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MtG, you post played the exact same games as Oerdin, except you don't have the excuse of your language being examined and having a personal reaction. You play the exact same game as all but his last post, except without the exuse.
Like happened with Spiffor, you are reading into my post a critique of the road blocks. They are necessary, and we have been forced into running them in the highly lethal way we do. How many times do I need to say it?
My point is with the language.
I'll give you an example in our own USofA. Dehumanizing opponents leading to vicious inhumane acts that the perpetrators were fully aware of at the time. One of the posters used Custer as an example for something. This is the man who deliberately slaughtered entire villages of women, children, and old men.
Read some of the letters of the troops who were present in the slaughters in the Indian conflicts post-Civil War. They range from horrified at their compatriots, to chilling in how they matter-of-factly talk about slaughtering these people. Please don't try to tell me that's how they did war then, they hadn't under Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas. But those were real people, not "dirty savages." Reinforcing my point on language.
Once you start dehumanizing your opponents, you have taken the first step to war crimes. We already have had some of our troops brought up on charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners. Any surprise? Yes, you will always have that. But the current rhetoric and labeling makes it even more likely. That's why police require training so they don't beat the crap out of the guy who resisted arrest. It's normal activity to dehumanize your enemy. So, unfortunately, are war crimes.
Even your arguments throughout your post "refuting" mine are red herrings.
And then you make my point for me! He was no "insert label here". He was your friend. Given circumstances, you might have had to shoot at him (I assume you were in the USA military). Even kill him. He's a dead person, not a "...sack of ****."
Then you create an even bigger red herring. Martyrs, etc. and the innocent civilians. To quote other posters, citations, please. You don't because the US command rightly is sitting on the numbers, because as described in my previous post, the car bombers have put the US in their ideal lose-lose situation.
Occam's razor. The car is full of "stupid civilians" or the car is full of "Martyrs". Puh-lease, look at my description of the shooting of Reagan. We have enough civilians in our own country fully capable of panicking and doing the wrong thing. Heck, the ones who out of curiousity ran towards the president after he was shot are definitely in the stupid category - they're not even panicked, their rubbernecking! That could have gotten them killed. No duh.
I suspect if you put 100 randomly drawn Iraqis in a potentially lethal military-civilian confrontation, and 100 Americans, the Iraqis as a whole will do fewer things to get themselves killed (after over 20 years in a police state, there's been some natural selection). The problem is that most of Iraq is a warzone, and even 1 in 10,000 people panicking at the roadblocks adds up to alot of dead civilians. The drivers for the most part have no desire to "... and the drivers of those vehicles who force the escalation to fire for effect." I agree that they do, but it's just being the wrong kind of person to be in a warzone. It's not their fault that they are in a warzone, it's not the soldiers fault (they have absolutely no choice but to shoot), it is the car bombers fault, no, strategy, and as I mentioned on the previous post, a clever and amoral one. If we were under the same situation here in the USA, the video of Reagan's shooting leads me to suspect our civilian population would do no better, maybe even worse.
Lastly, your biggest confuser. Unless you've been in a warzone... (you use variants of that multiple times in this thread). Well, then, have you worked as an EMT? Paradmedic? Pediatrics or ER nurse? I'm talking about the kids. I have been in the situation of watching a child get burned, over 60% of her body (remember the fuss over flamable children's clothing - those statistics have little children behind them). The odor of the burning synthetic that melts into a kind of goo burning into and through the skin is very distinctive. Watching her get taken out to the ambulance while her skin is still black, hanging in odd little shreds while steaming is something that you don't forget. That's why whenever I see the kids being used for political purposes (look at my post on the Arab hippocracy thread - need to go there next) and killed, you will find I tend to have a strong reaction.
It's real to me, just like being shot at is real to you. And if any of you want to accuse me of trolling, I'll supply you with a name and you can check with Shriner's Burn Institute of Boston (she survived and spent over a decade going there), or if they won't help due to privacy I'll give you a date so you can check emergency response records in Middletown, NJ - those should be public record. Kids get maimed and killed in warzones. It's inevitable. The results are HORRIFIC. It does not make the troops who do it monsters, though very often the leaders are. But it does make war something to be entered into very carefully, and I will always be opposed to it unless their is no alternative.
Like happened with Spiffor, you are reading into my post a critique of the road blocks. They are necessary, and we have been forced into running them in the highly lethal way we do. How many times do I need to say it?
My point is with the language. I'll give you an example in our own USofA. Dehumanizing opponents leading to vicious inhumane acts that the perpetrators were fully aware of at the time. One of the posters used Custer as an example for something. This is the man who deliberately slaughtered entire villages of women, children, and old men.
Read some of the letters of the troops who were present in the slaughters in the Indian conflicts post-Civil War. They range from horrified at their compatriots, to chilling in how they matter-of-factly talk about slaughtering these people. Please don't try to tell me that's how they did war then, they hadn't under Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas. But those were real people, not "dirty savages." Reinforcing my point on language.
Once you start dehumanizing your opponents, you have taken the first step to war crimes. We already have had some of our troops brought up on charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners. Any surprise? Yes, you will always have that. But the current rhetoric and labeling makes it even more likely. That's why police require training so they don't beat the crap out of the guy who resisted arrest. It's normal activity to dehumanize your enemy. So, unfortunately, are war crimes.
Even your arguments throughout your post "refuting" mine are red herrings.
It depends. Teenage fighters and suiciders aren't uncommon in the ME, and the US has had teenage casualties. When I was in my teens, I had a similar age friend whose family had just moved from Beirut. (This was in the mid-70's) At ten years old he'd been a courier in one of the militias, at 12 a weapons and ammo carrier, and at 16 a combat veteran. Get him out of the environment, and luckily, he was fairly well adjusted and a cool kid, but he was certainly capable of killing.
Then you create an even bigger red herring. Martyrs, etc. and the innocent civilians. To quote other posters, citations, please. You don't because the US command rightly is sitting on the numbers, because as described in my previous post, the car bombers have put the US in their ideal lose-lose situation.
Occam's razor. The car is full of "stupid civilians" or the car is full of "Martyrs". Puh-lease, look at my description of the shooting of Reagan. We have enough civilians in our own country fully capable of panicking and doing the wrong thing. Heck, the ones who out of curiousity ran towards the president after he was shot are definitely in the stupid category - they're not even panicked, their rubbernecking! That could have gotten them killed. No duh.
I suspect if you put 100 randomly drawn Iraqis in a potentially lethal military-civilian confrontation, and 100 Americans, the Iraqis as a whole will do fewer things to get themselves killed (after over 20 years in a police state, there's been some natural selection). The problem is that most of Iraq is a warzone, and even 1 in 10,000 people panicking at the roadblocks adds up to alot of dead civilians. The drivers for the most part have no desire to "... and the drivers of those vehicles who force the escalation to fire for effect." I agree that they do, but it's just being the wrong kind of person to be in a warzone. It's not their fault that they are in a warzone, it's not the soldiers fault (they have absolutely no choice but to shoot), it is the car bombers fault, no, strategy, and as I mentioned on the previous post, a clever and amoral one. If we were under the same situation here in the USA, the video of Reagan's shooting leads me to suspect our civilian population would do no better, maybe even worse.
Lastly, your biggest confuser. Unless you've been in a warzone... (you use variants of that multiple times in this thread). Well, then, have you worked as an EMT? Paradmedic? Pediatrics or ER nurse? I'm talking about the kids. I have been in the situation of watching a child get burned, over 60% of her body (remember the fuss over flamable children's clothing - those statistics have little children behind them). The odor of the burning synthetic that melts into a kind of goo burning into and through the skin is very distinctive. Watching her get taken out to the ambulance while her skin is still black, hanging in odd little shreds while steaming is something that you don't forget. That's why whenever I see the kids being used for political purposes (look at my post on the Arab hippocracy thread - need to go there next) and killed, you will find I tend to have a strong reaction.
It's real to me, just like being shot at is real to you. And if any of you want to accuse me of trolling, I'll supply you with a name and you can check with Shriner's Burn Institute of Boston (she survived and spent over a decade going there), or if they won't help due to privacy I'll give you a date so you can check emergency response records in Middletown, NJ - those should be public record. Kids get maimed and killed in warzones. It's inevitable. The results are HORRIFIC. It does not make the troops who do it monsters, though very often the leaders are. But it does make war something to be entered into very carefully, and I will always be opposed to it unless their is no alternative.
I expect better from you - I expect any civilians that died in this would have most likely died in the first 5 mins trying to run away. Of course some could have been killed some distance from the fighting as their houses got flattened by stray 120mm tank rounds...
). I can't remember the exact story, but they talked about one of the carloads of civilians who got shot at slowly approaching the roadblock, getting shouted at, and then shot. They got confused, they didn't know the language, and now they are dead/wounded (it was a family). That's what is so sad. Getting confused in a warzone (old roadblock vs. new roadblock procedures) can very quickly get civilians killed. 
). I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree, except for one little item. I have not caught any martyr stories, as in, very few if any people are lending it credence except for your usual speculation/justification types (Rush comes to mind).
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