Yes, and note how the politics of Israel have been shifted so far to the right-wing, lately, that Likud has made a coalition with the Israeli equivalent of the BNP. Because Republicans think that the ends justify the means. The only good military is one that is managed with a mind for keeping order, not as much with a mind for killing. You can take the lesson that a sense of order and lawfulness promotes good behavior, and it applies almost anywhere in the world. It has been proven that, if soldiers are taught that the rule of law is above all other considerations, they will consistently behave in accordance with that law, and they will do so unflinchingly and effectively. This is the first thing that a person entering the military should be taught: they should be taught to consider the laws that govern them, particularly during combat, to be their religion. Those who are overeager to kill or "avenge their civilization" will invent excuses to kill or to "avenge their civilization." They will see a camera and take it to be a firearm; they will even identify it as a specific kind of weapon. They will shoot first and ask questions later. They will fire blindly into a cloud of dust. When they find that they have made a mistake and ripped the life out of the wrong sort of person, they will once again choose the response dictated to them by their emotions, even in the midst of remorse for acting upon ill considered emotion. Law is what separates us from animals. It is the only thing that separates us from animals. An animal can be taught a language, and it would still be an animal. An animal can be given advanced technology, and it would still be an animal. An animal could build bridges and skyscrapers, and it would still be an animal if it were not ruled by law, first and foremost. Not by God, not by Man, not by Emotion.
Actually, the majority of the Marines I know see the "blood lust" stuff as antiquated bullshit and a very old joke. Ask a Marine with any intelligence, and I can guarantee he will tell you something similar to this: 1) When your buddy gets trigger-happy at the wrong time, you find yourself wondering what side he's on by the end of the day. Seriously, if you find that kind of thing happening during training, hit him very hard with your helmet until his brain starts functioning. 2) The only Marine who is worth a damn is one who does what he is trained to do, does it well, and does it without asking ill-timed questions. The enemy isn't dangerous: most of them are horribly trained idiots. You are more likely to be killed as a result of your battle buddy's fuck-ups than by enemy fire on any day of the week.
To me, the van is the sticking point. Under the laws of armed conflict you cannot target an ambulatory vehicle. However you can target a vehicle if you suspect it is moving/recovering enemy equipment. That might have been the distinction made in this particular case - it is probably covered somewhere in the AR 15-6 investigation. Personally I would be interested in hearing what the legal opinion was on that aspect of this incident. I'll try to find it. I suspect that there is some other element of the ROE that we are not knowledgeable about. I say this because the pilots were clearly aware that injured personnel are afforded protection - hence the long sequence where they are focused on an injured "insurgent" and just waited for him to pick up a weapon - at which point he would legally be a lawful combatant again. So the pilots clearly understood the ROE and were abiding by it during that time frame. Something about the arrival of the vehicle and the removal of personnel/equipment gave the van combatant status in the minds of the pilots. I understand why people are suspicious here and it was definitely a troubling scene. But taking in the totality of the video I think it is clear that the pilots were conscious of their legal obligations. It is possible that the pilots and the element that authorized the strike had both gone off the reservation. However given their lawful behavior both immediately following and preceding the event I am still going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Go ahead and maintain your delusions if you wish. The Taliban are ideologically identical with Osama Bin Laden, one is local, the other focused on international action.
Oh, the Taliban is a bunch of lunatics. They think they are "reenacting the life of Mohommed," and they are making right jackasses of themselves in doing so. I am just reflecting upon the fact that any experienced Marine would rather go up against a professional, highly trained enemy than a bunch of psychotic amateurs any day of the week. Professionals take prisoners, and they usually let you go as soon as they figure out who won. Amateurs will cut pieces off of your body, and then they will keep you as a prisoner while the remainder of your body festers and rots. Professional soldiers loathe incompetent jackassery above all other sins, whether it is the enemy or someone on your side who is doing it. The military solution to making world peace is to kill off all of the incompetent morons on both sides until the soldiers remaining have enough respect for each other that they refuse to fight anymore. I am not cut out for the military myself, but I think I have at least a basic understanding of the mentality of a grunt or a jarhead. They know that, if you were to pit two highly trained, professional, jackass-free armies against each other, they could decide on who "won the war" without a single life being lost on either side. Professionals will retreat when they have been out-maneuvered. Fanatics will stand there and try to play "martyr" BECAUSE THEY ARE CRAZY. Professionals will call it a victory and take a break if you run away screaming and begging for mercy. Fanatics will chase you down and try to kill you. Professionals will calmly take you prisoner if you surrender, and they will probably even give you a pack of cigarettes if you're a good boy. Fanatics will probably just keep shooting at you. If only highly trained, professional soldiers ever carried lethal weapons, they would never be used to actually kill anybody. It's not "bloodlust" that gets innocent people killed, in a war. It is stupidity.
I can't believe the bullshit that you believe, S.A.M. This is the real story. Apparently, this happened during a US raid on a town in Afghanistan. I don't know exactly what kind of bullshit was going on, but it sounds like someone actually did get killed in the confusion. The funny thing is that, by spreading around this propaganda, you are probably making it all the more likely that some poor, dumb schmuck will get himself killed while trying to attack US-led forces, and it will be your fault. I know you don't care. That's the problem.
Common Dreams is a highly biased and dubious source. You are aware of this, and you don't care. Besides, Dave Markland organizes with Stopwar.ca, so it's not like I'm cherry-picking some pro-military, pro-war blogger to back my side of the story. In fact, I am doing quite the opposite. I chose a blogger who actually has a vested interest in reporting material that would discredit the American military. The story he is telling is a lot different from yours.
Common Dreams is merely a website. The source of the news is Jerome Starkey and this is hardly an isolated incident or even the only school children executed by NATO.
SAM, I think that you are full of shit and that you are trying to incite moral outrage against the US. I think that you are a liar and a fraud, and I doubt you have any real respect for human life or dignity. I think that demonizing the US at any cost is central to your agenda, you will use any fraudulant means to do so.
I don't know that anyone can say definitively what happened. Is the blog posting even covering the same story as the video SAM linked? From what I can tell about this attack, it may not even be proper US soldiers, but some other force, intelligence related or mercenary etc. I have heard that mercenary security forces are replacing real soldiers in these places. Maybe they are the people to blame in whatever happened here. In my opinion, Blackwater et al. are worse, because no one even knows who they really answer to.
Here's the story, according to CNN, rather than an anti-war blogger: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/29/afghanistan.deaths/
And I trust CNN? That story doesn't appear to dispel any rumors or myths about civilians being needlessly killed. It seems to rest only on the US side of the story.
Maybe the best bet is to take CNN and, say, al jazeera, combine and stir well - then try to distill a few nuggets of truth from the resulting mixture? :shrug:
Is it wrong to want them to fight only those who are fighting them first? Do they need to kill anyone who even looks remotely like they may be an "enemy"? Even if they are picking an injured person up and trying to load them in a van? Is refraining from shooting someone like that getting emotional on the battlefield??? I'd like to know why and when killing innocent civilians suddenly became a ho-hum everyday event? Like, oh, yeah, so a couple people got shot today by law-enforcers for no reason, but it was all in the name of keeping the law and order. At least the law was upheld. Why is that an acceptable event?
SAM's story is simply unlikely, though. Stories about children being hauled out of their homes, handcuffed, and executed sounds too glamorously evil to be believed in the first place; it is too convenient coming from a culture where the US is "The Great Satan." For another, I don't trust anything coming from S.A.M. anyway because she is openly determined to demonize the US in any way that she can. It is safe to say that anything she says is deliberately fraudulant at worst, based on yellow journalism at best.
Haha, you would be correct in calling it a senseless slaughter, even if it were against militants. Now, you are operating on the assumption that I and others are trying to justify this somehow. This is why you are failing to understand what we are saying. When you have realized that we are human beings, just like you, come back and read this post again. The reason that things like this happen is that field commanders can be trigger-happy idiots who insist on shooting at anything that seems to be holding a weapon. This stems from a lack of discipline, and just about any member of the US military would love to have the bastard strung up by his nostrils. The US military does not take kindly to trigger-happy morons. They get their own men killed more often than not. Once again, burn it into your synapses that I am a human being with human motives, not some baby-murdering servant of Satan like you and other seem to be assuming anyone who disagrees with you must be, and then reread this whole post with that understanding in mind. The extent to which you people have completely dehumanized anyone who does not assume the same stance on this issue as yourselves is simply twisted. It is difficult to remain rational on this topic when the people I am trying to discuss it with seem to believe that eat babies for breakfast and wash them down with thistles. Doubly so when I have to contend with an Indian woman who seems to take GOP-style tactics toward trying to demonize the US. That is, she seems to exercise a complete disregard for whether or not anything she says is justified as long as it supports her agenda. You know, what S.A.M. is doing at the EXPENSE of the USA represents everything that is wrong with the GOP. People like S.A.M. simply can't be trusted, ever.
