Nope, and as you point out, that was deliberate. I’m not 100% certain given the technological limitations of the day that we could have necessarily avoided waging the war the same way the Germans and Japanese were waging it on us and still have been victorious.
They could have avoided many of those civilian causalities, certainly. There was no reason to fire bomb Tokyo, for instance, except to kill civilians. Nor Dresden. Nor was the Blitz against the Brits necessary…it was a deliberate targeting of the civilian population in order to, theoretically, break their collective wills to continue the war.
-XT
Yes, we do; we just label the people we slaughter “without regret or a care” as “terrorists” or “insurgents”.
Um…you do realize that we have imprisoned many of them, yes? If we were slaughtering them without regard then, well, that whole Gitmo thingy wouldn’t have been a problem. No?
Oh, never mind…it’s you. You were being hyperbolic again, no doubt…
-XT
Ah, I knew it was only a matter of time…
No we don’t. We label the people we mean to kill “terrorists” or “insurgents” or “enemy combatants” because we were and are actively targeting them.
We label the people we didn’t mean to kill as “civilians” or, more to the point here, “collateral damage”.
Don’t be silly. It’s quite possible to unjustly imprison people in one place, and indiscriminately slaughter some other people somewhere else.
Wouldn’t that mean that we are, overall, discriminate in our slaughtering? Even in your own, um, rather special opinion of America? Seems to me that the best you could do, having walked blindly into this logical maze, is to say we are arbitrary in who we slaughter…or, perhaps that we indiscriminately slaughter sometimes, but other times we simply unjustly imprison.
-XT
“Winning hearts and minds” is a method, not an objective. We didn’t attack Afghanistan because we wanted them to like us, we attacked them because we wanted to incapacitate our enemies.
It would be considered a war crime to not fight according to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions (ie, wear a uniform, hold weapons openly, etc). If you meet the requirements, then fighting and killing US soldiers is not illegal; but, if say, you don’t wear a uniform (ie, look like a civlian) and fight against the US, that’s illegal.
Any country could prosecute you for that under international law.
The war in Afghanistan was a good, justified war, that was well exectuted. We won, handily.
Then we didn’t leave.
There was nothing personal in my remark, nor had you any reason to take it that way. Yours, on the other hand, was undoubtedly personal and directed specificly. They are not remotely similar.
Referring to the failure of Taliban fighters to distinguish themselves from innocent civilians: well, duh. How can we possibly imagine that because a funeral is a Taliban function, that makes it a legitimate military target? Of course their wives and children will be in attendance, how could we expect otherwise?
Its their country, isn’t it? We are the foreigners, not they, they know who they are. Shit, its like we invade Texas to make war on the Baptists!
Hmmmm. No, bad idea. Never mind.
Yes. And ?
Of course there was and of course I did. I felt your remark not only addressed me, but people in uniform that routinely make such assertions on a daily basis because it’s their job that they volunteered to do. So that’s why I responded in what I felt was “in kind”.
If you didn’t intend it that way, then I apologize.
Because if we, as a nation, really want to stamp out terrorism in the most effective way possible, then we should equal their ruthlessness (in theory). But because we chose to pass on what could have been a very valuable chance to eradicate many members of the Taliban that were conveniently gathered in one place, it only illustrates my point that we are not in fact the ruthless, indiscriminate killers that some people like to portray our military as.
And who knows if there were women or children in attendance? The Taliban aren’t very fond of letting their women outdoors and have a very male-dominated culture.
:rolleyes: And of course, slaughtering innocent people couldn’t POSSIBLY enrage people, and draw in more recruits for the terrorists. Nor could it make people less willing to cooperate with us on the matter; never happen.
Or, we simply never cared that much about the Taliban in the first place.
Actually, the Taliban originated in Pakistan, and many are foreigners. But I think it’s important to distinguish between whether or not the war is justified and whether or not any particular tactic in that war is justified.
Frankly, I’m closer to your opinion than I am with most of the others in this thread. I think we were justified in going in after Al Qaeda sites, but we needn’t have tried to go after the Taliban, too, and to launch yet another nation building project that is unlikely to succeed. I know there is a certain blurring of the lines between those two groups, but I just don’t see an end game in trying to route out all or even most of the Taliban.
I’m also dead set against our use of predator drones-- they have turned us into The Evil Empire. We need an international effort to get the Afghan economy on some sort of stable course so that the people out in the hinterlands have some economic incentive not to team up with the Taliban or Al Qaeda or whatever Islamist militant group du jour pops up.
No, not even in theory. “Ruthless” is not a positive, its surrenders all value, and a method that generates more enemies than it neutralizes is not “effective”.
And we seem to have crossed information streams, here. I was under the impression that we did fire upon the funeral, that it was a “Taliban” funeral was offered as some justification, you appear to believe we abstained.
Anybody got the straight, ah, skinny?
http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=2884
http://yanksgohome.blogspot.com/2006/09/taliban-funeral.html
And from a reputable news agency: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14823099/
Maybe we fired upon some other funeral, but this is the specific instance where we did not that I was referring to.
Dude, if we were to “equal their ruthlessness”, we’d probably nuke the country, or at the least do our level best to slaughter everyone in it. (Ruthlessness gets more bang for the buck when you have the ability to make lots and lots more ‘bangs’.) After a certain point there won’t be more recruits for terrorists because they’d all be dead.
Not to say there probably wouldn’t be negative consequences to this - but then, there are reasons most of us don’t usually get that ruthless.