Sources: U.S. kills Cole suspect
- Thread starter HeXp£Øi±
- Start date
this is the war deal, if a soldier dies why should you care?, they were fighting.
I care if an al qaeda member dies just as much as i care if an US marine dies.
"Surrender or you'll get shot", is something each side can shout to the "bad guys", therefore, if any of them decided to not surrender, go out there, fight and die, well, they had the initial choice to surrender, don't you think?
that's why i support diplomacy, it avoids many situations.
I care if an al qaeda member dies just as much as i care if an US marine dies.
"Surrender or you'll get shot", is something each side can shout to the "bad guys", therefore, if any of them decided to not surrender, go out there, fight and die, well, they had the initial choice to surrender, don't you think?
that's why i support diplomacy, it avoids many situations.
Aunty Em
Well-Known Member
You're missing the point. It was an unmanned plane and they identified the man AFTER they'd blown up him and 5 other unnamed people. Looking at what happend because of wrong intelligence reports during the war in afganistan do you trust them? I don't. How do we know there weren't children in that car? Or other innocent people? Because the report doesn't say whether there were or not and you can bet your bottem dollar that after afganistan if anything like that happens again you aren't going to hear about it.
Have you ever heard of laser marking a target? You can be sure there was a ground force there somewhere with a laser on that car, after identifying who was inside of it. The CIA, even at it's most arrogant is not going to blow up a car with six people in it, in the middle of an Oil Rich Province without knowing who is in the car.
Well, it's good to question the government at every turn. but there comes a point when common sense has to win out. What would have happened had the people in the car not been Al Quieda? We would have just killed six Yemmen civilians. Do you really think we would have blown up a car with a drone on a possibility? You can be sure there was a positive ID made, by someone.
Aunty Em
Well-Known Member
Ardsgaine said:Churchill to Hitler: "Throw down your rockets, panzers, machine guns, etc, and come out with your hands up!"
Hitler to Churchill: "Come and get me, copper!"
It's war, Aunty. It's played by a completely different set of rules.
Maybe I just don't like the way the rules have changed. ?(
unclehobart
New Member
Revenge would be more along the lines of carpet bombing Mecca. Since the assault of innocent civilians was conducted against the core of the western financial world in the name of Islam, an assault on innocent civilians at the core of the Middle Eastern religious world would be just about tit for tat.
Its very hard to conduct a high morals Marquis of Queensbury fight when your enemy is sliding through the shadows and being hid by sympathetic governments. Yemen has been a non cooperative near enemy state for the last 15 years. The terrorists hid there because they knew that the government simply would not touch them. The old school method back in the days of Abu Nidal and before was to just sit back and let intel watch and wait for them to cross out into 'fair game' territory and attempt to pick them up for due process. They hid in Afghanistan and Yemen under the old assumption that we wouldnt have the stomach to step on others toes to go after them. The rules have changed and fair warning has been issued. The major powers, including China and Russia are sympathetic on the inside because they are also targets in the long run. France protests because of the large Muslim population that settled from the old North African colonies. Whenever France doesn't speak out against the rest, bombs start going off in trashcans in the malls and touristy areas. France is caught between a rock and a hard place. The other nations have a bit more leverage.
99% of what goes on is behind closed doors. For all we know there have been months and months of negotiations and cajoling with the Yemen government to at least detain the suspects. When weve had enough and the final demands are ignored ... you cant say they didnt at least suspect that such a thing wasn't within the greater realm of possibilities.
Its very hard to conduct a high morals Marquis of Queensbury fight when your enemy is sliding through the shadows and being hid by sympathetic governments. Yemen has been a non cooperative near enemy state for the last 15 years. The terrorists hid there because they knew that the government simply would not touch them. The old school method back in the days of Abu Nidal and before was to just sit back and let intel watch and wait for them to cross out into 'fair game' territory and attempt to pick them up for due process. They hid in Afghanistan and Yemen under the old assumption that we wouldnt have the stomach to step on others toes to go after them. The rules have changed and fair warning has been issued. The major powers, including China and Russia are sympathetic on the inside because they are also targets in the long run. France protests because of the large Muslim population that settled from the old North African colonies. Whenever France doesn't speak out against the rest, bombs start going off in trashcans in the malls and touristy areas. France is caught between a rock and a hard place. The other nations have a bit more leverage.
99% of what goes on is behind closed doors. For all we know there have been months and months of negotiations and cajoling with the Yemen government to at least detain the suspects. When weve had enough and the final demands are ignored ... you cant say they didnt at least suspect that such a thing wasn't within the greater realm of possibilities.
HeXp£Øi±
Well-Known Member
Maybe we should take a public opinion poll before we ever kill any terrorists. You know, when we see them driving down the desert have fox and cnn do live callins while the cia listens for a majority vote. Better yet why don't we just let them(terrorists) walk all over us and do nothing. That way we can be sure of never accidentaly killing civilians. These people specifically reside in places like Yemen and behind civilians so that we can't get to them. If we actually sent in troops to arrest them i can guarantee you that there would be more civilian casualties then there currently are.
Ardsgaine
Active Member
Aunty Em said:
This is a different type of war than we are used to fighting. The terrorists attempt to occupy a shadowy ground between the armed forces of a government and a criminal organization. In some areas they operate with the tacit agreement or active support of certain governments. In other places, they operate outside the law in terrorist cells. Then there are some places where law has broken down to the extent that they can carve out a territory for themselves in which they are the law.
Yemen appears to fall into the latter category. Apparently, the government has no control over the Yemeni tribesmen who are supporting the Al Qaida terrorists. They are cooperating with us to fight the terrorists, but their people aren't cooperating with them. The choice was to either go in with guns blazing in an attempt to "arrest" Al Harethi, which had already been tried, or to do what we did and take him out with a targeted assassination.
I should point out that in the past we have never considered the soldiers of other countries to be criminals. We killed them or took them prisoner for the duration of the war, but we didn't arrest them and sentence them to prison terms or execute them. The trials at Nuremberg were for acts that went beyond the waging of war. They took place at the end of the war after the enemy had surrendered. When the terrorists have been defeated, then we can decide which of the survivors we want to put on trial for war crimes. Since terrorism is primarily the waging of war by committing atrocities against civilians, I assume that will be all of them.
MitchSchaft
New Member
Wasn't that drone flown by the air force?
They need A Few Good Men
.
Luis said:
I believe we all support diplomacy. Diplomacy is only as good as the signers. It only avoids situations when countries/combatants want that.
Auny Em said:
Few distrust the govmint more than me. However, would you be more inclined to have faith in Iraqs "free" press? How about Yemens democratically elected parliment? Maybe our enemies have more trustworthy politicians and military than ours? Lemme think long & hard on that......nah.
Aunty Em also said:
That is the problem with fighting these thugs. There are no rules. With no rules comes allowing yourself to become a target of your last targets defenders. American, hell UN, intelligence is not stupid. We, the people, don't always get teh whole story. I doubt there have been many KIA/MIA/captured that were not involved, at some point.
"Either you're with us, or you're against us" was pretty clear. Al Qieda is not on our side.
Gato_Solo
Out-freaking-standing OTC member
MitchSchaft said:
Wasn't that drone flown by the air force?
They need A Few Good Men
The drone was flown by the CIA. A marine couldn't fly a kite over Yemen without looking like a target.
BTW...You know why the Marines are looking for a few good men? Because they haven't gotten any yet.
Aunty Em...Here is your source for how we did it.
HomeLAN
New Member
She's got a really good sentiment there, and the principles behind it are excellent. Unfortunately, they are simply unworkable in practice when you're involved in a war.
That's the central point that I think you're either missing or don't want to acknowledge, Aunty. These aren't civilians we're going after. We're not using police to capture them. These are miltary operations in the conduct of an overall war effort. Yes, the rules change. Yes, occasionally mistakes will be made and civilians (or even friendly troops) will be hit by mistake. That's a shame.
On the other hand, if we do nothing, more civilians will die ON PURPOSE! This is not a workable option. You don't have to like that the rules have changed (hell, I don't, my own family's in more danger now than 2 years ago), but the fact remains that they have changed, and they had to change.
Until meaningful progress is made in this effort (and IMO, that's going to include these types of operations as well as the removal of some opposition governments), you might want to get used to it.
*edited for typos - I hate having a cold.