Give me a break. While our law seems to define it in an overly broad way, most people do not think of a small missile as a WMD. In practical effect, they do not kill in mass.
I cannot envision any circumstance in which our laws or enforcers would decide that a WMD strike against Americans, to borrow a phrase, "was lawful".
I disagree. On 9/11, as I understand it, the use of missiles against aircraft was seriously considered, though at that point it was already too late. A missile fired from a fighter and a missile fired from a drone are equivalent if we want to call the latter a WMD.
What is harder to envision is our letting a foreign government do it, but that is because we are perfectly capable ourselves. If we had a dysfunctional military, that would be a different story.
I understand that extrajudicial killings such as that which led to the death of 140 civilians quite recently are war crimes.
They should make them practice on their families. Its so much easier to sacrifice other people's families, the core test of your principles should be the willingness to sacrifice your own.
Do you think a POTUS would give the order to shoot down a plane if his wife and daughters were on it? If not, are they of greater value than any other American?
Spidergoat said:
Give me a break. While our law seems to define it in an overly broad way, most people do not think of a small missile as a WMD. In practical effect, they do not kill in mass.
Pandaemoni said:
I disagree. On 9/11, as I understand it, the use of missiles against aircraft was seriously considered, though at that point it was already too late. A missile fired from a fighter and a missile fired from a drone are equivalent if we want to call the latter a WMD.
What is harder to envision is our letting a foreign government do it, but that is because we are perfectly capable ourselves. If we had a dysfunctional military, that would be a different story.
According to the Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from eleven to seventeen, all but one of them from the same family. The headmaster of the local school said seven of the children were handcuffed and then executed. A preliminary investigation by the United Nations reinforced Afghan claims that most of the dead were schoolboys.
I am wondering if the administration went through the proper hoops according to US law. Back in the Vietnam war it was a no-no when the US began bombing in Laos and Cambodia and so these bombing runs were hidden. I do not know what laws apply and how, but I assume presidents must go through some process to begin bombing in a new country.Without the legal sanction of the Pakistani government [which they cannot provide], all American attacks in Pakistan are illegal acts of terrorism
And even with the sanction of the puppets in Kabul, shooting kids under 18 execution style in night time raids, is also a war crime.
Self defense is an act of war. Of course if you're attacked you have to immediately launch a defense and worry about the legal niceties later. But we've had plenty of time to worry about the legal niceties and we haven't done so. The laws of the United States require a declaration of war by Congress before our forces may be committed to fight a war, and no such declaration has been issued. Just as it was not issued against Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan or Iraq (the second time). All of these undeclared wars were unconstitutional and the presidents who prosecuted them should have been impeached.Presumably the US would argue that they constitute legitimate self-defence.
I agree. The crime is that we're there at all.A war crime is defined as . . . . These strikes do not seem to fit the usual definitions of war crimes.
The term "weapons of mass destruction" was first used in 1937 to describe the wanton, large-scale bombing of a city in the Spanish Civil War by a large squadron of aircraft using a huge number of weapons. Since then, due to so-called "advances" in the technology of war, it has been refocused to mean a single weapon capable of killing at least thousands, and especially tens of thousands of people. For a while it was restricted to nuclear weapons. Today it also includes chemical and biological weapons, largely the result of George Bush's fraudulent accusation against Saddam Hussein, who could not possibly have had nuclear weapons, as a pretext for overthrowing his government.What does US law say about allowing foreign agents to use weapons of mass destruction against Americans?
Please watch your language. Misuse of words is a common tactic governments use to inflame emotions. There's no reason we can't behave better than they do.Without the legal sanction of the Pakistani government [which they cannot provide], all American attacks in Pakistan are illegal acts of terrorism.
drone attacks in Pakistan carefully target identified terrorists
The Taliban and Al Qaeda are terrorist organizations because terrorism (extortion using violence of military or paramilitary scope) is one of their stock tools. The people that the U.S. government targets in Pakistan are leaders of these organizations: terrorists by definition.Like whom? Which terrorists are they targeting? Who have these terrorists terrorised?
Until someone convinces me otherwise, I will label as a terrorist supporter anyone who voluntarily associates with someone well known as a terrorist leader, with the obvious exception of priests, physicians, and others bound by oath. As for family members, that's a tough decision, but in practice people are forced by circumstances to share the responsibility for the evil done by their family members, and there's no good way to prevent it. Except to end war, of course.Of the 700 people killed so far, how many were terrorists? How many were their supporters?
If you're saying that they were killed by mistake, the euphemisms of "friendly fire" and "collateral damage" apply. The rules of war require that such deaths be minimized. It's not statistically valid to look at a single incident; what is the overall ratio of collateral damage in these attacks?Of the ten Afghan schoolchildren executed by US Special Forces, how many were terrorists, how many their supporters?
As a pacifist and a libertarian I'm hardly going to defend the illegal, incompetent and/or simply evil actions of my government and its employees, particularly when they cause death to innocents or any other grievous injustice. I am only trying to do my job as the Linguistics Moderator, and moderate the use of terminology, for the sake of clarity in this potentially volatile discussion. So long as everyone uses words like "terrorism" and "war crimes" properly, it's up to you to argue over who's doing what.I think you may want to think about who the terrorist is here. . . .
I think your missing the point of terrorism. its not about killing its about fear. the current definition of terrorism focusing on violence is highly political in nature in my opinionThe Taliban and Al Qaeda are terrorist organizations because terrorism (extortion using violence of military or paramilitary scope) is one of their stock tools..