Human Shields. Is it OK to Kill them?

The logic that says the man is sending out suicide bombers to murder innocent children, He is responsible for who He lives with and holds close.

The military logic of defense of innocent lives at the loss of less then innocent lives who chose to live on the Target and them brag about it.

Yes SAM the difference in targets, innocent children just going about their live, or those who are held close for cover and propaganda purposes by those who would murder Jewish Children for no other purpose than to murder them.

Yes what was the military value of a Israeli school bus? a pizza parlour in the heart of Jerusalem? the lives of the Children murdered by those suicide bombings,

Yes SAM what is the military value of this;

Terrorist Samir Kantar who crushed a 4-year-old girls head
with his rifle butt.​

The head of a 4 year old, who was she being a human shield for?

Mossad never sleeps, and I doubt Kantar is sleeping well tonight, evey bump in the night, every creek of the floor, every shadow that flickers.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

With this kind of logic, there is nothing you could not justify.

On the one hand you see children as something expendable, and on the other you see children as people who need defending.
Your viewpoint seems to depend on whose children they are.

There is no doubt that among Arab peoples and Jewish peoples, in fact within all peoples, there are a great number who hold this hideous logic.
It leads to hatred, and retributional violence.

The attack on the twin towers resulted in thousands of innocent deaths.
In an attempt to attack what? A way of thinking.
Did it work? One of the most violent, and most publicised acts of violence and retribution ever? No, it did not.

I don't hate anyone, but that is perhaps because I have never had innocent people close to me destroyed by an enemy.

Perhaps you have had people close to you killed, and that may be the reason why you believe the things that you do.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

If you intentionally kill the innocient civilians used by terrorists as shields for you to kill, then what is the difference between you and the terrorist.

On the other I can understand those who claim it is rightful to kill the civilians n a country because they have voted to elect a government that is enemy to them. If that's the logic, then killing civilians in the U.S. or Israel can not be terrorism.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Of course they are. That doesn't mean it is always morally, legally, or operationally acceptable to cave a building that will kill a bunch of them, but make no mistake about it. The fault rests with the party that colocated them with a legitimate military target in order to recover PR points when the target was obliterated as they knew it would likely be.

Note that the above assumes the human shields are hapless victims rather than fucking retards. In the latter case, my vote is to let darwinism work its magic.

 

Some of the best documented "colocating" has been done by Israel soldiers in various operations - setting up in one floor of a dwelling in which their enemy's relatives have been trapped on another, for example - which makes a useful starting point for debate.

Beyond the use of threats to family and friends as a weapon against "guerrillas and terrorists", a common counterinsurgency tactic, there is the automatic problem of having invaded a densely populated area, and made enemies of some of the residents. The question of who, exactly, did the "colocating" in that circumstance seems up for debate.

And that is before considering the means of attack - which vary in accuracy and discrimination - as affecting the definition of "colocated". There have been times when everyone in, say, Baghdad, or Fallujah, was apparently considered to be "colocated" with legitimate military targets, judging by the means brought to the attack.

 

Interpol is not some sort of "international police force" with jurisdiction that reaches into multiple countries. Interpol is just an organization that facilitates cooperation between the existing police forces in different nations.

It is a good organization in helping track down terrorists that flee a given jurisdiction, but it has no authority in and of itself to investigate crimes or make arrests. Local police have to do that. There are no "Interpol agents" (outside of some movies) that could go to Afghanistan and start arresting terrorists, we would have had to rely on the Afghani police force to do that, if we relied on Interpol. Since the Afghani government was officially protecting al Qaeda, it seems unlikely they'd have let their police forces cooperate with the Americans.

 

And this logic says it is okay to kill women and children to get one "insurgent"?

No wonder you guys are hated everywhere.

So if foreign troops invade your country and bomb your house, its your fault because even though you are a soldier you sleep at home? And since your family knows you would defend them against foreign troops in the neighborhood, they are winners of the Darwin award for staying at home?

 

Well how about the 3000 Men Women and Children in the Twin Towers?

How about the Innocent Muslim Women and Children killed everyday by your Muslim Suicide Bombers, in Iraq and Afghanistan?

How about the hundreds of honor killings each and every week in Muslim Countries?

If you are going to wage war don't do it from behind your families and neighbors bodies.

You want to castigate me? yes really SAM, I wage war in the open I did not hide behind my children's bodies, I didn't wage war behind the bodies of my friends children, I didn't fight my battles from the bodies of innocent children and loved ones.....

Were do those you cheer on, your Muslim Terrorist brothers wage their war from? From behind the bodies of their innocent dead children and families, from behind the bodies of their neighbors who are willing accomplices and place even their own children's lives below the propaganda value of having them killed as human shields, yes that is why I don't like your brand of Islam, it wages war on the bodies of innocent Muslim children sacrificed as propaganda material by Muslim like you, Yes SAM, cheer the propaganda, cheer the deaths, and the cowards who hide behind the lives of the Innocent and teach them that it is Honorable to die to protect Muslim Killers of Innocents, Muslim's and Christian's, Buddhists', Animists'.......Yes Tell us how horrible we are from the mountain of dead innocent Muslim Children held as close cover by Your blood drenched Terrorist Friends just for the propaganda value of telling us how horrible the West is.

 

Let's use your logic in that case:

The term is "collateral damage".

They should have known better than to work in the same building as the people funding invasions and atrocities in other people's countries. And those people were very bad people, to be hiding behind human shields like that.

You invaded someone else's country, and used their children, instead. It makes sense, from a certain point of view.

 

Sorry, but that is not applicable to the WTC, it was the main target, and there was absolutely no military value to the Towers.

Please list the names of the people who were funding invasions and atrocities in other people's countries, yes name those people and citation of fact.

and that is something we will never see for iceaura, citation and facts.

Now yet again we have a grand pronouncement of a Iceism,

They should have known better than to work in the same building as the people funding invasions and atrocities in other people's countries. And those people were very bad people, to be hiding behind human shields like that.
You invaded someone else's country, and used their children, instead. It makes sense, from a certain point of view.

iceaura logic that from a frozen brain and no supporting evidence, just the grand logic of iceaura and nothing else.

 

Buffalo Roam: "there was absolutely no military value to the Towers."

9-11 exploited the greatest, most glaring military vulnerability of the USA: We are the nation most vulnerable to exhausting ourselves militarily (also economically, politically, and morally) against non-military threats, like a delusional man attacking gnats with a sledgehammer that he's pathologically obsessed with. This military vulnerability has never been hard to see- at least not for the majority of humanity that is not under the influence of intense, dishonest militaristic marketing that still dominates US culture.

 

What is there to debate? It doesn't matter who does it or how it is done. Using innocents as human shields is objectively wrong.

The term "human shield" is much more specific than you seem to believe.

 

And who doesn't do it?

The US, for example, scatters its military weapons manufacturing throughout its major cities, and at one time sited a good share of the financial business involved in its world wide military force projection in the WTC towers - yet we see many people here complaining about the innocents killed in the destruction of those towers, and talking about possible terrorist attacks against, say, major dams and ports and factories, as attacks against innocent civilians.

We see the attacks against the paramilitary forces of the Baghdad government, attacks which often kill many civilians in the thickly peopled locations such forces inhabit - the suicide bombs targeting police recruits, say - described as targeting innocent civilians: but turnabout, it's the inevitable killing of human shields.

Is there no moral difference between human shields as used by an invading force, and the existence of relatives and neighbors of the invaded country's combatants in the vicinity of the invasion targets?

If you are using aerial and artillery bombardment against enemy defending the city they live in, who is to blame for the collateral deaths inevitable with such imprecise weaponry? How is the defender of a city supposed to avoid having "human shields" nearby, in a city?

Not as used here, or in normal American public discourse.

 

The difference is that human shields can move away and shun the terrorists. In general what makes them "human shields" is that they (or their legal guardians in the case of children and the infirm) choose not to do so. If they choose to leave and cannot, then tend to be called "hostages."

Even then, the question is what is reasonably feasible. If you could invent a bullet that was lethal to terrorists only, then it would be more ethical to use it and leave the human shields alive than to kill them indiscriminately.

Retarded. Under that logic, one could claim that killing anyone merely sympathetic to terrorist complains was justified. Who needs an overt "vote"? What matters is moral support and the de facto self-association that that (or a vote) entails. If that's the logic, then killing civilians who want a Palestinian right of return or who think Israel should be disbanded can never be terrorism.

The election of a government you personally dislike is hardly the criteria.

 

Nonesense. When in a war the combating elements take refuge among the civilians and the civilians have no other place to go (as was the case in Gaza war), you can not say they were volunteer human shields. When one side is a fully-armed war machine and the other is a guerilla group and the war is inside a city, the weak party will most naturally hide wherever they find refuge. It may not even be a conscious act of putting the civilians under the risk. So in such a case the invading party will most naturally be responsible to spare the lives of the civilians. The stupid idea of collateral damage did not exist during the WWII, so why should it now. Using that idea, a lot of the atrocities committed by the Nazi army can easily be justified and that's not acceptable, agree?

This is an inhumane approach to the problem. Would you be okay if an army of the goods fighting terrorists kill your loved ones just because they happened to be at the vicinity. That's what is happening in the middle-east, Pakistan and Afghanistan on a daily basis. You do not go on killing the civilians till a smart bullet is invented, you come to your senses as a human being and stop your paranoic killing spree.


Off subject but one question I wonder the answer for: If Osama was responsible only for the Pentagon attack and not for the others, should he still be considered a terrorist?

 

The ones living in areas under attack by the US are not called "hostages" on this forum, by the people who use "human shield" vocabulary to deflect blame for US killing of residents and bystanders.

 

Trustworthy sources if there ever were. You'll understand if I don't feel any particular responsibilty for arguments I haven't made or am obviously disagreeing with.

If everyone posting in this thread uses their own arbitrary definition of the term then we are all wasting our time. I'm using the correct definition. Others might find it easier to interpret what I say if they do so as well, and an absence of rational discourse when they pick one that nobody else could realistically be expected to understand.

In my view, this is the major reason the term is now rapidly being diluted to uselessness. In today's atmosphere of low intensity conflict, the irregular force too often has no compunction about taking innocents hostage and expending their lives for a tactical advantage. The regular force, as the most potent yet not always best policy effector of its parent state, too often acts with similar terrible consequences for the same demographic. Confused outrage ensues.

This confusion is not a good thing, as terrorists do, in fact, use human shields, and militaries do, in fact, cause unacceptable amounts of collateral damage. Diluting the term does a serious disservice to either type of victim, whether for propaganda value or merely out of ignorance.

 

E3R: "I'm using the correct definition."

For myself, and for any other classmates as slow as I- Would you please reiterate your best "human shields" definition?

"the irregular force too often has no compunction about taking innocents hostage and expending their lives for a tactical advantage."

Please consider and include in your definition who is expending more innocent lives- "us" or "them" (or regular/irregular), and exactly how the considerable disparity is justified. Also explain if you can how military invasions and counterinsurgency do not constitute the taking hostage of a nation. Bear in mind that if your definition is true, it should fit/apply equally to your own country v. someone else's, and equally in terms of state/non-state aggression.

"Diluting the term does a serious disservice to either type of victim"

Then distill it on your honor.

 

Not "my" definition. THE definition. Is your google broken?

No I don't think I will.

 

E3R: "Not "my" definition. THE definition."

Recent U.S. invasions and occupations are provoking terrorism. Terrorists attack civilians. Accordingly, such military provocations encourage attacks upon civilians (as opposed to direct attacks on invading/occupying soldiers). US civilians are human shields at home and abroad in the War on Terror. This is too obvious for someone of your intelligence to deny.

Googling beyond Homeland Security and zionist propaganda (for 2 prominent and related examples) that's one side of what is found. A truly viable definition of "human shield" will hold true from either side, or hold true for any non-combattant who is a target of violent retaliation- but popular culture and Google don't readily evoke this reality with the term.

Still: If I inflict hurt on you, especially if from a position of military superiority- you may be likely to hurt those who send me in response, and t greater effect. The soft underbelly of great military powers (civilians) is the most obvious target of determined but stateless fighters.

I'm asking you to better define here what you claim to be so obvious, and which should equally apply if a foreign army were hunting terrorists in the streets of the USA.

"I'm using the correct definition."

But you are making an empty claim / shrinking away from the challenge when asked for specific substantiation - "No I don't think I will."

"Is your google broken?"

Our Google doesn't offer a clear definition, because "Human Shield" is not a highly-evolved term. This post can be Googled. That doesn't make it definitive.

Human beings are being made the targets of retaliation on both sides of present conflicts involving the USA. You don't seem to acknowledge this, and have made a claim of superior understanding of the "human shield" concept. I'm challenging you about that, because I suspect you're avoiding the big (reciprocal) picture.