Al Qaeda

[Mountaineer]

I quite agree.  My six year old did something really bad that I just can't find it in my heart to forgive him for and since I'm my own god, I am by definition correct on this matter.  My son is now 40.  I love to hate, it is such a freeing feeling!  Damn all six year olds, they are probably just as horribly evil as my son was.  Away with all of them!!  Makes me feel good to condemn all on the basis of horrible acts by some - guilt by association I believe it is called.  Woooeeee, it is great to be your own god, is it not, and not have to depend on some higher being for morals.

... Mountaineer

…What?

Religious people begin to lose me when they talk like this because the implication or assertion that secularism somehow leads to immorality is something I simply have not witnessed in my own life. Probably less than 25% of my friends and acquaintances are religious, and of those, few are seriously religious the way you are. I have not discerned any special difference in the morality of their actions, nor do I myself behave in the manner of your example toward my own child despite the fact that I am non-religious.

I just don't see it. Religion is one way of teaching and expressing morality, but to claim or imply that it's the only possible way strikes me self-congratulatory and quite a striking contrast from the humbleness I often hear preached.

PS,

First of all I appologize for apparently confusing you    I was in "full sarcasm mode" trying to show how ridiculous it seems to me to cast Christianty aside for blunders made by humans hundreds of years ago (and continuing today if you want to be precise since we are sinful humans).  Obviously (I hope it is obvious) I love my son and have forgiven him many times for his mistakes as he has forgiven me many times for mine; yes, we are human and no matter how hard we try, or how pure our intent, we make mistakes.  Mistakes happened in the beginning of the Biblical accounts from the Garden forward, in the beginning of Christianity, during the middle ages, and continues today.  That is why we so desparately need a Savior - we are incapable of being righteous on our own all the time.  When people point out the awful things that have been done by "Christians" and imply that is why they cannot believe, I feel sad as they are missing the whole point.  They are depending on their own flawed reasoning (i.e. they want to be their own god just like the Gnostics of old times) to establish their worldview rather than trying to understand what God has revealed to us.  That is one reason I find Repentance and Confession and Absolution so very freeing along with hearing the Gospel (I am forgiven for Christ's sake) and receiving the Sacraments (the body and blood of Christ himself).  That statement will likely draw flies too!  

For your second point about morals, I completely agree you do not have to be a Christian to have morals.  I also have many friends that are "good people" by man's standards who are not practicing Christians.  I do think, however, that somehow, the source of moral truth is outside of ourselves.  I really highly suggest that you watch the sessions on Christianity by Tim Keller that Desert talked about earlier - especially the second one as it deals with morals and some of the questions/comments you and others have made.  I really do think you would enjoy it and learn from it; if not, my apologies for encouraging you to spend time on something that may end up being wasted time.  http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3231 ... ts/2682018 or you may wish to go back to Desert's original post for the first session.

.... Mountaineer

[Reub]

If it sounds like I'm just a liberal military hater jerkwad......I was in the regular Army during the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraqi one. My best friends come from the Army. So we can at least set aside that ad hominem argument.

I am surprised that you can't see the difference between intentionally targeting innocent girls for murder and some being killed as the result of trying to destroy dangerous, evil threats to this country.

[Kshartle]

If it sounds like I'm just a liberal military hater jerkwad......I was in the regular Army during the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraqi one. My best friends come from the Army. So we can at least set aside that ad hominem argument.

I am surprised that you can't see the difference between intentionally targeting innocent girls for murder and some being killed as the result of trying to destroy dangerous, evil threats to this country.

I'm surprised you excuse the latter because of the former. I excuse neither and am unconcerned with the difference.

[Reub]

So you admit that there is a difference after all. They are not the same thing.

[Libertarian666]

So you admit that there is a difference after all. They are not the same thing.

Negligently killing someone who has done you no harm is manslaughter, even if they live somewhere near people you think have done you harm.

Willfully killing someone who has done you no harm is murder, even if they live somewhere near people you think have done you harm.

Oh, and in most jurisdictions, killing someone even unintentionally during the commission of a felony is also murder. Invading another country without that country having attacked you is a war crime, which should work in this case too.

Hope that helps.

[Reub]

So then, we were just as guilty as the Nazis during WW2? I think not.

[Libertarian666]

So then, we were just as guilty as the Nazis during WW2? I think not.

I believe Germany declared war on the US, so that would fall under the "Laws of War".

Invading a country on any other basis is considered a war crime.

However, even in war, deliberately targeting civilians is also a war crime. Thus, the bombing of civilian targets such as German cities was a war crime.

Of course, it is impossible to convict anyone of war crimes unless they are on the losing side. That is just another joy of archism.

[Reub]

So then if a country, or an entity inside a country, attacks us (or plans to attack us), but does not officially declare war on us, then we do not have the right to attack them? Really? Unless they declare war on us first, we cannot/should not attack them?

I don't believe that there is anything wrong with attacking a nation (including some civilians in that nation) if that is the only way (or the best way) possible to protect ourselves from a ruthless, murderous enemy. I do not believe that we committed war crimes of any kind during WW2. Even individual indiscretions by our individual soldiers would fall under the guilt of the enemy.

[Mountaineer]

So then, we were just as guilty as the Nazis during WW2? I think not.

I believe Germany declared war on the US, so that would fall under the "Laws of War".

Invading a country on any other basis is considered a war crime.

However, even in war, deliberately targeting civilians is also a war crime. Thus, the bombing of civilian targets such as German cities was a war crime.

Of course, it is impossible to convict anyone of war crimes unless they are on the losing side. That is just another joy of archism.

archism?    http://kevincraig.us/archist.htm

... Mountaineer

[Libertarian666]

So then if a country, or an entity inside a country, attacks us (or plans to attack us), but does not officially declare war on us, then we do not have the right to attack them? Really? Unless they declare war on us first, we cannot/should not attack them?

I don't believe that there is anything wrong with attacking a nation (including some civilians in that nation) if that is the only way (or the best way) possible to protect ourselves from a ruthless, murderous enemy. I do not believe that we committed war crimes of any kind during WW2. Even individual indiscretions by our individual soldiers would fall under the guilt of the enemy.

How convenient for you and the other neocons.

As for my position, I don't think I could explain it any better than this does:
http://mises.org/rothbard/warpeace.asp

[Reub]

After reading your position and that of some other high-brow libertarians and pacifists, I come to the conclusion that you are only able to aspouse your views because of the actions of neocons, as you call them. Without these great neocons throughout our history you would be in chains or worse.

[Pointedstick]

After reading your position and that of some other high-brow libertarians and pacifists, I come to the conclusion that you are only able to aspouse your views because of the actions of neocons, as you call them. Without these great neocons throughout our history you would be in chains or worse.

Now I'm wondering how I would be in chains or worse had we not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Because from my perspective it seems like we spent an awful lot of money to blow up a lot of stuff and kill a lot of people, but it's unclear what positive effect all this destruction has actually had, and our true enemy (Al Qaeda) still exists and apparently still poses a threat. Doesn't that make these wars total, abject failures, from a strategic point of view?

[Libertarian666]

After reading your position and that of some other high-brow libertarians and pacifists, I come to the conclusion that you are only able to aspouse your views because of the actions of neocons, as you call them. Without these great neocons throughout our history you would be in chains or worse.

Now I'm wondering how I would be in chains or worse had we not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Because from my perspective it seems like we spent an awful lot of money to blow up a lot of stuff and kill a lot of people, but it's unclear what positive effect all this destruction has actually had, and our true enemy (Al Qaeda) still exists and apparently still poses a threat. Doesn't that make these wars total, abject failures, from a strategic point of view?

Yes, but not from the neocon point of view, which is that war is a wonderful way to expand the government's reach over everyone, as well as very profitable for defense contractors and the like.

[MediumTex]

So then if a country, or an entity inside a country, attacks us (or plans to attack us), but does not officially declare war on us, then we do not have the right to attack them? Really? Unless they declare war on us first, we cannot/should not attack them?

I don't believe that there is anything wrong with attacking a nation (including some civilians in that nation) if that is the only way (or the best way) possible to protect ourselves from a ruthless, murderous enemy. I do not believe that we committed war crimes of any kind during WW2. Even individual indiscretions by our individual soldiers would fall under the guilt of the enemy.

On March 9-10, 1945, the U.S. fire bombing of Tokyo killed about 100,000 people, most of them civilians.

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, killing about 75,000 people, about 55,000 of whom were civilians.

On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped a nuclear weapon on Nagasaki, killing something north of 50,000 people, all but 150 of whom were civilians, including some allied POWs.

So you've got a pile of over 200,000 dead Japanese civilians from three bombing missions in a six month period.  If the U.S. hadn't been the winner, that would probably have qualified as one of the greatest war crimes of all time.  The narrative we were all told in school was that it was "necessary to end the war", but couldn't you say that about any wholesale slaughter of civilians during any war?

Hiroshima before and after it was attacked:





And Nagasaki before and after it was attacked:



Japan certainly did everything it could to defeat the U.S., but it's still disturbing to me to think of all those innocent people who had nothing to do with the imperial fantasies of the Japanese government and military being vaporized and burned to death.

I hope that our logic isn't that simply because an enemy aggressor attacks us first, that gives us license to kill as many civilians as we want without it ever being thought of as a "war crime."

[Reub]

Yes, it is certainly disturbing. However, how many American lives were saved by these actions? How much longer would the war have gone? I still put the blame for these deaths squarely on the shoulders of our ruthless enemies and attackers and not on us.

[Mountaineer]

There were over one million inocent casualties in our bloodiest war:

http://www.reillysbattery.org/Newslette ... _grace.htm

... Mountaineer

[Pointedstick]

Yes, it is certainly disturbing. However, how many American lives were saved by these actions? How much longer would the war have gone? I still put the blame for these deaths squarely on the shoulders of our ruthless enemies and attackers and not on us.

You punch me for no good reason. I punch you back. You punch me again. I kill your sister. You stop punching me. Does the blame for your sister's death fall on you or me?

[Mountaineer]

Yes, it is certainly disturbing. However, how many American lives were saved by these actions? How much longer would the war have gone? I still put the blame for these deaths squarely on the shoulders of our ruthless enemies and attackers and not on us.

You punch me for no good reason. I punch you back. You punch me again. I kill your sister. You stop punching me. Does the blame for your sister's death fall on you or me?

PS,

Interesting scenario.  Makes a good case for "turn the other cheek" as that apparently is the only way to not escalate the violence.  However, then I think of Pearl Harbor.  Should we have just "turned the other cheek" and ignored the carnage in order to prevent further suffering?  Or, was Roosevelt just looking for a way to end the depression?  (I've heard too many of those stories about the US leadership ignoring the signals as to what was coming.)  But back to your scenario.  I would say the one who killed the sister is the one responsible for her death, regardless of who threw the first punch.  Punches are in a completely different league than killing.  However, I don't think the firebombing of Tokyo or the nuclear bombs were in that much of a different league than what the Japanese were doing to us or did in China ... it just looks awful because the firebombing/nuclear bombing happened so quickly.  Same principle as why we get all worked up about a plane crash that kills a few hundred but ignore the traffic deaths that kill thousands - or one maniac with a gun taking out a dozen inocents while thousands of inocents are quietly aborted with nary a peep from the masses.  People are prone to knee jerk reactions when unusual events occur.  On the topic of Afghanistan and Iraq - seems very sketchy to me that we should have invaded either one.  It would have been much simpler to just go after those who masterminded 9/11 since a "nation" did not seem to be involved; personally, I think "the war on terrorism" is one of the dumber phrases we as a nation have coined - how do you declare war on an ideology?

... Mountaineer

[Kshartle]

So then, we were just as guilty as the Nazis during WW2? I think not.

I believe Germany declared war on the US, so that would fall under the "Laws of War".

Since we're doing history lessons and we need to figure out if it was ok for the US to slaughter 100k+ women, children and elderly in a firestorm in Dresden......Germany only declared war because the US was already waging war. The US was shipping arms and munitions and supplies to Britain and Russia and US ships has orders to shoot on sight any German vessel.

Ohhh and France and GB declared war on Germany, not the other way around. So I guess Germany was justified there too.

And Germany only invaded Poland so it could get close to it's long-term threat Russia. So I guess it was justified since that's what they had to do to protect themselves from invasion later.

Gee it's so fun and easy justifying invasions and the murders of millions by governments. I'm sure if we thought long enough...we could justify all of them

Or we could call it what it is...murder...and stop justifying it. We could maybe try the kindergarten lesson we learned that two wrongs don't make a right.

[ns3]

Interesting scenario.  Makes a good case for "turn the other cheek" as that apparently is the only way to not escalate the violence.  However, then I think of Pearl Harbor.  Should we have just "turned the other cheek" and ignored the carnage in order to prevent further suffering?  Or, was Roosevelt just looking for a way to end the depression?  (I've heard too many of those stories about the US leadership ignoring the signals as to what was coming.)

I don't believe the claims made in some fairly recent books that there was specific knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack beforehand. The reason I don't believe it is not because I believe Roosevelt wouldn't have ignored the warnings as claimed but because it was publicly denied by the still living WWII code-breakers who supposedly intercepted the messages.

I think there is more than ample evidence to support the claim that Roosevelt was intentionally maneuvering the Japanese to fire the first shot however. Even his supporters don't deny this. This is standard Machiavellian operating procedure for rulers who become convinced that war is inevitable and need to galvanize public support.

On a more recent note, I see this morning that the Iranians are planning on positioning warships off our borders in retaliation for us doing the same to them.

[MediumTex]

Note that I'm not saying it's improper to respond with overwhelming military force against any military force that attacks your country (or even makes a serious threat of imminent attack).

What I'm saying is that deliberately targeting civilian populations because they tend to live in more "bomb friendly" concentrations than military forces just seems like a really cruel thing to do.

Consider this: Part of the outrage that Americans felt about 9/11 was that it was such a gratuitous attack on a civilian population.  However, Noam Chomsky (with whom I don't usually agree) talks about how one of the responses around the world to 9/11 was surprise that the Americans would be so upset about having one of their cities attacked, considering that the Americans have been attacking other cities all over the world for decades.  If the idea of attacking cities (and civilian populations) were so distasteful to the Americans, why would they do it to other countries with such regularity?

The ugly and honest truth is probably that the U.S. simply cares a lot less about foreigners than it does about U.S. citizens, even when the stated purpose of a war is to liberate foreigners from a government that the U.S. doesn't like.

As far as whether WWII in the Pacific theater would have been prolonged if the U.S. had not slaughtered civilian populations, if that's really the logic that we are going to adopt, then wasn't Roosevelt negligent in failing to target Japanese civilian populations from the very start?

The fact that no U.S. cities were destroyed by the Japanese in WWII also makes the U.S.'s actions (to me, anyway) that much harder to defend.

When we look back at the history of our own country, I think that it's okay to say "That was a dumb thing to do" or "That was a cruel thing to do" without it being unpatriotic or unappreciative of the sacrifices of prior generations.  In fact, I would say that a reluctance to be honest about our own past failures (including past failures to behave according to our stated values) probably makes it more likely that those failures will be repeated again in the future.

For example, the similarities between the arrogance and thick-headedness of LBJ and his Vietnam adventure and the arrogance and thick-headedness of G.W. Bush and his Iraq adventure are, to me, striking. 

If history is any guide, I predict that in about 20 years the U.S. will be overrun with nail salons run by pushy Iraqi women.

[dualstow]

I read your entire post with interest but

If history is any guide, I predict that in about 20 years the U.S. will be overrun with nail salons run by pushy Iraqi women.

lol. Classic! I'm hoping they come up with something else, though, and leave the salons to Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians.

Added: I think the wiki page on the bombings debate is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_ov ... d_Nagasaki
Especially this part:

historian Donald Miller argues, in the days after the declaration, the Emperor seemed more concerned with moving the Imperial Regalia of Japan to a secure location than with "the destruction of his country."

[MediumTex]

I think the wiki page on the bombings debate is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_ov ... d_Nagasaki
Especially this part:

historian Donald Miller argues, in the days after the declaration, the Emperor seemed more concerned with moving the Imperial Regalia of Japan to a secure location than with "the destruction of his country."

When you consider how many civilians are killed by their own governments rather than by foreign governments, sometimes I guess it just kind of sucks to be a civilian.

I'm sure it's true, though, that for a political or military leader during wartime, the loss of civilians is probably much less upsetting than the loss of military resources.