Protect the unborn and slaughter your enemies. The bizarre inconsistency of the US right

Later this month US Republican senator Rick Santorum is expected to declare his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.  Speaking this week at the South Carolina Freedom Summit,  a self-declared Conservative event, Santorum spoke of ISIS  and the approach the United States should take to combating them:

If these people want to bring back a 7th-century version of Islam … then let’s load our bombers up and bomb them back to the 7th-century.

That’s right Rick, load up those bombers and  rain death from the sky upon the women,  men and children of the Middle East. Don’t worry about the fact that when you carpet bomb a country you don’t  clinically remove enemy combatants, you use a very blunt instrument that kills indiscriminately.  Don’t be bothered by the fact that bombing a country back to the seventh century condemns people in those countries to years of grinding poverty as their infrastructure is obliterated.  What’s really important is for America feel great again.

This is the same Rick Santorum who is avowedly pro-life,  who in the last presidential race said

The issue of pro-life, the sanctity and dignity of every human life, not just on the issue of abortion, but with respect to the entire life, and the dignity of people at the end of life, those issues will be top priority issues for me to make sure that all life is respected and held with dignity.

Santorum is typical of many. On the one hand he can compassionately and passionately argue for the right to life  at the beginning and end of life, but somehow seems comfortable with inflicting death on the supposedly unworthy in the middle of life.

I’m with Rick on the need to respect and reverence life. I just wish we could extend this same reverence to people who are not “one of us”. If that was our starting point  there would be a lot less externally imposed death at the start, the middle, and the end of life.