Airman Doors, USAF I think you’ve said it better than any us ever could do. I’m in Qatar right now (probably the safest place in the world, right now) and I’m not in the military. I certainly wouldn’t want to be any further North.
Moronic, blame shifting, and illlogical. The “root cause” of my going on an office killing spree might be that my boss is a jerk but that doesn’t mean he “caused” me to take the action I took. In such a case I would have made the choice to be a homocidal maniac. The scum that killed this woman decided to be murderers. No one forced that decision upon them.
Do you really think folks that are willing to disembowel a woman would have otherwise spent their lives in peaceful contemplation of their navels?
One wrong act does not justify any other wrong act. Each party bears the blame only for their own actions not the actions of others.
No, it’s not. Are you for or against partial birth abortion? You voted for it.
Do you believe it’s possible in any way, shape, or form that one wrong act could influence another?
Yes or no will be fine.
Well that is the nature of people. They want to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure.
Well one thing was certainly sure that if Saddam had been left in power then his sons would have succeded him and the suckiness of that would have lasted another generation or two.
Well, I hope you don’t think I am in the slow category because I agree with you that the US shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. They don’t have the cojones to do what is necessary to subdue a population with the type of culture that exists in the ME and then stay the course long enough to re-educate the populace.
Sorry, but the US isn’t the one who can make them a beacon of enlightenment. That is up to the Iraqis. No one else. They had the opportunity when Saddam was deposed (and I agree they most likely didn’t have the ability to do so given the conditions), but the nuts stepped in and co-opted it. Really all the US can do now is create an Iraqi force that will then deal with the terrorists and nuts in their own way, or give each interest group their own little piece of territory where they can be as brutal or enlightened as they desire.
Glad it’s understood–otherwise, you’ve got a hard time explaining all the countries we haven’t invaded.
Personally, I think you’re mixing apples and oranges here. Saddam’s culpability for his old crimes is uncontroversial: I think you’ll find precious few people that want him set free now that he’s captured. But that’s got nothing to do with what I’m saying.
I’m saying that his capture wasn’t worth killing off an additional 14,000 people to achieve, since his major atrocities (the ones supported with US weaponry, remember) were in the distant past. Had he been continuing this program of major atrocities, there would’ve been a stronger case for invading Iraq–a case almost as strong as the case for invading Sudan. But he wasn’t continuing it, and achieving justice for him isn’t worth the ultimate denial of justice to fourteen thousand people.
Indeed you do. Once more: the guilt of this woman’s murderers is undiminished. Please acknowledge I’ve said this.
However, in your example, let’s say that you were a convicted serial kiler who’d been in jail, and the governor of your state had granted you clemency for some bullshit reason, maybe to prove some point he had about the penal system. Let’s say you then chop up some woman on the street.
Sure, you’re guilty for the murder. Are you telling me nobody’s gonna get mad at the governor?
That’s what happened here. The US knew these terrorists existed. US advisors were saying, “Look, if we invade the country in this manner, bloody fucking chaos will erupt!” But the administration wanted to prove a point about their military philosophy, so they prosecuted the war in the manner than led to bloody fucking chaos.
And that’s what I hold them accountable for.
That, and the airstrikes and other assaults that have killed innocent civilians.
Daniel
And Airman, thank you for that post, grim though it is. My best wishes for your safety and for all of y’all’s speedy return home.
Daniel
And that is one of many attributes that makes “people” assholes.
This isn’t certain at all. IIRC Uday was shot the fuck up pretty nice some years back. Who knows it wouldn’t happen again.
No, didn’t mean to imply you were slow.
What if those “brutal little territories” collectively become worse then SH?
Yeah, my history class had a whole unit on the dismemberments and disembowelments of the British POWs in the War of 1812… :rolleyes:
Irrelevant question. Influence is not control. In my office shooting rampage hypothetical example, my mean boss influenced me but my response was not forced upon me.
The examples are not comparable. In the serial killer scenario the governor did have control and unwisely relenquished it.
The murderers of that woman were never under US control. An assumption is being made that if the US had never invaded Iraq, they never would have had an excuse to indulge in their homocidal tendencies. That’s an unlikely assumption. It is most likely that the killers are not even Iraqi but terrorists from other regions drawn to the conflict. The invasion of Iraq may have set the place of the murder but not having an invasion would not have stopped them from killing someone somewhere on behalf of their cause.
Holy non sequitur, Batman! The Iraq situation IS complex, as I just demonstrated. Your lack of comprehension is your problem.
That’s a very progressive text book, though I’m certain that very few of the Britian’s Indian allies were taken prisoner. I do not think we are going to find a country, the mighty US included, that can conduct a war without atrocities. War is an atrocity. That’s why everyone from Sun Tzu to Churchill insist that it not be entered into lightly.
Totally relevant question. No one said control, we said influence. Did your boss being an asshole contribute to the killing spree? Yes.
Same in Iraq.
My boss wouldn’t have been guilty of anything other than being an asshole. My going on a killing spree is not a logical consequence to his actions. My quitting or filing a lawsuit is a logical consequence of his actions. Shooting coworkers who had nothing to do with the situation isn’t.
Do a pair of parents killed by their son because they refused to buy him a car share the guilt of their own deaths? Their not buying him a car contributed to their deaths after all. Such scenarios can not go very far without revealing their absurdity.
An excuse for barbarism is just that, an excuse.
Why is that assumption unlikely? Why do you assume the killers are not Iraqi? Why do you assume that they were terrorists two years prior to today?
People share responsibility for the predictable outcomes of their decisions. One predictable outcome of the decision to invade Iraq was that a bloody, awful, protracted civil war would develop. We appear to be in the beginning stages of that bloody, awful, protracted civil war. The US shares responsibility for this predictable outcome.
Fine. You don’t like my serial killer example? How’sabout this: the government decides to increase the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers to 0.20%. Drunk driving deaths increase threefold. Is the government at all responsible?
Daniel
Generally one of the criteria for determining whether a force is a superior is whether you lost, smart guy.
Apparently less than 1.5% of the people that they have detained are foreign to Iraq.
I suppose you could argue that there is some reason why the particular murderers of this particular woman were foreign born, but it looks like plenty of people native to Iraq are considered suspected insurgents by the US forces.
The fact remains that being an asshole played a factor in his death. You’re going to look me straight in the eye and ay they had absolutely nothing to do with each other?
Bolding mine
Please point out where I talked about guilt, I’m arguing a different point. I just said (and as you’ve said) that things can be interrelated, which for some odd reason you seemed to deny.
We can deduce that there were contributing factors to that barbarism. Perhaps analyzing them will yield some clues as to how to prevent or minimize barbarism in the future.
You just can’t know. People are going to do mightily evil stuff when pissed off and left to their own devices. Think about lynchings, for instance. Drop some bombs on a US city, then remove the police forces. I wouldn’t bet a walnut on the populace not massacring some random people just because they look arab, or immigrated from the country that dropped the bombs.
American people aren’t some sort of saints. They’re like other people all over the planet. And people all over the planet rarely miss a chance to take revenge on whoever is available to be cut into pieces and can somehow be related to whatever harm they feel they have suffered from.
There are some “good” people, there are some “evil” people, and there are a lot of otherwise fine people that will turn into butchers if given some reason to do so.