Two demonstrations of cowardice, contrasted

I hate to comment on any item that's currently in the US news, largely because everything in the US is so politicized, and so emotionalized; there's really little point in trying to refute emotion with logic.

Now that emotions are subsiding somewhat; it is good to see journalists start to comment correctly about the beheading of the American journalist by Sunni militants. When I heard of it, my immediate thoughts were that the executioner did it with his own hands; and that he took full and individual responsibility for his actions.  Barbaric, perhaps, hard to watch, but that's only because it was more "up close and personal" than a missile strike; but effectively no different.Contrast that beheading with the indiscriminate killing of women and children in Pakistan using robots ... which is far more barbaric.  The use of machinery in no way glorifies or sanctifies those murders.  They are every bit as condemnable as the ISIS beheading.  Every bit. And, in the number of innocents killed, far worse.

As Eric Margolis (who has, himself, been a war journalist) said, "We westerners have a charming and quaint  belief that killing people from the air by using bombs, rockets, shells, napalm and cluster munitions – or even nuclear weapons – is somehow not really as bad as ramming a bayonet into an enemy, blowing him to pieces with heavy artillery, or slashing his throat the way sheep are killed Air warfare is clean. Air warfare is the American way of war."

Murder isn't sanctified by the use of technology.  It is sick to even think that way.

Eric also pointed out that at the very same time James Foley is alleged to have been being executed, Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the US, announced it had executed 19 people in public beheadings for various crimes. [source]  One of the victims was beheaded for witchcraft. There was no outcry at all in the US mainstream media over that medieval horror.

Send those young American soldiers back into Iraq, President Obama ... c'mon, I double-dog dare ya!