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You specifically proposed "killing them in a manner not publicized and then announcing that they have been executed." That is secretive. I agree that the current American method of execution, which permits witnesses to attend, is not secret.
Actually, I am describing what I've seen on the Motte, a place we both comment on. You claimed, without providing any evidence, that "you and other pro-America guys on here...ultimately draw the distinction between good and bad, with America on the good side of every conflict" and are "completely incapable of recognizing any hostile act taken against them from the viewpoint of its perpetrators." I don't think this is an accurate description of Americans on here, even the ones I've argued with about foreign policy.
What's your point here? I don't think anyone is denying that Hasan sees the world something along these lines, although I am not sure this is exactly how he would articulate it.
Because
And Nidal is not a combatant of a foreign army. What I am articulating here isn't some weird "American" perspective, we have customary traditions and international law that describe these sorts of things. Nidal doesn't fit the definition of an enemy combatant.
Did any of the people Nidal shot kill innocent people?
Getting things right generally matters. If you are unfamiliar with the dynamics of the Global War on Terror and who killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Middle East, perhaps you should withhold some of your judgment until you have a better understanding of what actually happened.
Are you pretending American and Iranian soldiers are co-belligerents? Or than American soldiers swore an oath to uphold and protect the Iranian Constitution?
Does it have to be hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Isn't it perverted to support the murder of...one person?
In your definition, a black guy who ancestry has been in America for hundreds of years, or a Native American guy whose ancestry has been in America for thousands of years, is less American than Donald Trump, who's a latecomer.
It is not secretive to openly process someone through the justice system, sentence them to death in a fair trial, house them in a a valid (for US standards) prison facility on death row, and then unceremoniously kill them. You provide no argument, you've just asserted that this is secretive somehow again and again. If you believe these institutions are working in secret, make that case. If you don't believe that, give a justification for why institutions that are not working in secret would start if the method of execution was changed from being a publicly broadcasted event to a private one. Why would that elevate the risk of torture?
But that is exactly my experience both here and elsewhere when talking about Us foreign policy. And is in part what you are doing in this very conversation.
This is the perspective of another person. I'm sure he would articulate it differently, but this is what I presume motivates many middle Eastern terrorists.
But you don't engage with it. Instead you assert the American perspective. Despite all the innocents killed by the US. How are you not seeing this? It reminds me of this exchange between Michael Scheuer and the House Homeland Security Committee.
From his perspective he was. He sees no reason to dignify the sanctity you or others reserve for the US and its actions on the world stage. And as he demonstrated, and like America has demonstrated against many a innocent victim across the globe, those rules and laws are just a piece of paper. Those US soldiers are dead just like those civilians are. If you want to pretend that the motives of the shooter don't matter, go ahead. But I think they do. And I think that a military like the American one, that has done some many horrible things in the service of a demented foreign policy can't play victim or hide being international law, sitting on a throne of dead women and children. That were to the US at the time 'convenient targets' they later choose to call 'Collateral Damage' after the women and children dead are counted.
Can you acknowledge how absurd it would sound to a person who identifies with the victims of those attacks that people representing the organization that committed those atrocities are complaining that they themselves were attacked in a 'place of trust' that's actually a military base?
Here you are asserting your American frame. There's no argument. Just an assertion that, to you, Nidal did wrong based on specific premises. I don't think oathbreaking is the main problem when people commit a mass shooting. I think you're just being obtuse to rhetorically distance yourself from the moral arguments made by the victims of Americas zionist foreign policy. Trying to qualify the event through ways that can't be equated with the actions of US armed forces. But when we do look at the actual issue at hand, which is the killing, there are plenty of equivocal examples to be drawn on.
Did any of the civilians bombed by the US?
I'm familiar with the death toll and the number I mentioned is generally accurate, depending on how much faith you put in US universities doing research into the topic. I already said, however, that the total number would not matter to the point of contention, given that it's very high in any case. High enough to make a mockery of any US serviceman who pretends to be a victim when killed. Especially so in Yemen.
What do you think this chain of replies is about? You said Americans were generally well versed in the moral cost of the actions they support. Noting several popular authors who you allege are read in America. I maintained that many Americans generally were not, given the repeat support they show for bombing innocent civilians.
So to incorporate your example, yes. If someone murdered an innocent person on command of someone hoping to benefit some twisted foreign policy, then wrote a book about how haunting the face of their victim is as it twists in pain in their dreams. And then someone else reads this, says it affected them dearly, and then goes out and supports killing innocents in search of the same gain the murderer sought, I would call that perverted, yes. The emotions felt by the reader were purely self gratifying and perverse. The emotional turmoil just another experience to be had.
No, I don't understand this. I'm saying that when you don a military uniform, you represent that force.
For the most part, yes. And this is demonstrated by the plurality of blacks living in America today. And the history of the native Americans, who never in their thousands of years of history on the continent did anything to make it into America as it is generally known to be. That was all 'Europeans'.
It's by definition more secretive the less transparent it is.
What do you mean, I don't engage with it. I have at least some understanding of it (despite what you might think) but I don't agree with it. Do you?
This might be true. I don't agree with his perspective. Do you?
I don't think I've been pretending they don't matter.
Well, do you agree with collective guilt, or not?
If it is wrong to kill people who are not directly guilty of a crime, then what Nidal did was wrong. If it's not, why are you complaining that the U.S. did it?
I sense, generally, that you disagree with actions taken by the United States government and therefore sympathize with Nidal. But I'm not getting a clear ethical framework for why you think what Nidal did was right and what the U.S. did was wrong.
Well...usually if there's premises there's an argument.
What's your argument that what Nidal did was good?
I think there's actually a huge moral valiance to oathbreaking. A single person killing his wife is much more evil than a single person who uses a nuclear weapon to destroy an entire carrier battle group, killing thousands of people including any civilians who happen to be onboard. Do you disagree?
See my question above.
The link that you provided does not substantiate your suggestion that the US military killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East throughout the Global War on Terror. It substantiates that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, which I did not dispute.
You, of course, will not be able to find any actual polling or research suggesting that a plurality of Americans support bombing innocent civilians.
You will argue that they support it from a consequentialist framework because they agree with actions that lead to the bombing of innocent civilians.
Very well: are you opposed to any action that might lead to the deaths of innocent civilians? Do you condemn all acts that lead to the deaths of innocent civilians?
And Nidal Hasan chose to don that uniform. He should have represented that force, instead of some other force (be that the Taliban, Palestine, the mob, whoever.)
Kind of a weird thing to say, given that nobody can think of American without thinking of cowboys, and nobody can think of cowboys without thinking of Indians.
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