women and children
mikepegg44
Posts: 3,353
This is a simple question to which I feel I may get people a little heated with my answer...I am not intentionally antagonizing...
If an enemy combabtant is consistently hiding in and amongst women and children...and those women and children are killed...who is ultimately responsible?
The person who dropped the bomb, or the person who intentionally brought women and children into harms way?
If an enemy combabtant is consistently hiding in and amongst women and children...and those women and children are killed...who is ultimately responsible?
The person who dropped the bomb, or the person who intentionally brought women and children into harms way?
that’s right! Can’t we all just get together and focus on our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells… - Ned Flanders
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Post edited by Unknown User on
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Someone who uses them as a human shield is directly responsible only for putting them in danger - not for their deaths, since that is dependent on whether the person with the deadly weapon chooses to use it on them or not.
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
in any case, police car chases (at least here) are called off if speeds reach unsafe limits ... police do not fire in crowded areas when apprehending a criminal ... that's why these things are done in the middle of the night generally ...
although i know the issue you are trying to address ... what should really concern us is why are people dropping bombs and why are people fighting!?? ... once you come to the realization that greed is the answer - you will see the necessity for your original question is no longer there ...
that is a nice distinction, I have wrestled with it for a while...I think that the people who choose to put them in danger are the worst of the worst, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the "force for good" to avoid the killing of the innocent.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Responsibility in war is always interesting because it challenges a lot of beliefs people have around responsibility for self and decisions people make.
would you do either, under any circumstance? I wouldn't... only a madman would.
no ... using any means necessary to not die is not the worst of the worst ... making decisions that will result in the death of millions of innocent people based on greed is the worst of the worst ... see cheney, bush and rumsfield ...
If the person doesn't pull the trigger to avoid collatral damage then do they bear any responsibility when the person hiding behind women and children kills other innocents? Not saying I have the answers....all I know is war sucks....but war is war.
I don't think Bin Laden was greedy.....his motivating force was religion.
using any means necessary not to die does not have to include cowardly and DELIBERATELY putting women and children in harms way, but I do understand your necessity to work in a shot at the US government. This thread isn't about bush, cheney, or rumsfield. It is a simple question to wonder where people put blame...
I agree that the responsibility is ultimately on the person dropping the bomb, but I find it funny that personal responsibility goes on the front seat here when in other areas of life it seems to be tossed aside.
I wonder if I was involved in a gun fight and picked up a kid as a human shield if you would see me as simply doing what was necessary to live, or if you would see me as an evil prick with no regard for human life or others around me
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Women and Children died on 9-11 but as I remember there were some people on the train who said they (Usoma's guy's) had good cause to attack on American soil.
also there are too many what if's to your question ,what if the bomb dropers had no idea of the women and children being there ?, sense Vietnam that I know of woman and children killed also and where used as human weapons (bombs) by the enemey, no offense my friend but your asking a question that relates to a war situation and things like bombs killing many inocent people is one the unfortunate partds of war, and if you think about it war as far as the US goes has changed significantly making attacks more pin point and less colladeral damage then in wars past, but in my opinion there is no right or wrong answer to your question
only sad facts.
Godfather.
if a baby had a bomb strapped to it and crying and running to you and your family would shoot the baby with the bomb to save your family ?
Godfather.
I am faster than a baby
I realize what you are saying, and there are tough choices all around...what I was getting at is to discuss the personal responsibility issue as a whole with a specific example that shows both sides of the issue that responsibility is something that is always present...For those, like myself, who are strict personal responsibility types when it comes to living life, I sometimes minimize too much the outside factors that play into the "choices" that a person has...and for those who seem to want to point at mitigating circumstances with little to no consideration for personal responsibility, that people ultimately have the choice...they can always choose to simply "not drop the bomb"...
I don't know...hopefully that makes some sense to at least one person other than myself.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
i was only responding to your worst of the worst comment ... and i'm sorry you are offended by my comment about bush et al ... sadly ... a lot of people feel that way about them similar to how people feel about BL ... failure to recognize this is why there continues to be guys running into crowds with women and children ...
I didn't vote for them, nor do I support what they did, but you have to admit, it was a stretch to bring them into the discussion considering they weren't mentioned at all before you did it...it was a general discussion about a moral issue, not specific to anything but that...Failure to realize that Bush is hated is akin to putting your head in the sand...I don't think anyone here thinks Bush isn't hated outside of the US...that was more the idea of the question...what is the terrorists responsibility?...is it the person who did the act, or the person who "caused" the act that is responsible?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
again ... you said worst of the worst ... it was my response to that ... most people who respond to a comment like that indicate who they think the worst of the worst is ... i think your nationalistic defense mechanism kicked in ... if i said the worst of the worst was some drug dealer in chile ... i'm pretty sure you wouldn't have been as upset at my bringing them into the thread ...
I would have still brought you back to the original topic...but you are right, I probably would have ignored it...unless you brought that Chilean drug dealer into every thread on every topic...
Polaris I love the passion, but what about the question?
edit: also my nationalistic defense mechanism has a very long fuse. I just don't like the idea that you seem to think no one in the USA realizes the things you say. I love the passion though
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
'...As for "terrorism", which [Michael Neumann] defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
Answer: The people who invaded the 'enemy combatants' country in their pursuit of that country's natural resources.
THIS ISN'T ABOUT ANY WAR SPECIFICALLY...
again who is responsible? should I mark you down for "the US" and move on?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Your original question is too vague. It requires some context. But I'd say that any enemy combatant who is unarmed and/or doesn't resist with deadly force can and should be apprehended without the need to kill any innocent men, women, or children.
i was one of the first to respond to your question! ... my main point really in responding to your post previously was that in a "running for your life" scenario ... people will do anything ... and that includes using women and children as shields ... i believe it's cowardly but that's human nature ...
as for the other thing - it isn't so much that i think no one in the US realizes things ... far from it of course ... but the reality is that those 3 guys are walking around living the good life paid for by your precious tax dollars ... so, while OBL had to go in hiding for the crimes he commits, those 3 assholes live a life of pure luxury ... only until the general populace realizes that (and that's who we are talking about here ... you're everyday folk) - will there be positive change ... not only as it refers to foreign policy and wars but every other aspect of a corporatized gov't ...
fair enough, you make a good point about the latter...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
right, it is vague as in not specific...the only thing specific is the actions committed by the two sides of the argument...context isn't needed for this example...if two sides are engaged in a war, and one side consistantly hides amongst women and children even with the knowledge that a bomb may come crashing down ... who is more at fault, the bomber or the enemy combatant who purposely uses women and children as shields. I guess that was the point of it all, not to be specific to more than simply being the "hider" or the "bomb dropper"
But I shall give you some context...the german soldiers in WWII were in a war with the United states(among many others) ...if German soldiers consistently were using schools and private homes as military headquarters while keeping women and children as shields, who is ultimately responsible for the collateral damage? The person who dropped the bomb, or the people purposely putting children in harm's way?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
For arguments sake It could be said that since the Germans started the war the Nazi leadership were ultimately responsible for any collataral damage inflicted on any German civilians. Though as far as I know they didn't use women and children as human shields
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann01132009.html
'...The truth is we are all prepared to see children maimed and screaming to further the goals we approve. The first and most important thing we cannot face is our own morality.
Ever since World War II it has been crystal clear that, if defeating evil involves air power, we will bravely let the children scream. We know their fate but we're stuck with endorsing contemporary military responses to genocide and even mere aggression. In this respect it is we, not Bush or the neocons, who seem out to give Israel carte blanche. If someone is rocketing our cities, however inefficiently, are we to wait until their technology improves, or our population displays an appropriate number of bloody stumps? And if the enemy is lodged in a densely populated area, must we hold off? It seems not - otherwise why can we bomb strategic targets even when we're certain that civilians will die in the process?
It is beyond obvious that violence is sometimes justified. In some cases, we undoubtedly sanction the use of air power, a clumsy standoff weapon almost guaranteed to kill and mutilate civilians. Hamas uses exactly this sort of standoff weapon. What's more, Hamas, for the sake of military convenience, has adopted a weapon even more certain to detonate among civilians than when brave anti-fascist pilots took off to fight a genocidal Nazi regime. Jennifer Lowenstein gets it precisely wrong: "Slave owners were also human beings, some of whom suffered unjustifiably violent attacks at the hands of their slaves. What do we do with this information? Sum it up by saying "therefore both sides were wrong"? or try to make people understand what led slaves to lash out in ways that were often so brutal? This changes the entire equation without sanctioning acts of murder or violence." No, we do indeed sanction acts of murder and violence, in just such circumstances.
These evasions are just what make the defenders of the Palestinians look like sleaze next to the forthright pigs who revel in the brutality we merely try to sneak by our audience. It doesn't work; it has never worked; it never will work. We all live in the same world and we all know what goes on in it, and how brutal we have become. We cannot and will not go back, not in this millennium. What is happening in Gaza is indeed a horror, and indeed terribly, incontrovertibly wrong. But to show this requires using the morality we have, not the morality we like to pretend we have.
It is no good saying Israel provoked the rocket attacks; the attacks harm people who had nothing to do with the provocation. It is no good saying Israel's tactics are atrocious, because neither we nor Hamas forswear atrocious tactics. We share this callousness with anyone who has ever endorsed any modern war or armed operation, or who ever would do so. Since these claims will invite a 'who's we?', the point needs belabouring: if you aren't against twiddling your thumbs through the Rwandas and Mauthausens and Nankings of history, you're for atrocities on some occasions, or you're in denial about what it means to participate in a real war. It is wishful thinking to suppose that we are in a moral position to complain about IDF tactics. The vilest of Israel's defenders are absolutely right when they say that the IDF is less brutal than some militaries which have been feted as heroes: when Berlin fell in 1945, for instance, as many as 150,000 civilians lost their lives. Even the most humane armies can be counted on, under pressure, to turn inhumane.
For our purposes, then, the morality of war turns not on its conduct but on the reasons for fighting. Iraq and Afghanistan offer proof that good intentions don't make for good reasons: when well-meaning idiots kill multitudes on the basis of faulty intelligence and twisted idealism, good intentions are no excuse at all. As for any alleged good consequences which might justify a war, we really have no idea what the ultimate consequences are in most cases, and certainly in this one. So the only way of assessing the rights and wrongs of this war, and most wars, is to fall back on the most universally accepted of all moral standards - a right of self-defense.
It's not complicated. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are in a state equivalent to slavery. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are not sovereigns. Israel has supreme authority in both areas. That means it can do literally whatever it likes to their inhabitants. This population has no political input whatever into their sovereign's decisions; the Palestinians in the occupied territories can't vote in Israeli elections. So the Israeli government has absolute power over these people, and they have no say at all in how they are treated. This is slavery without the muss and fuss of ownership. Slave revolts frequently involved the murder of innocent civilians, but I haven't seen much hand-wringing about the terrible morals of the rebels. Slaves and occupied peoples are accorded very generous rights of resistance. I doubt anyone today would condemn antebellum slaves on a plantation outside Charleston if they had used indiscriminate standoff weapons against that city. Allegedly freedom-loving Americans should therefore be particularly sympathetic to Palestinian resistance.
But what of Israel's right of self-defense? It exists, but it doesn't apply.
Israel, when it conquered the occupied territories in 1967, could have established a sovereign Palestinian state. This would have made the Palestinians, not a subject people at the mercy of their conqueror, but an independent people, responsible for their own acts and for keeping the peace with other sovereign states. Had the Palestinians then attacked Israel, Israel would have had the right to respond in self-defense.
But Israel didn't do that. Instead, it kept the Palestinians at its mercy, and its mercy didn't materialize. Israel embarked on a settlement policy that amounted to a declaration of war on a helpless population. The settlements were part of a project to take the Palestinians' land, all of it, for the use and enjoyment of the Jewish people. Of course Israel did not explicitly say it was going to take from the Palestinians the very ground on which they stood. But the settlements kept spreading, mopping up an increasing share of vital resources, and behind them was a settler movement, hugely powerful not only in the occupied territories but in Israel itself. This bunch of coddled fanatics, many of them American, quite openly proclaimed their determination to secure the whole of Biblical Israel for exclusively Jewish use. The Israeli government backed these racial warriors with unlimited military protection and extensive financial support.
These trends continue to the present day. Sure, Israel got the settlers out of Gaza, and I'm convinced that even Ariel Sharon, not to mention his successors, truly desired to resolve the conflict by withdrawing from the occupied territories and allowing something like a Palestinian state. But my convictions have no weight against what any reasonable Palestinian, or any reasonable human being, has to conclude: that given the continued strength of the settler movement, the continued popularity of the Israeli right, the continued military protection of the West Bank settlements, their continued expansion, and the Israeli government's all-too-obvious readiness to fight for whatever is politically popular to the last drop of Palestinian blood... given all this, the Palestinians are still faced with a mortal threat. They are still faced with a sovereign whose intentions, if not entirely clear, clearly countenance alternatives leading to an extreme humanitarian disaster for the Palestinians, and perhaps to the entire expropriation of most Palestinians' necessities of life.
This means that Israel is the aggressor in this conflict, and the Palestinians fight in self-defense. Under these circumstances, Israel's right of self-defense cannot justify Israeli violence. Israel is certainly entitled to protect its citizens by evacuation and other non-violent measures, but it is not entitled to harm a hair on the head of a Palestinian firing rockets into Israeli cities, whether or not these rockets kill innocent civilians.
Self-defense gives you the right to resist attacks by any means necessary, and therefore, certainly, by the only means available. The Palestinians don't have the option of using violence which hits only military targets - apparently even the Israelis, with all their intelligence data and all their technological might, don't have that option! But suppose a bunch of thugs install themselves, with their families, all around your farm. They have taken most of your land and resources; they're out for more. If this keeps up, you will starve, perhaps die. They are armed to the teeth and abundantly willing to use those arms. The only way you can defend yourself is to make them pay as heavy a price as possible for their siege and their constant encroachment on your living space. You're critically low on food and medical supplies, and the thugs cut off those supplies whenever they please. What's more, the only weapons available to you are indiscriminate, and will harm their families as well as the thugs themselves. You can use those weapons, even knowing they will kill innocents. You don't have to let the thugs destroy you, thereby sacrificing your innocents (including yourself) to spare theirs. Since innocents are under mortal threat in either case, you needn't prefer the attackers' to your own.
This may not be the most high-minded conclusion. However it's a conclusion we are forced to accept - we who very clearly countenance the killing and maiming of civilians in situations not nearly so precarious as what it is to be a Palestinian in the conquered, shrinking occupied territories. The thugs should keep their families from harm by ceasing their onslaught and withdrawing from the scene. Israel's obligation is similar. It must defend itself at the least cost to others. It should keep its families from harm by giving the Palestinians complete control of their external borders and allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. After this, if Israel is attacked, it can respond. Before, its response is not legitimate self-defense but continued aggression.
This is not about good and bad arguments for Palestinian resistance. It's about whether the defenders of the Palestinians want to vent, or whether they want to at least try to make a difference. If the bad or evasive arguments are effective, fine. My feeling is, they're not.
:shock:
That's a quote for books! just beautiful!
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Why not (V) (°,,,,°) (V) ?
I am not really after what would be said for arguments sake, more interested in your answer...is that your take, that the people who gave the orders for dropping the bombs are the ones responsible for the innocents killed and not the combatants hiding in schools? I am not trying to trap you...it is ok to answer the question in your own words.
nice article by the way
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
In my opinion, dropping a 10 ton bomb on a residential area knowing that women and children will be killed is no worse than planting a bomb on a school bus. Both actions will end with the same result - dead innocents.