It’s a war. I’m sorry there are these people who think it’s ok to take over huge swathes of territory, subject civilians to any number of atrocities, commit terrorist attacks throughout the world, inspire others to commit terrorist attacks throughout the world, are genocidal and have dug into the city of Raqqa. The Syrian Kurds are going to tear ISIS out of that city and slaughter them all with our support. Good.
I am glad for Human Rights Watch, but it’s being used responsibly in Mosul and Raqqa. It’s used as a smokescreen. That’s an approved usage.
Lead is also a chemical. So is everything you can think of.
The world should act quickly and responsibly to prevent genocidal regimes from controlling huge parts of the world, but it doesn’t and now the USA and the Kurds are being criticized for cleaning up this mess. It wasn’t two years ago when the Kurds were facing extinction in Northern Syria.
This isn’t massive bombing. Massive bombing would level Raqqa. These are some of the most precise bombings the world has ever known and is far more merciful than anything Raqqans will face. A war isn’t a place where you decide between the ideal and bad. It’s a place where you decide between the worst outcome and the slightly less bad outcome.
The Kurds are a far more civilized a fighting force than any other in Syria. I hope we leave them to do what they think is necessary to win with minimal casualties.
Yea, yeah, yeah. I understand there is the treaties and Hague Convention and such. However outside the USA, Europe, Canada and OZ and New Zealand no one else believes such idiotic fantasies.
You want to hold one side accountable, and let the other run free. I’d be more interested in how you can hold the other side accountable. Once you solve that problem come back and I’ll listen.
There are rules, but I think davida03801’s point is that not everyone follows them. Certainly ISIS and AQ don’t, and equally obviously neither do the Syrian’s (or the Russian’s for that matter). You probably feel the US doesn’t either. And, since the OP is talking about the coalition (while implying this is only a US ‘problem’), that would mean that the UK and other coalition members, who are also there, perhaps don’t either (again, according to the OP).
Rules are only rules if everyone actually follows them and there is a mechanism for enforcement. As we’ve seen with the rule on the use of chemical and gas attacks by the Syrian’s against their own people, it’s more like pirate rules…
Why no, that’s your bullshit strawman of my argument. To quote, ‘Literally everyone knows that’, but really, there is no question. However, since perhaps you require a hand hold to help you through, the US and UK and most of the other major combatants DO, in fact, follow the agreed upon rules of war…they, after all, were generally the ones who drafted them, so ‘agreed upon’ is kind of ironic. There is, of course, no enforcement mechanisms when they don’t, however. And certainly there isn’t any for the other combatants in the theater…the Kurd’s, Iraqi’s, various other militant and insurgent groups, and certainly, the Syrian’s and Russian’s don’t, by and large, follow them to one degree or another. So, you get a situation that we have there…it’s a slaughter that seemingly will drag on for the foreseeable future, regardless.
Can we please get over the notion that the “rules of war” were some invention of liberal fags to make it harder for Western countries to win wars?
The rules of war were developed over hundreds of years to make fighting wars easier, not harder. The purpose of war is not to kill the enemy. The purpose of war is to make the other guy give up and let you do what you want. Killing him is one way to do that, but surrendering works just as well. Destroying a city is all very well, but what if the point of the war is to take over the city? Why exactly is the city important? You have to capture it, yes, but WHY exactly?
The point is, you fight the enemy soldiers, and then you win, and then the former enemy city now becomes your city. The citizens who formerly paid taxes to your enemy now pay taxes to you. The citizens who formerly joined the enemy fighting forces now start to join your fighting forces.
Or you could kill everyone, flatten the city, and sow the fields with salt. But note that even after the Romans famously did this to Carthage, a generation later New Carthage was rebuilding.
Also note that if we don’t care whether Syrian civilians live or die, and we don’t want Assad to win, and we don’t want ISIS to win, what exactly are we doing over there anyway? I mean, it would be one thing if we decided Assad was bad, and ISIS was bad, so we had to save the Syrians from both of them. Except if we don’t care about the civilians either, what’s the point? Let Assad and ISIS kill each other and the Syrian civilians in peace, since none of it matters.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Can we please get over the notion that the “rules of war” were some invention of liberal fags to make it harder for Western countries to win wars?
[/QUOTE]
Huh? Who said that, or anything approaching that?
Well, um…my own point was that using the same stats the OP gave it’s pretty clear we DO care about the civilians. A lot. Kind of why the air strikes mentioned have such a low death toll when you factor in where those strikes are going and the tactics of the enemy who is using civilians as shields.
Who were you responding too with all of this? I mean, I agree with most of this as far as why we have rules of law and where they came from. Other parts of this I find hard to follow who you are talking too.
If i can nitpick WP is not a “chemical weapon” as they are understood, its an incendiary.
Otherwise you can consider TNT a chemical weapon since it is a chemical explosive.
I’ve still to digest the rest of the post, but it seems like another rendition of
Pick one guy out of a group activity, and demonize him only.
Ignore the guy on the other team who is cheating by hiding behind the spectators and running around using them as meat shields, and demonize our scapegoat again.
And lets not mention that the other idiot is the one actually causing the issue.
Ahh, the good old days of war for conquest*. We don’t really seem to do that anymore.
*it’s still the “good old days” in Africa, the Middle East, and potentially any country bordering Russia.
We clearly do care about Syrian civilians, but there’s a bad thing called ISIS that will ethnically cleanse 100,000s of Syrian civilians if they’re not stopped. If 600 Syrian civilians die while preventing the deaths of 100,000s then, as ugly as it is, that’s the best possible outcome. ISIS isn’t going to be reasoned with, and I can’t for the life of me understand why we should expect Syrian Kurds to tolerate their existence when ISIS was trying to wipe them off the face of the Earth just two years ago.
It would be wonderful if you somehow established which “laws of war” have been violated.
Neither Assad or ISIS believe in the “rules of war”. Furthermore the US isn’t going to drop soldiers on the ground and have them march against ISIS (which would reduce civilian casualties but vastly increase American casualties). The invasion of Iraq ensured the US will be putting very few feet on the ground in the Middle East for decades.
So either the US stops fighting, or they pick a side (ISIS, in this case) and bomb them repeatedly, with the resultant civilian casualties.
I don’t think anyone can prevent the US from doing this. They are so angry at the terrorists they’ll accept nearly any price to get them. If a close ally told the US to cool it, the current president would probably have more bombs dropped as a defiant statement. Nobody is strong enough to stop the US from doing so, or those who might be (or could pretend to be), like Russia… don’t care, and wouldn’t hesitate to do such things themselves.
The rules of war are a European invention but no one else follows them. I will acknowledge a nice and neat orderly system as long as the combatants were all European and following the established rules.
The Europeans got a bit of a surprise when Napoleon invaded Russia. You see this reading Wiki here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia. The French were much surprised by the Russians scorched earth policy in front of the French Invasion. Civilized people did not do that. Napoleon took Moscow on September 14th and was surprised that no civil delegation from the city would meet him. Apparently those savages did not get the rules of war memo. I will quote one line from the above link.
“Relying on classical rules of warfare aiming at capturing the enemy’s capital (even though Saint Petersburg was the political capital at that time, Moscow was the spiritual capital of Russia), Napoleon had expected Tsar Alexander I to offer his capitulation at the Poklonnaya Hill but the Russian command did not think of surrendering.”
Just one of many differences and tragedies between the East and West in war over the centuries. Syria is just another in a long line of them. The point is rules of war will only work if both sides apply them. Then, and only then, can you think of actually enforcing them.
How about deciding what the warcat teams are supposed to be doing, which is gathering evidence that war crimes have actually been committed rather than alledged. What it sounds like is a UN agency in search of a budget. As far as I know, if the warcat teams find evidence, they bring it to the appropriate authorities, thats either Washington, Damascus, Moscow or the Hague and so far no war crimes trials are on the docket.
I’d really have to guess that while war crimes sounds really good in papers, and makes it seem like that agency is doing its job, no actual war crimes have been committed. Atrocities by Damascus, sure, but thats not the same thing.
Call this what it is, a UN agency going to war with the US, as usual.
The litmus test is collateral casualties vs terror tactic’s. Any time you use the military, your going to have both collateral damage, and casualties. If a flagged military is by word and by deed, following a ROE that minimizes the chance of collateral casualties, then by deed its not committing war crimes.
An attack that’s designed by choice, to degrade the ability for EMS personel to respond to afflicted areas. Example, first bomb run, 75 percent of the bombs dropped are fused to explode on contact, causing destruction, 25 percent of the bombs dropped are fused to explode when fire fighters are putting out the fires from the first set of bombs. Second bomb run, timed for after the second set of fused bombs decimates the firefighters, all incinderary this time, causing a fire storm.
Who said that, or anything approaching that?
that was’nt so hard