Should America/NATO support Syrian resistance the way it did in Libya?

There's nothing to understand, it doesn't belong on this planet. I've been beaten by thugs bad enough to need reconstructive surgery, but I swear it didn't make me as ragingly mad as this story, not even close. If I had a gun and a magical teleportation device there'd be carnage.

I really just think I dont see it Halfwise. I mean they are human beings. They are on the same planet as me, they live in the same time period as me.
But that poor kid, he must have been terrified and they could still look a child in the face and then do that to him in fron tof his family, over a name in a single sentence?
I get the spread terror bit, I get the power through fear stuff, but I dont get how human beings can do that sort of thing to anyone let alone a child. I dont get the complete lack of empathy required, that above all makes it seem inhuman to me, but that's a word that's just an excuse because they are human.
But human in a way I just cant understand and makes me wonder if as a species we are really worth much.

halfwise wrote:There's nothing to understand, it doesn't belong on this planet. I've been beaten by thugs bad enough to need reconstructive surgery, but I swear it didn't make me as ragingly mad as this story, not even close. If I had a gun and a magical teleportation device there'd be carnage.

I like the way you think.

Sadly I think I do understand, at least partly. It was a shock to me when I first realized that many humans don't put a significant value on human life. It seems as if this respect for human life that we often take for granted isn't hardwired into us. It's something we've learned, and apparently can easily forget.

I don't even want to post the details on this guy. Too horrible. I'm not a fan of the death penalty, but I could look the other way in this case.



The American soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians during night-time raids on two villages last year has pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

Staff Sgt Robert Bales admitted 16 counts of premeditated murder and other charges. He pleaded not guilty to one charge, impeding an investigation.

Bales, 39, was charged over the March 2012 attacks on two villages near the remote base in southern Afghanistan where he was posted.

Most of the victims were women and children, and some of the bodies were burned; relatives have expressed anger at the notion Bales will escape execution for one of the worst atrocities of the Afghanistan war.

At least some justice is being done in this case, though if I was one of the population I'd probably feel the military was being too lenient as well.

But I can at least understand a single person committing atrocious acts - it's the groupthink thing that drives me crazy.

there are bound to be bad eggs in the military, but there is a system of justice, however lenient behind him, who will call him to account for his acts. those guys who killed that boy will never be called to account, they are sanctioned and applauded by their superiors. I hope one day ordinary people realize they are being whipped into submission by evil men, and rebel.

looks like its started then, Rivers of Blood,

Muswell Hill Mosque Set On Fire In Suspected EDL Attack

''Counter terror police are investigating whether a fire that completely destroyed a mosque in North London was started deliberately.

The building in Muswell Hill, which houses the Al-Rahma Islamic Centre and Somali Bravanese Welfare Association, was razed to the ground by the blaze.
Police said they were treating the blaze as suspicious amid reports that EDL graffiti was found daubed on the charred building in what could be another revenge attack for the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich
Muslim leaders have expressed fears over the "massive spike" in Islamophobic abuse following the butchering of a solider in Woolwich. Grimsby mosque was targeted with firebombs in the wake of the attacks and anti-Muslim graffiti has appeared in graveyards and mosques have had their windows broken.

Mrs Figg wrote: I hope one day ordinary people realize they are being whipped into submission by evil men, and rebel.

Halfwise wrote: it's the groupthink thing that drives me crazy.

And I believe this is at the root of the evil. I feel it too. We want to hit back against evil, and at least as hard as we were hit. Crazy is a good word for it. But I would bet anything those young men felt they were the ones who had been whipped, and felt entirely justified in killing because people they loved had been killed. Our human minds far too easily justify evil by saying "I didn't start this. He did."

You see this everywhere on earth, at every period in history. It actually seems to define our history. People living in peace with their neighbors for generations. Then a difference of opinion. Once the first death happens, the fragile fabric of our civility to each other is torn. Then the crazy rage that's been lurking in us surfaces and all Hell breaks loose. Think Spanish Civil War, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. Think Congo, Southeast Asia, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Latin America, American Revolution, French Revolution. The list would be a library in itself.

These are your Rivers of Blood, Mrs Figg. I just hope that you can patch the rip over there before it spreads too far.

halfwise wrote:At least some justice is being done in this case, though if I was one of the population I'd probably feel the military was being too lenient as well.

But I can at least understand a single person committing atrocious acts - it's the groupthink thing that drives me crazy.

I'm going to break down and post one small, tame quote from the Wikipedia article on Sgt. Bales one man Kandahar Massacre, just to compare it to the Syrian shooting:

"Eleven members of Abdul Samad's family were killed in a house in Najiban village, including his wife, four girls between the ages of 2 and 6, four boys between 8 and 12, and two other relatives.[8] According to a witness, "he dragged the boys by their hair and shot them in the mouth".[43] At least three of the child victims were killed by a single shot to the head of each.[38] Their bodies were then set on fire. "

It goes on and on and on....

Because he confessed to it, he gets a relatively comfortable cell with free meals. HE DIDN'T EVEN APOLOGIZE!!! Explain the justice please. Exactly who do why do we have death penalties in the military if not for this?

Not to excuse anything here David but I think the difference is we (as in society) trained this man and sent him to commit acts of violence in our name (which is what soldiering is when you remove all the gloss), so there is perhaps a sense that society played a role in his acts, or has some responsibility for them- we asked him to kill for us and for whatever reasons he went crazy and did this- so his treatment reflects I think in part the fact he may never have committed any such heinous acts had he not been a soldier in the first place.

That argument is perilously close to "He's on our team, so we have to defend him, right or wrong."

This man was trained for very specific rules of engagement. He was NOT trained to murder little children in front of their unarmed families, and then desecrate their bodies.

I'm not trying to vilify Sgt. Bales, but if we are talking about justice the points of view of the victims need to be a major part of the discussion. Otherwise we make a mockery of the term.

If justice was the goal, once his guilt was determined Sgt Bales should have been turned over to the local community for punishment. Isn't that what we all expect of justice?

I think if it's our own government, we excuse leniency (it could be me!). Serial killers are rarely executed. In fact the death penalty is very unevenly applied in this country.

But we want harsh punishments if it's a foreign government. The Afghans have every reason to want the death penalty, and perhaps we can use the complicity Petty talks about as an excuse to give it to them, rather than as an excuse to hold back.

It might give the Afghans a reason to stand up to the thugs that are running around if they feel the foreign soldiers deal strongly with their own.

Agreed. Double standards buy us a lot more enemies than friends. As I've said before, I wish the USA wasn't a "superpower". But since we don't seem to have a choice in the matter, I'd think we owe it to everybody to hold ourselves to at least as high a standard as we expect of others.

"He's on our team, so we have to defend him, right or wrong."- David

Close but not the same. Rather that we defend him automatically because he is ours, its more we defend him because we may feel some responsibility and therefore guilt that we might have helped make him.

Yes he was trained to only kill within specific parameters but we havent seen what he my have seen, felt the consistent minute by minute pressure of just being there knowing people would tear you apart alive given half a chance.
Again this is not to excuse anything, but to perhaps explain why we find it harder to just condemn him to death.

"If justice was the goal, once his guilt was determined Sgt Bales should have been turned over to the local community for punishment. Isn't that what we all expect of justice?"

Not my idea of justice, sounds like mob rule.
One of the few things humans have been smart enough to realise is that we are terrible people taken all in, and therefore need rules that are above or beyond us but agreed upon to keep us in check. And that dispassionately evaluate the facts.
Justice is for him to stand trial before his own peers and laws, for all available evidence to be heard and then his peers will judge him according to the law.
Handing him over to people full of rightful, but not helpful emotional needs for revenge to do with what they will is not what Id call justice.

Yep, handing him over is not the way to go. Though 90% of the time I don't agree with the death penalty (once applied no appeal will bring you back, and the Innocence Project in the USA has demonstrated just how poor our justice system is in judging guilt) this is one case where I think it would be the right thing to do.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Not my idea of justice, sounds like mob rule.
One of the few things humans have been smart enough to realise is that we are terrible people taken all in, and therefore need rules that are above or beyond us but agreed upon to keep us in check. And that dispassionately evaluate the facts.
Justice is for him to stand trial before his own peers and laws, for all available evidence to be heard and then his peers will judge him according to the law.
Handing him over to people full of rightful, but not helpful emotional needs for revenge to do with what they will is not what Id call justice.

OK then. Let's think of an English soldier of a past century who commits a crime against a Scottish citizen. Are you saying it wouldn't be justice to punish him under Scottish law because of the emotional state of Scotland? That he needs to be tried by Englishmen who can more properly appreciate and sympathize with his prejudices? That a white man should have a white jury? The jury of peers is a difficult concept to reconcile some times....

Just to clarify, I wasn't really proposing to hand him over, though we've often asked for people to be handed over to us. I'm just questioning what Justice is in this case.

What would be justice if a Muslim killed 16 American people? Death, obviously.

Rather than take a past example I can imagine it now, we have english soldiers based in Scotland of course as part of the British Army.
If one of them was to do what the American soldier did he would I am pretty certain be tried under military law, not Scottish Law- neither has a death penalty.
I would think it likely however that he would serve his sentence in Scotland.

If however it comes to extraditing a Scots offender to another country, even when we have an extradition order, we have a get out clause on countries with death penalties- either we dont send them or the death penalty is waved as an available punishment.

I think this is important- even if someone commits a terrible massacre like this elsewhere- if they will treat him no better than he treated his victims then justice loses its moral authority to judge.
It cannot both hold the right to judge others and yet fall below those standards in its pronouncements. Not ideally anyway.
I may be biased however as I have grown up in country where this premise is one of the founding stones of our justice system.

And if you can't determine justice that satisfies both sides you should bring the case to an International Court. That's why we have International Courts. For international justice.

Agreed on that Ally.
If only they had the authority to bring countries governments to Court to sort things out before the wars start.

Well the United States being the United States, it ignores the authority of most International organisations.

But if we're talking equal justice, if a mass murder is committed on american soil by a foreign national, do they send them back to their own country to stand trial for that crime? No. Because America is a very unjust place.

Exactly Ally. As the world gets smaller the number of contradictory overlapping legal systems increases, and it's only going to get worse. But I don't believe the US acknowledges the International Court to have jurisdiction over US military. I see why they think that's necessary, but I think in the long run it's a big mistake.

In this case there is Afghan law, sharia law, military law, and the US civil law the soldier was raised under. Interestingly, all allow the death penalty for a crime like this, but the details of the process are different.

"As the world gets smaller the number of contradictory overlapping legal systems increases"- David

A fact highlighted with the snooping thing in the US- Obama reassured Americans by telling them only foreigners were being targeted- now the foreigners are demanding to know what America has been doing regards their citizens- and is doing something which would be illegal in those countries- and if so why should it be legal for America to do it?

Pettytyrant101 wrote: Obama reassured Americans by telling them only foreigners were being targeted-

I for one am NOT reassured!