From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@MSX.UPMC.EDU)
Date: Thu Oct 04 2001 - 11:25:03 MDT
Brian Williams wrote:
These cowards did not believe they were facing certain death, but
merely earning eternal bliss, therefore by definition they are not
courageous, but mere opportunists.
### Your argument sounds quite plausible, however, there is a problem: it
means that any Christian, Jew, Muslim, or any other theist who believes in a
personal afterlife, acts cowardly by dying in a war. The bomber crews in WW
II, most of whom were theists, and bombed civilian or mixed
civilian-military targets (the firebombing of Tokyo, Berlin, Dresden), must
have been cowards who knowingly attacked civilians and gladly went into the
storm of AAA fire, hoping for eternal bliss if things go south.
Is this the kind of conclusion you are drawing?
If meanings of words are stretched to fit the emotionally charged moment,
soon all meaning is lost.
Perhaps you could provide a definition of cowardice, a general one, fitting
all situations.
The 911 perps were scared (as we can infer from their writings) they
overcame their fear. If they were cowards, the WTC would be still standing.
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