The Troubles

[Smitty-48]

They preyed upon the English people's restraint, really. If they did that to Americans, we'd have killed every last one of them.

I understand wanting to get the English the fuck out of your country, but targeting civilians is a no-go. Once you do that, you really have to get killed.

Since when is targeting civilians a no-go? Trump says "you have to take out their families" and Americans cheer. Wait, is it only bad when non-nation combatants target civilians but ok when nation combatants do?

If the family members are doing anything at all to assist the actions of the terrorists, which they inevitably are, they become Direct Participants in Hostilities which removes the protection of Non Combatant, so in reality, not striking them is a political choice, the United States would, in almost every case, be within its rights to do so under international law and the laws of armed conflict, with the caveat that the use of force was targeted, proportionate and collaterally mitigated.

Unlawful Combatants have practically no privileges at all, and even just hanging around them, never mind assisting them, pretty much puts you at ground zero by default, international law and the laws of armed conflict were written by states specifically to deny non state actors the privilege to attack them, so the law is exponentially weighted in favour of states over non state actors.

Basically, you're not permitted to be a terrorist under any circumstances, and the law is written so that states have the broadest latitude to defend themselves from you if you go there, states knowing full well that terrorists would employ human shields when they wrote the laws.

[jediuser598]

What do you think would happen if Trump ordered our armed forces to target civilians?

We'd find out about it ten years later through something like WikiLeaks, it'd last in the news cycle for a week then the American people would forget about it.

Negative. Illegal order. Go fuck yourself. That's what would happen.

I guess when we didn't torture people because they were like "Nah man, fuck that illegal order, I'm not doing that." Oh wait, yeah that didn't happen, and we did torture people. I'm sure they'll come up with some fancy new term, and ol' Tangerine will go "Smart!" after one of his tweets talking about it.

You voted for the guy, and he said he'd do it. I'm going to take the man at his word. I'm sure they'll find a way around the law and do it anyways. Know what Trump's lawyers are arguing right now?

"The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd claims."

https://www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-l ... 42663.html

And remember, you voted for this guy.

[jediuser598]

They preyed upon the English people's restraint, really. If they did that to Americans, we'd have killed every last one of them.

I understand wanting to get the English the fuck out of your country, but targeting civilians is a no-go. Once you do that, you really have to get killed.

Since when is targeting civilians a no-go? Trump says "you have to take out their families" and Americans cheer. Wait, is it only bad when non-nation combatants target civilians but ok when nation combatants do?

If the family members are doing anything at all to assist the actions of the terrorists, which they inevitably are, they become Direct Participants in Hostilities which removes the protection of Non Combatant, so in reality, not striking them is a political choice, the United States would, in almost every case, be within its rights to do so under international law and the laws of armed conflict, with the caveat that the use of force was targeted, proportionate and collaterally mitigated.

Unlawful Combatants have practically no privileges at all, and even just hanging around them, never mind assisting them, pretty much puts you at ground zero by default, international law and the laws of armed conflict were written by states specifically to deny non state actors the privilege to attack them, so the law is exponentially weighted in favour of states over non state actors.

Basically, you're not permitted to be a terrorist under any circumstances, and the law is written so that states have the broadest latitude to defend themselves from you if you go there, states knowing full well that terrorists would employ human shields when they wrote the laws.

You don't even have to be assisting anyone. Just do the Obama:

Lest you skim over that last quote, ponder its meaning. A former high-ranking official in the U.S. government is asserting that the CIA kills innocent people in other countries, counts the corpses, and reports that they're militants, even though they don't actually know who the guys are.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ts/257749/

Walking down the street outside of a house, drone strike comes in a blows up the house, you die. Oh, guess what? You must have been a combatant. By definition of you know getting killed by the drone strike, makes you a combatant, that's why they say he has single digit civilian casualties.

And speaker is telling me that military officers would kowtow to that logic, but go "oh hey, no, we can't follow that illegal order" from someone like Trump? Who they probably voted for? Yeah, right.

[Smitty-48]

Well except the law favours Obama there as well, America has an Article 51 right to self defense, if you are going to attack America as Unlawful Combatants from functionally ungoverned spaces, hiding amongst the local population as human shields, then you are responsible for the consequences to that local population, the law puts the onus on the attacker to ensure the safety of the local population, by clearly marking who is who and where is what in terms of Non Combatants, if not, then the war crime is failing to do so.

Again, the law was written with the awareness that Unlawful Combatants would in essence be cheating, not following the rules, and so the law holds those who are doing that responsible, and the state which is trying to defend itself from them has the broadest latitude to strike back as necessary.

America is actually being exponentially more precise than the law requires, because there were no drones and precision guided munitions when the law was written, by the letter of the law, America could be much more indiscriminate, there's no requirement for pattern of life recce and persistent ISR, and America could use much more force if it didn't have the option of using UAS and PGMs.

I cut America slack on this, America is the most restrained military power of them all, if it was the Russians or the Chinese, they would just flatten the place with carpet bombing and incendiaries, when it comes to being discriminate, America really is the good guys, the bad guys don't give a tinkers cuss about the law.

I don't hold America to some impossible standard which no one else on earth could, or would even bother to adhere to.

I don't like Obama's politics, but when it came to warfighting, he certainly was not a monster, if anything, he went too easy on them, the book on Obama was that he was far too concerned about PR and as a result nobody called off more strikes to avoid the bad press of "ZOMG civilian casualties!"

The West Wing was micromanaging, and in terms of requests for targeted strikes, most of the time they called it off for just this reason, ain't no Operation Rolling Thunder, nothing of the sort.

I would even cut Obama slack for being too cautious, because thanks to the liberal panty waists of America, politically, his hands were basically tied. I'm quite sure that he personally would have liked to go harder, but realistically, he has to play to his base.

It's war, Jedi, people are going to get killed, but America's war on terror is arguably the most discriminate war in human history, considering the nature of the enemy, and America is in the end the softest option, if you somehow forced the local governments to go into these places to try to deal with it, they would just shell it indiscriminately with artillery.

[heydaralon]

Its a pretty simple fix guys. Just get Irish to swear an oath of loyalty to England and renounce any future claims to sovereignty. What is so hard about that?

[jediuser598]

Well except the law favours Obama there as well, America has an Article 51 right to self defense, if you are going to attack America as Unlawful Combatants from functionally ungoverned spaces, hiding amongst the local population as human shields, then you are responsible for the consequences to that local population, the law puts the onus on the attacker to ensure the safety of the local population, by clearly marking who is who and where is what in terms of Non Combatants, if not, then the war crime is failing to do so.

Again, the law was written with the awareness that Unlawful Combatants would in essence be cheating, not following the rules, and so the law holds those who are doing that responsible, and the state which is trying to defend itself from them has the broadest latitude to strike back as necessary.

America is actually being exponentially more precise than the law requires, because there were no drones and precision guided munitions when the law was written, by the letter of the law, America could be much more indiscriminate, there's no requirement for pattern of life recce and persistent ISR, and America could use much more force if it didn't have the option of using UAS and PGMs.

I cut America slack on this, America is the most restrained military power of them all, if it was the Russians or the Chinese, they would just flatten the place with carpet bombing and incendiaries, when it comes to being discriminate, America really is the good guys, the bad guys don't give a tinkers cuss about the law.

I don't hold America to some impossible standard which no one else on earth could, or would even bother to adhere to.

I don't like Obama's politics, but when it came to warfighting, he certainly was not a monster, if anything, he went too easy on them, the book on Obama was that he was far too concerned about PR and as a result nobody called off more strikes to avoid the bad press of "ZOMG civilian casualties!"

The West Wing was micromanaging, and in terms of requests for targeted strikes, most of the time they called it off for just this reason, ain't no Operation Rolling Thunder, nothing of the sort.

I would even cut Obama slack for being too cautious, because thanks to the liberal panty waists of America, politically, his hands were basically tied. I'm quite sure that he personally would have liked to go harder, but realistically, he has to play to his base.

It's war, Jedi, people are going to get killed, but America's war on terror is arguably the most discriminate war in human history, considering the nature of the enemy, and America is in the end the softest option, if you somehow forced the local governments to go into these places to try to deal with it, they would just shell it indiscriminately with artillery.

We're headed into the weeds here Smitty. I'm not saying civilian casualties don't happen. What we're talking about here is a specific quote from a guy the poster in question voted for. The poster in question said it's wrong to target civilians, yet he voted for a guy who explicitly said "We have to go after their families." Then he said that even if his guy did make that order, the military would ignore it. Would they though?

Let us table that and just say it happens, what do you think the American general populace would say about it? If they found out? Remember, they voted for this guy, who said he'd do it. My guess is they'd be A-OK with it. My guess is that nothing would happen. Sure liberals would scream to high heaven about it, but being a republican he doesn't really care about liberal opinion.

Sure it's war Smitty, but you ok with torture, and specifically targeting civilians?

[Speaker to Animals]

Can somebody change his forum name to gyne lotrimin already?

[StCapps]

jedi is still pissed about targeting terrorists families, even after Trump took it back because "Mattis talked him out of it". As if Trump didn't plan to flip flop on that all along and was just milking the tough guy act to get elected. Man's got to play to his base now jedi, be real.

[jediuser598]

jedi is still pissed about targeting terrorists families, even after Trump took it back because "Mattis talked him out of it". As if Trump didn't plan to flip flop on that all along and was just milking the tough guy act to get elected. Man's got to play to his base now jedi, be real.

He also said he was going to go after Hillary when he became president, then he said he didn't want to, now he says he does. So which should I believe?

Promises to go after Clinton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha6m3Qi04CU

Decides to not go after Clinton:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/p ... ation.html

Flips and says he now wants to go after Clinton:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... d-hillary/

So, people who voted for Trump, which one should I believe?

[jediuser598]

Can somebody change his forum name to gyne lotrimin already?

You're the one who said you're against targeting civilians, but voted for a guy who is for targeting civilians. And what would you do exactly if he did "take out their families"? I bet you'd still vote for him in 2020 if he ran.