Italian Journalist Shot by US Troops

[Pangloss]

Pakistani Scientist A.Khan was caught red handed selling nuclear technology to the Koreans an Libiyans as part of a hoverment Deal..

Yet Pakistans is a frontline ally in the War on terrorism..

 

I don't see what this has to do with the price of tea in China. That's like asking why Germany is an ally given the fact that some Germans are still abusive towards Jews. No country is perfect.

 

This reminds me of a conversation I had once with the wife of one of my friends, a reasonably well-educated woman, with a Bachelor's degree in business administraion and a job with responsibility. She asked a group we were in at a party one time "why the government can't just release ALL the information about UFOs". The problem, of course, is not with her suspicions, but with her assumptions. (sigh) Oh well.

 

 

N.Korea goes nuclear and US agrees to negotiate with China as a third party mediator...

Then why attack Iraq...

 

North Korea declared its nuclear capability just a few weeks ago, more than a year after we invaded Iraq. Ditto the changes in negotiating strategies. But even if those things happened before Iraq, I don't see the relevence. We have to deal with many different nations in many different was. All nations do this.

 

 

Well you must ask yourself why the AMerican troops are still there....

Many theories are floating around and you to must agree that the reasons given for the incursion were'nt true......

 

Ohhhhh I see, you were suggesting that all of this was *planned* -- that the administration knew all of this was going to happen in advance of the Iraq War. Wow... you sure give Bush a lot of credit for intelligence and foresight. I'm surprised -- most left-wingers think he's some kind of moron.

 

Well that may play at Democratic Underground, but I think you'll find we set a different standard here. You may not believe this, but it is actually possible for someone to disagree with the war and NOT think it's some kind of massive, global conspiracy.

[Pangloss]

You know, just as a side note, a lot of my friends question why I straddle the middle ground so often. I believe that to have a TRULY open mind you have to be willing to consider ALL possibilities, not just the ones that are politically correct, or that your friends prefer, or that are easiest to contemplate. I don't reject any of Anindya's suggestions -- I simply ask for evidence. That's it. If you believe something, great -- more power to you. If you want to convince me that it's true, back it up.

 

Put another way, if you consider yourself to be a "liberal" or a "conservative", or if you (for example) immediately either *defend* or *oppose* whatever the Bush administration happens to do or announce on a given day, then your mind is closed. Stop pretending otherwise and just admit it -- you're biased, and it is affecting your judgement.

 

That's not addressed to Anindya specifically, it's just a general comment about why I'm a centrist/moderate. I am one because, simply, I see anything else is a cop-out. A failure to admit bias and closed-mindedness. A failure, period.

 

Of course, one of my friends points out that that is, in fact, a kind of closed-mindedness. That I'm basically refusing to admit the possibility that, for example, conservatives may be completely in the first and liberals completely in the wrong. (grin) But my defense to that argument is that I considered the possibility that he might be right. Whereas he (as a conservative) refused to consider that the opposite possibility might be true. So I won the debate.

[Sayonara]

Assume the base has a history of attempted break-ins which have resulted in the loss of numerous lives. In order to make the analogy more accurate, also assume the wanderer was making suspicious movements. Why, then, should the guard be held soley responsible? It was the ignorance of both which resulted in death.

Because many people don't think "that person might be a spy" outweighs "that person might be a lost civilian".

[Pangloss]

But the question here I think would really be whether or not "we're getting hit with dozens of suicide bomb attacks per day and this person might be yet another one" outweighs "that person might be a lost civilian".

 

It's not New York or London we're talking about. It's Iraq.

[Sayonara]

Wow, "dozens" of attacks per day. Imagine that, in a country of millions of people, with thousands upon thousands of cars.

 

Well I'd certainly shoot first. It's not like soldiers have a duty to protect non-combatants, or should accept the possibility they may die in combat, or anything like that.

[Pangloss]

As opposed to my country or yours, where we see how many suicide attacks per day?

 

And this is the second time in this thread you've made gross assumptions about what I was saying. "Shoot first" is an invention out of *whole cloth* on your part. That would be like me saying that you're claiming it wouldn't even be okay to fire on a half-track full of stormtroopers taking careful aim. I'm not putting words in your mouth, so I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from doing that to me. I won't ask you politely again.

 

This is Iraq we're talking about. The single most dangerous place in the entire world. Your little rules are great for a little drive through Coventry on a Sunday after church. What they're good for in Iraq is getting more of your and my countrymen sent home in wooden boxes.

[Tetrahedrite]

This is Iraq[/i'] we're talking about. The single most dangerous place in the entire world. Your little rules are great for a little drive through Coventry on a Sunday after church. What they're good for in Iraq is getting more of your and my countrymen sent home in wooden boxes.

Iraq was probably a much safer place for civilians under Saddam's rule than before the enforcers arrived. Ironic, no?

There would have been one sure-fire way to prevent thousands of your countrymen coming home in wooden boxes.....

[Skye]

Set the Time-o-matic to 2003!

 

 

Anyway, the main thing is that this situation has occurred before with civilians. There may be problems with the way that the roadblocks are set up, and that needs to be fixed before more people die.

 

And another thing, a car loaded with explosives that wants stop at a roadblock and detonate its bomb just has to do that. There's no need to speed through the roadblock. So the soldiers would be concerned that the car will pass the roadblock and enter the base behind them. The idea that these soldiers fear for their lives seems nonsense.

[Pangloss]

The idea that these soldiers fear for their lives seems nonsense.

 

It's nonsense that soldiers fear for their lives? Nonsense?! Surely you don't mean that, do you?

 

Why are people beling so absolutist in this thread? Sitting in our comfortable chairs thousands of miles away is so easy. Pretending like it's all one thing or another. It's all so simple and straightforward, isn't it? Wow.

 

I don't understand what's so hard to comprehend about soldiers having rules that encompass many levels of engagement and numerous possible situations. But if that's what you people need to tell yourselves in order to keep that ideological hatred going, well I guess that's what you need to do. Whatever it takes to fight and oppose the enemy, right?

 

Yeesh. I need to find me some right-wingers to bash. I feel unclean.

[Phi for All]

Why are people beling so absolutist in this thread? Sitting in our comfortable chairs thousands of miles away is so easy. Pretending like it's all one thing or another. It's all so simple and straightforward, isn't it? Wow.

It is the absolutist mentality that I am trying so hard to avoid, Pangloss. Imo, it is our obligation as humans to look for the good in others, and to expect to find it. To assume absolutely, even as a soldier, that every person is a bomber and every vehicle is a bomb may seem a safe assumption but it actually desensitizes us as people and them as soldiers.

 

Of course a soldier in a war zone is always watching out for danger. They are trained to do that. But they are also trained to detect the difference between a suspicious enemy and a wandering friendly. In target practice, when the civilian target pops-up, they're not supposed to shoot at it, right? In this case they made a grievous error of judgement. We would praise them if they guessed right, so what is your problem with punishing them if they guess wrong? We can't let that equation be manipulated by justification or we lose the subtle differences that make war somewhat worthy.

 

A soldier in a war has stepped forward to defend his country. A civilian has made no such commitment and it falls to the soldier to err on the side of protecting innocent lives rather than the lives of other committed defenders. I'm sorry the scale has to tip in favor of the civilian in this instance, but if you justify that war and martial law take precedence, you erode the morals and concepts you are fighting to disseminate and protect.

 

Is it then any wonder when other countries don't support you when you want to go to war again?

[Skye]

It's nonsense that soldiers fear for their lives? Nonsense?![/i'] Surely you don't mean that, do you?

In this situation, yes. It's pretty obvious, considering that's what I said.

[Pangloss]

It is the absolutist mentality that I am trying so hard to avoid, Pangloss. Imo, it is our obligation as humans to look for the good in others, and to expect to find it. To assume absolutely, even as a soldier, that every person is a bomber and every vehicle is a bomb may seem a safe assumption but it actually desensitizes us as people and them as soldiers.

 

Well put (as usual).

 

 

Of course a soldier in a war zone is always watching out for danger. They are trained to do that. But they are also trained to detect the difference between a suspicious enemy and a wandering friendly. In target practice, when the civilian target pops-up, they're not supposed to shoot at it, right? In this case they made a grievous error of judgement. We would praise them if they guessed right, so what is your problem with punishing them if they guess wrong? We can't let that equation be manipulated by justification or we lose the subtle differences that make war somewhat worthy.

 

I don't have a problem with punishing them if they didn't follow procedure. What I have a problem with is punishing them if they DID follow procedure and a civilian still got killed.

 

At this point we don't know if procedures were followed or not. So saying (as several have done above) that they should be punished based on the current information is about nothing more than ideology and opposition to the war or President Bush.

 

Let me be clear: I don't have a problem with determining what really happened, fixing the procedures, and doing more to try to prevent this sort of thing. But there will always be a caveat to those fixes, and that caveat is "so long as it doesn't increase the danger to our troops". Period.

 

Liberalism-uber-ales folks have a problem with Bush declaring the war to be over, and insist that it's still one today, right? So why wouldn't you extend that reasoning to include the troops who are actually in harm's way? Oh no, that reasoning has to be tossed aside, because it's not part of the agenda. It's SO much more important to look for any excuse to bash Bush or conservatives. Yeesh. That's just disgusting to me. BEYOND disgusting.

 

I don't have a problem with opposing the President -- you've seen me do that many times. What I have a problem with is the discarding of logic and critical thinking *solely* for ideological reasons.

 

 

A soldier in a war has stepped forward to defend his country. A civilian has made no such commitment and it falls to the soldier to err on the side of protecting innocent lives rather than the lives of other committed defenders. I'm sorry the scale has to tip in favor of the civilian in this instance, but if you justify that war and martial law take precedence, you erode the morals and concepts you are fighting to disseminate and protect.

 

No, sorry, I don't agree with that reasoning. Not when the bad guys are dressed as civilians.

 

It's a short-term problem, Phi. War is ugly. Deal with it. This idea that war should be like peace is just absurd.

[Sayonara]

As opposed to my country or yours, where we see how many suicide attacks per day?

Yeah right, because I just wasn't paying attention when the IRA spent years terrorising the civilian population of the UK with car bombs, bin bombs, nail bombs, exploding pubs, and the always fun "inside-out shopping centres".

 

 

And this is the second time in this thread you've made gross assumptions about what I was saying. "Shoot first" is an invention out of *whole cloth* on your part.

I have not made assumptions about what you are saying, I have interpreted it in a certain way based on the words you are using. I don't see why this is such an issue that you can't deal with it simply by saying "that is not what I meant", or perhaps "what makes you say that?"

 

 

That would be like me saying that you're claiming it wouldn't even be okay to fire on a half-track full of stormtroopers taking careful aim. I'm not putting words in your mouth, so I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from doing that to me. I won't ask you politely again.

I'm not sure what most parts of this are supposed to mean.

 

 

This is Iraq we're talking about. The single most dangerous place in the entire world. Your little rules are great for a little drive through Coventry on a Sunday after church. What they're good for in Iraq is getting more of your and my countrymen sent home in wooden boxes.

The absolute bottom line is that soldiers are expendable. They exist because society does not like to randomly lose or take civilian lives.

[Pangloss]

I simply have no response to that. Shocked speechless.

 

Oh well, it's just a discussion; no sense getting upset about it. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[Sayonara]

How can you be shocked speechless by that after saying "War is ugly. Deal with it"?

We can't have our cake and eat it.

 

You're right though - this is clearly an emotional issue. I think I am going to have to leave it alone (well, you know - until the next post that makes me scream "GAAAAHHHH").