2010-04-08, 17:22 | Link #42 | |
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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I'd like to take a moment to strongly advise that the people who have only watched the shortened 17 minute version of the wikileaks guncam video, to take the time to watch the full 39 minute version.
I'd also suggest reading the army investigation into the incident. I'm not entirely satisfied with Wikileaks being entirely forthcoming with the edited down video when it comes to full context... Quote:
Especially when they observe what looks like to them, one of the individuals with an "RPG" setting up around the corner to fire on said US troops a scant 100 meters away. At least with the first encounter, I'm not seeing what other response really was viable... It does remain a fact that firing upon the van that showed up is a far more dubious decision. It probably was even the wrong decision to make. But I'd like to point out that dealing with a situation like that in real time is far more ambivalent then when sitting down in a stress free circumstances in hindsight. Allot of people have been talking about how easy it would have been for them to find themselves in the same circumstance and it being assured that they couldn't have been effected by the circumstances into making a bad call. Sitting in our rooms as civilians and already knowing for certain that something goes wrong in the video, it's easy for us to come to the conclusion that the van's occupants are clearly just some good samaritans trying to help some injured people. But to the Apache crew that just thwarted an "Insurgent RPG attack", this looks allot like the hostiles extraction vehicle showing up to extract them. Due to not knowing about the people in the van, even us with hindsight we can't really ascertain whether or not they were just some random folks or working with the Insurgency. It would have been better for them to have stayed their fingers in that circumstance for not being reasonably sure about the circumstance, but before someone decides how hard they criticize, is contemplate how much better they would do if put under the same situation with the same pressures. Last edited by Roger Rambo; 2010-04-08 at 17:45. |
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2010-04-08, 18:26 | Link #43 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Age: 35
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It is really scary as hell to think of all these people out there supporting the slaughter of innocent civilians, just muster what little empathy you have and think about how you would react in such a situation. Also the military never found weapons on the dead Iraqi's all the reports say that they did are CONTRADICTIONS of the U.S.'s own internal investigation. This is so frustrating how little we value human life, as if life after birth is worth less than the lives of the living. Killing civilians will only embolden terrorists to assault us in ways we can't even imagine.
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Seriously I truly don't understand the lack of compassion for the living, the dead and the dying. If this occurred on American soil you bet your ass people would be screaming war crimes, but since we are so detached from it, people just brush it off as "it's only iraqi's" or "it's just collateral damage" Honestly if I was one tenth as hawkish as some of these posters I'd have asked for the U.S. to invade the undeveloped world because clearly life is not only a commodity. @RogerRambo It's sick that you justify this bloodshed. The chatter in the helicopter was nothing like that of people who were afraid for their lives. They were having fun shooting fish in a barrel, they enjoyed killing people for the sake of killing people. There was zero dread or even trepidation in the voices of these soldiers, no hesitation, just joking words given to the dead. That in itself is the damning evidence, these people were of clear judgement, not afraid for their lives, not worried about anything except for getting a thrill by dehumanizing others. |
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2010-04-08, 18:54 | Link #44 |
Not an expert on things
Join Date: Jun 2007
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Edit: This has to do with the collateral damage topic. I was trying to get this after Nosauz's post but was too slow.
Just to gauge everyone's feelings about this: is it excusable beause it's understandable? Looking at it from one way, you could say that it's understandable that they would have fired, because it was a very high-pressure situation. Looking at it from another way, in the end people who weren't hostile still lost their lives. You can't just look at it from the perspective of the soldier or the dead. Also, to mention something to Nosauz's response to RogerRambo, the few war novels I've read make me think that morbid jokes like that are a coping mechanism to avoid personalizing war, because doing that would make them unable to function. The Things They Carried comes to mind. Since I haven't seen the video, I'm not saying that you're wrong, but it's something to consider. They might not be cruel, because the jokes may be necessary to not go insane. |
2010-04-08, 19:01 | Link #45 | ||||
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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There's a good NYT article on this. Quote:
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2010-04-08, 19:02 | Link #46 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Age: 35
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If you choose to rationalize their actions, that's your right, but as a human don't you feel soiled to utter those words? Don't you feel unhuman to treat other humans worse than chattel? @RogerRambo I cited a source, AP stated the military confirmed there was no RPG. Anyway, treating humans as less than such dehumanizes the killer too. I choose to maintain my compassion, and to see the morally impermissible. As humans we should feel sorrow, pain, disgust for the results of this action. Also if the military found no wrong doing, why hide this, why paint this as insurgents? Why did it take a new organization and a leaker with clearance within the military to shed real light on the "truth" that we have seen. It's frustrating on how little some people value human life, if this kind of collateral damage is allowed, then I'd find it hard to blame the Nazi's killing jews, because they just like the Americans were under the assumption that the jews were a threat/imminent threat to their sovereignty and safety. |
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2010-04-08, 19:48 | Link #47 | ||
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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This will never work perfectly however, as this video demonstrates, and horrible, atrocious things like this will happen. as long as you do battle with men trained to wage war, especially with all the ambivalence of an asymmetric campaign, things like this will happen. And as horrible and callous as this may seem, all you can do is hope to learn from the experiance to try to keep it from happening in the future. A source that said nothing like what you said. Quote:
If AP said that, you could provide a link to the article that said that with direction quotation something of the effect of "There were absolutely no weapons present within the first group". CNN links to the Pentagon investigation report. Well, that didn't take to long. |
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2010-04-08, 20:07 | Link #48 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Age: 35
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A military investigation later concluded that what was thought to be an RPG was really a long-range photography lens; likewise, the camera looked like an AK-47.
This is what I quoted directly from the article, they didn't link to the Armies report but w/e. Also even if you claim Godwin's law, it is actually applicable in this situation because basically the government defines it's interests are greater than the lives of other humans, this is the exact same sitaution. Also to not even give these people of the dignity of the truth about how they died is ridiculous to claim we are somehow more morally superior to the terrorists that blow themselves up because we have the backing of our government when we kill civilians. |
2010-04-08, 20:48 | Link #49 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Looks like there is indeed more to the story Apparently there was an ongoing battle with men fitting these guys description. Quote:
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2010-04-08, 21:19 | Link #50 | ||||
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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And it's not really a what ever. The source you provided(Yahoo/AP) only partially supported your statement. The other source you called upon(Army report) flat out contradicts what you said. Quote:
The Greeks killed at Thermopylae and Artemisium because they figured their interests ranked higher than that of thousands of Persians. The Mongols and Vikings ran rampant because they thought personnel wealth and power ranked higher than other peoples lives. The Crusaders shed blood because they thought their religious beliefs ranked higher than the others lives. Lincoln fought a war that killed hundreds of thousands because he thought the Union was more important. The allies killed millions for the exact same basic reasons the Axis did. They thought their interests/beliefs. You can't simplify an armed conflict as being like the Holocaust if your only basis for making the judgment is that "They decided their interests/motivations ranked higher than other peoples lives". Since that's the basis of all human conflict. Quote:
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It might not be much, but it's still above the people who intentionally drive car bombs into a market with the clear intention of killing as many non combatants as they possibly can. |
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2010-04-08, 21:39 | Link #51 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Age: 35
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Considering we had no reason to be in Iraq I don't see how you spin yourself out the idea that any civilian deaths is less than egregious. The entire premise of why we are there is based on a lie. War is brutal, but to hide it from the public so that we can pallet continuously funding this war that has only really helped haliburton and Black water, just makes our occupation even more heinous. These people deserve better, and actually I bet life under Saddam Husein was better than the hellhole they currently live in. This war serves no purpose other than fueling the hate towards America felt by middle easterners, we are creating the terrorists every time we kill their families. This war has done nothing to make America safer, and based on that fact alone, we should pull out.
Also the way the American public views the civilian casualties is quite indicative of why we treat the poor as lazy bums and dead civilians as insurgents, it's because we don't value life as a nation. |
2010-04-08, 22:01 | Link #52 |
…Nothing More
Administrator
Join Date: Mar 2003
Age: 44
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This story has taken over the News Stories thread for enough pages, so I'm splitting it out. Please avoid retreading old ground; threads with cyclic topics will be closed.
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2010-04-08, 22:31 | Link #53 |
Princess or Plunderer?
Join Date: May 2009
Location: the Philippines
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If a person knows that yielding to his own ideals about life means death, he/she must be willing to be the thing he is fighting against. This is NOT only about America. It's also about the other side and every other side of every other war in the world right now.
If you still think soldiers can think morally while thinking that every second of their life might be their last, I don't know how logical you are thinking.
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2010-04-08, 22:39 | Link #54 |
Juanita/Kiteless
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: New England
Age: 40
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Where did you hear this? I live in New England, lived in CT when the Iraq war started and now live in NH, and I have never; not once, heard someone in either state say they think drafting would be a good idea or that they want it to happen. Not once.
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2010-04-08, 22:43 | Link #55 | |||
Black Dragon
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: In the Netherrealm, thinking who to betray next...
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Now that can be justified by saying "Some of the corpses actually had weapons". And haven't you tough that the army could place those automatic rifles and rocket launchers there to justify the attack? Quote:
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2010-04-08, 22:50 | Link #56 |
Check out my Rolek!
Join Date: May 2008
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You know, after reading some of the posts in this thread, and I can't help but agree with the Founding Fathers: people really are too stupid for democracy to work.
Anyway, to stay on topic... while it is regrettable that innocent people were killed, shit happens in war, and mistakes are made. The boys from the 1st Cav. thought they were shooting legitimate targets (they were), and ended up killing civilians. And no, I don't consider the journalists to be "innocent." They willingly tagged along with people engaging (or intending to engage) the enemy. WTF did they think was going to happen? The only sympathy I have go to the people in the van who stopped to help the wounded and the other people who were shot at. Oh, and really wish people would learn how to properly argue before giving it a go. I've seen all types of fallacies in this thread: people posting irrelevant "evidence," people making arguments with faulty evidence, people avoiding the issue altogether (going from "did the helicopter pilots make the right call" to "I hate the war because Michael Moore told me to"), etc. EDIT: I decided to get rid of the giant rant that followed... because using a giant fallacy in an argument about fallacies and pointless debate just seemed pretty fail. Refer to the post at the bottom of the page if you still want to read it for shits and giggles. Proper argumentation is no longer possible due to the massive fallacy involved, but it's still something I've wanted to get off of my chest.
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Last edited by Nappy Hared Azn; 2010-04-09 at 01:23. |
2010-04-08, 22:56 | Link #59 | |
Juanita/Kiteless
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: New England
Age: 40
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Yeah, I don't even really feel like getting into it, but Evil Rick I know where you are coming from. It pisses me off. I heard we have killed tens of thousands of innocents in just Iraq alone with this war (which we declared and we invaded them), and injured many more (many of them horribly; like you mentioned, missing limbs from bombings). And I heard this figure of tens of thousands of fatalities years ago...who knows how big the number is now. It is probably tens of thousands more, for just fatalities alone. The amount injured is probably well over 100,000. I don't disagree with the "war on terror". Breaking up terrorists networks is good. The war in Afghanistan is justified, I think. But the war in Iraq...damn it, I knew it was a bad idea from the start. I had a pretty bad feeling about it right before we invaded. Note: I edited my post. I started getting off topic.
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2010-04-08, 23:39 | Link #60 | |
Black Dragon
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: In the Netherrealm, thinking who to betray next...
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Yes, the truth is that, we can't do anything. But oh, waith? What's this thing inside my head? This thing inside my brain? Oh yes, it's my comon scense, it's my right to belive what I think it's right and what I think it's wrong. The ability to know the diference between a medic who travels to the warzone to cure harmed inocent people asking nothing in return and a man with a hig political rank, wearing an expensive swit, pointing with his finger and giving the order to launch a bomb in direction to a city filled with civilians, and you want me to shut up because I can't do anything to change it. The problem here is that the voice has power, that the internet gives an oportunity to tell waht I think, what a civilian without a military rank or a political charge thinks of the world he lives on. Even if it's on message boards, it is my right to tell what I think and you're NONE to tell me to "shut the fuck up".
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