Well one, because -I- used to be in the US military and I know what kind of people are in there. We don't intentionally go killing civilians, and those that do, go to jail or a hangman.
All gunship firings have gun camera footage. Out of the hundreds of claims of innocents being slaughtered, we only find one actual set of footage that shows something which looks to be just that?
And again, I have to ask, why was he carrying a camera as large as a weapon? Why were they in a group? Why was there a man in the group with either a rifle or an RPG? And why the hell does a man with two children in his car stop in the middle of what is apparently an active ambush?
There is definitely a lot more to this story than was presented in the video, but then the video's real purpose is propaganda pure and simple. After all, you can see that there IS a man with a weapon in the crowd, but every time the guncrew member mentions THAT guy, the editors of the video show us the journalists. Funny that. But again, the video's purpose is propaganda and some people are more gullible than others.
The US military does intentionally go killing civilians - as recently as the Vietnam war, which it decided to extend into Cambodia and Laos. Nobody, from the rank and file troops up to Kissinger has ever swung for it.
OK, that was a generation ago, but there's not exactly strong evidence the US military doesn't deliberately kill civilians any more. There's certainly evidence that many US personnel are negligent about the safety of civilians, and at the strategic level, the US invasion of Iraq has cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
I fully agree that your having served in the US military is a useful indicator of the quality of the people it lets in. On previous showing, you're one of the last people I'd expect to handle the situation in Iraq with any degree of tact, sensitivity, compassion, or sense of proportion.
Yes, we've thus far only found one set of footage showing a US gunship massacring civilians - just like we only found one set of photos from Abu Ghraib. The US military seeks to conceal such footage, for obvious reasons. It's not reasonable to assume that the one time they got caught out is the only time it happened. And if the majority of such claims are genuinely illegitimate, why not declassify some footage that proves it?
Why shouldn't someone carry a camera as large as a weapon? Why shouldn't people congregate in groups? Also, a large proportion of Iraqis have guns, and since the US invasion has caused a breakdown of law and order, many have resorted to carrying them in self-defence. You know - the kind of self-defence you think ought to be a constitutional right for all free peoples, even in so-called civilised nations with an effective police force. What, precisely, in the context of Iraq, is wrong with doing any of those things? And why is it reasonable to perpetrate mass carnage on the basis of a hunch?
By "propaganda", you appear to mean "objective evidence that weighs strongly against the side you're determined to support at all costs".
1) Abu Ghraib - those people were breaking the law, what they were doing was illegal and not condoned, and as soon as it was discovered they were prosecuted. It was the US military that brought Abu Ghraib to light btw, NOT the press or any 'special rights group.
2) The military may or may not conceal such footage, however those involved are still tried regardless of whether or not the footage is made public. The fact that this footage has been made public and statements from the superior officers seem to tell a separate story shows there is a lot more to this then the video shows. The video also shows some rather sophisticated editing, I'd love to see the original uncut footage from each of the gun ships involved. Not just the segments from the one. If the soldiers involved did intentionally engage civilians, or were in violation of the rules of engagement, they will be prosecuted.
3) Why shouldn't someone carry a camera as large as a weapon? Why shouldn't people congregate in groups. Because they'll be shot. Duh. When there is a war on and you are in the war zone your rights go out the window! Your argument is rather stupid, sorry.
4) That was propaganda, it was by no mean objective. They set out to show that the people were murdered and cut the video and added the tags to make it show that. There was nothing objective about that. Give me everything they had to start with and I could produce a video that would show the reporters in active collaboration with the enemy and that their deaths were a sad accident as they met with terrorists. Yes, it would be propaganda as well, just like this piece was.
5) as for my previous post, well I am a student of history and the facts. You are really just an innocent who has no experience or understanding of the forces of the rest of the world. To you none of it is real, and you will apply double standards all day long because it's not you dying and it's not your life that is threatened. If you should ever be in the situation where you have to fight for your life or that of others (but somehow I don't see you ever doing that) I know exactly what will happen to you.
I know it's bad form to jump into a discussion like this, but I just wanted to point out one tiny thing; the war ended on the 1st of May 2003. That means everything after is just a police action and the rules of engagement for your own population are far less strict than those of the Geneva convention. So shooting civilians is fine :o)
Yeah, but if we follow that line of reasoning as far as it goes then we have to classify the US military as illegal immigrants (at least between when they decided the war was over and when a new government could be elected that would formally invite them to stay). (-8
How many? As many as it takes of course. The fact that you value your own life less than you value the lives of those trying to murder you says a lot about your opinion of yourself. You see yourself as worthless. I suspect you are also the type who expects others to lay down their lives to defend yours, expecting some policeman or solider to risk their life to protect you.
I feel that my life, and the lives of my family, friends, and fellow countrymen are valuable. More valuable than the lives of those who would murder them.
I am not part of the problem, you however ARE the problem. You expect others to do for you, that which you will not do yourself. People like you are the cause of every war that has ever taken place on the face of the earth, because a bad person looked over, saw a weak impotent man who would rather roll over than fight, and decided to take what you had. Evil people are like animals, and no one preys on the strong, they only prey on the weak. And that would be you.
There is a very important distinction between a police officer and a soldier. If A and B have a dispute, a police officer is a higher authority and can exercise the state's Weberean monopoly on violence judiciously. However, if A and B are states and each deploys a soldier against the other, a bloodbath ensues.
Look at the situation in game-theoretic terms:
A is belligerent, B is belligerent: A and B both die
A is belligerent, B is peaceful: A gets B's stuff; B dies
A is peaceful, B is belligerent: A dies; B gets A's stuff
A is peaceful, B is peaceful: A and B both get to live and keep their stuff
Clearly, the best possible outcome is for nobody to be belligerent. And, assuming you value life over property, even if one party is belligerent, the total utility is worse if the other party is belligerent as well. Indeed, it takes a certain kind of mind to think "X is going to kill me and take my stuff. Even though I'll still die, it would be better to kill X than let them take it."
Maybe you think that's not the situation, because if X tries to kill you, you can kill X without yourself dying. Given the chequered success of US military endeavours in recent decades, that's somewhat optimistic - and even if it weren't, the "might makes right" doctrine is abhorrent.
More realistically, that's not the situation because, if A is belligerent and B is peaceful, A will quite likely take B's stuff but not kill B. Yes, there are obvious examples of genocidal loonies who kill B anyway, but there are also plenty of obvious examples where the aggressor lets the victim live.
And, even in the face of naked aggression, there are invariably better options than retaliatory escalation. Fortunately, few wars involve more than a small proportion of the world's population: that leaves a large number of onlookers who can intervene or mediate with far greater moral and practical authority than the victim.
You say I see myself as worthless because I don't value my own life above the lives of an unlimited number of strangers - even strangers who happen not to mean me any harm; I say you see others as worthless because you do.
You presumably think it's fine for householders to use lethal force deliberately against burglars; I don't.
You seem to be selfish and insular: selfish, because you'd rather use violence in your own interests even if it makes the world a worse place overall; insular, because you'd rather use violence on your own behalf than trust others to do it for you, even if it makes everyone including yourself worse off overall.
Because I live in a country that disagrees with your values, I'm 2½ times less likely to be murdered than you. UK citizens are fifty times less likely to be killed by the police than US citizens, and UK police officers are in turn seventeen times less likely to be killed in the line of duty than US ones. You think I'm weaker than you because you don't see my weapon; I think I'm stronger than you because of my social contract.
And, apart from all of that, killing people is wrong, plain and simple.
Your views are illogical, unsubstantiated, selfish, narrow-minded, antisocial, immoral, boastful and cowardly.
All gunship firings have gun camera footage. Out of the hundreds of claims of innocents being slaughtered, we only find one actual set of footage that shows something which looks to be just that?
And again, I have to ask, why was he carrying a camera as large as a weapon? Why were they in a group? Why was there a man in the group with either a rifle or an RPG? And why the hell does a man with two children in his car stop in the middle of what is apparently an active ambush?
There is definitely a lot more to this story than was presented in the video, but then the video's real purpose is propaganda pure and simple. After all, you can see that there IS a man with a weapon in the crowd, but every time the guncrew member mentions THAT guy, the editors of the video show us the journalists. Funny that. But again, the video's purpose is propaganda and some people are more gullible than others.
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OK, that was a generation ago, but there's not exactly strong evidence the US military doesn't deliberately kill civilians any more. There's certainly evidence that many US personnel are negligent about the safety of civilians, and at the strategic level, the US invasion of Iraq has cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
I fully agree that your having served in the US military is a useful indicator of the quality of the people it lets in. On previous showing, you're one of the last people I'd expect to handle the situation in Iraq with any degree of tact, sensitivity, compassion, or sense of proportion.
Yes, we've thus far only found one set of footage showing a US gunship massacring civilians - just like we only found one set of photos from Abu Ghraib. The US military seeks to conceal such footage, for obvious reasons. It's not reasonable to assume that the one time they got caught out is the only time it happened. And if the majority of such claims are genuinely illegitimate, why not declassify some footage that proves it?
Why shouldn't someone carry a camera as large as a weapon? Why shouldn't people congregate in groups? Also, a large proportion of Iraqis have guns, and since the US invasion has caused a breakdown of law and order, many have resorted to carrying them in self-defence. You know - the kind of self-defence you think ought to be a constitutional right for all free peoples, even in so-called civilised nations with an effective police force. What, precisely, in the context of Iraq, is wrong with doing any of those things? And why is it reasonable to perpetrate mass carnage on the basis of a hunch?
By "propaganda", you appear to mean "objective evidence that weighs strongly against the side you're determined to support at all costs".
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2) The military may or may not conceal such footage, however those involved are still tried regardless of whether or not the footage is made public. The fact that this footage has been made public and statements from the superior officers seem to tell a separate story shows there is a lot more to this then the video shows. The video also shows some rather sophisticated editing, I'd love to see the original uncut footage from each of the gun ships involved. Not just the segments from the one. If the soldiers involved did intentionally engage civilians, or were in violation of the rules of engagement, they will be prosecuted.
3) Why shouldn't someone carry a camera as large as a weapon? Why shouldn't people congregate in groups. Because they'll be shot. Duh. When there is a war on and you are in the war zone your rights go out the window! Your argument is rather stupid, sorry.
4) That was propaganda, it was by no mean objective. They set out to show that the people were murdered and cut the video and added the tags to make it show that. There was nothing objective about that. Give me everything they had to start with and I could produce a video that would show the reporters in active collaboration with the enemy and that their deaths were a sad accident as they met with terrorists. Yes, it would be propaganda as well, just like this piece was.
5) as for my previous post, well I am a student of history and the facts. You are really just an innocent who has no experience or understanding of the forces of the rest of the world. To you none of it is real, and you will apply double standards all day long because it's not you dying and it's not your life that is threatened. If you should ever be in the situation where you have to fight for your life or that of others (but somehow I don't see you ever doing that) I know exactly what will happen to you.
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If the answer's more than 1, you're part of the problem.
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I feel that my life, and the lives of my family, friends, and fellow countrymen are valuable. More valuable than the lives of those who would murder them.
I am not part of the problem, you however ARE the problem. You expect others to do for you, that which you will not do yourself. People like you are the cause of every war that has ever taken place on the face of the earth, because a bad person looked over, saw a weak impotent man who would rather roll over than fight, and decided to take what you had. Evil people are like animals, and no one preys on the strong, they only prey on the weak. And that would be you.
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Look at the situation in game-theoretic terms:
- A is belligerent, B is belligerent: A and B both die
- A is belligerent, B is peaceful: A gets B's stuff; B dies
- A is peaceful, B is belligerent: A dies; B gets A's stuff
- A is peaceful, B is peaceful: A and B both get to live and keep their stuff
Clearly, the best possible outcome is for nobody to be belligerent. And, assuming you value life over property, even if one party is belligerent, the total utility is worse if the other party is belligerent as well. Indeed, it takes a certain kind of mind to think "X is going to kill me and take my stuff. Even though I'll still die, it would be better to kill X than let them take it."Maybe you think that's not the situation, because if X tries to kill you, you can kill X without yourself dying. Given the chequered success of US military endeavours in recent decades, that's somewhat optimistic - and even if it weren't, the "might makes right" doctrine is abhorrent.
More realistically, that's not the situation because, if A is belligerent and B is peaceful, A will quite likely take B's stuff but not kill B. Yes, there are obvious examples of genocidal loonies who kill B anyway, but there are also plenty of obvious examples where the aggressor lets the victim live.
And, even in the face of naked aggression, there are invariably better options than retaliatory escalation. Fortunately, few wars involve more than a small proportion of the world's population: that leaves a large number of onlookers who can intervene or mediate with far greater moral and practical authority than the victim.
You say I see myself as worthless because I don't value my own life above the lives of an unlimited number of strangers - even strangers who happen not to mean me any harm; I say you see others as worthless because you do.
You presumably think it's fine for householders to use lethal force deliberately against burglars; I don't.
You seem to be selfish and insular: selfish, because you'd rather use violence in your own interests even if it makes the world a worse place overall; insular, because you'd rather use violence on your own behalf than trust others to do it for you, even if it makes everyone including yourself worse off overall.
Because I live in a country that disagrees with your values, I'm 2½ times less likely to be murdered than you. UK citizens are fifty times less likely to be killed by the police than US citizens, and UK police officers are in turn seventeen times less likely to be killed in the line of duty than US ones. You think I'm weaker than you because you don't see my weapon; I think I'm stronger than you because of my social contract.
And, apart from all of that, killing people is wrong, plain and simple.
Your views are illogical, unsubstantiated, selfish, narrow-minded, antisocial, immoral, boastful and cowardly.
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