Reply With QuoteTroops have killed prisoners on the battlefield since roughly the beginning of time. That surviving the process of surrendering long enough to become a prisoner is somewhat difficult is a not very well kept secret of warfare.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0512/her...ontinue-obama/"What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place," he continued. "Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now."
Troops have killed prisoners on the battlefield since roughly the beginning of time. That surviving the process of surrendering long enough to become a prisoner is somewhat difficult is a not very well kept secret of warfare.
What's your point Lum? That we should embrace it? Women have been raped since the beginning of time too.
It's a ridiculous assertion to just say, "Shit happens." If we politically can't embrace it, then we should either enforce the policy we claim to hold and prosecute and punish appropriately those who don't adhere to it or get the fuck out of the wars.
Last edited by Mordrak; 05-12-2010 at 12:28 PM.
Raped women, shot children and executed prisoners have always been and will always be fundamental parts of warfare. The longer the conflict lasts, the more wartime atrocities are to be expected.
In this case, saying "shit happens" is about the best you can do. It's a war. Atrocities will always be committed in a war, regardless of what the rules say or how badly the civilian population wishes they could somehow sanitize warfare.Originally Posted by Mordrak
Shit happens, but you hold the people responsible, responsible. That is also part of the cost of war to a modern moral society.
Why not just throw out the geneva conventions then, go back to our roots, and just commit genocide? Let's turn the middle east to glass if morality is checked at the door because you know shit happens.
That's not an argument. Murder is also bound to happen overtime and more murders are likely to happen the larger, more diverse, and more dense a society gets. That's human nature, there's more triggers, more people, and thus more opportunity for conflict.
Shit happens right?
Yes, atrocities are bound to happen in war. It doesn't mean that it's a blank check on atrocities. We should hold them responsible for their actions, including leaders that look the other way by refusing to hold people accountable.
Last edited by Mordrak; 05-12-2010 at 01:26 PM.
Yes, but the rate at which atrocities are committed is reduced when civilians hold the military responsible for its conduct. Conversely, a "who cares, it's normal" attitude encourages them.
Who was suggesting that nobody be held responsible? I think there's a difference between not being surprised when inevitable atrocities happen and condoning them.
Are atrocities going to happen? Yes. Do they happen in every war? Yes. They even happen in many UN peacekeeping missions. Should they be overlooked? No. The issue here would be if its being ignored by successive levels of authority above the combat troops.
That's the implication when Baker's response to my statement that people should be held responsible is, this is "about the best we can do."
It's not the best we can do when we routinely give people a pass because war is dangerous and a shitty job and soldiers are fighting for our freedoms. I'm sorry, if we can't hold ourselves accountable we should abandon the hypocrisy of rules of engagement, human rights, and just go fucking all out or get the fuck out.
I'm tired of the apathy these long wars have bred in people.
Last edited by Mordrak; 05-12-2010 at 01:38 PM.
War isn't some tidy game of Risk where all the pieces are carefully monitored and every rule is followed to the letter. You can get as draconian as you want to try to solve this particular problem, but nothing will make it go away. When you train people to go kill other people, shit like this tends to happen. Never mind the fact that even if we could keep our troops from doing it 100% of the time there's not much we can do to prevent our allies from doing it (note that last bit that was quoted about handing them over to Afghan troops).
The only way to avoid this is to not go to war, period, which is something our country completely sucks at. If Americans truly gave as much of a shit as they pretend to do when war atrocities are reported we would have listened to Washington a few hundred years ago, remained isolationists, and not had to deal with the disheartening fact that war is messy no matter how you slice it.
The Geneva Conventions have been flaunted in every war that has been fought by every country that ratified them. There isn't enough money or manpower in the universe to properly enforce them 100% of the time. Hence, shit like this. I agree it's morally repugnant, but it's one of the non-negotiable prices we always have and always will pay when we go to war. Frankly I'm astonished we're able to go to war and not commit genocide or unleash nukes left and right.
Also, I'd argue that a modern moral society wouldn't have been in Iraq in the first place and would have handled Afghanistan much differently both in the past and now. I think we have a long way to go before the US can claim it operates from any sort of position of moral authority.
I find the whole idea of trying to Sanitize War laughable.
which reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 4.
Holding officials and the persons responsible accountable is not sanitizing war.
I wasn't condoning it. I was just trying to point out that it's inevitable.
I'm tired of people treating war like something where you can easily and consistently enforce rules of engagement.It's not the best we can do when we routinely give people a pass because war is dangerous and a shitty job and soldiers are fighting for our freedoms. I'm sorry, if we can't hold ourselves accountable we should abandon the hypocrisy of rules of engagement, human rights, and just go fucking all out or get the fuck out.
I'm tired of the apathy these long wars have bred in people.
Honestly, shit like this just makes me hate Bush and his administration more for treating war so flippantly.
Yes, I understand. I don't believe anyone here is saying that people should get away with it, but don't act surprise that shit like this happen in a war.
Some poor soldiers get will punished.. and same thing will happen again and again.
We're a year and a half past Bush. This is Obama and his crew's responsibility to deal with now.
Some deserving soldiers, you mean.
I know...I know.
well, some but not all.
Nothing will make rape, serial killers, pedophiles, fraud, animal cruelty, arson, theft, or any other number of crimes go away. We don't throw up our hands on those, nor do we think the answer is ridiculous amounts of draconian surveillance and oversight. What we do is hold people responsible when we can and the evidence is there.
And you're misreading the intent of handing them over to the Afghan troops. Remember, we're training those troops. They hand them over to the Afghan troops to be killed when we don't want to set them free or kill them ourselves.
People don't give a shit about anything until either someone who does prods them to action or it lands in their own backyards. And yes I agree, I say we abandon the pretense of rules of engagement altogether, hold people accountable, or get out.The only way to avoid this is to not go to war, period, which is something our country completely sucks at. If Americans truly gave as much of a shit as they pretend to do when war atrocities are reported we would have listened to Washington a few hundred years ago, remained isolationists, and not had to deal with the disheartening fact that war is messy no matter how you slice it.
I'm not talking about proactive enforcement 100% of the time. We don't even have that standard within our country during peacetime. You know, people get away with fraud, murder, rape, pedophilia all throughout the United States too. We don't throw up our hands because some people get away with it.The Geneva Conventions have been flaunted in every war that has been fought by every country that ratified them. There isn't enough money or manpower in the universe to properly enforce them 100% of the time. Hence, shit like this. I agree it's morally repugnant, but it's one of the non-negotiable prices we always have and always will pay when we go to war. Frankly I'm astonished we're able to go to war and not commit genocide or unleash nukes left and right.
I agree and I'm arguing we should be working toward that, by holding people responsible and/or getting the fuck out.Also, I'd argue that a modern moral society wouldn't have been in Iraq in the first place and would have handled Afghanistan much differently both in the past and now. I think we have a long way to go before the US can claim it operates from any sort of position of moral authority.
You guys are a pretty sad lot to accept this sort of thing by shrugging and muttering some platitudes about how war sucks. Personally, I'd be surprised if this sort of thing were happening under the watch of the US military. Yeah, war sucks, but I expect more from my country's standing army. And it's apparently surprising enough that Hersch thought it was worth bringing up at a conference on investigative journalism. I mean, it's not like the guy was crying wolf about the My Lai massacre. But that stuff just happens in war, right?
But administrations have treated war flippantly since teh beginning of time!
-Tom
Proactively, no, but after the fact you can. This entire war has been a series of passing the responsibility or looking the other way when we've gone against our principles, committed war crimes, or obstructed justice. I'm tired of inevitability and realpolitik pragmatism being the weak excuses for their lack of leadership.
Shit, it should be even easier now to hold people responsible, with all new documentation we have of the process of war both from soldiers documenting themselves and the videos like the one wikileaks obtained.
Last edited by Mordrak; 05-12-2010 at 02:07 PM.
I saw the Daily Show too! It was super!
The plus side is that with Obama in charge, it probably will get dealt with somewhat reasonably.
I agree with you Mordrak, but I've been in a cynical mood lately. America is the land of passing the buck, where those truly responsible are rarely held to account. Obama is just another enabler.
I don't feel that's a particularly fair assessment. It's not acceptance, it's an understanding that this sort of thing is quite literally unpreventable in a shooting war. Of course those responsible should be punished. This will serve to stop it from spreading. Nothing at all will serve to stop it from happening in the first place though.
There is no such thing as an atrocity free war for much the same reason there is no such thing as a crime free city. Human nature doesn't work that way and there will always be some bad apples. I don't get surprised or outraged when someone tells me that there was crime in my town, and I don't get surprised or outraged when someone tells me there were atrocities in a war. Completely predictable and inevitable things shouldn't really cause much in the way of surprise and outrage after all.
It seems like there's two ideas here that aren't necessarily in opposition, yet two opposing sides being formed around them to argue about it.
When it comes to war, you can expect these things to happen, at some point. Just like you can expect road rage, murder and rape. It would be naive to be shocked by any of these things.
Just because you expect something doesn't mean you shouldn't go after it with zeal. Imagine simply letting rape and murder go on without any care to prosecute or punish those responsible. Looking the other way is never an answer. Like Mordrak said, after the fact, you can do something. We can't prevent murder, we can't prevent rape. We will all be long dead and those two things will still be happening. But who could ever suggest we don't punish those responsible, hunt them down?
We should be holding these men responsible and punishing them after the fact, like we do any other crime.
How reliable is Hersch?
I'm not so confident on that point. Considering his DoJ lawyers have been wiping their collective asses with the Constitution since day 1, I really don't see much difference between Bush & Obama when it comes to executive power.
Basically, this (NSFW) represents the relationship between Obama in the campaign and what ends up really happening between him, his administration, democrats and republicans.
Can you guess who is who?
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