(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
No doubt by now, you’ve heard about Dr. Tiller that was assassinated while attending church today. He was an abortion doctor who found himself regularly on FOX News due to Bill O’Reilly.
So, what exactly does it take for a person to get it into their heads that killing someone is better way?
First, let’s remember that Doctor Tiller performed all of his abortions according to the law, despite Bill ‘O’s false accusations. As far as we know, the killer didn’t have a wife, girlfriend, or family member have an abortion at his clinic. And, we have no knowledge of any interaction between the two.
So, from this, we can deduce that; 1) the killer’s motive was simply, “abortion is wrong, doctor’s who do abortions should die.” But, from what we know, this is the only abortion doctor this killer murdered. Now, if the killer was prepared to go on a nationwide killing streak of abortion doctors, then, his hatred might hold up as a philosophy. Right now, it doesn’t.
In all of my years, military, law enforcement, war zones, I can tell you the times when I have felt that taking another persons life was justified.
1) Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy
LEARN THESE WORDS! Did the person have the ABILITY to cause me, or another, serious harm or death? Did the person have the OPPORTUNITY to cause me, or another, serious harm or death? And finally, did I feel that my life, or the life of another, was in JEOPARDY because of this person?
When all three answers come up “yes”, you have cause to take another persons life.
In November 2006, while I was in Iraq for my second time as a contractor, I got put into a situation where I had to ask myself these three questions.
My supervisor was having an argument with the group of local Iraqi’s we hired to assist us. It got heated. And before we knew it, he had picked up a set of band cutters, and threatened to sodomize one of the Iraqi’s with it. He then turned to me, because he knew that I would never allow this type of behavior, and, he proceeded to threaten me, and, my family, if I had him fired.
My mind went like this: “If I get him fired, I have to qet to be home to keep my family safe.” “If I get him fired and I don’t go home, they are in danger.” “That leaves me an option of killing him now, and staying, possibly, or, simply leaving, or, leaving and getting him fired.”
In that mental assessment, I had already justified Ability, OPPORTUNITY, and JEOPARDY. Yes, he has the ability as an bomb tech to cause death to me or my loved ones. With him in the States, he gains the opportunity. And, if those come to be, my family will be in jeopardy. So, yes, my first two seconds of thought boiled down to; AM I going to kill him now? I didn’t. I left. But, I would have been within my rights to do so.
2) Them or Me
I’ve sat in a foxhole at 2am and got told that we were about to be overrun by a force larger than ours. Our orders were, “kill anything that comes over that hill.” Here is another time when the mind works out the rationale. They are coming through us. The survivors of this clash are going to depend on who wants to live. So, it boils down to them or me. Yeah, if it has to come down to one of us dying, then, they get put into the body bag, not me.
There is a third instance where I could see me making that same decision. It comes from an oath I took over 20 years ago where I swore to uphold and protect our Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. This is the one that is a grey area.
If our government ever gets to the point where they are a power unto themselves, without constraint, checks or balances, when the Congress and Judiciary are ineffective in stopping the abuses, and these abuses came in the form of our Constitution being shredded…. then yes… I would put my life on the line once again for my country.
With all that said…
Does anyone see where any of the above matches some right-wing nutjob killing a doctor?
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It comes down to this – some people think that killing is wrong only if the “victim” is not wearing shoes.
So the same guy that was so angry over the deaths of defenseless embryos goes into a CHURCH (??!!) with a gun and intent to kill a doctor, a father, a grandfather, a husband, a defenseless human being who was carrying out the work of the church.
Here is an example, from the WaPo online comments section, of how these people “think”.
I omitted most of the last word, there are limits as to what I will print.
Is it possible to reason with such people?
Will there be a retaliation – more killing?
This is madness and sadness and it must stop.
This is just insanity. There is no rational reason for this. NONE. There is no reasoning with people who’s brains are wired to accept this distorted thinking. They are not Christians, no matter what they claim. They are nuts..insane. And they scare me and I don’t scare easily.
…who provided all sorts of medical care to women. Who, as history demonstrates, have suffered from their lack of full-human status since before doctors learned how to save as many lives as they cost. The patriarchal institution of allopathic medicine didn’t try to learn anything useful from the midwives and healers – the women who traditionally attended to women’s medical issues (including pregnancy, birth and birth control) – they just wanted those women out of competition. Called them “witches” and had thousands of them killed. So they could spread “childbed fever” that gifted women in the 17th century with an average life expectancy of 26 years from want of a decent hand-washing.
If you really believe abortion is murder of innocents, your ‘Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy’ criteria is met by killing the abortionist. The sticky wicket in this country is that the state recognizes the right of women to control their own bodies and make their own medical decisions. Thus killing physicians who provide abortions as part of their clinical services is plain old murder-1 under the ‘Law of the Land’.
Dr. Tiller never forced any woman to get an abortion. He just provided the medical intervention that is much safer than other means women have availed themselves of in the past. Making abortion illegal never prevented abortions from taking place, after all. Heck, God is the most prolific abortionist of all time, since a full third of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion! Christians have no “Life Is Precious” leg to stand on either, as there is no evidence life was ever “precious” to either gods or humans. In fact, life is 100% fatal.
Thus this cold-blooded murder is just another act of terrorism. The goal isn’t to make unwanted babies be born, it’s to frighten women into not exercising their rights and doctors out of safely facilitating those rights. Oh… and to intimidate more liberal denominations, since this particular murder took place in church. Violence for the purpose of terrorizing a population or any subgroup thereof is the very definition of “terrorism.”
act of murder, some justification for it, does not compute. It is nonsense, crap, wrong thinking and dangerous. There is no reason, in our country, that something like this should be tolerated, defended or entertained as some sort of debateable discussion. This is just plain insane.