US air strikes kill 140 civilians in Afghanistan, including 93 children

Discussion in 'World Events' started by DiamondHearts, May 15, 2009.

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  1. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    Killing civilians is only a war crime when the the forces that killed the civilians are thoroughly defeated, unconditionally surrender and are imprisoned. Otherwise killing civilians is just collateral damage.
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The death of civilians itself is not a war crime. It's only when those deaths are intentional.
     
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  5. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    But Hiroshima was not a war crime. Also whether a civilian killing is intentional becomes confusing when tactics are used which will unavoidably kill civilians even though the target is non-civilian.

    Drunk drivers go to jail for vehicular manslaughter even though they never intended to hurt anybody. Should Air Force Generals will be treated less harshly than drunk drivers as long as their side wins the war or at least is not defeated.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Not prosecuted, you mean.
     
  8. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    İt was not a war crime. Period. And nobody but fringe Lefists thinks so. There was no law that it broke.
     
  9. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    If a military strategic plan is moving ahead without problems, you're probably walking into an ambush.

    In other words, Generals make mistakes in the field, largely due to either inaccurate or misleading intelligence reports.

    Are Generals in the habit of targeting civilians?

    Do you actually believe a General isn't going to sleep nights knowing one of his decisions inadvertently killed a group of children?

    Have Generals not made mistakes to the extent of killing their own troops. Ever hear of "friendly fire?"

    As they say, "Friendly fire, isn't."
     
  10. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    There is a question of "how hard do you try to avoid killing civilians". Your own soldiers will be safer at least in the short term if you just destroy everything that moves in enemy territory before you move your forces into that area.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Rules of war are different than those that apply to individuals. Hiroshima (and other cases like Dresden) was an example of total war, where an entire society is engaged in trying to defeat another society. It's a struggle for existence, and such acts, while terrible, are permissible.
     
  12. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    The USA was never in a struggle for existence with Japan.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sure Japan would like to keep us existing, but under their thumb. That's more or less the same thing as not existing as a free nation.
     
  14. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    Imperial Japan could never have taken our freedom-fries, nor our happy-meals. They were finished as an empire by 1944- cut off from their colonies and literally out of gas. Meanwhile in the USA, we were riding high, on the top of the world. It was over for them long before our weapons-testing war-crimes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
     
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Total war does not imply existential struggle - none of the societies that engaged in total war in WWII and lost ceased to exist, for example.
     
  16. superstring01 Moderator

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    Odd. The weapons were already tested.

    Japan was refusing to surrender. Even the most conservative estimates placed American casualties at no less than half a million for a manned invasion. Much more for the Japanese. While the Japanese were making back-channel overtures for peace terms with the USA, every one of those came with conditions. The American rule was no conditions.

    Funny. If the Japanese were so done for, why did it take TWO atomic bombs to get them to surrender?

    ~String
     
  17. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Japan was never in any position to deprive the United States of our independence. And so they never intended to attempt anything like that.
     
  18. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    The notion that all is fair in total war is nonsense. The USA is still damaged and diminished today, as the only nation to have unleashed nuclear weapons and the greatest firestorms of all time upon civilians. Likewise, our overkill in Afghanistan will harm us for generations.
     
  19. superstring01 Moderator

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    Can you please spell out how we are damaged to this day? Anything credible beyond your lofty claims? Is this hypothetical damage worse than the damage that would have occurred had the USA just decided to invade using troops?

    ~String
     
  20. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    "Can you please spell out how we are damaged to this day?"

    Our professed moral superiority is a global laughing-stock, and the more we force the issue, the greater the damage to our place in the global economy.

    "Is this hypothetical damage worse than the damage that would have occurred had the USA just decided to invade using troops?"

    There was no need for US troops to invade the Japanese mainland after the Japanese Empire had been demolished and humiliated.
     
  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not saying all is fair. It would still have been wrong to torture any of those people, but it wasn't wrong to demonstrate our new powerful weapon that would end the war. War is a demonstration of power. It is ethical to end it as quickly as possible, with as few deaths as possible. I feel that the nuke attacks on Japan saved lives overall.
     
  22. StrawDog disseminated primatemaia Valued Senior Member

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    No one can answer that question as the option was not implemented. The default response that lives were SAVED by deploying nukes is likewise not affirmed - no point of comparison and pointless conjecture. What CAN be affirmed is that hundreds of thousands of INNOCENT civilians perished, and THAT is a permanent stain on the moral record of the USA. As the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are.
     
  23. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    spidergoat: "I feel that the nuke attacks on Japan saved lives overall."

    Imperial Japan's offensive capabilities, and imperial viability were already history before those bombs fell - they were already an irreversibly-collapsing maritime empire, with their navy at the bottom of the sea. By late 1944 Japan's capability for further war crimes was not remotely comparable with the US nuclear attacks upon cities.

    Similarly, Afghanistan's national threat to the USA was a fleeting mirage, because Afghanistan was never really the pre-eminent "haven for terrorism" or the oasis of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was of Arabian origin, and was falling out of favor with the Taliban since before 9-11. Al-Qaeda was at least as separable from Afghanistan as Japan was from her empire. The destruction of Afghanistan was not necessary, not justified, and not effective.
     
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