The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

US. World

And Murderers Are Set Free

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Ynet reports:

The bodies Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were handed over to the Red Cross on the Lebanese side of the border at around 9 am Wednesday, more than two years after they were kidnapped into Lebanon on July 12, 2006.

The prisoner exchange deal with Hizbullah was executed following months of German mediation, and after the government ratified the deal and President Shimon Peres pardoned Lebanese murderer Samir Kuntar.

Kuntar will return to Lebanon along with four other Lebanese prisoners, as well as the bodies of 199 Hizbullah members.

My heart goes out to the Goldwasser and Regev families.

It is a sad day when murderers are pardoned and given license to walk freely among us all. It is a sad day when those who rejoice in evil deeds and revel in the blood of the innocent stroll out of prison.

There was a time when I believed that if we only treated people with respect and dignity they would extend the same courtesy to us. It made sense to me. Be nice and others will be nice to you.

But it is a fantasy that doesn’t extend to the real world. Evil exists. There are far too many examples of people who do not feel, who are capable of doing horrible things that you and I could never imagine.

We can review serial killers. We can talk about Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, BTK etc. We can look at examples of leaders such as Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot etc.

The truth is out there. And that sad and lamentable truth is that there are those who will kill you and your family without compunction. You don’t let these people go. You don’t set them free. You don’t give them the ability to hurt others.

It is not smart. It is not wise and it is most definitely not humane. Save your sympathy for others. Save your tears for those who deserve them. There are monsters who walk the earth during the day and the night and Israel just released some of them.

Why Do People Kill Each Other

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Earlier today my son asked me to explain to him what war is like and why people kill each other. It is a hell of a question and one that he has asked before. I am not a soldier. I haven’t been to war.

I have been in a number of hairy situations. I have seen the after effects of a bombing and have been in the E.R. when they have brought in shooting victims. I have been in a number of fist fights, been hit with brooms, rocks and a chain, but never shot. Not that I am complaining, I am not.

I can’t say that I believe that you have to be a vet to explain why people go to war either. I can offer descriptions of what war is like based upon things I have read or heard, but fortunately do not have any first hand experience. The closest thing I have got is what I have seen in films.

If push comes to shove I’ll tell you that I believe that sometimes you have to fight and that there are wars that are necessary. I am not a peacenik, by any means. But when it comes to discussing this with the kids I am cautious.

Today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day. I wrote a post that covered some of the history in more detail than here. If you are interested you can find it here. We are indebted to those men.

Anyway, be it coincidence or otherwise today is the day that he hammered me with questions about war and why people kill each other. He is all of 7.5 so I wrestled with how much to tell him, how sophisticated I should be in my response.

He has lost so much of his innocence about the world. He knows that bad people sometimes do things to children and that not every marriage lasts. He knows that some people steal and that life doesn’t always have a happy ending. So providing him with some information is not going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back either.

I did my best to explain that sometimes people just can’t get along and that sometimes they fight in a way that isn’t nice. I told him that I thought that war should be a last resort and that you should try and avoid it.

But I also told him that if you have to fight to defend yourself you have an obligation to do so in a manner that takes care of the situation, short term band aids are a poor solution.

He nodded his head and told me that he thought he understood. He explained that one of his classmates parents had split up. I asked him what he meant and he gave me a perfectly suitable description of a couple who have divorced.

I nodded my head and asked him to continue. He explained that Tommy’s parents couldn’t get along any more and that they had decided to live in different houses. And then he told me that Tommy said that he was much happier because his folks didn’t fight anymore, that they were friends now.

Just as I thought I had skated by and managed to avoid spending the evening discussing war he came back to it. He wanted to know how his grandfathers had managed not to be killed. I reassured him that going to war wasn’t a death sentence, but that you really didn’t want to have to go unless you had to.

He sighed and told me that he was happy to hear that. And then he asked me to promise that I wouldn’t get killed fighting a war either. I smiled and told him that they didn’t like making guys my age soldiers.

Confession: I have no interest in being a soldier, but I hated saying “guys my age” as if we are all that old. We’re not. Compared to so many others I am just a babe in the woods.

Oy, I don’t like 39 all that much. Sure it is better than the alternative, but…