Sacrifice or Suicide

Fri. Aug. 11, 2006, Starbucks War Room: Dr. Dave Young and I were trying to understand the insanity that would lead a network news anchor to equate U.S. soldiers, seamen and civilian first responders with terrorist suicide bombers.

It happened on Thursday's Hardball on MSNBC. Chris Matthews was interviewing NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams about the terrorists caught in the plot to bring down airliners leaving Britain. Chris referred to John “Silky Pony” Edwards’ belief in likeability as a defense policy, that if only the Islamist got to know us better, they would learn to love us (or at least not kill us). Matthews noted how these latest monsters lived for years in Britain and yet "having gotten to know us, they want to kill themselves to hurt us. Isn't that an even deeper conundrum here than the chemicals used in these attacks?"

Got to hand it to Chris: That is indeed a deep conundrum. (What a moron!)

Williams, live from Heathrow Airport, responded: "And that, Chris, that last aspect, the willingness to take one's own life -- I always tell people, you know, there are guys on our team like that, too. They're called Army Rangers and Navy Seals and the Special Forces folks and the first responders on 9/11 who went into those buildings knowing, by the way, they weren't going to come out. So we have players like that on our team."

Dr. Dave and I considered two possible explanations for Williams’ outrageous statement. (1) He is so anti-US-military that he sees them as equivalent to terrorists. (2) He is the stupidest person alive.

Dave noted that whichever option is true, it is testament to the victory of American education. Only a college educated person could say something like that. I found that Brian Williams was born in Elmira, NY, a berg not far from my hometown of Rochester, NY. He attended George Washington University and the Catholic University of America, and that could explain his liberal nuttiness.

Dave called the equation of sacrifice and suicide relativism ad extremis, which means, I think, that these actions are exact polar opposites. But hey, I knew that.
Brian Williams has shown his amazingly ignorant view of history by comparing Osama bin Laden to George Washington and other such nonsense before. So this latest insanity is not out of character. Still, it was amazing to hear someone say it sincerely and out loud.

If Williams can't distinguish between a suicidal murderer killing innocent people and someone who commits an act of selfless sacrifice in an attempt to save innocent lives, he shouldn't be the anchor man in Elmira, NY much less for NBC News.

And then there was Mike “Maniac” Wallace telling Sean Hannity about his interview of the Iranian Holocaust Denier, but that’s another blog.