A whole new war, a dazzling hate I never knew

POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, January 30, 2009 20:59
VIEWED: 6353
PAGE 9 of 10

Hero, surely you're not implying that makes it right for us to kill civillians from that region. Eye for an eye, is that what you're saying? The whole reason we're fighting the 'war on terro' is (allegedly) because these people kill civillians. We're supposed to be doing this to protect lives. But never mind that, 'they' killed innocent people 'over here', so let's kill innocent people 'over there'.
Civillians are civilians, they're not fair game just because the other side broke the rules.
P.S. all this is academic anyway. The U.S. and it's allies have been killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people for decades, that's what started this whole stupid mess. Technically our side broke the rules first.

"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."

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Originally posted by Hero:
Yes...not to mention Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates...in 1807 or Washington marching on Pittsburg in 1794.

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No one ever said the US could follow it's own rules...

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More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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COBB
Hero, surely you're not implying that makes it right for us to kill civillians from that region.

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No, I think that Hero was drawing a moral equivalence between Al Qaeda and the United States.

Personally, I agree =)

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Hero, if I did misinterpret your post I apologise

"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."

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Originally posted by Corncobb:
Hero, surely you're not implying that makes it right for us to kill civillians from that region. Eye for an eye, is that what you're saying?

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What I am saying is that there is no moral equivilancy between an act of terror, that deliberately targets civilians, and an act of war which unfortunately results in civilian deaths.

To take your 'eye for an eye' analogy. One person strikes for the eye with the purpose of putting the eye out. The other punches the first person accidently putting the eye out. There is a difference of intent...not result.

In WW2 the Nazis fired rockets at London to terrorize the people. The Allies bombed factories to stop the production of war material. Both killed civilians.

Your analysis puts the Allies and the Nazis in the same moral catagory. I reject that notion. In fact I argue that the Nazis are responsible for the death both the civilians in London AND the ones in their bombed factories.

Likewise Al Queda is responsible for the attack on 9/11 and EVERY death (civilian, military, and terrorist) in the war on terror since 9/11 INCLUDING Iraq.

H

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Hero

I am abstaining from arguments, in general, I just advise you to do a little research. You research a lot better now than when first showed up, but it still doesn't make sense to me. Wouldn't you're argument be more persuasive if you fact checked your statements before posting them?

Now, forgive me some nitpicking, but I just want to show some examples of what I mean:

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What I am saying is that there is no moral equivilancy between an act of terror, that deliberately targets civilians, and an act of war which unfortunately results in civilian deaths.

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Okay, this may be true, but it doesn't support a pro-US position. While we have no evidence that Bush has targeted civilians intentionally, we know for a fact that the US has, many times, and admittedly so. Certain in WWII. Forget Dresden for a moment, we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. This sort of thing has been policy since Andrew Jackson, and was still so under Clinton, there's no reason to think that it would stop. I'm not talking conspiracy theory, I'm talking open admission of targeting civilians. If you want to call that terrorism, I would agree, but that definitely makes the US a rogue state.

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To take your 'eye for an eye' analogy. One person strikes for the eye with the purpose of putting the eye out. The other punches the first person accidently putting the eye out. There is a difference of intent...not result.

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Okay, just because I'm nitpicking, I don't see where this fits in.

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In WW2 the Nazis fired rockets at London to terrorize the people. The Allies bombed factories to stop the production of war material. Both killed civilians.

Your analysis puts the Allies and the Nazis in the same moral catagory. I reject that notion. In fact I argue that the Nazis are responsible for the death both the civilians in London AND the ones in their bombed factories.

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This is what made me respond. This is patently absurd. The entire historical community is agreed that the allies killed more people, and more civilians, than the axis. It's not even a matter of debate. Certainly more than Germany alone. There are numerous websites devoted to this topic. Allies are responsible for about three times the casualties of the axis.

If you want to make the case that the Axis was morally wrong, that's a different and more complex issue. But what you stated is equivalent to saying that the South did more property damage to the North in the Civil War. That would be absurd. You can still argue a moral high ground for the North, and many do, but not on the basis that they were less destructive.

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Likewise Al Queda is responsible for the attack on 9/11 and EVERY death (civilian, military, and terrorist) in the war on terror since 9/11 INCLUDING Iraq.

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And, since you mention it, who is Al Qaeda? Does this organization exist? Does it have any connection to 9.11, let alone Iraq?

The CIA and FBI don't seem to think so. I think that you'd have to come up with a strong argument to support this, first define Al Qaeda. If you mean the mujahideen militants in Afghanistan lead by Osama bin Laden, those guys work for us, they always did, and it's highly doubtful they had anything to do with 9.11, and it's absurd to blame the Iraq war on them. I have, as I said, in my possession, the actual documented war plan of the invasion of Iraq written by Dick Cheney, and published, back when Osama was working with the CIA. The Iraq war was planned and executed by Cheney, and that requires no theory: He published the thing.

"There is no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, I don't know why anyone would think that." - George W. Bush, a year or two ago something, I don't know the date.

So, you say something like that, and you're out on the limb of Hero, by himself, making an outlandish claim. Yes, sure, you can do that if you want, but don't expect it to be saluted if you don't run it up the flag pole. A claim like that has to have a ton of evidence behind it.

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To take your 'eye for an eye' analogy. One person strikes for the eye with the purpose of putting the eye out. The other punches the first person accidently putting the eye out. There is a difference of intent...not result.

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Allow me to rip holes in your analogy: this isn't a one on one situation. A closer analogy would be: one person strikes a close friend of yours, intent on putting out their eye. So you punch a close friend of theirs, accidentally putting out the eye. This doesn't sound very just to me.

And this is even if I were to accept that the retaliatory 'eye removel' would be wholly accidental. If we make the analogy as exact as possible it would read 'you punch a friend of theirs. You know you're likely to take out their eye, and you don't really need to risk taking out their eye, but you do it anyway.'

I do not believe that you can reject responsibility for an act in that way. It wouldn't hold up in a court of law. If you do something knowing full well innocent people will be hurt then you are responsible for the injuries or deaths that result. It doesn't matter whether that was your desired goal or a means to an end or a side effect that you felt was acceptable.

Don't bother rebutting with how the person is meant to represent a nation while the eye is meant to represent civilians, its a faulty analogy - people's eyes have no autonomous conciousness and you can't regard a whole nation of people as a conglomerate entity.

As far as the WW2 analogy goes, ditto everything Dreamtrove said. Plus I don't see much comparison between the two situations. The Nazis were a threat to the existence of whole races, and the freedom of the world. They had a huge war effort, which, unfortunately, many innocent factory workers were a part of. The factories had to be destroyed and thats horrible and I'm not sure it's entirely justifiable, but it's still a very different situation. Middle eastern terrorists, to quote Bill Bailey, are 'a loose collection of random zealots who could be rounded up with a sustained police investigation'. The civilian casualties caused by attempts to round them up are not unavoidable - they're not directly in the way, they're not involved at all, they just happen to have the misfortune of being in the vicinity. Furthermore, the threat posed by terrorists, though they have commited horrendous acts, pales in comparison to the threat posed by the Nazis. Finally, its a slightly spurious assumption that in this analogy Al Qaeda would take the role of the Nazis and the War on Terror would play the part of the Allies. This betrays a nation-centric 'us-vs-them' way of thinking. As I mentioned earlier, technically, we started it. The conflict between the western world and the Middle East did not start with 9/11. If we were to follow your reasoning, that would give Al Qaeda the right to wipe out everyone in the US, and the US government would be to blame, which is clearly an insane and disgusting idea.

"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Wouldn't you're argument be more persuasive if you fact checked your statements before posting them?

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Perhaps. But from the rest of your post you fail to grasp any understanding of both my argument and the facts you claim to present.

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Certain in WWII. Forget Dresden for a moment, we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan...

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So your argument is "but we killed civilians in WW2". Lets not skip the greatest and most lasting non-Jewish humanitarian disasters of the war, the atom bombs. There was great debate over what targets to choose. Hiroshima was a major naval base, logistics center, transportation hub, and industrial center. That is why it was bombed. To deny the enemy the naval base, harbor, airfields, railroad yards, supplies, and factories.

That the enemy would place such things in such close proximity to its civilian population was tragic. All the more sad when you consider that every death was the responsibilty of the Japanese leadership.

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To take your 'eye for an eye' analogy. One person strikes for the eye with the purpose of putting the eye out. The other punches the first person accidently putting the eye out. There is a difference of intent...not result.

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Okay, just because I'm nitpicking, I don't see where this fits in.

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You don't see a difference between two fighters when one sets out to blind his opponant and the other merely sets out to win the fight.

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Your analysis puts the Allies and the Nazis in the same moral catagory. I reject that notion. In fact I argue that the Nazis are responsible for the death both the civilians in London AND the ones in their bombed factories.

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This is what made me respond. This is patently absurd. The entire historical community is agreed that the allies killed more people, and more civilians, than the axis. It's not even a matter of debate.

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Must not be counting Jews or Commies...

But your point is that we killed more civilians. But our goal was never to kill civilians it was to eliminate the enemies ability to make war.

During the Civil War Sherman destroyed massive amounts of civilian property in Georgia. The point was not to lay waste to the South, it was to end the South's ability to continue the fight.

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And, since you mention it, who is Al Qaeda? Does this organization exist? Does it have any connection to 9.11, let alone Iraq?

The CIA and FBI don't seem to think so...

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Perhaps. But then you don't think like a lawyer. We're trained to look beyond the moment for causation. Spilled milk in the aisle, slip and fall. But for the failure of the store to clean up the mess, the injury would not have happened. But for the milk jar's defective design the bottle would not have broke. Etc.

But for Al Queda's attack on 9/11 the war on terror would not have started, therefore the Iraq war would not have happened (absent some other factor).

While the causation line can go back further then 9/11 and branch out...the forseeability becomes a factor. The Iraq war was a forseeable...perhaps even a planned outcome of the attack. The is not true of Clinton...but for Clinton's failure to take custody of Bin Ladden in 1998 9/11 would not have happened because 9/11 was not forseeable.

Lets go back to Hiroshima. But for Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor the bombing of Hiroshima would not have happened. Yamamoto himself knew it was coming...maybe not the form but inevitable and total of defeat was a possibility he understood, warned about, and ultimately planned for.

H

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Perhaps. But from the rest of your post you fail to grasp any understanding of both my argument and the facts you claim to present.

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I'm extremely well informed on the subject. I do know people, and one of my closest friends is the EU's eductation expert on WWII, as I said before.

But I don't need to ask him, because this is all very well known.

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Lets not skip the greatest and most lasting non-Jewish humanitarian disasters of the war, the atom bombs.

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I just said I'm not even wanting to discuss anything with people who defend the attack on Hiroshima.

That said, you're way off. You left out the chinese nationalist campaigns against japan, which often targeted civilians, killing 900,000 civilians in one incident. But the biggest killer was Russia. The Ukranian and Polish victims of soviet aggression were the largest civilian casualties of WWII. Total axis caused deaths were about 25 million, total allied were closer to 90 million, civilians represented about 1/2 of all deaths, pretty much across the board. One of my pet peeves with holocaust discussion is that it was not only jews. This is our mainstream media. I'm not denying 6 million jews died, but I'm saying yes, and we focus on this to the exclusion of everything else? The nazis themselves killed as many non-jewish civilians, even in camps. Including many relatives of mine. I know this position gets no more sympathy than Wulf's reverse racism, but it's very real. But I would say that the Chinese, Ukrainians and Poles were the principal victims of the war in numbers, Poles getting it from both sides, followed by Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, and Japanese.

But our media has a lot of jewish people, not so many polish people. Some poles were also jews, and some jews were poles, but at this point, the nazis weren't making any real distinction, and the soviets made none at all, they, like the germans, killed people who were a power threat, people with influence, that's where my dad's family got crushed.

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All the more sad when you consider that every death was the responsibilty of the Japanese leadership.

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This is so twisted an idea that it barely is worthy of a response except to say Tojo took his orders from Hitler, not from Hirohito. But talk about blaming the victim. Sure, there were a lot of Japanese atrocities.

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Must not be counting Jews or Commies...

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I just counted them.

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But your point is that we killed more civilians. But our goal was never to kill civilians it was to eliminate the enemies ability to make war.

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To be fair, neither was the Germans, their goal was to relocate them to Israel. I blame the corporations and the Nazis for the shift in policy.

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During the Civil War Sherman destroyed massive amounts of civilian property in Georgia. The point was not to lay waste to the South, it was to end the South's ability to continue the fight.

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Some folk would take issue with that statement.

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And, since you mention it, who is Al Qaeda? Does this organization exist? Does it have any connection to 9.11, let alone Iraq?

The CIA and FBI don't seem to think so...


Perhaps. But then you don't think like a lawyer.

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Spare me, my brother is professor of law, an expert, I hear a lot about this.

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But for Al Queda's attack on 9/11 the war on terror would not have started, therefore the Iraq war would not have happened

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1) this was obviously your point.
2) it was nonsense. I have cheney's original war plan right here. Besides that, we had been at war with Iraq for 12 years before we "invaded." More if you count Iran/Contra.

Oh, and 3) you're concept of Al Qaeda needs work.

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The is not true of Clinton

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Clinton went to war with Iraq and killed 670,000 civilians, everyone knows this. Everyone except the democratic media.

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Lets go back to Hiroshima.

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Oh, please, let's not.

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But for Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor the bombing of Hiroshima would not

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