In that case I apologise if I made any misleading implications and I also take *your *point, but my contention is that the only reason these civilians wren’t rounded up and slaughtered like sheep is because they fought like lions.
If they hadn’t fought back for their very lives, the massacre would have been worse, but to my mind their deaths still very much count as a massacre by virtue of the fact that their murders were deliberate and on a large scale.
You said that “wholesale” massacres of the “civilian population” have happened, when in fact they clearly didn’t. I think that goes way beyond a “misleading implication.”
I maintain that a civilian is, in the eyes of international law, a non-combatant. It is disingenuous to support a rebel movement and then pretend that its participants are innocent civilians when they managed to get themselves shot in battle. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Your previous statements implied that civilians were ruthlessly murdered for no good reason, when in fact what you’re talking about are the deaths of heavily-armed individuals that occurred when they were shooting it out with the armed forces. Civilians, my ass.
That is a fair point.
Of course, many of those killed by Gaddafi were not combatants by the broadest conceivable definition. But, it is also a fair point that the rebels started this – for good reasons, I admit, and no doubt hoping it would go the way it had in Tunisia and Egypt – but when it didn’t, they did go ahead and wage civil war, and when you start a civil war under modern conditions, you must accept that you are setting something in motion that will kill many of your compatriots, including non-combatants and women and children. As well as destroying a whole lot of your country’s valuable property. There is no way to avoid “collateral damage” in a modern civil war. And every state does have the acknowledged right to put down insurrection by armed force, and doing so in a way that causes noncombatant deaths is not in an of itself a war crime or a crime against humanity. I’m sure the American Civil War killed a few civilians; doesn’t make Lincoln a war criminal.
Now wait a minute. My understanding is that the killing was initiated by Gadaffi’s troops, not by any insurgency. The government crackdown is what transformed demonstrators into rebels and made civil war.
You’re correct, Spark. The machinegunning started before the rebels existed. Look who Brainglutton is replying to.
I fail to see how Gbagbo constantly fooling his own people, postponing elections till he has in effect ruled for another term, and most of all pouring gasoline by the barrels on ethnical and religious divisions could find any justification with “The Greed of the West”. Those excuses only contribute to make Africans look incapable of facing their own shortcomings.
Didn’t think so.
Stop calling it a civil war.
We’re not talking about two opposing camps of civilians taking up arms against each other here, we’re talking about a dictator using his own armed troops and hired mercenaries to brutally put down an uprising by his own people that started peacefully.
Spark240 is right. This started as a peaceful, yet vocal demonstration in Benghazi by unarmed civilians. That alone would have been unthinkable in Libya even as recently as last year, as Gadaffi has a long history of ruthlessly crushing any voices of dissent. But emboldened by the changes in Tunisia and Egypt, the Libyan people saw their chance to speak out and took to the streets to do so, waving banners and calling out for change. They were met not with rubber bullets and teargas, but with live ammunition from the outset. Gaddaffi’s forces didn’t even make a pretense of trying to control the crowds, they set out to slaughter as many protestors as they could, as quickly as they could, and had absolutely no qualms about firing on women, children and the elderly. The International Criminal Court itself has already seen damning evidence that the use of live fire against protestors was a pre-planned, pre-meditated response by the regime, even before the demonstrations began.
Any weapons that the civilians have brought to bear against their oppressors were ones that they captured at very, very high cost. In the initial stages of the uprising, the people had virtually nothing with which to defend themselves. When Gaddaffi’s snipers were employed in Al-Bayda to shoot unarmed protestors in the streets, the people fought them off with rocks. When the people attacked the “Katiba” fortified compund in Benghazi that formed the headquarters of his Internal Security forces in the city, they did so with home-made molotov cocktails and were met with heavy machine-gun fire. The losses were extremely heavy until one man loaded up his car with propane gas cylinders commonly used for cooking, and rammed the front gate of the Katiba in a suicide attack that blew the gate to rubble and allowed the remaining people to storm the compound and overwhelm the security forces within.
So let’s be clear here - the people didn’t start this. They didn’t want the massive bloodshed that’s been inflicted on them, they just wanted an end to the regime and the chance to determine their own lives. They wanted to do this peacefully, but by making peaceful dissent impossible, Gaddaffi make a violent uprising inevitable.
That is still a civil war.
Really? Is my internal dictionary *that *out of whack? I thought a civil war was when the general populace of a country took up arms against each other. What do you call it when a dictator simply kills his own people? How is that a civil war? Not snarking or anything, it’s a genuine question…
That is what Libya is going through now.
I actually heard that Arab prof Anderson Cooper always has on compare it to the Spanish Civil War. But, there is a difference: Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco. Stalin supported the Republic. And now the international community is supporting the Libyan rebels. But nobody outside Libya is going to give any material support to Gaddafi.
Huh. Consider my ignorance fought then, but he’s still a murdering, delusional shitstain, and the sooner he’s gone, the better.
It is now a civil war. It didn’t start off that way. Unless you call the Montgomery Bus Boycott a civil war. Except instead of dogs and hoses, the government used rapid firing quad mounted cannons.
This sort of thing.
No argument. I bet even Hugo Chavez is by now wishing Gaddafi would just sail off to St. Helena or somewhere.
In addition to “collateral damage,” a modern war (civil or otherwise) often involves “friendly fire” deaths.
As a citizen of a NATO member country: :o Sorry! Our bad!
And doing that to unarmed protesters could be considered a crime against humanity.
But, once the rebels take up arms and take the field against the government – which they always have the option not to do – then they’re fair game by any standard; and, as I said, at that point the rebels must accept that they are setting something in motion that will kill their own country’s noncombatants, etc. Which does not mean it is never worth doing; but it does mean that you cannot fairly charge a government of whatever form or legitimacy with “crimes against humanity” just for fighting back.
The point of the matter is that the Libyan Government did that to unarmed protestors.
Before any rebels took up arms and took the field against their government.
Do you understand this, BrainGlutton, or have I been imprecise? Do you need me to make myself more clear here?
Man protest. Man get shot by horrible horrible big gun. Other man protest. Other man get shot by helicopter. Third man and fourth man say this is crime. They start rebellion.
But first man and also other man, they still shot. This crime against humanity.
That’s what I said.
Sorry I haven’t been following this thread or following the Libyan situation much lately since Japan.
I understand that Gaddafi’s troops are basically kicking the rebels’ asses? An American general basically said the rebels were going to lose?
Is either side being resupplied with weapons? By whom?
I am so glad Obama made NATO Europe take the lead on this.
How are the Yurpeans doing? Last I heard they need our A-10s.
How much longer does Gaddafi need to stay in power until NATO feels internationally obliged to leave and let Gaddafi get on with ruling his country?
Things look bad right now, but then again, right now, the actual defected military forces are busy training new military forces, as I understand things. It’s going to be fast and half-assed, but every day they stall, the rebel forces grow closer towards becoming an effective army.
If they can last long enough, they will be able to fight the loyalists in the field. But it’s gonna be a month or so.