So a gang discovers that one of their members has been taken out by their opposing gang- a gang of different ethnicity and rules.
They go to that gang’s 'hood and they “snapped after seeing one of their own killed”.
They “were just blinded by hate … and they just lost control”.
They killed 24 innocent people who were of the same ethnicity and background of the opposing gang.
“Investigators say that photographs of the scene taken after the attack show bullet-riddled walls and victims killed with point-blank shots to the head and chest, considered a sign of an execution-style killing.”
Define your terms clearly; equating a nation’s military with an unlawful gang
shows where you’re coming from and will earn you rolling eyes more than nods of agreement.
I’d think that “snapping” is the very opposite of a hate crime. Not that we’d want anyone susceptible to that in the services, if events turned out the way some allege.
Yes, this isn’t gang warfare. Members of a nation’s military should be held to a higher standard than members of a gang, since they represent their nation in the eyes of the world. And they have superior officers who have the duty to imposer that higher standard, for that reason.
I shouldn’t have used the intensifier very, but I can’t really see how one can commit a hate crime without being previously disposed to it. After all, hate doesn’t just appear in someone out of whole cloth.
In fact, if it were shown that someone “snapped” out of stress or violence, I would hold that as a mitigating factor as to whether or not it should be classified as a hate crime. Actual hate crime statutes are so disparate and frequently seemingly arbitrary that I don’t want to research the dozens or hundreds of them to be found.
*Military prosecutors plan to file murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the shooting death of an Iraqi man in April, a defense lawyer said Thursday.
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The eight men are being held in the brig at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of San Diego, said Jeremiah Sullivan III, who represents one of the men.
The Iraqi man reportedly was dragged from his home west of Baghdad and shot. Both the Los Angeles Times and NBC News said troops may have planted an AK-47 and shovel near the body to make it appear the man was an insurgent burying a roadside bomb.* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5039420.stm
*
The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.
The video appears to challenge the US military’s account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.
The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.
A spokesman for US forces in Iraq told the BBC an inquiry was under way.*
A: Pjen, your op is… designed in an amazingly outstanding way. It all but assures that people will not pay attention to the content of your post, as the structure has so much horribly wrong with it.
Are you even thinking about the actual issue? Is this simply a loaded and very stupid metaphor? It’s not even close to accurate.
Would you rather we spent time dissecting the reasons why your metaphor is amazingly wrong, or would you rather discuss the far more serious issues you wrapped within it?
Please do tell us.
B: Well, the appropriate thing to do is have an inquiry, investigate these reports. if they’re plausible, conduct a trial, find them either guilty or innocent under the UCMJ, and then have appropriate punishments applied, up to and possibly including ‘hung by the neck until dead’. The same thing that you do with any potential murder cases. What else should be done?
Does anyone think the investigations will be blown off? That’s a different issue entirely, after all.
And, of course, considering Pjen’s apparent definition, it seems the ‘gang’ has 130,000 members, for the Iraq branch. We’re lucky a single Iraqi is left alive.
Moderator’s Note:Pjen, if you have a point you want to make in Great Debates, it is best to make that point, not to play games about what it is you’re saying (however thin the disguise on your OP may be).
Attempting these sorts of “gotchas” tends to engender a lot of hostility from other posters, to the detriment of actually getting anyone to listen to the argument you’re trying to make.