire the types here, who claim to be inspired so much by Jesus. They are the first ones to look for any good reason to torture, kill, shoot or bomb someone based on self defense or simple revenge.
Momo, people here are discussing ethics. I'm not sure what the hell you're doing.
That's the first thing you've said here that makes any sense. The ticking time bomb scenario presented in "Unthinkable" has very little to do with what's going on in the real world. They waterboarded KSM to find out whether there *would be* a ticking time bomb, or any other sort of attack. At the moment, we don't know for sure whether (a) there never was a ticking time bomb or (b) there was a ticking time bomb and they were able to disarm it because KSM told them about it when they waterboarded him. Until we know that, it's difficult to judge whether "enhanced interrogation" works or not. As for the moral aspect – I still maintain it depends on the specific situation. Known, imminent danger – like highly-unlikely ticking nuke scenario – torture probably justified. Just trolling for intelligence – probably not.
If you were faced with torture (not the "American" version, where someone puits you in a cold room and makes faces at you, but the kind practiced by everyone else, where you're electrocuted or have holes drilled through your hand, or parts cut off)- you're telling me YOUR tack would be to just tell them stuff and hope they never verified you info? Doesn't seem smart to me.
Trained fighters know they'll be tortured, and they're trained to expect it. They're trained to resist. Many know the Americans are pussycats with a press and a Left that salivates to make Americans the "bad guy" and excuse the atrocities committed by others. Meanwhile, if an American is captured, he fares worse. If he gives misinformation, he will be tortured, and if he gives true info, he may be tortured. He may be killed in the end no matter what. Americans always stop once they have the info they need, because Americans have a sense of MORALITY and DECENCY, no matter what the Left desperately needs some people to believe.
It sounds like neither of the interrogators are competent. They're both more interested in emotional satisfaction than in analyzing the subject and using their smarts to get the information. And yeah, that's the trouble with our culture today, and I'm sorry to say that the Right has gotten as bad about that as the Left.
About as meaningless a reply as I've ever seen…
I'm guessing that your comeback to a good argument in grade school was to shake your head and repeat "nuh-uhh!" Still haven't developed any since then, I see.
Or are you still in grade school?
What I got out of the movie (in terms of the characters) is that he (H) was doing things that were uncomfortable and even downright repugnant to himself in order to save millions. She (Brody), on the other hand, finally threw up her hands and said "we can't do this! Let the bomb go off!"
This means, of course, that she, in order to feel good about herself, was willing to let millions die, despite her oath to "protect and defend." He, on the other hand, was willing to do things that caused him mental anguish (and put his family in danger) in order to save millions.
It was his methods that worked, and hers that were the equivalent of surrender.
…insult our intelligence…two bit crap head… Irony? Or foot-in-mouth?
I never claimed that Darwin was a moralist. He merely observed that the toughest survive, and the weak die. America is tough, but we are refusing to fight. That's the same as a tiger rolling over to let its throat get ripped out, because it believes the other tiger has more of a right to its territory than it does.
Nothing moral about it. Just survival. America is committing suicide, and a lot of us don't like it.
HELLO!?!?!
Since the 1990's thousands of American citizens and foreign nationals have been killed, and countless more made the targets for mass attacks against civilian populations.
The 9/11 attack was intended to kill hundreds of thousands–the object was to topple the buildings into surrounding skyscrapers causing enormous devastation. Both the "Shoe" and "Underwear" bombers intended to bring down the planes over crowded urban areas.
So did the bombers who were scheduled to board numerous flights from Heathrow, before intelligence gained by waterboarding KSM allowed intelligence officers to apprehend them at boarding. It also foiled the plot to construct and explode a "dirty bomb" to be carried out by Jose Padilla, and another to ignite the NYC gas lines, which would have caused mass casualties.
I don't know what moral calculus you're using, but just how many innocent civilian casualties do there have to be before your tender sensibilities about violating the civil liberties of a terrorist plotter reaches override?
About as meaningless as the comment I was responding too I guess
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