The Right to Die and Having no Right to Take a Life

Ooh here I go again writing about things I know nothing about.  A couple things have caught my attention in the news this week.  Some nutjob US soldier appeared to have lost the plot and went on a bloody rampage killing women and kids in their homes, the other is Tony Nicklinson who has 'Locked in Syndrome' fighting for the right to die.


I'll start with the latter here just to get it out of the way.  I'm trying to be very careful about what I say here as this is a subject of intense controversy where there are incredibly strong views on either side about the morality of taking your own life. The other reason I want to get this out of the way is that I never know which side to take here.  Do I join the 'life is a gift' side of things and say that under no circumstances a life should be ended? Or do I take the view that there is a point where your quality of life is so bad you're better off dead?


To get it out of the way as quickly as possible I'm concentrating on the case of Tony Nicklinson.  As I said before he has a condition called 'Locked in Syndrome'.  Simply put this is where you're brain is completely alert and fully functioning but the rest of your body doesn't work at all.  (Just think Stephen Hawking and you have the idea).  In fact to look at it's exactly like Stephen Hawking complete with a computer that speaks for him and everything.  This is where I first thought 'Why does he want to die?  Stephen Hawking is fine with his condition while also being determined to be a leading theoretical physicist and cosmologist.


For some hours I couldn't side with Tony Nicklinson due to this.  I'm not saying they have the same condition, but I imagine it feels awfully the same as each other.  For a few hours I was siding with keeping him alive, but then I found out about the difference between Tony Nicklinson's vocation and Stephen Hawkings.  Stephen Hawking uses his mind.  His mind to me seems totally dedicated to thinking and working on 'theoretical' physics.  While his job is more difficult without the use of his body, he doesn't 'need' it.  Tony Niclklinson on the other hand had a vocation (I don't know exactly what it is but the news mentioned this) that required the use of his body, and not just that, his hobby was sports (there was a photo of him playing rugby).  His talents lay in his body, so to take all of that away from him would of course prompt him to take the action he is taking.  With that information you would side with Tony for this.


I still however can't form an opinion on this.  I'm fairly fit and fully functioning so there's no way I can possibly put myself in either of their shoes.  I have no idea what I would want to do if I was in Tony Nicklinson's shoes. I'd like to think I'd want to soldier on but there's no way of telling unless I came down with the exact same condition.  So I'll leave it to the all but non existent readers to leave comments with their personal opinion on this one.


I'd hate to be the Judge on that court case.


Now here comes the part where I talk about the 'mental breakdown' that cost well over a dozen lives in Afghanistan.  I'll get right to the chase here because I don't normally talk about more than one thing in these blogs.  When  I first heard about this, the only the information I had about this is that at least one American soldier busted into several peoples homes and killed all of them.  My first thought was 'this is like that event in my home town 'Bloody Sunday' roughly 40 years ago.  It turns out that it was indeed just the one soldier who acted out of what I can only assume was incredible stress.  This is no excuse of course.

The following is from my personal observations in my own home country.  If you add any foreign military presence to a country, it's residents wont appreciate it.  No matter what your reasons for your army to be in their country is, the indigenous population will want them back out of the country as soon as possible.  So to add atrocities such as this will make the Afghanistan people so angry it will only make their presence even worse.  At least in this case an apology was issued in a matter of days as opposed to decades as was the case in Bloody Sunday.  At least the man who went beserk on a bunch of women and children looks like being brought to justice in the near future instead of it looking like it will never happen as is the case of Bloody Sunday.  For once they seem like they are apologetic as opposed to being the bullies the world perceives them to be.

That being said many innocent people, mostly women and children were slaughtered recently and there is no way it can possibly be defended.  I realise I sound like I'm in a game of dick measuring from my previous paragraph but that is not in any way my intention at all.  I offer my condolences to the families of the dead and I know what you must be feeling right now.  This is the worst possible thing that could possibly happen to a family. In fact it's the most horrific thing I can imagine to have happen to you.  


So to sign off I'll say, 'Shame on you, you who break into peoples homes and slaughter them as if they were animals.  You who cause the heartbreak of so many people due to this.  You killed those who must have had to watch their entire family violently end their lives before theirs were ended too.  You make me sick to the core.  I hope you die too. In fact I hope you die with the same methods your country do to perpetrators of homocide in your own country, failing that I hope you die of AIDS or something.


J


PS.  Sorry about the CSPAN video i posted, I tried to get something that got to the point but that's the best I could find at short notice.