Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Duskypearls
And I think ALL is fair in love and war. Wars are not about winning popularity contests. They're about complete and utter destruction.
Bullshit. The US isn't that incompetent. If complete and utter destruction were the point, Afghanistan would be cluster bombed with thermobaric bomblets and there wouldn't be a single soldier on the ground. From the very beginning, the enemy has been defined far more constrained than that. Besides, humanity is on a technological level where the idea of complete and utter destruction as the purpose or content of war is materially equivalent to extinction of the species.
Furthermore, all armies have rules of engagement and rules of conduct.
Additionally, there are laws that apply to war. Those protocols of the Geneva Convention to which the USA is actually a signatory include the prohibition against defiling the corpses of enemy combattants. This isn't a question of who crossed the line first, but a question of whether you honor your own commitments, whether you are reliable and worthy of having others' commitments to you honored, and whether you cleave to honor under pressure (if not, one doesn't actually have it, after all, just an illusion that persists while convenient).
However, all of this is just pissing in the wind, like the war itself will remain until the US leaves it to nations that rely on competent, disciplined armed forces instead of bullies with guns and deceived individuals that fail to distance themselves from the same. Because the fact of the matter is that there's something other than killing going on over there, something a lot of the more competent armed forces can do, namely putting an end to an armed conflict without leaving everyone on all sides a lot worse off than when it started.
This isn't war on your home soil. You're not required to do squat. Everyone on our side is there by choice (although for any conscripts, the choice is a hard one, but not one they're exempt from making correctly, according to the protocols that the USA agreed to during the trials against the soldiers of Nazi Germany, where it was established that this responsibility rests solely on the individual in question, regardless of there being repercussions for making the right choice).
The USA decided to remove the Taliban, not to eradicate the Afghan civilian population. That's the game plan.
Right now, the USA has yet again pissed on its allies by proxy, then wiped itself with the game plan.
If you positively want another Vietnam, with no gain, no reason to be there, and nothing to make it seem like anything more than a field trip with good, fun killing to be had for Americas' finest as a means to make the nations and its armed forces look even worse and less professional internationally, by all means, endorse this shit. But if you want anything else out of this clusterfuck, put down the officers in charge and give the enlisted a dishonorable discharge, then make sure the rest of the servicemen know you're looking for soldiers, not juvenile bullies with firesticks in the play pen.
When there's war on your home soil, then you can talk about war as an act of survival, and it'll indeed be a different game altogether. You're feeling that in Afghanistan, after putting some of them in that situation, with the IEDs and all the other measures that any patriot will use against an invading or occupying force. But when you're in a war of aggression with the intent to change the regime of another nation, you don't get to justify pissing on the corpses of people courageously defending themselves against your aggression and then whine about them blowing you to bits. Nor do you get to whine the next time someone rams a couple of planes into a tall building over there, because that's just good customer service: delivering what the customer ordered in a timely manner.
I've no love for the Taliban, and I'm sad about the lives lost on 9/11 and in the aftermath.
But you're still doing your best to make it hard to keep feeling that way.
When our folks lose their temper, they spray paint a few doors, then get pulled from the mission for being unprofessional about their jobs. Yours go collecting body parts, mutilating corpses, abusing prisoners of war, pissing on fallen enemies and generally sowing grave doubts about their ability to do a job well under pressure, casting the whole nation in general and its armed forces in particular in a poor light. That nobody has fragged the bastards yet makes it even worse, showing that your people only do that for selfish reasons, not because it's a question of right or wrong, nor to limit casualties, just to save their own asses or to have their own way. It just continues a pattern of being the shitheads with the biggest stick, at a time when your stick is demonstrably going flaccid.
There's other people going to pay for what you repeatedly do. Mine among them.
So please answer me this: what objective did your servicemen accomplish, or attempt to accomplish?
I mean, if it's do or die and all that, everything for the cause and so forth, then actions have a direction and purpose, an end that- in that view- justifies the means. And for the life of me, I can't think of any ends, unless they were trying to harm the western world in general and the USA in particular. That may well be a worthy ends, from an international perspective, but it's hardly what you're paying them for. Which leaves the actions as something other than means.
That leaves them without any justification, regardless of the standard applied.
It's just random actions, the actions of undisciplined, barbaric savages.
Yanno, those savages popeye would have us piss on.
Wouldn't you prefer to have an army?
I'm not naïve as to war as a brutal thing that features a lot of savagery. We used live Germans to clear our mine fields after WW2. I'm fine with comfort girls. Attirition by psychological factors is useful against nation states in particular. People are more motivated to end brutal wars than 'civilized' wars. However, there is a difference between acting in a savage manner, and being a savage. Also, there's commitments to uphold, allies to think of, and a goal to accomplish. This stuff is treason in that context, plain and simple.
And, incidentally, the Talibs aren't savages. Quite on the contrary. They're far more disciplined and dedicated than the US troops appear to be. They've also got balls of steel, readily taking on superior numbers, even when not pressed. They got numerous veterans of a protracted ground war with the USSR, originally trained and funded by the USA. Whatever their beliefs and politics might be, we should be able to respect that- as warriors- they are fierce, fearless, formidable and very disciplined. That doesn't merit pissing on their corpses. It merits treating them with respect and recognition for that set of qualities, of utmost importance to any serviceman. We should be so lucky as to have more people with those qualities on our side.
I don't agree with their beliefs, culture or politics, but they're not cartoon figures.
Do you defile and debase the animals' carcasses after hunting them?
A corpse can be regarded as a living memory, a memorial or a reminder of the being that once inhabited that body, and it is seen so by a lot of people of a lot of denominations, including several atheists, and the act of defiling it with nobody to even challenge the act is very distasteful.
And, let's face it, they recognize the "sanctity" of a corpse, or else they wouldn't be pissing on them.
Back in the Vietnam War, there were a lot of corpses, and sometimes a corpse might be the most convenient place to sit while eating your rations. That's not what has happened here, and not comparable. It's not a matter of having an overly full bladder, needing somewhere to 'go' and not caring where. These guys knew what they did, and subscribed to the meaning of it. That makes it indisputably both a war crime and, in the logical extreme, an act of treason. They aren't ignorant: they're taking a value they subscribe to, and defiling it as best they can.
There's circumstances where that might be excused. This isn't one of them.
Ship the enlisted men home in disgrace. Execute the officers.
Then send actual soldiers to replace them.
Health,
al-Aswad.
P.S.: The post wasn't intended to be as acerbic as it turned out. The magnitude of idiocy and pollution of the gene pool just gets to me sometimes.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: The actions of a few disgrace all allied troops. - 
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