The central issue of this thread is whether or not **Airman Doors, USAF, ** was called a murderer by another poster, and whether or not that other poster should have been warned by a moderator the way Airman was warned.
The way I read the post Airman took offense to…well, IMHO, Colinito needs a warning as well. It really looked to me like he just didn’t bold **USAF, ** as Beagle stated above.
Odd, I thought the same about you.
Not for me he is not. Where did you get the idea I was an American? And what the fuck has the American military done for me?
Yes, but they were also major military industrial centers, weren’t they? And as such, legitimate targets (for conventional munitions anyway)?
Ahem, that’s why I said the “American military umbrella” and not “our.” Without our military, many nations today would not have been able to use the money saved on defense for building their economies.
You might think that’s what you said – but that is certainly NOT what your wrote:
And what the fuck do you know what I have or haven’t “contributed,” asshole? Am I now officially an “America-hater” because I see through – as has most of the world by now – all the bullshit your current Government is feeding you?
It’s the same sentiment, merely restated,–perhaps that what confused you. Foreigners like you are ingrates who benefit from our military (we put up more money and more troops to solve the world’s problems than any other nation)
Your posts in this thread answer that question, don’t they?
Fuckface
Look. Where I come from, “murderer” is the last word said before there is a knock-down, drag out fight. To imply that is as low as you can go. It’s similar to “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in diplo-speak. When that card is palyed, there will be some consequences. I called him a coward because he would NEVER have the stones to say that in front of someone who wears the uniform for a living. He said it behind the guise of anonymity in a place where he knew he was safe to do so. If that’s not cowardice I don’t know what is.
For the second time, I acknowledge that I tore him up in the wrong place, but I wanted it to end there. When I saw that I was the only one to get warned I made it into a larger issue. All that is required here is a ruling, is hurling an insult like “murderers” acceptable? It’s not my decision, and I thought it was an important enough one that it should be made publicly.
BTW, you can play the semantics game all you want, guys, but you know what he implied and you know why I’m furious about it. But keep arguing amongst yourselves, by all means.
I have a question for you…let’s say Bush calls off the war and the troops return home. No action is taken against Saddam. What then?
How do we guarantee that he won’t build nuclear weapons? How doe we guarantee that he won’t rearm and reinvade Kuwait and then go on to Saudi?
How do we guarantee that North Korea won’t build nukes? Oh…wait a second…
Right. Because you already know everything about me due to my opposition to this bloodthirsty exercise in deception :rolleyes:
You gotta feel sorry for all the helpless fucks who can’t see the world outside the dictates of whatever Grand Poobah they choose to follow blindly. Must make them think everyone else needs one of their own as well.
Anyhow, have a very pleasant evening. I’m done banging my head against a wall.
Shows how much you know. Anyone who has been in this threads with me knows that I am dubious about the war, particularly our lack of an exit strategy, but that does not mean that Saddam should not be ousetd, just that we have to be careful how we do it. Frankjly, I’d be happy if we avoided war by paying the sonofabitch off and sending him into permanent exile.
And Diogenes, your point about North Korea is excellent. So that must mean that you now realize the folly of treaties and inspections with an adversary that has no intention of honoring its obligations and you fully support the necessity of ousting Saddam. Glad to hear it.
So, I take it you also favor an invasion of NK?
Sure, ten years ago, but now it’s too late. Get it?
Um, Persephone, I was only talking about gobear’s odd insistence that Hiroshima & Nagasaki were not civilian targets. Nothing to do with the fight that got this whole bit of weirdness started; FWIW, Airman’s always looked like a cool character to me, Colinito’s statement was ridiculous on its face, and Airman has a legit complaint about how the moderator handled it, which to me was completely outrageous.
The USA is nowhere near perfect, however. There’s nothing wrong with simply acknowledging that, and realizing that regardless of whether the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were the lesser of two evils, they were still
a) a nuclear first strike that
b) deliberately targetted civilians.
You can go on from there to argue that it prevented much worse later, which is a legit argument that has been gone over repeatedly elsewhere. But the above is simple fact.
You make it sound as if killing civilians was the sole purpose of the bombings, which I strongly object to.
Not to play Junior Mod here, but as a mark of respect for Airman Doors (or for Colinito for that matter), would it be acceptable to everyone to take discussions of whether bombings, atomic or other, are “targeting civilians” and all the related semi-hijack not connected with the core issue of whether Colinito’s comment on “murderers” was in fact an insult of the sort forbidden in GD over to this thread which was started by Beagle for just that purpose?
Now that makes sense. It doesn’t work that way in all parts of the US, but at least your anger towards David B is justified in that context.
-Upon preview, I see that Polycarp has posted an excellent suggestion. The original issue has nearly been lost here.
In my opinion, Colinito’s ass was saved by a combination of two factors: (1) his own inability to write with syntactic coherence, and (2) DavidB’s unwillingness to allow his usual sense of fairness to override a bias. I’m not sure what the bias was, but it had to have something to do with granting leniency toward arguments against the military and/or the war.
It had to be clear to David that, at the very least, Airman took Colinto’s post to be an accusation of murder. Even in this thread, no one is disputing that that is how Airman took it. And even though there is disagreement in here about whether that was in fact Conlinto’s intent, there are enough people convinced that is was indeed his intent that it has been established that a reasonable person could interpret Conlinto’s post that way.
Since it is at least a reasonable interpretation, it is confounding that David did not see Airman’s post, look back up at what Airman responded to, and see that an accusation of murder was a reasonable interpretation.
He could have called out Colinto at the same time he did Airman, something like this: “If you say that a class of people are murderers and then you identify an individual as a member of that class, you have called the individual a murderer. Don’t do that again in Great Debates.”
Look. The vast majority of our servicemembers are professionals with a job to do. Airman and Bluesman are no exceptions. These people go to very unpleasant places, under conditions most of us find abhorrent, to do their jobs.
Yes, it’s true that sometimes, civilians are killed. Pointing out each and every instance of this would take more bandwidth than I’d care to waste at the moment. I don’t think that the US military deliberately targets civilians, and I don’t think any individual servicemembers take it upon themselves to target civilians. If any do, well, under American and military law, they’re murderers and there are courts set up to prosecute them.
All of that having been said, though, I think that Colinito’s remark was horribly inflammatory, and designed to elicit a reaction. He got one. I think that either David B owes Airman an apology, or he should hold Colinito to the same standard.
Robin