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Mannahnin wrote:

feeder wrote:I'm using "outrage" to mean "angry surprise". We have been at war with a shadowy, nebulous ideology for about ten years now. We have cruise missile'd weddings, strafed funerals, and bombed homes, schools and hospitals. That's fine, we are at war. Just don't act all outraged when the other side does the same. That's what war is.

I think there's a false equivalence being drawn here. Motive does matter. If one side kills an unarmed civilian bystander by accident, and regards this as a tragedy, that is different from when someone else targets an unarmed civilian bystander deliberately, and boasts about it as an accomplishment.

I don't think the article actually has this guy as any sort of traitor planning an attack on civillians. If anything, he's a crazy that was looking to get back on some people that wronged him. It's clear he acted alone rather than 'defected' to any sort of opposing side.

War is an awful thing, and I don't think anyone else in the thread is going to agree that it's "fine" that weddings, funerals, or hospitals have been bombed. Generally these are seen as terrible things, to be avoided if possible in the future.

That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Emperors Faithful wrote:That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Are you stating that our respective militarizes (US, Australia, UK, ect) actively seek to cause civilian casualties?

Ahtman wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Are you stating that our respective militarizes (US, Australia, UK, ect) actively seek to cause civilian casualties?

Yes, yes we do actually have such qualms...

Sckitzo wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Are you stating that our respective militarizes (US, Australia, UK, ect) actively seek to cause civilian casualties?

Yes, yes we do actually have such qualms...

I need a bit of clarification. Are you confusing the fact there are civilian casualties with our soldiers going out of their way to cause civilian casualties?

Emperors Faithful wrote:
Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

In my experience the opposite tends to be true.

The people with no experience with death tend to scoff at its significance.

But, of course, your millage may vary.

Ahtman wrote:

Sckitzo wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Are you stating that our respective militarizes (US, Australia, UK, ect) actively seek to cause civilian casualties?

Yes, yes we do actually have such qualms...

I need a bit of clarification. Are you confusing the fact there are civilian casualties with our soldiers going out of their way to cause civilian casualties?

Wait just typed up a scathing, sarcastic rant then realized you were saying the same thing I was. No man, I was saying we have qualms about killing civilians, and that it's avoided when ever possible.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

War is an awful thing, and I don't think anyone else in the thread is going to agree that it's "fine" that weddings, funerals, or hospitals have been bombed. Generally these are seen as terrible things, to be avoided if possible in the future.

That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

Yeah Emps astute again there mate, I have done 4 tours, (2 Iraqs, 2 Afgahistan) and I really do not care at all if something that only has a Muslim population gets bombed. I mean, im not a total psycho so id steer clear of saying its a "good thing" because im aware of them tactical implications and I actually want us to win the war, something you cannot do if you turn everyone against you.

However on a personal level, I care nothing at all for civilian deaths in either of those nations, I view Islam as the single biggest evil in the entire world, and I think that the less Muslims in it the better. If it wasn't for the ramifications (radicalising even more of them) I would be happy for the strategy to be "bomb them out of the stone age"

Nasty business im sure, but hey ho. I don't have nightmares, addictions or PTSD so i figure I got off lightly.

What is the record for number of suspensions/bans, anyway? I'd be interested to see the league-table.

Albatross wrote:What is the record for number of suspensions/bans, anyway? I'd be interested to see the league-table.

What?

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

feeder wrote:I'm using "outrage" to mean "angry surprise". We have been at war with a shadowy, nebulous ideology for about ten years now. We have cruise missile'd weddings, strafed funerals, and bombed homes, schools and hospitals. That's fine, we are at war. Just don't act all outraged when the other side does the same. That's what war is.

I think there's a false equivalence being drawn here. Motive does matter. If one side kills an unarmed civilian bystander by accident, and regards this as a tragedy, that is different from when someone else targets an unarmed civilian bystander deliberately, and boasts about it as an accomplishment.

I don't think the article actually has this guy as any sort of traitor planning an attack on civillians. If anything, he's a crazy that was looking to get back on some people that wronged him. It's clear he acted alone rather than 'defected' to any sort of opposing side.

You're mixing together two different things; or maybe I was.

I was disputing the idea put forward that IN GENERAL we are "fine" with the deaths of innocents or the bombings of hospitals when it's our guys doing it. I don't think that's true at all. I'll concede that we're more likely to accept it if our side did it, but we still consider it a bad, not-desirable thing, and personnel can get court-martialed for the deaths of innocents, depending on the circumstances.

Regarding this guy in particular, while from what I've seen he wasn't targeting civilians, folks do get outraged when a person betrays an oath and plans the deaths of the people they've sworn to stand beside and defend. Maybe that's childish, but I think a lot of us take such oaths seriously.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

War is an awful thing, and I don't think anyone else in the thread is going to agree that it's "fine" that weddings, funerals, or hospitals have been bombed. Generally these are seen as terrible things, to be avoided if possible in the future.

That's very naive coming from you, Mannahnin.

Of course the general public think both terrorist attacks and civilian bombing are terrible things. The people actually involved and fighting however may not have any such qualms.

I come from a military family. My dad never went into combat (was only Airborne briefly when he was young, then went career later in the Army Reserves, Corps of Engineers), but I've certainly been around a lot of military personnel including guys who've been in combat. In my experience they can be a bit jaded to the horrible things you see and do in war, but they take them seriously, don't enjoy them, and try to avoid them. Matty is the exception, not the rule. And some of that obviously springs from his intolerance/ability to write people off as "other" or virtually inhuman. Guys like that are out there, but they're not the majority of combat personnel, by any means.

Mannahin wrote:Matty is the exception, not the rule. And some of that obviously springs from his intolerance/ability to write people off as "other" or virtually inhuman. Guys like that are out there, but they're not the majority of combat personnel, by any means.

In all honesty, I think it's a Royal Marine thing. I've known a few in my time, and they're all pretty much the same in that regard. I seriously think it must be the way that they're trained - 'cheerfulness in the face of adversity (i.e. unspeakable horror)', and all that...

It's not a front, though. He's really like that, though in real life he comes across as more 'jocular barbarian', as opposed to 'hate-filled face-biting lunatic'.


Matty? You still there, or are you banned again?

Our Marines are pretty similar. There's some nice grim, callous humor of the like in Generation Kill, if you haven't checked it out.

That said, there's a bit of a difference between that and literally not caring whether our soldiers/Marines blow up a hospital or not.

Of course, we have to take into context how Matty means it when he says he doesn't care about the death of anyone he hasn't personally met, He always expresses that in a way which comes off much more offensively than he really means it, as I recall.

Mannahnin wrote:Our Marines are pretty similar. There's some nice grim, callous humor of the like in Generation Kill, if you haven't checked it out.

That said, there's a bit of a difference between that and literally not caring whether our soldiers/Marines blow up a hospital or not.

Well, does anyone really give a gak? Like, really? I mean, people say they care about stuff like that, but I'm convinced that, much of the time, they say it because that's what one is supposed to say. Or, like Emperor's Faithful, they pretend to care about people in third-world countries in order to impress girls with pink hair at their college.

Hama was attacked by the Syrian armed forces the other day. They used tanks on civilians, and lots of people are thought to be dead. Did you give a feth? Or did you just react with bored resignation like I did? Obviously, I'd prefer it if gak like that didn't go down, but in truth I don't really care either way.