And again, you just flat-out admitted that you think that the killing of innocents has been and can be justified. What are you, some kind of Muslim?
Repeat after me: it’s different when we do it.
Or rather, it’s different when our brave troops do it.
If you fire a rocket into a crowded apartment block to kill an insurgent, you’re killing civilians to achieve a tactical aim.
Exploding a bomb on your back in a crowded marketplace kills civilians, but to achieve a strategic aim.
I certainly abhor all civilian deaths, but you appear to be making a distinction between tactical and strategic; one is “civilised” and one not. Yet “civilised” states indulge in very similar behaviours from time to time: Shock and Awe, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo, etc.
You’re focusing on the outcome. Yes, both are victims are just as dead. But when apportioning moral blame, outcome is not the most important thing, intent is. So, morally, Osama Bin Laden and General Patreaus are in different universes. The latter wants to kill as few innocents as he can will achieving a military objective. The other wants to kill as many innocents as possible in order to terrorize, or blackmail, the civilized world into compliance.
magellan01, please point to where the Muslims in your retarded poll are specifically talking about killing civilians in terrorist actions, versus killing civilians as collateral when hitting appropriate military targets.
I disagree wholeheartedly. In apportioning moral blame, both intent and outcome are important. If they weren’t, we couldn’t prosecute drunk drivers for vehicular homicide since there was no intent to kill anyone.
If you reread what you responded to, we are somewhat in agreement. We agree that both intent and outcome should go to any calculation apportioning moral blame. I said intent was more important. It think that you agree with that, though I’m not sure. Could you clarify?
:rolleyes: I think you’re looking for the Remedial Clown School. Do a search for threads in which Elucidator is active.
Shock and Awe, historically, was a cudgel. It was a “don’t you dare fuck with us, because if you do, this is what we are capable of”. I’m reluctant to use our modern sense of warfare and morality concerning life to judge past people. Yes, even Muhammed gets wide berth in that. But there is a very real difference in between the sides you paint. One uses the intentional killing of innocent people as their tactical strategy. The other accepts that innocents may die—and if they do, the number should be kept to a minimum—in the carrying out of a particular military objective. You seem hell bent on ignoring the blaring difference that one side seeks to minimize the deaths of innocents, while the other seeks to maximize it. For the former group, it is an unfortunate, albeit acceptable, consequence of an action. For the latter it is the objective. Can you really not see the moral difference?
Wow - I can feel the breeze from here from all that handwaving.
You have made much of the datapoint in the poll you cite that a significant number of American Muslims agree that the killing of innocents has been and can be justified. Nothing in that figure explains the contexts for which such killings would be deemed justified. You have then gone on to give examples of circumstances in which you too agree that the killing of innocents has been and can be justified. Now you’re floundering to fill in context, because it’s the only thing that keeps your argument from collapsing. Come back when you can demonstrate that all those poll respondents meant their answer in the “Muslim” sense rather than in the “American” sense.
Terrorism is exactly the same. Al Qaeda believe they are fighting a war against us. They do not have the troops or armaments or training to fight a conventional war, so they fight an asymmetric one. They cannot defeat our armies or topple our governments but they can sap our will to fight them and sow fear and confusion. The killing of innocents is the means to that end, not the end in itself.
Ultimately your argument still comes down to “It’s okay if the US does it/it’s not okay if Muslims do it”. If you want to whine that Al Qaeda are not playing by the rules*, go right ahead but it will still just be whining and it will still be war.
Dead is dead.
*That said, Sun Tsu would probably approve of their approach.
Which, largely, was what 9/11 was.
Think about it: if you were a terrorist armed with planes full of fuel, and your strategic aim was actually to kill as many innocents as possible, where would you crash your planes? Personally if I was an evil terrorist motherfucker, I would crash them into the blocks of most densely populated apartment blocks in upper Manhattan at night when everyone was asleep. Instead they chose two very very prominent symbols of US economic might, during the day.
By this reckoning, the attack on the Pentagon was justifiable, given that Al Qaeda deem themselves at war with the US: it has a tactical military objective, to do considerable damage to the control center of the Department of Defense, and damn the innocents that work there. Similary, wherever United 93 was heading in Washington, since this had a tactical objective to cause maximum trauma to the Commander in Chief and his government.
I am, of course, in no way trying to justify the heinous acts of terrorists of any political persuasion or religious stripe - just trying to get you to see that the comparative situations are not as black and white, “civilized” and “uncivilized”, as you are trying to paint them.
You have me wrong, then. Outcome is more important than intent. Dead is dead.
What I THINK magellan01 is alluding to when he mentions intent is the use of “rules of engagement” or “LOAC” : http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/loac.htm
No terrorist organization I am aware of has to play by these rules. To make a finer point may I quote jjimm:
One of the major precepts for rules of engagement is distinction.
I have an uneasy feeling that no terrorist involved, whether it be the Oklahoma City bombing or 9/11, discussed rules of engagement before carrying out their plans. THAT’S why I have such a problem with the initial bombing of Baghdad after 9/11 as I don’t have any data on whether the US military followed any LOAC protocols.
Just an observation. Don’t shoot the messenger 
My personal belief is that rules-of-engagement that result in direct civilian casualties at the rate we are generating them in Iraq (or for that matter, in World War II) are unacceptable from a moral standpoint.
We’re not following our own LOAC or the Geneva Convention these days. Kind of hard to scramble up on the high horse when you’re torturing people to death.
While I abhor the notion of water boarding or torture of any kind, I was unaware that the US government has killed anyone through these practices. Admittedly, I haven’t looked into it as much as I should have.
A quick Google turns up articles:
Death By Torture: US Media Ignores Hard Evidence
The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture
U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq
I just found another one. Horrifying, if there is any veracity to it:
BTW Shot From Guns, I’ve been attempting to place anchor text for my url links but it doesn’t seem to work. In the post window is there a button I have to press to create it?
If you want to use the button:
1.) Create the text of your link.
2.) Highlight that text.
3.) Click the “Insert Link” button (looks like a globe with some metal links in front of it)
4.) Paste or type your URL and hit “Ok” in the dialogue that comes up.
If you want to do it manually, the syntax is [****URL=“http://notarealwebsite.tld”]Link Text Here[/****URL].
Anchor text for links? Wha? Huh? Wouldn’t that clog up the intertubes?