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sedonaman
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According to Joseph P. Bialke, Air Force Law Review,
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6007/is_55/ai_n8585592, historically, treatment of those operating outside the Laws of War has been harsh: no quarter.
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findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6007/is_55/ai_n8585592, historically, treatment of those operating outside the Laws of War has been harsh: no quarter.
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epan
Guest
I don’t care what the reason is, or who does it. Anyone who intentionally targets civilians deserves termination. Period.
I understand asymmetric warfare. Still, no excuse.
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OneSheep
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To me, it is a matter of political will. Nixon and the players at camp David had a lot of work to do at home before they could sit down at tables. At this point, congress has passed laws limiting the State Dept and our nation’s policies to the point that military action toward Iran is becoming the only “legal” alternative. It is a crime that soldiers and others have to die because of lack of political will.
It would truly take incredible leadership to convince the power of the lobbyists and other politicians in Washington that reconciliation, not violence, is the answer, and actually move in the direction of diplomacy. This is not the case. But there is absolutely no way we can call any aggression toward Iran a Just War. Our options are not “tried”. Our options were instead denied from within. This was also the case in Iraq.
I have heard of the book, and I think I heard an interview about the book with Wiesenthal once. The stories of survival and even forgiveness in the concentration camps are inspirational.
It is my understanding that Wiesenthal never came to the point of forgiving the Nazis. He also said something like “one has no right to forgive for others”.
I don’t know about “forgiving for others”. That is a rather impossible thing. What I do know is that I can forgive anyone for the benefit of my own holiness. What I do know is that I am fully capable of hating people who have hurt people I love and care about. I read the stories and was moved deeply, as a child, by the horrors of the holocaust. I cared about the Jews (still do), and hated the Nazis. When I was older, I came to a point of working to forgive everyone I resented in my life; I happened upon the Nazis, and came to understand their perspective and forgave them also. This involves the very painful process of accepting the fact that I am capable of doing what the Nazis, the terrorists, or any other evildoer has done, and understanding that dehumanization and hatred are a matter of blindness. Can we forgive others’ blindness?
Many Iranians are blind to the humanity of the Israelis, and many Israelis are blind to the humanity of Iranians. The blindness is a mental phenomenon; our empathy shuts off when we feel resentful or out of control. Jesus obviously knew this, thus His emphasis on forgiveness. And who do we forgive? Every single person we feel any resentment toward whatsoever, including ourselves. It is possible.
Granted, you and I can find it a lot easier to forgive the Iranians and Israelis, we do not have an added obstacle. Since violence and threats in themselves inspire resentment and hate, an Iranian politician would have to accept that he is partly responsible for the nuclear threat from Israel, because his support of Hezbollah triggered resentment and hatred from Israel, which he “should” know, but his mind is in denial about this, his support of Hezbollah is to him a matter of what he sees as justice. The Israeli politician would have to accept that he is partly responsible for the Hezbollah threat from Iran, because Israel’s actions against Palestinians, and the nuclear threat against Iran, triggered resentment and hatred from brethren in Iran and elsewhere, which he “should” know, but his mind is in denial about this, again he is acting upon a matter of what he sees as justice.
So, there is a lot more awareness and forgiveness to take place for those closer to the threats and violence. But this is why it is so sad that we Americans, in such a position of power, are unwilling to help the two sides get together. We in the US are certainly less threatened than the Israelis or Iranians.
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epan
Guest
Wiesenthal was put on a work detail at a hospital. He was summoned by a young officer, about to die, who had committed a horrible atrocity. He had rounded up all of the Jews in a town. Put them in a house. Put gas cans in the house. Lit the house on fire, with his troops posted with rifles to shoot anyone fleeing the home. On his deathbed, he asked Wiesenthal for forgiveness. He was seeking the forgiveness of a Jew.
So, that is the factual basis. The rest of the book explores what forgiveness is, from various perspectives.
Perhaps your calling in life is to join the diplomatic corps, or to enter politics.
I doubt that anyone disagrees with you that peaceful resolution to problems is preferred over violence.
I still maintain that sometimes, the only option is the use of force. Sometimes a policeman must fire his or her weapon to prevent a criminal act. In the case of terrorism, if someone is engaged in attempting to kill civilians, then force is justified to stop them. Negotiations may continue, if possible, but that does not obviate the justification for the use of force.
My personal take on history is that major social changes attributed to pacifism were not always achieved entirely by pacifistic means. For example, without the threat of violence as an alternative, MLK would not have been taken as seriously. Ditto for Ghandi. Our history shows that pacifists also rely on the unstated threat of violence by others.
Certainly, Nixon and Reagan used both the stick and the carrot to achieve their successes. I am not very familiar with how Carter succeeded. He was quite averse to using force, until the end of his presidency. He changed his views as he gained experience in office.
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sedonaman
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Do you know what an evil person is?
Winston Churchill once said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” So it is, the Western democracies, considering themselves to be the to-date epitome of civilized world diplomacy, are willing to invest so much capital in negotiation to settle disagreements between nations. To the Western mind, negotiation has become so in-grained that it has essentially, but unintentionally, become second nature and all too often an end in itself. To the non-Western mind in many cases, negotiation is merely war by other means, or just an extension of the battlefield. That negotiation could be something other than a way to resolve disputes peacefully is completely alien to the Western mind. Such over-reliance on negotiation by Westerners in the past has almost always had extremely disastrous consequences because of the mistakes on both sides: the Westerner who convinces himself of the basic good will of his adversary across the table, and the adversary Despot who overestimates the price the democracies are willing to pay to maintain peace. This paper will concentrate only on the mistakes typically made by the Western negotiator.
The first mistake made by Westerners setting out to negotiate with a Despot is their assumption that he is a rational individual like everyone else who wants to resolve a dispute. Nothing could be further from the truth, and one need only look at how he gained power in his own country to see this to be a grossly invalid assumption. [Note 1]
In order to negotiate successfully, one must be willing to give up something the other wants, an oft-neglected or forgotten requirement; and important to note here is that what the Despot brings to the table is not really his at all! He has already taken something from the rest (peace); and, operating from a position of weakness, seeks something in exchange for the return of what he stole; and here is where the “Anointed” [Note 2] make their first big mistake: by agreeing to negotiate under such (perhaps subconscious) assumptions, they have granted to him what he has stolen, and validated his position! [Note 3] Having the position of strength of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable” thrust upon him, the Despot then is only too willing to accept it. Then it is only a matter of BARGAINING as to what the Despot is willing to accept and what the Anointed are willing to concede. From there, the Anointed are usually reduced to such a subordinate position that they can only sheepishly ask questions like, “Do the peasants get to keep their cows?” and hope that the current demands are the last the Despot will make, so the rest can resume business as usual. Once again the powerful will have surrendered their position of strength, their only advantage. This process is what is known as “appeasement.”
Those experienced in bargaining know that if a “buyer” offers X, he is usually willing to pay X plus Y. The only question is, what is Y? Once concession X has been paid by the victims of this extortion and blackmail, it is a simple matter for the Despot to lie low for a while until things quiet down before proceeding with his plan for more power and repeating the above process of “crisis”/ negotiation in order to extract Y (upping the price for peace); and once the process is renewed, the previous X plus Y become the new X in his search for a new Y.
At this point, the Anointed, all considering themselves seasoned statesmen and apparently convinced they can solve all mankind’s problems, have so much invested in this process that their own human pride prevents them from admitting they’ve been had (by an uneducated, upstart son-of-a-peasant at that!). And so it continues, a desperate attempt to make negotiation work even at a cost agreed to far beyond that originally imagined, with the Anointed ceding concession after concession, and with each one a little more power, to the Despot until there is no more Y for the Anointed to give without exhausting whatever political capital they might have remaining in the eyes of their constituents and thus endangering their own careers.
Once the Despot has extracted the last Y willingly conceded, his madness having been unleashed by the spineless Anointed and being convinced of his own position of power, he is still not through and has one option left: taking it by military force. The result is all-out war, a war that could have easily been avoided in the beginning at relatively low cost to both sides in both dollars and human lives by NOT ceding anything, hoping that the Despot will go away (he won’t), but rather letting the Despot know in no uncertain terms that military force WILL be used if compliance to the letter is not accomplished immediately and that there will be no further concessions since the current agreement (usually the point of contention) contains them all. Constituents who are tempted to agree to more should be made aware that that amounts to paying blackmail and that they are endangering a whole younger generation that will bear the greatest hardships of an all-out war, not the Anointed who never seem to pay a price in blood whatsoever. …
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sedonaman
Guest
[cont.]
In the case of al-Qaeda, they are not even a legitimate country with any government at all; they are nothing more than evildoers. “…An evildoer is NOT motivated by a wish to change the way other people act: His objectives are not to persuade or cajole or threaten others into doing as he wishes them to do. Instead, other people exist in his eyes ONLY AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO DO EVIL: He doesn’t want to manipulate them for his selfish purpose; rather, HIS ONE AND ONLY PURPOSE IS TO INFLICT EVIL ON THEM – EVIL, AND NOTHING MORE . . .COMBAT WITH EVILDOERS IS NOT CLAUSEWITZIAN WAR. YOU DO NOT MAKE TREATIES WITH EVILDOERS NOR TRY TO ADJUST YOUR CONDUCT TO MAKE THEM LIKE YOU. YOU DO NOT TRY TO SEE THE WORLD FROM THE EVILDOERS’ POINT OF VIEW. YOU DO NOT TRY TO APPEASE THEM, NOR PERSUADE THEM, NOR REASON WITH THEM. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic – YOU TRY TO WIPE IT OUT.” [Note 4]
Notes:
(Note 1) Although beyond the scope of this paper, the question of “national sovereignty at all cost” should be the topic of serious reconsideration.
(Note 2) Thomas Sowell, Visions of the Anointed
(Note 3) To George H. W. (Bush I) Bush’s credit, he did not “allow to stand” Kuwait’s invasion by Iraq, thus not conceding what Saddam Hussein had stolen, and effectively breaking the process up before it had a chance to progress to further advantage for Hussein. This also could be why negotiating with the North Vietnamese was so difficult: they refused to grant what the US had, in their eyes, stolen: they initially demanded the removal of US troops before agreeing to negotiate. It is also how Bush II broke up this process by halting a quickly degrading situation by holding Saddam Hussein to his Gulf War agreement and UN resolutions to come clean on his weapons of mass destruction.
(Note 4) Lee Harris, “Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology” policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html
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hieroglyph
Guest
It puts us into an excellent position. The American oil companies expanded into the middle east during the war. They made extensive donations to political campaigns. The American mercs also got expensive contracts. They probably made donations too.
The oil puts the Middle East into the production seat. As the world uses up the resources in the Middle East while under the American fist, America can pull back. Then the next big oil fields are the shale in the US and Canada, so we dominate oil for the forseeable future. The US has been setting itself up very competantly for world domination.
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hieroglyph
Guest
However the uniform is no excuse for illegal acts and illegal orders, according to the international court which the US convened on the Nazis at Nuremberg. The US has engaged in numerous war crimes for which it could be held responsible; The use of torture and sado-masochism of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are just a few examples. Further, this does not address the moral issue of joining the military and ceding one’s objections considering the numerous unjust wars and individual military actions of the past twenty years. Once you join, you will be held responsible for following orders, by the police power of the military; you have ceded your moral power to a state whose unethical imperialism is known the world over. No, I would not rejoice at a child who joined the military, unless the country was attacked and forced to engage in a just war. There was no dishonor in those who joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, or those who served in defense of the country in the War of 1812.Mega dittos. It never occurs to some that they should explain why they don’t vent their outrage on those who commit illegal acts instead of those engaged in honorable soldiering.
I might add that the requirement for a uniform also protects the legitimate combatant from being held responsible for the deaths and destruction he causes as long as he acts according to the laws of war. This is known as the combatant’s privilege, which I’m sure you know.
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Lost_Sheep
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I dare you.
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Lost_Sheep
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Tell that to the 3000+ people who died on 9/11. You’re suggesting that “a bunch of middle easterners” had no intention of causing harm?
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Lost_Sheep
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Lost_Sheep
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sedonaman
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I don’t know where you got the idea that I said any of it.
In fact, that’s why I included the qualifier, that the combatant is legitimate as long as he follows the laws of war.
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JerryZ
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You better get a shovel and crawl out of the hole you live in. The world has become a large village and you can’t afford to put blinders on and pretend that what goes on in Iran for example will not affect your life or the life of your sons and daughters in a very short few years.oh really? just what is so nonsensical about what i said? every word of it is true. in the past 20th century not ONE war met the requirments for a just war. those poor misguided soldiers died for the international plutocrats. not our freedoms, sorry
The etnic cleansings in Croatia or Sudan or any other number of places had not been stopped by “interventions from the plutocrats” where would have ended?
There are people out there that have decided they will kill every single Christian, Jew or other non conformant to their religion views, or have you not heard about the bombs they have placed in Christian Churches in the middle east?
Truth is Satan is working overtime to bring about our own destruction.
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JerryZ
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that is the most factless statement ever utered by any one!Can you name 1 Colony of America?
You said you are American
Seems to be a case of acute rectal ventriloquism!
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Lost_Sheep
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It should be noted that the Holy Father Benedict XVI briefly fought for Germany towards the end of WWII. He was defending his country which I see as an honorable thing to do.
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OneSheep
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It seems to me that you are angry at terrorists, and want them destroyed, this is understandable.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but this part of your entry is likely the same operating principle that the Al Qaeda uses, except we are the “evildoers”, and we are the ones whose “only purpose is to inflict evil”. We are all capable of this type of thinking. When people violently break our rules and/or threaten us, our ability to understand motives and empathize is greatly diminished. We see the value of the other as worthless. Those who hung Jesus on the cross saw him this way. Reference to other people as “despots” or “evil” is the language we use to describe what we see when we hate: that those people are less than human.
Jesus said to remove the post from our own eyes first. Justifications for not forgiving are “posts”. It is very easy and understandable, indeed it is part of our nature to want to destroy our enemies, and to do so our mind has to dehumanize them. Part of this involves the mechanical blocking of our empathy. We don’t have to will such blocking of empathy, that is what comes naturally. We do have to will to forgive, because this is what we need to do to overcome our default. Just like we have to will chastity to overcome temptations outside of marriage.
As far as negotiations and so forth, negotiation outside of the context of forgiveness does not really solve the problem. It just changes the theater of the battle to the table. If the hurt, threats, anger and desperation are not addressed, there is not much of a lasting solution.
At the expense of being very repetitive I do repeat: there are times where violence is necessary. Epan refers to these times. And it may be true, also, what he says about the movements started by MLK and Ghandi. Even if the people of those movements had no intention whatsoever to do violence, opponents who ordinarily use violence to solve problems (which was true for the opponents of both Ghandi and MLK) will assume that the violence will come next.
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sedonaman
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Then why don’t you understand it?
Haven’t you ever heard of “moral equivalence”? An example is, “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”
“When we fail to discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong, and the behaviors that lead to success and those that lead to failure, we do not end up objective, neutral, tolerant, or even indifferent; we end up hating what is good, right, and successful. We have seen this pattern over an over. The idea that a successful person is not a testimony of the opportunities in America but an indictment of American greed, and the belief that America is no better than any other country has led to hatred of America. Concern for the rights of criminals has led to hatred of their victims. So, the idea that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter has, surprise, surprise, led to an increase in terrorism.” – paraphrased from The Closing of the American Mind.
Does that go for terrorists, too?
By engaging in terrorism, they have already de-humanized themselves. Even the law recognizes this. The legal analysis I referenced says they are “hostes humani generis” – the common enemies of mankind.
Your empathy with terrorists is part of the problem, not part of the solution, for activity that is rewarded is likely to be repeated.
I don’t think you really believe that because you have not given a single example of one.
Look. You are all wrapped up in trying to understand terrorists and their motives. I don’t see that they have any legitimate grievances at all, least of which justifies taking out their frustrations on those who have nothing to do with their perceived grievances. That is why I call them evil: others exist only as an opportunity for them to do evil, and nothing else. The CCC says that, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy [to go to war] belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” This applies to the terrorists as well as the rest of us, or does the Catechism exempt them and other non-Catholics?
If they are not exempt, then their grievances are with their own governments, and not with the U.S., Israel, nor the non-combatants they target. :sad_yes:
As far as those who crucified Jesus are concerned, they were not as bad as terrorists because Jesus didn’t exist as an opportunity for them to do evil. In their eyes, he was just a threat to their authority.
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Matilda_Bennett
Guest
General Reminder:
The charity level of this discussion appears to be deteriorating. Please self-edit for tone and content before clicking the “Submit” button. If the charity level does not improve, this thread will have to be locked. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
The charity level of this discussion appears to be deteriorating. Please self-edit for tone and content before clicking the “Submit” button. If the charity level does not improve, this thread will have to be locked. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
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onenow1
Guest
Everyone should be opposed to war !! What does it accomplish ?
Peace
Peace
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