Yemen questions

[happythoughts 0]

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According to Merriam-Webster:

War: a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations

Assassination: to murder by sudden or secret attack usually for impersonal reasons

So - we haven't officially declared war on Al-Quaeda (per our constitutionally-approved method of declaring war) we are fighting them covertly (i.e. the Predator attack was unannounced and unexpected, which is why it was effective) and we aren't fighting a state or nation. To really claim it's a war you're going to have to change the definition of war. I'll stick with the dictionary.

Good definition. Al-Queda attacked our embassies, our warships, our homeland. Sounds like war to me. What do you call that? I know you don't want to sound like the word police, but I can't come up with a better word. According to your dictionary definition, they are at war with us, but we aren't with them.

However, if they would like to get a nation, I would certainly approve. Then it would be official according to the M-W dictionary and we could flatten them. Before the PLO had their own spot, were they at "war" with Israel or just upset, distant, and moody?

"to murder by sudden or secret attack" All ambushes in wartime are sudden attacks from hiding. Ambushes are assassinations?

"Quick guys, kill more than one or they'll call us assassins." We ambushed or assassinated the Al-Queda guy. OK. Like it. We could have done it another way, but there are no corrals in Yemen to do the shoot out around.

You did use a word just to convey a sub-meaning that is negative about an act. I didn't like the implied undertone. They got him. If you want a clean little definitional box to put it in, I don't have one except war. Did they ambush/assassinate him? Yep. Good idea.

[freeflir29 0]

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I just don't want the public to become sheep

The far right has been calling "The Public" "Sheople" for a long time. Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of validity to that label. So many people are concerned with nothing more than what's on TV tonight and the sale paper at the grocery store. It's sad really. All I can do is take care of me and mine.

[freeflir29 0]

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Damn, hate to say it Bill, 'cause we seem to be on the same side, but......BURN!!

ROFLMAO.......2 points......it's not every day you get over on Billvon.

[billvon 3,109]

>OK...type in "war" there and read down to 2a.....

"a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism"

Uh, that's not the definition we're talking about. By that definition, you and I are at war since we are involved in a conflict over definitions. It would be absurd to try to justify bombing me based on that. The problem is that we are using the loose definition of war (i.e. they are hostile towards us) when we want to define what we're doing, but using the strict definition of war (i.e. a declared, armed, open hostile conflict) when we want to take action against them.

Choose one definition, of any sub-heading you want, then stick with it. If it's declared, open, hostile war, then declare war, and occupy Yemen and anywhere else we suspect Al Quaeda is operating. Attack them if they resist (i.e. treat them like Afghanistan.) If it's the kind of war that applies to any ol' conflict (like the war on drugs) then admit that we don't have the same imperatives we'd have during war.

So which will it be? Definition 1 or 2A?

[billvon 3,109]

>Good definition. Al-Queda attacked our embassies, our warships, our
> homeland. Sounds like war to me. What do you call that?

Terrorism.

>We ambushed or assassinated the Al-Queda guy. OK. Like it.

OK, good. We agree.

>You did use a word just to convey a sub-meaning that is negative
> about an act. I didn't like the implied undertone.

Why not? Don't like being in a country that uses assassination as part of their foreign policy? Think that makes us, perhaps, not quite the planetary good guys we often claim we are? Unfortunately, I agree.

[freeflir29 0]

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If it's declared, open, hostile war, then declare war, and occupy Yemen and anywhere else we suspect Al Quaeda is operating.

Haven't we done that already? I'm not sure the exact number of countries we have troops operating in right now but I know IT'S A LOT. In fact I just saw a story from one of those "conspiracy" sites that talked about the US sending a bunch of Marines into Colombia. Pretty laughable since we have been sending "other" units there for many years.

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So which will it be? Definition 1 or 2A?

Well...if you want to stick to a definition I'll have to go with 2a. Since we don't have a nation state to fight.

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If it's the kind of war that applies to any ol' conflict (like the war on drugs) then admit that we don't have the same imperatives we'd have during war.

Certainly, the Tactics, Techniques, Procedures, and Objectives are very differen't in this case than they were in say WWII, Iraq, or Vietnam.

[billvon 3,109]

>Well...if you want to stick to a definition I'll have to go with 2a.
>Since we don't have a nation state to fight.

OK, so it's sort of a non-specified non-declared general conflict type of war, like the war on drugs. Using such definitions we'll be able to justify assassination of just about anyone, since by that definition we're at war with cuba, just about all arab states, venezuela, zimbabwe, china, and north korea. Heck, we could take out Mugabe tomorrow with a predator and a 'war against racism' theme, or Musharraf with a 'war on terror' theme. After all, we're at war!

[freeflir29 0]

Actually...we are still very much at war with North Korea. We have just enjoyed a long cease fire. Go to the DMZ sometime. It's pretty easy to tell.

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After all, we're at war!

I think what you are missing here is doctrine. US military doctrine states that war is an extension of politics. The stated objective of "war" is to cause the enemy to bend to your will. Doesn't say anything about killing...that's just a by-product. Since Al Qaeda has yet to give us an ambassador or governing body to negotiate with we have moved on to the next step.

[PhillyKev 0]

Maybe that's what those guys in the car were talking about. Deciding who should be the Al Queda ambassador to the US.

[billvon 3,109]

>Since Al Qaeda has yet to give us an ambassador or governing body
> to negotiate with we have moved on to the next step.

Do you honestly think that if they _did_ we'd negotiate with them? If Iraq said, tomorrow, "Hey, we're not going to comply with those arms inspections, but we'll send our ambassador over to talk" we'd give up on this 'war with iraq' push?

>US military doctrine states that war is an extension of politics.

I would like to believe that war is the last resort when all diplomatic solutions fail. "War as an extension of politics" will lead to a lot of US soldiers dying for political reasons, and I think that's something worth trying to avoid.

[happythoughts 0]

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>You did use a word just to convey a sub-meaning that is negative
> about an act. I didn't like the implied undertone.

Why not? Don't like being in a country that uses assassination as part of their foreign policy? Think that makes us, perhaps, not quite the planetary good guys we often claim we are? Unfortunately, I agree.

No. That would be someone else putting words in my mouth. I like the idea that our country finds the murderers and kills them. As far as being "planetary good guys", killing individual Al-Queda members by using the available technology does not tarnish that. That is what my govt should be doing. The good guys defend us from bad guys. Like I said earlier, you are calling it assassination to give it a negative shading. We are at war with Al-Queda and are proceeding to defend ourselves in an honorable fashion.

[freeflir29 0]

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Do you honestly think that if they _did_ we'd negotiate with them?

In the case of Al Qaeda it's a moot point. Since they are not a nation and have little operational control over their troops there really isn't anything to negotiate. You might as well negotiate with me. I have almost as much control over Al Qaeda as anyone else. They do understand the theory of "Decentralized Execution." It's what made us operationally superior to the Russians.

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If Iraq said, tomorrow, "Hey, we're not going to comply with those arms inspections, but we'll send our ambassador over to talk" we'd give up on this 'war with iraq' push

Nope...we have already stated that their compliance with weapons inspections is a MANDATORY part of the agreement. Non-negotiable.

[billvon 3,109]

>Like I said earlier, you are calling it assassination to give it a negative shading.

I am calling it assassination because that's what the dictionary definition is for what we did. It indeed has a negative connotation. It's better to accept that we do sometimes do things that are, objectively, not so moral than to claim we are the moral leaders in an otherwise amoral and evil world. That way we are seeing the real world, and seeing the real world correctly is, I think, important if you want to be effective in it.

>We are at war with Al-Queda and are proceeding to defend ourselves
> in an honorable fashion.

Sending an unmanned drone with a bomb to kill a carload of people without warning (and taking out an unintended target in the process) is honorable? I think you have a different definition of honor than I do. It may have been neccesary; necessity has little to do with honor.

[freeflir29 0]

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I think you have a different definition of honor than I do.

You watched the "Lone Ranger" a lot as a kid didn't you?

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Sending an unmanned drone with a bomb to kill a carload of people without warning (and taking out an unintended target in the process) is honorable?

Killing people is never really honorable. Real life doesn't resemble the movies at all. When people die it's not pretty. It's not a WWII John Wayne movie where people throw their arms up when they get shot. Is waiting in the dark to ambush an enemy patrol honorable? I say who cares....combat is about killing the enemy with the least expenditure of your own resources. It's not about honor. So that question is irrelevant.

[happythoughts 0]

"to murder by sudden or secret attack" Artillery attacks, bombing from aircraft...what in war does not meet your definition? You hide behind a bush and shoot them. You drop a bomb from an airplane or an unmanned drone. By that limited definition, all war is assassination.

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It's better to accept that we do sometimes do things that are, objectively, not so moral than to claim we are the moral leaders in an otherwise amoral and evil world. That way we are seeing the real world, and seeing the real world correctly is, I think, important if you want to be effective in it.

Ok, I see the real world. The terrorists who keep attacking the US are the bad guys. We may not be right in every event that has ever happened. Our country isn't perfect, I am not saying it is. However, in this situation, we are. We found and killed the evil guy. We are the good guy side.

>We are at war with Al-Queda and are proceeding to defend ourselves
> in an honorable fashion.

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Sending an unmanned drone with a bomb to kill a carload of people without warning (and taking out an unintended target in the process) is honorable?

Yes, it was a military target taken out in a military fashion. What do you suggest? Gunfight on main street at high noon. Not going to happen. I am lost on what you consider the "moral" problem here.

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I think you have a different definition of honor than I do. It may have been neccesary; necessity has little to do with honor.

Yes, I believe any military action taken against an aggressor is honorable. I thought it was done well.

"necessity has little to do with honor." You seem to think it is somehow immoral. The necessity was to kill someone in self-defense using every available means. We did. Self-defense is honorable. We used the best means, a bomb.

[jdhill 0]

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Sending an unmanned drone with a bomb to kill a carload of people without warning (and taking out an unintended target in the process) is honorable?

So if we had carpet-bombed the desert it would have been better? How many bombing missions during WWII had the intent of neutralizing the operational leaders of the enemy? How many civilians died in those non-assassination attempts? And how many airmen? Should this guy have had a "fighting" chance? Did he give the sailors on the Cole that chance?

Something is missing... Yemen is not screaming to the UN that the US has violated their sovereignty... who is to say they did not approve the operation behind the scene? They would not be likely to say so in public for fear of becoming targets themselves.

Your deffinition of assassination may be the correct litiary diffinition, but not the legal one as set forth in the Executive Order that prohibits them (they are not against the law).

This issue is not black and white, not all situations would warrent the same action. What, IMO, is acceptable in this one may not be in another... Shades of Gray...

Josh

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

[billvon 3,109]

>Killing people is never really honorable.

I agree, but there are more ways to resolve conflicts than killing people. I do not find our assassination of those people honorable; I do find our negotiations at the UN to give Hussein a last chance quite honorable. We are sacrificing time to give a madman one last chance to avoid a war, even though we know the odds are low that he will comply. But by giving him that option, we are taking the high road and letting _him_ determine how his country fares - and I find that pretty admirable.

Other situations that have to do with honor:

- Ending the cuban missile crisis with minimal violence: honorable
- Killing 350,000 people with two nukes: not so honorable
- Supporting a country during a famine with direct aid: honorable
- Supporting radical terrorists so they kill some Russians: not so honorable

There is such a thing as honor, and it does not come from a gun. It comes from the intelligence, restraint and wisdom of peacemakers. Sometimes that fails, and we must resort to violence, which is in no way honorable. I hope we see it as the last resort it is.

>Is waiting in the dark to ambush an enemy patrol honorable? I say
> who cares....combat is about killing the enemy with the least
> expenditure of your own resources. It's not about honor. So that
> question is irrelevant.

I agree, which is why I worry when I hear about how we're defending ourselves against Al Quaeda in an honorable fashion. We may be defending ourselves in a necessary fashion, but that is far from making it honorable.

[happythoughts 0]

"Other situations that have to do with honor:

- Ending the cuban missile crisis with minimal violence: honorable
- Killing 350,000 people with two nukes: not so honorable
- Supporting a country during a famine with direct aid: honorable
- Supporting radical terrorists so they kill some Russians: not so honorable "

JFK was one of our worst presidents. The Cuban missile crisis was probably just luck. Remember the Bay of Pigs where he landed all the Cuban patriots on the beach and then didn't give them air support? They were all killed or captured? He sentenced everyone in Cuba to a lifetime of living under Castro.

Giving the Afghans the tools to defend themselves against the Russian attack was helping a small, essentially defenseless country to defend themselves against the Russians. None of our leaders are apparently as psychic as people would prefer, otherwise they would have predicted the future.

[PhillyKev 0]

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JFK was one of our worst presidents. The Cuban missile crisis was probably just luck. Remember the Bay of Pigs where he landed all the Cuban patriots on the beach and then didn't give them air support? They were all killed or captured? He sentenced everyone in Cuba to a lifetime of living under Castro.

Actually I think it was the other way around. Kennedy inherited the Bay of Pigs invasion plan from the previous administration. The senior military officials convinced him that it was all worked out and that there was only one possible outcome. He was naive and believed them and it turned into a fiasco. He learned from that mistake and when the military leadership pressured him to launch air attackes followed by invasion during the missile crisis he went against their recommendation and opted to try a diplomatic route until there was absolutely no other choice. If we had invaded and any of those missile sites were active they WOULD have been launched. The Russian commanders in the field had open orders to launch in the event of an attack and loss of communication with their superiors.

[billvon 3,109]

>Ok, I see the real world. The terrorists who keep attacking the US
>are the bad guys. We may not be right in every event that has ever
> happened. Our country isn't perfect, I am not saying it is. However,
> in this situation, we are.

No, we're not, and that's what keeps getting us in trouble. We're STILL not perfect, and not all the flag-waving in the world will make it so. We are in a bad situation right now. We have done a lot of bad things - bombing weddings, selling bomb parts to Iraq, funding the terrorists who caused 9/11 - and we will end up doing more before the year is out. At best we can try to not be as bad as the enemy; I think that's a worthy goal.

Too many people here see the world through very rose colored glasses. They actually believe, in the words of our esteemed leader, that "we love—we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love."

That's just not the real world.

>Artillery attacks, bombing from aircraft...what in war does not meet
> your definition? You hide behind a bush and shoot them. You drop
> a bomb from an airplane or an unmanned drone.

Correct, none of them qualifies as "defending ourselves in an honorable fashion."

>Yes, I believe any military action taken against an aggressor is
>honorable. I thought it was done well.

So our bombing of the Afghani wedding was honorable? The 9/11 attacks were honorable? (You keep calling them acts of war, and they certainly saw us as the evil aggressor.) Sorry, I can't agree with you there. Or are only violent acts by the US honorable? (Note that the CIA drone bombing was NOT a military operation.)

[freeflir29 0]

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I do not find our assassination of those people honorable

Hmm....I find it quite honorable that our soldiers are out there serving their country. I'm sure the man or woman that "pulled the trigger" knew exactly what they were doing. I'm sure they will also think about that at night. Or maybe when they are having some beers with friends. Soldiers endure a lot more than physical scars. I have seen them. They're not pretty! I also find it highly honorable that someone put themselves in EXTREME danger to get that piece of intel to the CIA. I don't think they used a sattelite to determine who was in that car. Someone "dropped a dime." They put their life on the line for me and you. I'd call that honorable.

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I do find our negotiations at the UN to give Hussein a last chance quite honorable. We are sacrificing time to give a madman one last chance to avoid a war

I don't think that is quite as honorable as you make it sound. I think we are negotiating because we have to. The world wide political backlash from the US attacking Iraq on our own would have been ugly and would probably have been a worse threat than Iraq itself.

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Ending the cuban missile crisis with minimal violence: honorable

Considering the alternatives I don't think we had much of a choice.

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Killing 350,000 people with two nukes: not so honorable

Uuuhhh....the fire bombing of Tokyo I think it was, was far more destructive than the nukes. I still think it was better than 500,000 more dead American kids.

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Supporting a country during a famine with direct aid: honorable

Somalia? I don't think we ever should have been there. The actions of the politicians in that event were CRIMINAL!!!

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Supporting radical terrorists so they kill some Russians: not so honorable

Turn about was fair play. Besides, we were fighting the Russians in a proxy war. I suppose it was wrong when we shipped arms to England during WWII. Not really that differen't of a scenario.

[billvon 3,109]

>None of our leaders are apparently as psychic as people would
> prefer, otherwise they would have predicted the future.

I would be perfectly happy if they could just learn the lessons of history. Why make the same mistakes over and over?

[freeflir29 0]

Great debating with you Bill. I certainly don't agree with just about anything you have said on this thread but hey...it's America...it's a free country .....and that's why I don't live in California. Too many people with Strange attitudes. I'm going home now!!!! You kids play nice.

[Zlew 0]

You have to remember that location really does make a big difference in the fact that there are differnces in rescources availbe at a given place and time. If we don't have police or sizeable military folks there to take care of things that need to be taken care of, I'm fine with useing what we have (hellfire from above). Thats not going to be the case in Canada or the US.

Apples and oranges

Z

[billvon 3,109]

>I'm sure the man or woman that "pulled the trigger" knew exactly
> what they were doing. I'm sure they will also think about that at
> night. Or maybe when they are having some beers with friends.
> Soldiers endure a lot more than physical scars. I have seen them.
> They're not pretty!

Yep, I know at least two cops who went through something like that after killing people who needed to be killed.

>I don't think that is quite as honorable as you make it sound. I think
> we are negotiating because we have to. The world wide political
> backlash from the US attacking Iraq on our own would have been
> ugly and would probably have been a worse threat than Iraq itself.

I agree; it would have been both dishonorable and dumb. We're doing at least that the right way; I hope we continue to do so.

>Uuuhhh....the fire bombing of Tokyo I think it was, was far more
> destructive than the nukes.

I agree there, but both then and now we hold the use of nuclear weapons to be especially evil (with good reason, I think.)

>I still think it was better than 500,000 more dead American kids.

It may have been the lesser of two evils, but not by much. Killing 350,000 to save maybe 500,000? Or perhaps 100,000? I've seen estimates that range from 100,000 to 1 million potential american deaths as a result of an invasion of Japan if we didn't use nukes. We traded those possibilities for 350,000 Japanese deaths. Hard to claim any kind of moral superiority there, beyond wanting to win a war quickly.