Re: Atheists: America's most distrusted minority

Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of
Vorlonagent of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:


"Methuselah Jones" <methuselah@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns97C25FEF6779Amethuselahaltgeekorg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of
Vorlonagent of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:

The most charitable I can be is tell myself that Churchill is
mistakenly assuming that only unformed military personnel work in
the Pentagon.

Well, not supporting Churchill, but in all fairness, the Pentagon is
a valid military target, regardless of the civilians that work there.
Civilians often work on military bases, but that doesn't make those
bases any less a valid target. Just like the military personnel, the
civilians in such situations know the risks.

Churchill is objecting to the descriptor "innocent" as applied to
Pentagon 9/11 victims. I don't believe working at a US military
installation automatically cancels that status. Churchill makes this
claim when he writes, "There is simply no argument to be made that the
Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building
and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple."

Were the US army and navy troops (or civilians employed by the US
military) who died at Pearl Harbor "innocent"? Pearl was fair game
for a military attack, true. But were they "innocent" too? I believe
so. They were just people whose work entailed a certain amount of
risk. "Risk" does not bear on a question of "innocence" or "guilt",
let alone make for an open-and-shut case for "guilt" implied by
Churchill's remarks.

I agree. I was only responding to your suggestion that civilians at the
Pentagon made it not a valid military target.

--
Methuselah
"I only drink to steady my nerves. Sometimes I'm so steady I don't move
for months."
-- W. C Fields


.

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