I wish I had what you are high on unless it's life, I already got that and I'd not want to steal from the aged.

Rimshot, yo!

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I wish I had what you are high on unless it's life, I already got that and I'd not want to steal from the aged.

Rimshot, yo!

Just years of accumulated crust. Highly adaptable stuff, crust is.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
No, really, do go on.... I long for the lucid perspective of a wannabe spook.

I do not want what I haven't got.

Sinead!

Gesundheit!

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by BlueShift:Um... the original article was all about how we're supposedly breaking said rules by bombing too much. I suppose that one does have to assume that there are rules to argue about whether or not they are being broken.

I forgot this part, apologies. My point here is not that one cannot make "rules" but that they are meaningless. I mean, look at the very constuction of your own sentence which parallells the issue: "...breaking the rules by bombing too much." That's an absurd remark. Like, a little bombing is OK, just don't, you know guys, over do it? The US has killed more civillians than Al Qaeda according to most "documentation" but we are to applaud ourselves for showing restraint for not having a Mei Lai ever month? Congratualtions, we didn't kill too many inncoent people, everyone gets a medal!?!?

Okay.

There ARE rules. We made them up and most of us come from countries that have ratified them by treaty and legislation. Some of the big ones come from the Geneva Conventions if memory serves, but there are others.

I can't quote them chapter and verse, I've only read parts of them in other peoples' writings. But the quotes tend to concentrate on a requirement of combatants to refrain from taking actions that will put non-combatants at risk unnecessarily.

Bombing has its place in military actions. But only in certain circumstances, which I will not attempt to define other than to say they should under no circumstances be utilized in densely populated areas. Which of course they are in Iraq, with chilling regularity.

Those who violate the terms of those treaties should, and must if their nation wishes to retain credibility as morally superior, be punished. Whether it's leaving wounded enemy combatants to bleed to death, abusing prisoners, intentionally firing on civilians or detaining people without just cause or trial, allowing the perpetrators to get away with those actions is ultimately self-defeating.

We're seeing the consequences of the failure to police our own troops effectively in Iraq: It's harder for our home populations to rationalize our presence in the middle east as liberators when we learn of atrocities committed in our name and it hurts the morale of the soldiers in the field to believe that we lump them in with the scum that commit those crimes; it undermines whatever good will we might have had in the occupied nation to see those crimes ignored and covered up (and occurring regularly) and encourages them either to refuse to cooperate with, or to actively resist our efforts; it becomes increasingly hard to maintain our stance of moral superiority in world politics when our fellow nations know full well that we make no sincere efforts to punish those who breach the most important pieces of international law.

The rules we make serve as a mission statement and they reflect how we see our societies. They absolutely ARE enforceable. The fact that we fail to do so is a damning commentary on the actual nature of our societies.

The history of humanity includes as a major, perhaps even defining theme, our attempts to rationalize not just our understanding of nature but our instinct-derived actions.

Until we are actually rewriting the human genes that inspire the winds of war that strip the leaves off the human tree, strictly rationalized memes like martial law are the very best humanity can do to mitigate our bloodthirst for organized mechanized mass murder.

Yeah! Witness is back! Let the ambiguous penis jokes (re)commence!

One: Rules are not enforceable, that is an illusion perpetrated by people who obey rules willingly. Anyone with a serious mind to break rules of any sort will not be stopped, Period.Laws do not effectively legislate human behgavior, rules do not effectively curb human want. Never have, never will. Inculcating idologies of various sorts, does, in some way do this.

Still, no one is addressing what I am talking about. A nation can make up any fucking rules for any fucking thing it wants. it has little effect on what actually goes on in or by said nation.

Maybe I have not made my point well, but I seriously believe that a belief in rules or law or any other such as a fundamental principle of man's decision making is a delusion. I do not see it.

People don't kill their neighbors because it is illegal, they don't kill their neighbors, because at the end of the day, they find it more frightening to go through with it. People who do, simply do not find it frightening. The law rarely enters the picture.

This illusion that the laws of man has some sort of control over the destiny of the species is just flat out wrong.

Can you make rules as in wiriting things down on papaer and punishing people who don't follow the paper? Sure, but that doiesn't have efficacy in my opinion.

Man's history has reamined relatively static in the last 10,000 or so years. If rules had efficay I would expect that to not be the case.

And don't bring up the eradiaction of slavery. We don't have slaves anymore not because we (people) are just and moral folk, we don't have slaves because of the fucking industrial revolution.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
One: Rules are not enforceable, that is an illusion perpetrated by people who obey rules willingly. Anyone with a serious mind to break rules of any sort will not be stopped, Period.Laws do not effectively legislate human behgavior, rules do not effectively curb human want. Never have, never will. Inculcating idologies of various sorts, does, in some way do this.

Still, no one is addressing what I am talking about. A nation can make up any fucking rules for any fucking thing it wants. it has little effect on what actually goes on in or by said nation.

Maybe I have not made my point well, but I seriously believe that a belief in rules or law or any other such as a fundamental principle of man's decision making is a delusion. I do not see it.

People don't kill their neighbors because it is illegal, they don't kill their neighbors, because at the end of the day, they find it more frightening to go through with it. People who do, simply do not find it frightening. The law rarely enters the picture.

This illusion that the laws of man has some sort of control over the destiny of the species is just flat out wrong.

Can you make rules as in wiriting things down on papaer and punishing people who don't follow the paper? Sure, but that doiesn't have efficacy in my opinion.

Man's history has reamined relatively static in the last 10,000 or so years. If rules had efficay I would expect that to not be the case.

You are grossly oversimplifying in servitude to a principle that has enraptured you. We human beings are enormously influenced by environment. (This is why we work so enormously hard at influencing our environment.)

Legal structures are a very large component of our environment. Including those inculcated ideologies you mentioned.

Laws are not invincible. Neither is anything, except maybe quantum principles and E=MC2.

quote:

People don't kill their neighbors because it is illegal, they don't kill their neighbors, because at the end of the day, they find it more frightening to go through with it. People who do, simply do not find it frightening. The law rarely enters the picture.

Consider me one of those rare instances. I'da killed lots of folks if I thought I could do so and evade the long arm of the law.

Lotsa folks need killing in my opinion.

First, we can enforce laws, but as a society we simply choose not to.

The military could have investigated the Haditha massacre but chose not to. The evidence wasn't just available, it was easily available if they wanted it. Instead they downplayed the irregularities in the reports and it wasn't until it was publicized in the media that even the half-hearted effort they've directed toward the case was put in.

Second, some people are deterred from breaking laws for fear of punishment. It works for minor infractions as well as large ones, as nihilistic as the world may be there are plenty of people who adjust their driving style when they reach the point where one more infraction will result in having their license canceled.

Likewise, if people saw serious action being taken against the abusers Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay it would deter some people who otherwise might otherwise have behaved improperly when the opportunity arose.

Clearly nothing is going to dissuade a narcissistic nutcase who thinks he's doing God's will by taking a gun with him when he climbs the bell tower, but reasonable people are influenced by the people around them as well as the actions and policies of the authorities who claim to represent them.

Third, slavery may have been outlawed but it was never really abolished. The abhorrent trade is practiced in a big way in much of the world, barely beneath the radar of regular folks. I read a National Geographic article a few years ago that mentioned that in the same year the article was written three significant 'busts' had taken place in Florida where illegal immigrants were being (even more illegally) detained and forced to work by the people smugglers who had brought them across the border doing menial work picking crops and such. This is without mentioning the far more disturbing accounts from those forced into the sex-industry against their will.
Involuntary servitude or use in the sex trades

You seem to confuse an unwillingness to take action with an inability to do so. You also don't seem to see the distinction between law enforcement and deterrence.

Enforcing the law is to actively stop a crime in action and/or to prosecute the guilty parties. Deterrence is to take measures that you hope will discourage people from committing the proscribed action.

Deterrence may or may not be effective, but it's impossible to accurately gauge it's effects. There are no statistics I'm aware of that convincingly point to the number of people who weren't killed because the prospective killer chickened out at the thought of being gang-raped in prison. Nor do they exist for the number of attacks that do not occur because people simply don't want to risk the possibility that the 'victim' is able effectively defend themselves.

Finally, would you explain from where you pulled the slavery issue from? I can't remember if I read every post on this thread, so if you can point me to the one it becomes relevant I'd appreciate it.

quote:

The military could have investigated the Haditha massacre but chose not to. The evidence wasn't just available, it was easily available if they wanted it. Instead they downplayed the irregularities in the reports and it wasn't until it was publicized in the media that even the half-hearted effort they've directed toward the case was put in

Let's break down the monolith a little, shall we? I understand that good information about this was hard to come by, so I hope I'm successfully resisting the urge to flip out over this.

Elements of the military may have neglected this crime, yes. I'll refrain from commenting on the facts there much because I have to. If they neglected it, then yes, they're fuck-ups who should face some consequences.

But other elements of the military busted their asses and put their lives in considerable danger to investigate that incident. They were literally taking crime scene photos, digging bullets out of walls, collecting shell casings and scraping DNA off furniture while people were shooting at them. At that point, most cops would have run the fuck away, but these guys did not.
The fact that the case fell apart (and there are many points at which any criminal case can fall apart) later does not mean that the entire military didn't give a fuck and never did anything to investigate.

Since Haditha there have been other (lesser) incidents which have been much more successfully investigated and prosecuted. That one was a turning point.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
And don't bring up the eradiaction of slavery. We don't have slaves anymore not because we (people) are just and moral folk, we don't have slaves because of the fucking industrial revolution.

And, nonetheless, there were just and moral folk who agitated against slavery.

quote:

Still, no one is addressing what I am talking about. A nation can make up any fucking rules for any fucking thing it wants. it has little effect on what actually goes on in or by said nation.

Maybe I have not made my point well, but I seriously believe that a belief in rules or law or any other such as a fundamental principle of man's decision making is a delusion. I do not see it.

The thing is: by that standard, what can possibly be addressed? You obviously have all the answers, having handily denied human agency in the face of mass human behaviors.

_{he knows everything, thats what's so uber about the dawg....He can know it all and still be wrong!}

...And I seriously believe that a belief in belief is a way to be as wrong as possible while still knowing it all.

My understanding of military procedures is at best vague and ill-defined, when it comes to criminal investigation it's even less reliable.

But wouldn't the investigators only become involved when/if the matter was brought to their attention by someone who thought that elements of the report didn't add up? They would be very hard pressed to investigate every ambush and shooting that the U.S. military was involved with in Iraq.

My information regarding Haditha isn't really the exhaustive, but from what I read there were doubts about what happened almost immediately, but that their superior chose not to do anything about it.

I'm not anti-authoritarian or anti-military by nature. I think that most servicemen and women are good and decent people, even those in Iraq and those on the other side.

Two things:

love your signature, Boog. Second: your Fight Club avatar is punching himself in time to the music I'm listening to (Front 242, Take One).

Now back to your regularly scheduled quagmire.

I saw Front 242 in 97.
that's a decade ago....sheesh.

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:

I saw Front 242 in 97.
that's a decade ago....sheesh.

1986. Sigh.