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WTF is mintpressnews?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
So do Soldiers.

Is it National Talk Out Of Your Ass Day or something?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Soldiers have never bombed civilian targets?

I'm being rhetorical, of course they have.

And your contention is that soldiers do this to sow terror and rule through fear?

This'll be fun. Could you provide some examples?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
My contention is that soldiers blow up civilian targets when it benefits them to do so- whether that goal is "to sow terror" or "to win a war" is arbitrary nonsense people tell themselves so the actions of their Country don't keep them up at night.

This will be fun indeed. Your retort?

My retort's pretty simple:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because Terrorists target civilian populations to sow terror and rule through fear

So do Soldiers.

You claimed that soldiers target civilian populations to sow terror and rule through fear. You've realized you can't actually back that statement up with modern examples, so you're trying to back away from it. Which is smart, but it would have been far smarter to actually think it through before you went all glib.

Because, of course, the US military doesn't target civilian populations. Civilians do tend to get killed in warzones, as has been the case since warzones came about, but we go out of our way to keep the number as low as possible. The other guys? They go out of their way to make that number as high as possible. You can take your apologist nonsense elsewhere.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Okay, I was wrong to have not clipped off those last 6 words in my quote. Thanks for calling me out on that, bro. You really got me.

I'll apologize if requesting that you say what you actually mean instead of demanding that we try to make some sense from your wild claims is asking too much.

Yeah, that's crap. When you deliberately target a civilian area you're targeting civilians. That it's "for the war effort" is arbitrary nonsense people tell themselves so the actions of their Country don't keep them awake at night.

Why do you keep capitalizing country, out of curiosity?

And no, there's actually a difference. I can tell you've spent far more time both studying and actually at war than I, so I'll do my best to make this quick: trying to minimize civilian casualties is different from trying to maximize civilian casualties. If one side is trying to minimize civilian casualties and one side is trying to maximize civilian casualties, it takes a really special sort of person to claim they're both actually trying to maximize civilian casualties.

Trying to paint me as an "apologist" is cute.

I think it's more unfortunate that I didn't have to try very hard.

I don't condone terrorism; I don't condone any sort of deliberate attack on civilians. I'm just objective enough to realize that if deliberately killing civilians is enough to put you in special hell, terrorists aren't going to be alone in it.

Well, rest easy, little buddy. We haven't deliberately gone after civilians for quite some time.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
For the same reason I smell my socks before I put them on. Why do you look up before getting in the shower every morning?

I don't do either of those things, and I'm getting a little concerned.

I know there's a distinction. I've said as such multiple times in this discussion, in fact. That distinction is meaningless within the context of this discussion, however. Again, that the US military goes through great lengths to pick enemy soldiers as its preferred target over civilians does not change or excuse the fact that the US military has no compulsion with unleashing hell on civilian locations if it deems doing so as necessary, as history has shown. So holding some kind of special hatred for one group of people for targeting blowing up civilians is dumb. I'm glad you've fallen back from the hardline stance of "the US doesn't deliberately target civilians" to "the US doesn't deliberately target civilians often", though.

No. The distinction is, "The US doesn't deliberately target civilians." Find me one example from the GWOT where it's been our policy to go, "Well, due to the lack of viable enemy targets, we're just going to hit some civilians." Or anything even approaching that. That civilians are sometimes killed in attacks on legitimate targets is unfortunate, but is a reality of war. The number of times we've opted not to "unleash hell" because civilian casualties would be too high in spite of having a valid target is large enough for us to have video of it on YouTube.

Here's what you need to understand: you're arguing that guys who deliberately target civilians are the same as guys who do not, and who not only do not, but who go out of their way to minimize civilian casualties. You're doing so from a standpoint of, apparently, a complete lack of knowledge about anything remotely relevant. Keep it up, though. LordofHats and I don't often end up on the same side of an argument. It's refreshing.

 d-usa wrote:
Soldiers (or more specifically the military) targeting civilians to create terror or fear is a legitimate strategy that we have used in the past though. Isn't that the basic idea behind "total war"?

I don't think we have done it on that scale since WW2 though.

Nah, hasn't really been a thing since precision bombing became a reality.

There were multiple reasons cited for the war in every resolution on it I've ever seen, and the absence of nukes doesn't mean an absence of WMDs. It's a pleasingly broad definition.

But yeah. Some people just aren't ready for democracy, I guess.

 dæl wrote:
The US ratified the UN Charter, so its one of the few international laws that does apply to you guys.

When we choose for it to, sure.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if our given pretext for invading Iraq was wrong, it was still the right thing to do.

If anything, complain that we didn't use any of the laundry list of "legitimate" reasons for invasion.

We did, though. The resolution authorizing force against Iraq didn't solely consist of the line, "They have WMDs."

There were, if memory serves, seven or eight separate reasons cited. Everyone - administration, opposition, media - shorthanded the entire thing down to WMDs, because it was the sexiest and the easiest to talk about.

 dæl wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
The resolution authorizing force against Iraq

Humour me, what Resolution was that again?

This one.

 dæl wrote:
Cheers, was any evidence ever found linking al qaeda to Iraq? Or any of the terrorist groups mentioned? And what do Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have to do with anything? You surely can't use that as a justification for an invasion?

You can use anything you want as a justification for invasion.

 dæl wrote:
So would you admit that the justification was a series of baseless accusations about terrorism combined with some nod to chemical weapons given to Saddam by the US and human rights abuses, that were mostly carried out while Saddam had US backing?

No, but that's because I read my own link.