2008-03-30 Please don't, at least not over this!

[Rakshasa Taisab]

One side has a Durus blade, the other... ?

[davester65]

One side has a Durus blade, the other... ?

Durus blades retract into a lump of crystal when not being used. Sarna's blade doesn't. I suspect it's a normal 2 handed scimitar. I think I read in the Heretical Knowledge thingie on Wikipedia that some of the really old durus blades didn't retract, but were fragile because of that. Would Sarna carry a fragile antique as her main weapon?

[runic]

People really seem to forget WWII wasn't a clear-cut moral question back in the day.

reminds me of the second to last episode of band of brothers. it wasn't till they stumbled across the concentration camps that anyone had an idea just what had been going on.

One side has a Durus blade, the other... ?

Durus blades retract into a lump of crystal when not being used. Sarna's blade doesn't. I suspect it's a normal 2 handed scimitar. I think I read in the Heretical Knowledge thingie on Wikipedia that some of the really old durus blades didn't retract, but were fragile because of that. Would Sarna carry a fragile antique as her main weapon?

didn't the elven ambassador have a blade like that?

[Itterind]

There's a recent report on the fact that there's only been six bombings this month I felt I should mention. Saddam's security forces would kill hundreds a month and unlike flashy bombs murders in a police state aren't reported. Those left behind remember though, and thus much of this violence.
So far twenty percent of the Awakening soldiers have been incorporated, not much, and there will be some sectarian clashes in the future, but already now violence is less than it used to be under the so-called 'calm' of Saddam's era and continuing to drop.

And there was something else I was going to mention, but I forgot it. Sorry that I am not reading and responding to replies, but I wouldn't be able to contain myself and would spend far too long writing up replies.

[davester65]

One side has a Durus blade, the other... ?

Durus blades retract into a lump of crystal when not being used. Sarna's blade doesn't. I suspect it's a normal 2 handed scimitar. I think I read in the Heretical Knowledge thingie on Wikipedia that some of the really old durus blades didn't retract, but were fragile because of that. Would Sarna carry a fragile antique as her main weapon?

didn't the elven ambassador have a blade like that?

A diplomat might carry an antique like that for show. I doubt a ranger would.

[Boss Out of Town]

There's a recent report on the fact that there's only been six bombings this month I felt I should mention. Saddam's security forces would kill hundreds a month and unlike flashy bombs murders in a police state aren't reported. Those left behind remember though, and thus much of this violence.
So far twenty percent of the Awakening soldiers have been incorporated, not much, and there will be some sectarian clashes in the future, but already now violence is less than it used to be under the so-called 'calm' of Saddam's era and continuing to drop.

And there was something else I was going to mention, but I forgot it. Sorry that I am not reading and responding to replies, but I wouldn't be able to contain myself and would spend far too long writing up replies.

Meh. "DIU" is how I explained this my conservative friends. "Different Information Universes." Doctrinaire conservatives live in one universe, and most of the rest of us live in another. I've got one friend who still insists Saddam had something to do with 9/11, even after both of his heroes, Pres Bush and VP Cheney, denounced the idea in public, claimed they never believed in or promoted the idea, and denounced anyone who said otherwise as members of the librul media conspiracy.

Back in the other universe, Joe McCarthy was scum, the Civil Rights movement was good for America, Vietnam was never winnable, Nixon was a criminal, sexism and racism are real, Creationism is unreal, the Whitewater scandal was a conservative fantasy, global warming is a real threat, the Iraq War was the worst foreign policy disaster in this nation's history, and Dick Cheney is an obvious and habitual liar and a sick, evil old man.

Debating across universes wastes electrons and oxygen, so we agreed to disagree and talk about games and home repair. One of those friends got married on Saturday, his son attending in Marine dress uniform and saber. I wished the boy luck on his next tour in Afghanistan, then we all celebrated the wedding and wished each other happiness.

[wodan46]

DIU is a good term for it. Though it doesn't cover the whole dispute, it is the root problem, which is that people's perspectives, their worldviews, are shaped over years to the point that they are no longer capable of comprehending the opposing side, they just see them saying 1+1=3.

Anyways, for the Iraq War, trying to confront it as generically good or bad is not really a proper way to look at it. It has many consequences on many levels.

1. Starting a war for any reason is a way of saying that it is ok to go to war, so long as you are "right" and have the firepower to back it up. The implications of such an attitude are extremely negative both in how other countries will react, as well as to what it could do to internal policies by a country that finds such acceptable. Note that I said Start, not Join. Joining is more murky.
2. The conflict in Iraq was handled in a very poor manner. The choice to disband the Iraqi army and get rid of the Baath party forced the Sunnis into a corner, which led to the insurgency, which in turn led to a counter-insurgency by the Shia, as well as creating a temporary gulf of government. The decision to hand out various jobs to private contractors resulted in the reconstruction being far longer and more expensive than it should have been, and was a blatant act of profiteering. The US military was used as a police force, and was needed as a reconstruction force, but lacked the training and equipment to do either.
3. Ignoring the issues with starting a war, the Iraq war was still not morally justifiable. Far more nasty governments exist elsewhere, yet we do nothing about them. We could hardly deal with them anyways, furthermore, why are we supposed to be cleaning up the messes of the world anyway, when we have more than enough of that at home to deal with anyways? Lastly, I think that getting over a million civilians killed in a giant clusterfuck of a civil war was significantly worse than what Saddam had been doing.

[Imp-Chan]

This discussion of real war should maybe be separated from the discussion of the comic? I mostly find it depressing, and while I get that other people really enjoy talking about it, couldn't that happen in a different thread that isn't supposed to be about comic stuff and therefore isn't something I will feel bad if I don't read?

^-^'

[mindstalk]

Good call. New thread here viewtopic.php?f=23&t=707
Don't know if the admins can ninja individual messages. Or copy the whole source thread.

[Graybeard]

This discussion of real war should maybe be separated from the discussion of the comic? I mostly find it depressing, and while I get that other people really enjoy talking about it, couldn't that happen in a different thread that isn't supposed to be about comic stuff and therefore isn't something I will feel bad if I don't read?

Fair enough; I was about to write something similar, and thanks to mindstalk for setting up the other thread. I do hope that the Iraq discussion migrates there.

That said, as I dig into it a bit, I find that the Rudolf Hess analogy to what's going on in the story works well enough that I almost wonder whether Poe had Hess in mind when scripting it -- and the Sarine/Sarna encounter is part of the analogy. Hess was a big shot in Nazi Germany (his title was "Deputy Fuhrer" to Hitler) who "borrowed" a fighter plane in 1941 to fly to Britain and try to negotiate an end to the war in the West, so that the British would back Germany in taking on the Soviet Union. Part of the story was that when Hitler found out what he was doing, a number of other German fighter planes were scrambled to shoot Hess down, unsuccessfully as he eventually parachuted into Scotland. (Do you recognize Sarna in the cockpit of one of those planes?)

However, the British weren't much gladder to see him than the Germans were to have him going off on this maverick mission. They locked him up, interrogated him for the rest of the war, and delivered him to the post-war Nuremberg trials for war crimes. He was convicted on two of four counts ("crimes against peace" and conspiracy to wage aggressive war, but not war crimes or "crimes against humanity") and spent the rest of his life in prison. Opinions on the episode remain divided to this day; most historians seem to think that Hess was simply crazy as a bedbug (there was no doubt he was somewhat mentally unstable, from the way he acted once he reached Scotland), but there is no consensus as to his motives, nor whether he got screwed by post-war events.

There are parts of this that work eerily well in sizing up what Sarine has been up to. Cast Sarine in the role of Hess, the elves as the Nazis, Tsuiraku as the Brits, and Ianilis as the Soviets, and there are enough resemblances to be unsettling. There are of course important differences, notably the fact that the elves and Tsuiraku aren't at war yet, and that Ian already is on the warpath, while the Soviets were just back there glowering lustfully at eastern Europe when Hess did his thing. Few would convict the elves of waging "aggressive war" against Ianilis, although a pretty good case could be made that that's exactly what they'd been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years against the half elves in general. And so on.

However, the most important part of the Hess story that's relevant to this encounter is the way Hess was viewed after the war. Hess has had very few defenders -- but one of those "defenders" (with distinct reservations, to be sure) was Winston Churchill, which is telling:

Reflecting upon the whole of the story, I am glad not to be responsible for the way in which Hess has been and is being treated. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded.

That is a message well worth thinking about here.

Impy, I hope you don't mind if that part of the discussion stays here while the Iraq part moves. The Hess situation looks more like what's going on here the more one looks at it, and it's easy enough to see Sarna cast as one of those fighter pilots.