US Military Actions Abroad

Hey Chief, I'm talking about women in the Middle East -- not Muslim women in the UK. There is a big difference between the two. A HUGE difference.

I don't think I said anything about equal dignity. The point is equal rights. What are you doing to end the practice of preventing women from driving, lack of education, inability to go where they want without a male relative as chaperone?

What are YOU DOING ABOUT IT?

 

LOL @umar having to go on facebook to insult a poster here to get a viewpoint from some person allegdely in the ME.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=444

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-trister/womens-rights-in-the-midd_b_493714.html

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Yes back to the topic at hand since you can't dispute the facts of womens rights or lack thereof.

A commendable action by the US to try this asshat and convict him for obvious crimes. My hats off to the US Military for doing the right thing and keeping up the high standards of the US and our accountablity of our troops overseas.

Kudos to the US Army for doing what is right!

Thanks umar for this positive story about how the US does not tolerate barbarism from its own troops. I hope it serves as an inspiration to the people in afghanistan that these types of actions are unacceptable and perhaps someday they will take similar measures to stop their own people from doing the same or worse.

 

You absolutely did.

I don't, but I'll listen.

Drug Runners? You want to bomb people who deliver stuff to drug stores? That's sick. Why do you want to kill merchants?

What war are we fighting in places like Pakistan and Yemen?

And you're lying. Using a drone means you get a more accurate hit on your target. If that target is innocent, the drone will be more effective killing innocent people than other methods.

Do you value American lives more than the lives of people in the Middle East?

 

I did?? Where?

Yeah you failed at humor there. Badly.

So are you just trying to be obtuse or are you really that out of touch with reality? Maybe you have heard of this group called al queda? Maybe? Their leader was found in pakistan. They routinly use pakistan as a hiding place while launching strikes in afghanistan....Guess you missed all of that. As for yemen. USS Cole ring a bell? Again that aq bunch train and operate there, and FYI it was OBL who declared war on the US in the 90's so yeah that war.

Lying am I? Where have I advocated attacking innocents? Show me that statement or retract yours. That drone is used to attack enemy combatants. Are you really this ignorant of what war is?

I value American lives more then our foes in the ME. You can try to paint the picture as being something else, but the fact is I will always put higher value on American lives then those of the enemy we are fighting against. If this were WWII I would value American lives more then German, Italian, or Japanese combatents. So you can try to spin this all you want, but I do not have a high value on the lives of those fighting against the US.

 

I do believe the point that MS29 and to some extent Umar, is that we do not always know that we are killing our enemies.

I mean it would be nice to get rid of the Italian or Russian Mafia in the USA but it does not mean us bombing the house of a suspected gangster.

Even if we knew that the most wanted criminal in the USA was sitting in some building, would you drop a bomb on the building?

What if his children were with him? Would you still be ok with killing the criminal and his son?

Now even if you and I may say sure why not, would that be lawful?

It is not black and white, lots of gray going on, we do not have perfect laws and rules regarding this issue.

I agree with you, I support dropping bombs on suspected terrorist, but I also understand why many people think that is a bad idea, I am even open to stop the practice if we can figure out a better way on how to deal with this problem, like say invading Pakistan or Yemen (but that would be way too expensive right now and I do not think the American people would go for it).

 

Yes exactly, I am referring to military operations as it pertains to the issue of using drones. I asked ms29 to give me a context of how he views this issue, he declined.

I would obviously approach a criminal matter far differently and of course wouldn't utilize the military to go after them. Thus I wouldn't use a drone to go after a criminal as you outlined above. That is where police, FBI etc... would handle the situation and they operate under a completly different set of engagment rules.

As for the targets we hit, no one is perfect and there will be mistakes made, but in the all and all I think the drones provide a far lesser risk of killing innocents than that of any other means we have available to us to hit these targets. The enemy we are fighting obviously try to hide who they are in order to survive long enough to fight. That is why they don't wear uniforms or operate out of any acknowledged miltary base or location and instead use villages as operating bases and dress like the civlian populace. It makes it easy to say that anytime we kill one of their fighters that no it was a civlian. Works good for the propaganda machine.

I would think that the use of drones would be the lesser evil for those worried about innocents being injured or killed as opposed to 2000 lb bombs being dropped on their heads....Not to mention the cameras on the drones allow for a much better target resolution.

 

I agree with you, but I was just pointing to where Umar and MS29 are coming from, to them killing any civilians (Umar may say any Muslims) is bad, so if a single innocent civilian (like the Yemeni-American son) is killed by a drone attack then the attack is illegal.

I think to Umar is about what he views as morality, to MS29 is about the legality.

it is a grey area, I am sure lawyers could argue for it on both sides, that is why I made the point a few pages ago that it would be good if the family of the Yemeni-American were to sue the US government for the killing of their family member (not sure if the son was also an American citizen, I know the terrorist was).

I can also see that we are at a disadvantage from our enemy, we as a state are required to follow the law, American law mostly but also International (not always) law. I know that is fighting with a hand tied behind our back but we are supposed to be a country that does respect the law.

If there is a case and our SC or some other court (we do not recognize the International court) dictates that Drone attacks (any other missile/bomb) attack is illegal then I would hope our military and CIA would stop.

 

Wow, wow, wow.

"That drone is used to attack enemy combatants." Ok, What crimes against America did Tariq Aziz commit?

 

Thanks for the geography lesson, Chief.

I spoke English. Does it matter? It was the language we both spoke. I don't speak Farsi, urdu, Pashto, or Arabic. It makes no difference.

Oppression of women knows no language. And rather than advocating to build a wall around the MidEast and let it devolve into an even more medieval region than it already is -- incapable of science or enlightenment -- I advocate to free the women, who are the only ones capable of keeping the entire region from destroying itself.

 

No I understood where you were coming from and I don't disagree with you at all.

As far as the drones go, how are they any different from a plane going in and doing the bombing? It is a fact of war that we use missiles, bombs etc... and nations have been doing so in one form or another since we started using weapons. Hell a rock and an arrow are missiles for all intents and purposes. I couldn't see how drones could be determined to be illegal without making all weapons of war illegal. Hell war should be illegal but we all know that won't happen.

I think there is a relative lack of reality here in this discussion with those 2 as it pertains to war and weapons of war. On the morality front, war itself is immoral. There is nothing about war that is moral. War is about killing your enemy and them killing you. It is about using force to force your views on another or to respond to attacks made against you. War is sick,evil and vile and makes good men and women on either side commit acts that they most likely would never dream of doing.

As for legality. What is legal about war? You are out to kill your enemy. Killing is murder and it is illegal. Yet we make exceptions for it because it is war. At least with drones you remove one sides troops from the fighting thus lowering the number of potential dead, second with the cameras you have a better chance at firing on combatents and not innocents, though it is not a perfect system.

Sadly we as a race are not ready to abandon war or violence no matter what we might say. It would be nice if we didn't have people who lust for power, who commit heinous acts of terrorism, who didn't put money over a person's life...the list goes on. Maybe one day we will mature past this part of our development, or maybe we will end up reducing our numbers so much that war is put in the past. But until then we will have wars and we will have our differences such as the ones here on this board and thread concerning what is legal and moral and so on.....

 

Maybe you would feel better if we stopped using drones and instead used B-52's to carpet bomb the whole area?

Sorry, your link doesn't appear to be opening for me,
What does aziz have to do with drones?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_Aziz

What does he have to do with this??

 

I take it your lack of proof of where I said attacking civlians and innocents is ok is why you didn't post any links here in your response?

Why don't you just man up and admit you were wrong, I have done so here on these boards when I was wrong. To umar of all people. I don't think it is too much to ask for the same from you.

 

Again I agree, the only point they may make is that we are not at war with Pakistan or Yemen, so why are we attacking people there?

Obviously is because there is where the people are hiding, but they question the legality of us dropping bombs on countries we are not in open conflict against.

We have done it before, and like you say other countries do it (well I am thinking Russia and Israel).

that would be the test of this legal action, can we the USA kill an American civilian in a foreign country that we are not in conflict against for rebelling against the USA?

Would it be legal for use to fly Predators over Mexico to kill Mexican Cartel leaders?

It may be a good idea and it would help with the war on drugs, but would it be legal?

Now In my opinion is up to Yemen and Pakistan to get us to stop, by shooting down our drones or by taking us to the United Nations and demand we stop (like Mexico would if we start shooting hell fires all over their country).

To me this is an open question (legality) to them this is case closed.

 

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24682220&postcount=128

Clearly shows that you are incorrect with your statement.

 

The Tariq Aziz that America murdered the other day is 16 years old and unrelated to the one mentioned above.

React to this quote from the article:

The drone killed exactly who it intended to. Is this episode ok with you? If not, what should happen to the participants?

 

As I said before, the system is far from perfect and the loss of these young lives is as tragic as the lives lost on 9/11. Now you said the drone killed who it intended to, this is wrong. The operators of that drone killed who they aimed at. Who did they think they were hitting? Did they intentionally target this 16 year old? Are you proposing that anyone who has ever hit an innocent person in a combat zone go to trial?

Perhaps as I have said before if aq and the taliban actually wore uniforms, didn't hide behind civlians, and used military vehicles incidents such as the tragedy above would not happen.

That said, would you have felt better if the attack had come from a 2000 lbs laser guided bomb?

 

Keep in mind these are the people we are fighting:

http://wireupdate.com/wires/18994/taliban-hang-8-year-old-boy-in-southern-afghanistan/

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/burqa-clad-taliban-murder-11-civilians3-kids

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He is not only incorrect, he is an apologist for those that would oppress them.

Women who are "free" and "choose to wear a Gurkha" do so because they live in fear.

And whether I speak to them in English or through an interpreter who speaks in their native language is immaterial.

Women in Muslim countries are oppressed. And the oppressors are Muslim men who are more humiliated than anything else, because thy hold the keys and have proven to be unable to accomplish much. Look around your house for something that says "made in the Middle East". They are an abject failure at Anything beyond oppressing women.

 

Also from the article that isn't loading for you:

So, to answer "who did they think they were hitting?", they generally don't put that much thought into it.

That's the program you've bought into.

I hold out hope that it's out of ignorance of stuff like this.

I would feel better if we don't kill people who aren't threatening us.

The people who committed the 9/11 attacks are dead. The people who planned the 9/11 attacks are either dead or no longer a threat to us.

Everything else is done to benefit authoritarian politicians and the military-industrial complex.

 

MS29 do you really think that Al-Qaeda no longer wants to target the USA?

I know you subscribe to the idea of blow back and I agree to a point with you and Mr Paul, but believe me if you think that bringing all the troops home would mean Al-Qaeda calling for peace, you would be wrong.