[Boromir88]

You pretty much said it right there. To cause physical harm you have to be able to actually interact with physical things.

But I never said someone needed 'flesh' to be capable of doing anything, as you have asserted. I only said that in order to physically bring harm to someone else, one would have to have a physical body.

Which, I did admit that luthien brought up a good point, in that I obviously did not take into consideration that the Dead Army was able to kill the corsairs with their fear and driving them off the boats to their watery grave (that I would certainly classify as being able to 'physically harm' because with their fear they were able to kill the Corsairs). That's something I wasn't considering...by 'physical harm' I was talking about the fact that the King of the Dead could not have stabbed the Witch-King with a sword...or couldn't have drop kicked him in the face.

FYI, the Aniur didn't have bodies when they made Arda.

...Ya I kind of knew that.

Look at Sauron; a horribly crippled spirit when he was finally defeated. The Witch-King was vanquished from the world when he died. The dead army just pretty much died regularly but got to stay in Middle-Earth.

It doesn't matter how they died is the whole point. All death is, in Tolkien, is the seperation of the spirit from the body. The King of the dead was...dead therefor he couldn't have had a tangible body. And in order to be able to fight and 'brawl' with something that did have a tangible body, you needed to have one yourself.

Also, the curse wouldn't be lifted until they fought for Gondor. If they were expected to fight, then why were they cursed with something that wouldn't let them fight?

They did fight for Gondor, just not in the way of slashing people up or round house kicking them. They were able to fill the Corsairs with madness and have them jump off the boat...after this Aragorn holds their oath fulfilled.

The end of that, I'm sorry, just doesn't make any sense. Isildur was spiteful because of their betrayal, so he cursed them,ther isn't some sort of magical power to keep their bodies intact so they could still fight. They betrayed Gondor, Isildur cursed them until their oath was fulfilled, which they did. After being cursed they hid in their mountains, died, but being cursed their spirits couldn't rest until they fulfilled their oath. Isildur's curse was a show of spite. So, he didn't care whether they were capable of fulfilling their oath or not. He despised them for their betrayal so he laid a curse on them, if they were able to fulfill it good for them, if not too bad shouldn't have betrayed Gondor.