There's probably a good debate there re: ethics. Is it ethically better to kill a tyrant or go through a ten-year circus of endless delays and appeals, subjecting his victims to reliving the horror every time it enters the news or he makes public statements. All for what? So we can lock him up and forget about him. Can you just imagine going through all that with Bin Laden? Good grief.
You're making gratuitous assumptions regarding time. The post WW2 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg lasted eleven months. Just over a year elapsed between the beginning of Adolf Eichmann's trial and his execution. It's been done before, it can be done again. If we want it.
If Trump is motivated by emotional pangs also and not just naked cynicism that almost makes him more dangerous. If he really bombed for teh poor dead babbies, who knows what an appropriately outré atrocity might drive him to.
Amor de Cosmos wrote: You're making gratuitous assumptions regarding time. The post WW2 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg lasted eleven months. Just over a year elapsed between the beginning of Adolf Eichmann's trial and his execution. It's been done before, it can be done again. If we want it.
I'd be more interested in your plan to get him to trial in the first place. Ground invasion? Hundreds/thousands of lives lost on a goose chase of indeterminate length and outcome? Or Eichmann-style snatch and dash?
As I said we should be planning for tomorrow, not constantly looking in a rear-view mirror at so-called solutions from yesterday or the day before. If a fraction of the human and economic resources spent by the world's major powers on conventional weaponry were spent on finding alternative methods of capturing a single individual with minimal, or even no, loss of life then we might be getting somewhere. Even now it's relatively easy to find where someone is, securing them is more difficult but not impossible. Yes there'll be security, but why assume anyone needs to be killed? Why use bullets? We tranquilise animals, why not enemy soldiers? We're basically a smart species that acts stupidly. We're capable of better, much better. Why not try to be better before we blow ourselves to kingdom come.
But you're the one looking in the rearview mirror to Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial. What benefit did mankind see from those exercises? Did we learn to be better human beings? Did it end all similar atrocities? Did they, indeed, mainly end in the executions of those convicted anyway?
What would have been the point of trying Hitler or Mussolini or Gaddafi or any of those monsters from the former Yugoslavia?
The runways are operational, as they were used for sorties today.
Some US sources claiming that they were never targeted, but it does seem increasingly clear that as many as half of the missles missed the base entirely.
Notifying the Russians obviously allowed them to warn the Syrians. Reports claim that senior officers fled without telling their soldiers.
Assassination is not easy; look at how many times the US tried to kill Castro. Eichmann and Saddam were not heads of state when they were captured.
Trials are going to be called "victor's justice", as was Nuremberg, and their only purpose really is to humiliate the loser. There was some hope that trials might deter future dictators but that obviously never occurred.
Trump really is as thick as pig-shit but the Americans seem to like this fact, as their culture is anti-intellectual and pro-Action Man. It's like a Rambo presidency, until the shit hits the fan.
WOM wrote: But you're the one looking in the rearview mirror to Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial. What benefit did mankind see from those exercises? Did we learn to be better human beings? Did it end all similar atrocities? Did they, indeed, mainly end in the executions of those convicted anyway?
What would have been the point of trying Hitler or Mussolini or Gaddafi or any of those monsters from the former Yugoslavia?
Examples from the future aren't available, so there isn't really an option.
It isn't flicking a switch. It's going to take more than a handful of examples to change the bloody habits of centuries. The most important point is trying to bring about justice without innocent bloodshed. The point is also, as Hannah Arendt said, to see and comprehend the banality of evil. Hitler, Stalin, and legions of others are mythologised, because we were never allowed to see their feet of clay. Even today they're considered monsters, not men. All of us — and especially their victims — need to see, and know, that isn't true. We also need to understand that, even though they're just like us, we're better than them because we don't do, nor countenance, the despicable things they've done.
That Mark Corrigan style gamma minus newsman John Sopel has now filed a vile little piece on BBC news, normalising Trump and the Syria bombing like he's just doing what faggy Obama was too limp to face up to. No one will notice when they get privatised and Murdoched. They are now a full on partisan State broadcaster and no more pretending to be a Public Service broadcaster. And for the highbrow crumbs to the trustees, it's a dead heat between BBC4 and Sky Arts as to whose founding "mission statement" is now most debased.
He does but there are going to be brighter people than Bannon and Jeff Sessions at the top of the military. And maybe Trump is more deferential to soldiers than he is with other top brass.
It doesn't wash that he and his team were upset by the news and came up with it.
Amor de Cosmos wrote: It isn't flicking a switch. It's going to take more than a handful of examples to change the bloody habits of centuries. The most important point is trying to bring about justice without innocent bloodshed. The point is also, as Hannah Arendt said, to see and comprehend the banality of evil. Hitler, Stalin, and legions of others are mythologised, because we were never allowed to see their feet of clay. Even today they're considered monsters, not men. All of us — and especially their victims — need to see, and know, that isn't true. We also need to understand that, even though they're just like us, we're better than them because we don't do, nor countenance, the despicable things they've done.
But, with much respect, we know all these things already. Relearning them with each tyrant serves nobody but the tyrant. You're looking for a principled, ethical response to a question that doesn't deserve one.
To frame that idea, let me state that I'm unequivocally anti death penalty. I fully support, for example, trying serial killers like Paul Bernardo, even when their conviction is certain and only prospect is lifelong incarceration, with likely no net benefit to anyone. This is, obviously, a very first world idea not embraced by all first world countries (or, indeed, people).
And then there are tyrants. People with the uniquely rare power and malice to kill scores of people on a whim. We know their names. And no amount of principled 'learning from history' will ever change the way they approach their personal brand of tyranny. For these people, we (IMHO) do more harm than good when we let them mock the due process of law, continuing to propagate their lies as the surviving witnesses to the atrocities sit in the gallery. And then we kill them in the end, and have learned what?
You're looking for a principled, ethical response to a question that doesn't deserve one.
Why not? Are there any questions that don't deserve such a response. When and where do we set ethics and morality aside?
For these people, we (IMHO) do more harm than good when we let them mock the due process of law, continuing to propagate their lies as the surviving witnesses to the atrocities sit in the gallery. And then we kill them in the end, and have learned what?
In what sense are they mocking the law? Quite the opposite. They don't have a gun at their side, or an army at their command to do that. It's just them. one ordinary flesh and blood human being, required to answer for his/her crimes against the rest of humanity.
Trials are going to be called "victor's justice", as was Nuremberg, and their only purpose really is to humiliate the loser.
Yes. That inevitably is going to happen. It's an evolutionary process, and will, rightly, change accordingly. The South African Truth and Reconciliation commission explicitly moved away from Nuremberg's retributive model to a "restorative" one for example. How much of that, if anything, is relevant in Syria's case is moot of course.
Amor de Cosmos wrote: Why not? Are there any questions that don't deserve such a response. When and where do we set ethics and morality aside?
I framed that: when the situation is so extreme (as in murderous tyrants) that to 'bring them to justice' would do more emotional (or even physical) damage than to simply dispatch with them. And I'm not worried that this is going to be a slippery slope sort of thing. We're talking about one or two people in a generation.
In what sense are they mocking the law? Quite the opposite. They don't have a gun at their side, or an army at their command to do that. It's just them. one ordinary flesh and blood human being, required to answer for his/her crimes against the rest of humanity.
Not the opposite at all. They take the stand and either seek to explain it away (we were only following orders), deny it, or double down and give their heinous views one last airing. When are they ever actually required to answer for their crimes? When do they ever seek forgiveness or give their victims peace? It's a sham...it never happens. And then we kill them anyway.
ursus arctos wrote: The runways are operational, as they were used for sorties today.
Some US sources claiming that they were never targeted, ...
I'm inclined to think that the Tomahawk does not even carry a warhead that is effective against runways. The Russians won't be slow in getting their latest defensive hardware in place in Syria. If Trump's not careful he'll be giving them free testing of their capability against front line American weaponry while a third party is the target.
EDIT: For the avoidance of doubt, I'm referring to their capability against cruise missiles, not anything that might risk American lives.
They take the stand and either seek to explain it away (we were only following orders), deny it, or double down and give their heinous views one last airing. When are they ever actually required to answer for their crimes? When do they ever seek forgiveness or give their victims peace? It's a sham...it never happens. And then we kill them anyway.
Well if you're convinced that it's beyond human capacity to move beyond Old Testament resolutions to violent conflict, then there can be no further discussion. As I said earlier, I'd hope we can do better than that. I do believe that, post-WW2 there have been positive moves in that direction, beginning with Nuremberg and moving through the, more than forty, truth and reconciliation commissions that have taken place in the last thirty years. None of these are perfect — any more than, in a different context, the EU or UN are perfect — but perfection is always the enemy of the good and, on the whole, the world is better off with them than without.
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