Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’

Discussion in 'Politics' started by james_bond_3rd, May 18, 2006.

  1. Yes, it does matter the conditions underwhich I was killed by a drunk driver.

    And this whole argument is such a straw man argument anyway, as the soldiers were not drunk drivers, they were soliders who murdered innocents.


     
    #121     Jun 2, 2006
  2. You don't know that for a fact. I don't consider Iraqis in an insurgent hotbed to be very credible witnesses.
     
    #122     Jun 2, 2006
  3. The forensic evidence will be the witness.

    The eyewitness testimony in these things doesn't hold as much weight.

     
    #123     Jun 2, 2006
  4. Agreed.
     
    #124     Jun 2, 2006
  5. but in the same breath, you will also agree that any american inquiry would be impartial.

    LOL
     
    #125     Jun 2, 2006
  6. They are American troops. Who else would look into it? The Iraqi government?
     
    #126     Jun 2, 2006
  7. Rousseau, Hobbes, and Haditha

    Jun 9, 2006
    by Nathanael Blake (

    The Left finally got its Iraqi My Lai. After years of screeching for sordid sustenance like fledgling buzzards, they have what they wanted: a nice mess of massacred civilians. Wait, amend that to a nice mess of civilians massacred by Americans. Those slaughtered by the "insurgents" have never been of much interest to liberal opponents of the war.

    Nor are they concerned with what actually happened in Haditha, where a unit of Marines appears to have intentionally murdered innocents. The only proper response is horror and condemnation, and everyone is expressing that, with some cautiously adding the caveat, "if the allegations are true." There is no war crimes lobby defending the targeted killing of women and children.

    One might then wonder why, if we’re all in agreement on that, this is becoming fodder not merely for the news headlines, but also for the opinion pages. The answer is provided by the editorial board of the New York Times: "This affair cannot simply be dismissed as the spontaneous cruelty of a few bad men…it will not do to focus blame narrowly on the Marine unit suspected of carrying out these killings and ignore the administration officials, from President Bush on down, who made the chances of this sort of disaster so much greater by deliberately blurring the rules governing the conduct of American soldiers in the field."

    Haditha is the biggest stick liberals can find, and they’re going to beat the hated cowboy president’s warhorse until it is deceased and decomposing; and should it be buried, they will disinter it and resume the thwacking.

    However, one question should be put to them as they merrily batter away: are American soldiers really such moral idiots that they took the loosening of interrogation rules as carte blanche for baby killing?

    The liberal approach to our soldiers is disgustingly condescending. Maureen Dowd explains that, "American troops are under spectacular emotional pressure." President Bush, not the murdering Marines, is the real culprit; he created the environment that drove them to atrocity. Is this illogic induced by political opportunism and an antipathy toward Bush that gladly embraces the irrational? Of course it is. But there are more fundamental influences involved as well. Consider the opening of Dowd’s column, "Before the war, America railed against the Iraqi leader for slaughtering innocent Iraqis. Now the Iraqi leader is railing against America for slaughtering innocent Iraqis."

    Ms. Dowd, of course, is paid to put things out of perspective, but this view isn’t confined to the Times’ resident spinster. Many Americans are determined to prove that their nation is no better, and probably worse, than others. For them, the sins of America and Americans are enough for a declaration of moral equivalence. Now no sensible conservative denies that America has serious faults – it is populated with humans, after all. But then, that’s the point of difference.

    For conservatives, who take a dour view of human nature, events like the Haditha massacre are inevitable, and the blame must rest on individuals. War crimes are entirely natural, if by natural we mean what people do. This does not make them right, and they should be punished severely, but no system shall ever entirely prevent them, for the problem lies within the human heart.

    However, liberals believe that people are inherently good, and that in the state of nature humans would not do such things. The conservative view is that of Hobbes, the liberal view that of Rousseau. As the famous opening of The Social Contract put it, "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." And his disciples have added, "Man is born good, but everywhere he is made bad."

    James Burnham wrote that, "Modern liberalism, contrary to the traditional doctrine, holds that there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of man that makes it impossible for human society to achieve the goals of peace, freedom, justice and well-being that liberalism assumes to be desirable and to define ‘the good society.’"

    Thus, when horrors such as Haditha arise, the blame must be affixed on social structures. And the denunciation takes on the aspects of a moral ablution, for by rejecting the corrupt system, liberalism’s moral purity is confirmed. We conservatives wonder at the lack of proportion liberals display by the vehemence of their condemnations, but it is entirely consistent with their premises. Atrocities demonstrate the system to be flawed, and because an ideal system is possible, they need not temper their criticisms.

    Rousseau proclaimed that, "Theorists are led into error because, seeing only States that have been from the beginning wrongly constituted, they are struck by the impossibility of applying such a policy to them." That is, all the observed limitations of human society need not reduce our optimism for what can be done in the future.

    For liberals, the institutions and leaders behind the war, not the men behind the trigger, must bear the blame for Haditha.
     
    #127     Jun 10, 2006
  8. #128     Jun 5, 2008
  9. From the Halls of Montezuma
    To the Shores of Tripoli;
    We fight our country's battles
    In the air, on land and sea;
    First to fight for right and freedom
    And to keep our honor clean;
    We are proud to claim the title
    of United States Marine.

    Our flag's unfurled to every breeze
    From dawn to setting sun;
    We have fought in ev'ry clime and place
    Where we could take a gun;
    In the snow of far-off Northern lands
    And in sunny tropic scenes;
    You will find us always on the job--
    The United States Marines. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima

    Here's health to you and to our Corps
    Which we are proud to serve
    In many a strife we've fought for life
    And never lost our nerve;
    If the Army and the Navy
    Ever look on Heaven's scenes;
    They will find the streets are guarded
    By United States Marines.
     
    #129     Jun 5, 2008
  10. Moonbats just hate it when Americans are found innocent. It goes against everything they believe in.

    I have it on good authority that James Bond 3rd is aligning with Code Pink to discredit the acquittal on the basis that all Marines are bloodthirsty animals bent on rape and murder.
     
    #130     Jun 5, 2008