russ_watters said:
Some people believe the individual right to life trumps all other considerations and can't be revoked for any reason. While I respect the sensitivity, I find it impractical, particularly when dealing with an active mass murderer.
If you meant me, you misunderstood me. I think that UBL should have been tried before a court, and if the death sentence applies (though I'm not a proponent of the DS in general), then he should've been executed. This is not because I value UBL's life so preciously, but to preserve this right for humans in general. Either all humans are such, or not, and the point being, you never know if somebody else who might someday have more power turns that back to you or me.
Al68 said:
I mean exactly what I said to begin with, unequal sovereignty is not the only sense in which nations can be unequal in a relevant way. That is too obvious and has been made far too clear to keep saying over and over.I said nothing resembling that. Are you confusing me with someone else? That would certainly explain a lot.I was not referring to a neutral stance. I was referring to the duties and loyalties of the U.S. President. The U.S. President is not neutral, being neutral would be treasonous.
Well then I misunderstood you. The president shouldn't be neutral, that's for sure.
DR13 said:
First off, don't call me childish. You are trying to invalidate all of my points by name calling.
The innocent people who died in Afghanistan were either killed deliberately by AQ or accidently in the crossfire of war. Obviously the US did not want any civillian deaths and we did what we could to keep them to a minimum, but they are unavoidable in war. Should we never go to war?
Well I called your point childish, not you. Also, it is not about what the US tried or didn't - the civilian deaths caused by US actions, from the point of their relatives etc. don't care about that. And no, war has a purpose and is sometimes needed, that is out of the question for me.
And I don't get how you can say that we killed OBL outside of a war. He declared war on us and continued to propogate that war by recruiting new terrorists and plotting new attacks. Just because he is not on a battlefield does not mean he isn't at war. He was never going to be on a battlefield for the rest of his life (too risky). Should we have just let him live until he died a natural death?
Not outside a war. Outside a
war zone, where rules of war don't apply. Look up the definitions etc. of a war - you actually can't declare a war on individuals nor on a concept. What I say, and I'll repeat that from an earlier post, IF the raid was legitimate, then the raiding unit should've done everything possible without endangering their lives overtly (endangering their lives for a mission is, in the end, part of their job), they should've captured him alive and tried him before a proper court (refer to my first paragraph in this post).
Also, don't compare the killing of OBL (a mass murderer) to "the most gruesome massacres of human history" in which innocent people are killed. They just aren't in the same ballpark.
And yes, it is true that someday someone may regard me as an enemy. However, it would not be because I killed people. I'm not sure what you are getting at. But I will try to reply to your point with a true story: My grandpa was a boy in Poland during WWII (we are jewish). To avoid the camps, my grandpa and his family hid in the wilderness with a large group of people (just like in the movie Defiance). The Nazis labeled them as enemies for no good reason. When they captured a Nazi, do you think they treated him with the respect that they wanted to be treated with? Do you think they conveyed their feelings through words? I'll let you use your imagination for the rest of the stoty. Actions have consequences.
I feel with you, even more than you might think, because I'm a Bosniak and it is pretty well known what the Serbs have done to us. I also understand that your ancestors wouldn't treat a captured Nazi humanly. I know that my relatives wouldn't and didn't do; the same in our case.
The Serbs attacked us also for actually no good reason, because there was not much to gain, and for the people actually involved in combat, the reasons were incited hatred, nationalism and racism. They had actual concentration camps, too, some of them were called rape camps by the guarding soldiers themselves. Some of my near relatives spent time in a concentration camp, some where killed in combat, and some where plainly executed because a Serb patrol found them.
My point is, the Serbs are, in the end, humans. Some of their combatants fighting against my relatives personally where our neighbors next house for 40 years before. Why was that possible? Because of dehumanization. They ceased to view Bosniaks as humans. In turn, Bosniaks reacted the same. The Nazis specifically degraded the Jews, calling them subhuman etc. In turn, a captured Nazi wasn't a human anymore, he was only a Nazi pig that could be killed for revenge. That is the point I'm trying to bring forth. What should've been done? A proper trial. Like the Nuremberg trials. I wouldn't protest a second if such a proper court sentenced the worst of them to death. However, a fair trial should be granted.
Now if someday some enemy turns on you, it doesn't matter what you personally did or did not do. You are part of the enemy mass for them and won't count as a human anymore. I suspect it doesn't matter for you if they shoot you because you killed someone on their side or because you happen to be what you are (Jewish, and probably American, and/or of Polish descent? Can't make an assumption here)? Dead is dead.
Call me a dreamer if you want, but also view back through history. We've come pretty far, seeing what people did many decades and centuries before, because such do-gooders had dreams about how humans should act ethically.
Instead of a 2,000 pound bomb then and without notice - we should inform them we're going to blow it up now with a smaller device.