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Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose?
HughPickens.com writes: Erik Wemple writes at the Washington Post that Fox News recently took the controversial step of posting a horrific 22-minute video online that shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death. Fox warned internet users that the presentation features "extremely graphic video." "After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video," said Fox executive John Moody. "Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content."
But Fox's decision drew condemnation from some terrorism experts. "[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS's media arm," said Malcolm Nance. "They might as well start sending them royalty checks." YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site it would be taken down. CNN explained that it wouldn't surface any of the disturbing images because they were gruesome and constituted propaganda that the network didn't want to distribute. "Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video — which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause — but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing 'strong, earth-shaking and decisive' retaliation."
But Fox's decision drew condemnation from some terrorism experts. "[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS's media arm," said Malcolm Nance. "They might as well start sending them royalty checks." YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site it would be taken down. CNN explained that it wouldn't surface any of the disturbing images because they were gruesome and constituted propaganda that the network didn't want to distribute. "Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video — which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause — but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing 'strong, earth-shaking and decisive' retaliation."
No.
Corporate restrictions apply.
To me, Fox got it right this time. They put the video up, with big graphic disclaimers of how barbaric it is. Nobody was ever forced to click on it, you don't have to watch it if you don't want to. Even more so, it seems rather unlikely that anyone who was considering aligning themselves with ISIS would go to Fox for information and become persuaded to join ISIS after watching this video there. ISIS is certainly tech-savvy enough to be able to distribute this through other channels to get to the people they want to get it in front of.
That said, Fox posted this likely for no reason other than to draw eyes - and with them, hopefully money - to their website. So much like Ron Paul, Fox News is most often wrong but on rare occasions right for the wrong reasons.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...that if a right-leaning group committed "atrocities" anywhere (perceived or otherwise), MSNBC, Salon, Mother Jones and their ilk would have it on front page infinite loop 24 x7. Our society needs to quit playing partisan games and starting calling out evil, regardless of who the perpetrators are.
Even better. Faux "News" claimed it was to educate the viewer about ISI(L/S), but did not put a translation of the 20ish minutes of ranting before the murder.
i wonder what the public opinion would be if the true "horrors of war" were shown on TV?
You know, soldiers massacrating people (which is what war is, literally).
Would they still call them "boys" as in "bring our boys back home"? Will they be received as heroes?
No matter how vile and criminal the content it still has the right to be seen.
The industrial military complex needs bad guys so we create them, arm them, and then they do bad things and we get shown those bad things so we support punishing those bad people, who we created and armed and abused and punished. Without our complacency and acceptance of this, it would not happen. American Sniper is another example of glorifying killers of bad people. Who are these bad people, why are they bad, what circumstances could we create that could make them friendly, would that be profitable to our corporate overlords?
Showing these murders serves as a gut punch to the free world. It enables us to have a visceral reaction to this brutality, forcing us to acknowledge and deal with the fact that there are people in this world who are willing to use any means to achieve their end attempt to force their beliefs on others through fear and control them through the same. Unfortunately, I don't think enough it makes the evening news or online news feeds. Like the press coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, somehow the modern press has developed its own misguided ethos over what the American public should or shouldn't see. Should there be a sufficient warning so that children or those who don't want to see it can choose not to? Yes. But, that's all that's needed. Fair warning.
Ultimately, it's not the press's responsibility to censor violent video. It's their responsibility to show it. It's their responsibility to objectively report the news.
There are those who will argue that Fox was doing ISIS's PR work for them. That's bunk. Has not showing the carnage that Boko Haram has inflicted on the people of Nigeria stopped them for doing it? In fact, when terrorists killed a handful of people in Paris, it was plastered all over the news for weeks. We all saw the wounded police officer shot in the head. Yet, long before that, tens of thousands of people were murdered, entire towns leveled and atrocities beyond even that were committed by Boko Haram -- yet that has received and still receives a tiny portion of the news coverage that the Paris attacks had. That's the greatest disservice of all by the press.
I think that all videos and events should be presented without editing or commentary.
I would prefer to mike my mind up instead of having others decide "what I need to know" .
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
if you don't like it don't watch.
it is poor taste to post it and it gives the bad guys what they want, but that is how free speech works. the price of free speech is that you even so often are forced to choose whether or not to hear or see something you don't like.
lose != loose
it's common practice to describe the scene and leave it to the consumer's imagination. That's how terror control works.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Maybe if we don't look at it we can pretend it doesn't exist, right?
I commend Fox on this. As a consumer of news I want the CHOICE of whether I view this or not. I do not want the news provider to choose for me. As a point of fact, I have up to this point chosen not to view the video.
I am actually not upset a Fox for this, I am upset that the New York Times are such cowards that they won't show Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
Seeing it on TV is probably not going to have much of an effect for the same reason that playing violent games doesn't have much of an effect. Vision is a powerful sense, but not anywhere near as powerful as the effect of hearing, smelling and feeling on top of seeing.
It's inevitable that any visual depiction is going to be different from the actual event, no matter how hard the people depicting it try to keep it accurate.
Other media organizations are afraid to post the video because "people might get the wrong idea."
Basically, they are afraid that people will start going all anti-Muslim. Well hello, most Americans should be pretty familiar now with the "all terrorists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are terrorists" idea.
Videos like this will show people exactly who is on the other side. This isn't a fake propaganda video, this is what ISIS/ISIL wants people to see. I suppose it doesn't fit into the worldview of the left-leaning media, who believe that diplomacy, talk, and hugs will cure any conflict, and that conflicts are due to misunderstandings between rational people.
It should be pretty clear that burning someone alive in a cage wasn't a misunderstanding.
When faced with this pretty brutal challenge to their worldview, the left basically says "screw it" and ignores it. It doesn't fit the narrative.
Just don't censor it. If somebody wants to put it up, let them. It is nobody else's business. Censorship is always the worst option.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I don't know if there is journalistic purpose in this. I only know what I feel about it. I've not watched it (or there other videos) and have no desire to.
I've seen people dying and badly injured before in real life as well as video. I'm not very squeamish about it, but it's unpleasant.
ISIS desperately wanted people to see this and have it burned into their memory. I have no desire to help them get something they want. The couple of stills I saw from it simply confirmed my opinion of them.
Beyond that, I have neither time nor memory neurons for either them or their "snuff" videos.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
This is exactly it.
No one could bring themselves to believe the horrors that the Nazi's did UNTIL the pictures could be seen.
These things are hard to look at, but they must be seen.
The CIA probably did worse things in 2002-2003, and the U.S. government is not prosecuting.
Lessons learned from Vietnam.
Does hiding news from people serve a legitimate journalistic purpose?
Far from helping ISIS's message, it hurts them in most of the world. Never mind how angry it had made various Middle Easter nations (Jordan the most of course) it is the kind of thing that'll hurt their recruitment with western youths. It's much harder to glorify them as valiant freedom fighters when you see shit like this. When the killing is impersonal it is easier to write it off as just "war against the infidels" or whatever. When you see cruelty up close, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to ignore.
Liberals want to candycoat the news, filter it, and shove it up our a**es.
Far rightwingnuts want to pretend they are overly righteous and more factual when they do almost as much editorializing as the left [not quite but in the same ballpark most of the time!]
YES. It should be available to be seen. ...and they have a lot of gruesome shi* in them. .... by shining a light on their atrocities you're doing them a DISFAVOR, it turns more people against their cause than it brings to their cause. Likewise I don't need hour long theses by rightwing reporters giving me a philosophical and psychological analysis of videos or war events .......
() we put out movies like Saw, Final Destination, snuff films etc
() Censorship of news is WRONG - NAZI WRONG - ISIS Wrong - RUSSIA WRONG - CHINA WRONG [maybe China should show those tanks running people over on the nightly news every anniversary of Tiannamen (sp?) and on whatever China's version of youtube is? ] - US of A WRONG
() Information, data & facts should not be buried away by choice of committee - so that means the liberal press can STFU about how it's propaganda and anyone who publishes it is doing ISIS a favor
Give me the data, give me the facts - give me the freedom to decide. DO NOT MAKE THAT CHOICE FOR ME
insert tab A into slot B
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
Yes there are journalistic reasons to show horrific videos. Your average person is far too insulated from the painfully ordinary horror that occurs around the world.
But that's not why Fox News showed it. Fox news is a nationalistic propaganda outlet for the American far-right and only exists to influence the public. They showed it not to inform, but to inflame. To create support for a war effort that the American far right considers beneficial. To dehumanize the enemy of the day "Look at those savage sand ni****rs. Lets go bomb the fuck out of them"
Context is everything.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
I have no idea on where this quote came from, but to paraphrase, "Good journalism is presenting news that people don't want to hear".
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
There is even less reason to censor it. People really need to see what war looks like.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The concentration camps weren't designed to terrorize an enemy, and the allies waited until the war was over. Two major differences between that case and this.
In this case Fox is literally doing exactly what an extremist terrorist-etc group wants them to do.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Watching videos of the 2nd 911 plane crash into the WTC
over and over and over,
slow motion, up close
seems to have reduced people's capacity for critical thinking to this day.
Suddenly the most paranoid person in any given room was considered a national security expert.
These videos seem to perform the same way.
I refuse to watch them for the same reason I refuse to watch snuff films.
But I know people who watch them with ghoulish fascination.
As horrible as it is, this is what happens during a war.
Perhaps if more people saw the reality of war they would not be so apathetic and supportive of the warmongering puppets in the white house.
Wars rarely have anything to do with people vs. people; they have much more to do with corporations and elitists battling for control; often with a religious spin.
Unfortunately it is not the war mongers who risk their lives for their personal goals. It is the well-intentioned, good-hearted soldiers who are being used as cannon fodder to protect the elite - not the average citizen.
Dead soldiers are hidden away and not honored and remembered as they used to be in past wars - and as they should be by their government.
The ones that survive are often really, really messed up as a result and are not given proper treatment. PTSD is a BIG problem in the military.
Personally I don't want to see horrid images, but then again, I do not support this "war of terrorism", nor Bush, nor Obama nor Harper or the Greedy 20 nor the central banks.
I do support the brave soliders who put their lives in harms way for us.
We should repay them by identifying and removing the REAL terrorists - the warmongering old-boys in the White House and Parliament Buildings.
Violence is not the answer.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
You know, soldiers massacrating people (which is what war is, literally).
War is, ideally, about the goal of killing or otherwise defeating enemy combatants for a moral outcome (i.e. defense against terrorism or protecting our allies). This is not the same as shooting unarmed people simply because they exist in an area.
Collateral damage should not be ignored. If it is minimized in achieving war goals, I would consider my soldiers to be heroes. It not, I would be seriously questioning why and under whose authority. But at the end of the day, everyone weighs collateral damage against the achievement of war and makes their own decisions about whether the outcome is good.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Normally, I don't agree with much of what the Fox News [Drama] channel does. But in the US, we are too overly protective of the populace in hiding the reality that they live in. We should allow people to see the absolute brutality of these things, IF they choose to. I don't think it should be aired on TV (nor repeated 50 times over the week) but putting it online for opt in was the right call.
This is assuming that we respect the wishes of the family of the pilot and they were ok with this posting. And I would think otherwise if this was propaganda for ISIS. In this case, I do not think it is. This was either real stupidity on someone's part and I hope he got caned/stoned to death for it. Or some conspiracy to put ISIS in horrible light (the video tape & releasing it; not the murder).
Cause this video probably does more PR harm to ISIS than all the bombs and soldiers will ever do. Up to this point, most people considered ISIS to be human. They were someone that could be negotiated with. They may have some "cause" or "ideal" that could be understood and addressed. Like Cuba, Hamas, or North Korea. People would support them on this opinion or choose not to fight or choose the level of brutality to reply with.
Now, with this video, ISIS will be viewed as cruel animals. There maybe civilized, normal ISIS men and women trying to define a stable environment (however we may disagree). But even they will be branded as animals. And the human response to rabid animals is that they need to be put down. Negotiations will be treated differently, offensive measures will change, and your support groups will be disgusted with you.
I would say this single video probably has destroyed the brand called ISIS. They may regroup under a different moniker but that's like starting from ground zero.
They did this during the Vietnam War (search for videos on YouTube - or 4chan if you have to see them - I prefer not to look - I already know how bad my fellow man can get). Depending on the war, yes we would still call them "boys" and receive them as heroes. See what Jordan's response has been to this video. The "Rules of War" and Geneva Convention was put into place to keep this sort of thing from happening, and if you choose to ignore them, then the term "Non-Combatants" goes out the window. Sadly, what's going to happen is a lot of people are going to die.
If people saw what was really going on maybe something more would be done about it. FUCK CENSORSHIP!
And, unfortunately, there are groups of people who deny that the Holocaust never happened. (I guess those 12 million people killed just "got lost walking home.") All evidence for the Holocaust is written off as inconsequential or part of a pro-Holocaust conspiracy.
I wonder if, a generation from now, we'll have terrorism deniers who will claim that there were actually no terrorist attacks in the middle east? (We already have the 9-11 deniers, so we're partway there.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I wouldn't watch this video, and I suspect the motives for Fox News here is not pure. But ultimately this is a personal moment for the man who is suddenly faced with a horrific death. These are the last moments of his life, and I believe they should belong to him. Since I didn't watch it, I don't know what it contains, but I would suspect they do not show the man at his best. If we could know his wish in the matter, I'd want to defer to that. But since we can't I'd defer to the less morally ambiguous choice which is to keep the moment as private to him as is possible.
Peace, or Not?
One could easily argue, if people want to see it then showing it has a legitimate journalistic purpose. Even if those people then decide they want to join ISIS.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Actually, if concentration camp photos were leaked during the war, maybe the Allies would have done more to liberate them quicker or disrupt them so that they couldn't kill as many people.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to agree with Fox and think that ISIS wants these videos shown so that people will fear them. I also worry that showing these videos will add fuel to the "all Muslims are evil terrorists" fire. Still, showing the video (in an opt-in capacity) could have some positive results. (Rallying people against ISIS even if they might have sympathized with the group previously.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But all the Western news organizations do it to some extent. My favorite example was the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami. News organizations seemed to have little problem showing the bloated bodies of Asians, but if they showed any Western bodies on the wall-to-wall broadcasts, it was purely by accident.
While I can see the point of not giving the likes of ISIS what amounts to free publicity, the fact is that they did do something horrifying, and it was made publicly available.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I disagree, our news outlets, no matter how dubiously "newsy" they are, should not censor content for any reason. Fair warnings, room clearing statements are good taste, but this is the reality. Watching this video is as close as first hand information most of us will ever get, it's not a frame job or some conspiracy. They're not exaggerating anything, this is real life.
Perhaps Fox News intended to whip us all into a frenzy of "Obama is a weakling, he should nuke the middle east", but I doubt any such thing will happen. If anything we're going to get numb to all of this and relatively apathetic to anything that occurs over there, as long as it's harsh. That can only harm the ISIS cause, and enable our leadership to find the best solution, not necessarily the most spectacular one.
They won't show the videos, but they will trip over each other trying to be the first to identify a gunman every time there is some kind of mass shooting...
Of course, because they're doing it to the enemy.
Yes, it serves a legitimate journalistic purpose.
BUT that purpose is not the only factor that should go into deciding whether publishing the video in a given media or venue is a responsible thing to do.
Nick Ut's photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack sans clothing during the Vietnam conflict was published after careful consideration of the journalistic purposes and other factors. It won a Pulitzer prize.
The image can be found here.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The terrorists want as many people as possible to live in a non-specific paralysing fear where you are afraid to provoke the enemy rather than having a desire to take the fight to them. Self-censorship only serves their cause. The west needs to see them for the monsters that they are and admit which religion/ideology drives them. They are simply following the example of their prophet because he did similar things. If you call them non-Islamic then by extension you are calling Muhammad non-Islamic as well which is ridiculous. What the terrorists do not want is the public in the western nations getting angry and calling for a coalition to defeat ISIS like the allies defeated Nazism and fascism in WWII.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
True on both counts, but Fox "News" aired/posted a snuff film - (isn't that illegal?). In their defense, though, it's was probably more to make Obama look bad - for not bombing them further back into the Stone Age - than making Muslims or, more specifically, ISIS look bad.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Look at those evil Muslims killing innocent people to further their political goals! They are barbaric demonspawn! NUKE THE ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST!"
Of course, people with this view (I know a few) are completely unaware of the incredible irony...
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
So what? When you hear 'collateral damage' from an airstrike, it is equally likely that a family somewhere was trapped under the rubble of their house and burned alive. And nobody gets mad about it.
If this was my family member I'd say show it all over the place. If it forces people in the region to acknowledge that ISIS is not about Islam but is a brutal gang roaming around and killing anyone Muslin and non Muslim then the video did its job.
So why the fuck is the US not sending the same amount of troops into Iraq to get rid of ISIS as they diid to oust Saddam. The place has become are real quagmire and those people you "freed" from their dictator are now suffering under an even more brutal group.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
One of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing was being interviewed. She insisted to reporters that the name of the bomber that was still alive, Tsarnev, not be used during the interview (PTSD is the presumed reason).
I recall that because I feel I have to reiterate my answer on that here.
Whether you feel some sort of trigger from that sort of thing or not, if the information is available, it must absolutely be part of the discourse on the subject. Yes, it is rather an ugly part of history, one that, I think, most people would like to forget just as soon as they hear about it. But, despite your comfort level, that piece of information is part of history, and it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that it should be omitted from discourse on the subject.
If you don't want to see it, hear it, or think about it, that's fine. But it still happened. And suggesting its availability doesn't have a "purpose" gives the false impression that it isn't significant. Unpleasantness should not immediately be grounds for censorship.
As an added thought for this particular situation: what I fear is the beating of a war drum to a threat that I haven't been exposed to. If I am not allowed to judge for myself what brutality has happened, I fear being lulled into a false sense of having to trust politicians and journalists who inject their own biases into situations and off the cliff into skirmishes that I might have a different perspective on if given all available evidence of the subject.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
It's too bad the Allies released those photos of the concentration camps. They were literally working for the Nazis and their SS arm.
Yeah, so many do not realize that ISIS and groups like them are acting like Nazi Germany. The world went to war against Germany to fight Nazism knowing that not every German was a Nazi but something had to be done to stop them. All of the silent muslims are either secret supporters or complacent in their silence to the atrocities committed much like how the germans that refused to stand up to the nazis in germany are partially to blame for the holocaust.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And the flipside to that, particularly where ISIS is concerned, is that horrific acts like the burning of the Jordanian fighter pilot to death, easily available online or via the nightly news, might actually serve to inflame the anger of the public in many countries, serving the purpose of creating more support for the anti-ISIS campaign. That certainly seems to be what has happened in Jordan, where ISIS's actions has probably eliminated any desire on the part of the Jordanian government or its citizens to seek some sort of diplomatic compromise.
To me, al Qaeda, ISIS and the other Islamist extremists are like a hyper-virulent virus. They leave behind a horrible trail of death and misery, but they are so awful and so destructive that they essentially burn themselves out. Even Muslims who might in some ways be sympathetic to the extremists' variant of Islam will likely walk away from them because of these kinds of insanely over-the-top displays of cruelty. ISIS shouldn't be worried about shocking and pissing off Westerners, it should be worried about shocking and pissing off their co-religionists.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hope that we learn from this that there are extremists everywhere, from lunatic "barbaric Muslims", to "[bloodthirsty] evangelical Christians". I also hope we look around and notice a large number of muslims and evangelical christians who are not crazy or extreme and simply want to live their lives like everyone else. Even down here in crazy right wing Texas, right on my street there are Hindu's, Muslims, Christians of all flavors, athiests, blacks, whites, and even a gay couple. We aren't killing each other, our kids aren't warring down at the elementary school.
Clearly then, what it takes to put a man in a cage, set him on fire, and burn him to death is not a property of his religion. That man is out of his mind.
Because Germany and Japan were just victims.
Total war is an awful fucking thing, which is why we should avoid it. But if you are going to attack major military powers in the age of air power, then you will be bombed, and tens of thousands of your citizens will die, often horribly.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Are they showing ads on the page? If so then no the video shouldn't be shown. They are making a financial gain to someone murder. If it were me being murdered i wouldn't want Fox or anyone else making money/getting there jollys off of my demise. The people who will judge the murders in a trial are the only ones who need to see the brutality. That is MO on the matter
Jack of all trades,master of none
The "rules of war" can only work when the belligerents recognize that they exist. A number of the people executed at the war crimes trials after WWII were tried, convicted and sentenced because of their treatment of prisoners of war.
Not that the Allies were perfect, but in the case of the more egregious acts against POWs by Japan and Germany, often the orders came from pretty high up, so it wasn't just the odd unit going a little nuts.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because a well-educated populace should know who its enemies are, and why politicians may decide to send our military to go to war with them.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Burning people alive? Yes, it IS barbaric: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/04/burning-victims-death-still-common-practice/
Who is training them? In fact, try considering who created them.
Chickens flying everywhere...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
ISIS leans further to the right
It's left-wing groups that want to dictate what is acceptable to wear (schools often banning certain clothing for example), to drink (NYC and overly-large sodas) or even what women can do with their bodies (the constant slut-shaming of sex workers).
The only way for ISIS to go more left wing would be try to impose limits of speech - gh wait, they do that too...
Since you seem to be confused on this point please read the book Liberal Fascism for a better understanding of just where historically fascism comes from.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To be fair, it also shows that the credibility of journalism has come a long way in 70 years. Back then, rumors, speculation, and opinions were given equal weight and presentation, even within a single article. We don't necessarily need pictures to believe a story today, and pictures aren't necessarily a reflection of reality anyway. It's all about the integrity of, and our trust in, the information sources we use.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You know, soldiers massacrating people (which is what war is, literally).
In military terms the word massacre has a specific meaning which is narrower than the sense you're using it in. The dictionary version is "an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people", however the military version of the word involves a disparity of force. For example, using a machine gun to mow down unarmed POWs would be a massacre (not to mention a war crime), while using a machine gun to kill armed soldiers attacking your position would not. Killing all inhabitants of a besieged city would be a massacre, inflicting heavy casualties on the soldiers guarding a city prior to it's capture would not.
It is good to see multiple posts challenging the idea of 'legitimate' news and to see the positive recognition of them. One aspect I've not seen mentioned is the idea of a 'terrorism expert'. Exactly how does anyone actually rate being considered a terrorism expert?
When someone can make accurate and specific predictions or, even better, identify high-leverage actions to change terrorist behavior, they would rate being considered experts. Otherwise, they are no better than 'futurists'.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
I think the apologists for the terrorists and Islamic extremists should definitely watch all the burnings, stonings, beheadings, and rapes. Apparently words aren't enough.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'd say, at the very least, ISIS represents an economic threat to the United States, and the United States has dealt with economic threats via military power, even where there was no direct territorial threat, almost back to its beginnings. The US waged the Barbary Wars against North African pirates because the tribute the Barbary Pirates demanded was a threat to US economic interests.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
ISIS desperately wanted people to see this and have it burned into their memory.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even if ISIS wants the video to be seen, to have it seen by a wider group could easily have consequences they did not think of.
But perhaps they didn't think it WOULD be seen Did you ever think that ISIS might count on the fact that only groups friendly to them would get to see the whole video, the rest of the world just getting a summary as it has with past videos? Because it doesn't mater if Fox puts up the video or not for the people supporting ISIS, they will see the whole video. It's better that the rest of the civilized world be able to see true barbarity in action, so they can take a harder line against it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
We like to think that we're free from US Government media propaganda. But vilifying your enemy-du-jour by focusing on tragic, heinous actions is pretty much the only way to drag a democracy into war.
Bonus points for actually providing the enemy with weapons in the first place:
http://scgnews.com/the-covert-...
This kind of thing has been going on for a long time... you know those WMDs we were so sure Iraq had? We knew they had them because we sold them to Iraq back when we were supporting Iraq vs. Soviet-backed Iran. It's just a fringe benefit to be able to turn your former "allies" into "enemies" a bit later by showing everyone all the bad stuff they did with your weapons.
Not judging, but it's interesting to see how the defense-industrial complex works.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
What's the big deal with burning somebody alive? Look what the US Army did to Dilawar in Afghanistan.
They suspended him from the ceiling by the wrists for 4 days until his hands were crippled, and kicked him on the knees until his feet were crippled too and he died of the complications.
The lead interrogator responsible, Glendale Walls, served 2 months in military prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh please! In that case we never had war, at any time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ask yourself this... How effective would such videos be if nobody saw them? If people didn't know they existed. Would they keep making them?
ISIS is slaughtering thousands of people not on video also. Burning them alive, crucifying them, stoning homosexuals to death, holding women as sex slaves...
The list goes on and on and on. Plainly without the video they would still do these things, in fact if anything the video makes them more "civil" to some degree as they try to provide external justification for the actions they take - internal murders, not so much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Indeed. A warning is certainly appropriate, but news is news, however horrific it might be.
In Liberty, Rene
The concentration camp atrocity pictures were revealed pretty much as soon as they were discovered. Unfortunately, the first one was only truly found in August, 1944 - Majdanek. There was a conscious program to eradicate evidence of the camps, but the Soviet Bagration offensive caught the Germans off guard and overran the camp before it could be cleaned up. Later on, the Western Allies found camps, but only in the last three months of the war. Those films and photos were instantly available. So your first argument is entirely specious.
The purpose of the camps varied by camp, but in general the priorities were "seed fear in the population of going to one", "imprison enemies of the state and get work out of them" and "extermination of undesirables". In light of that, the big difference between the camps and this ISIS action is that ISIS is interested in foreigners, while the Germans were focused on their own population. That's not a good enough excuse to hide their atrocities.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm not apologizing for anything. That is the nature of total war.
And you know what, I'm glad we won. I won't apologize for it. That you don't like the bombing campaigns is irrelevant to me.
The Carthaginians picked a fight with the Romans, and in the end, Carthage was knocked to the ground and its fields salted.
The lesson of Carthage, Dresden and Hiroshima is that you don't take on the pre-eminent military power of your day and then expect that you can be protected by rules of engagement you didn't even bother following when you thought you had the upper hand.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not a fan of Fox news but in this case I think suppression of the video helps ISIS more than showing it. Suppression allows us to ignore the fact that they're a group with behaviors that don't belong in the civilized world, similar to the Nazis. Showing the video is distasteful, but if done on a opt-in basis it allows interested viewers to see their barbarity and develop an appropriate level of anger. Sure, some extremists may become motivated by what they see as strong action but the net effect will be negative as the broader population will be repulsed. You can see this playing out in Jordan right now.
Things admittedly get rather slippery when comparing war crimes - but personally I would rank the execution of an enemy soldier, even a horrific execution for propaganda purposes, on a somewhat different scale than the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
In my opinion this video shouldn't be shown and evidence of concentration camps should be. Both are equally disgusting in terms of horrors to human life. However, I think the distinction should be that one is intentionally desired to be shown by the perpetrators and the other is not. Giving the terrorists (or nazis or any other group what they want) sends the wrong message and ENCOURAGES more atrocities. ISIS obviously wanted people to see this horror, that's why they made the video and they released it to the media. The Nazis didn't want people to know the horrors they were performing and they didn't submit the evidence for the world to brag.
And most importantly, viewing evidence of the Holocaust makes it less likely that there will be another Holocaust like incident in the future. Showing evidence of terrorist executions makes them MORE likely to execute people in increasingly horrific ways to get attention from the world. It's the same reason why you shouldn't release videos or notes of people who go on shooting sprees and then commit suicide. It is a perverse way of encouraging insane people to commit horrible things or they will be forgotten.
News agencies shouldn't have to censor any material, but they should consider the ramifications of releasing it. Fox News decided money and page views were more important than discouraging future atrocities.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
War has rules.
The only rule to war is to win. Rules of war are there because we have to live with ourselves and our opponent after the war.
Better to think of the conquered/conquerer as gentlemen than a savage. Savagery begets savagery.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
That's true, but during the Afghanistan war Robert Fisk published hundreds of photos of Afghani civilians who were killed by American attacks, which the BBC, British press, and American press wouldn't print.
News media get much more news than they have room for, so they have to be selective.
I wonder if Fox News ran similar photos of the civilian victims of civilian victims of the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Gaza?
So what does that make us in the US? We who have allowed pseudo-christian fascists to gain ever more power over the last century, and regularly use that power to commit atrocities overseas in the name of American and British business interests?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Look at those evil Muslims killing innocent people to further their political goals! They are barbaric demonspawn! NUKE THE ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST!"
That position is probably too extreme, at the very least we should consider using air bursts to minimize damage to the oil supply.
There is still a big difference. Nazis didn't take pictures of concentration camps to generate sympathy for their cause. They deliberately hid the evidence because it would hurt their cause if known to the world. ISIS is intentionally staging these executions, recording it, and sending it to the media to get attention. Fox News just gave them attention. Do you think they might do something even more horrific next to make sure it gets on the news? This video shouldn't have been released because it tells terrorists that to get their message broadcast to the world, all they have to do is commit atrocities.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Who cares what "journalists" think or do? They stopped being gatekeepers of information, and most lack sufficient experience or knowledge to have informed opinions on much of anything.
Should it be legal to distribute the video? Of course.
Whether you choose to watch it is your business. I really didn't want to see it.
If true, then fine.
If not, they're just profiteering.
A while back, Fox also showed live TV footage of a man shooting himself in the head as he was pursued by police. This is not something that reputable journalists do.
If you report that that you have a video of a news event, and you don't make it available for the public to see somehow, that's hiding information.
Fortunately, it matters less and less: the entire journalistic profession is becoming irrelevant. They used to be the people who had the time and got paid for running endlessly after news stories and information in order to redistribute it. That also gave them a lot of power as gatekeepers of information and allowed them to write the occasional editorial.
These days, people collect and distribute information themselves and the primary function of journalists has become as obsolete as horse shit collectors in NYC after the automobile. Journalists are trying to reinvent themselves as some kind of intellectuals and experts on whatever they are reporting on, but face it: a journalism degree doesn't give you much insight into complex topics like the economy, psychology, criminology, the law, or science.
Searched for the link again, found it this time ... ... ...
The last time I had that sort of a chill run down my spine was in that one short shot in "The Ring" - were you see the girls face. ... That was a *long* time ago. No, I don't watch horror movies.
Summary of the videoclip: ... Very well funded indeed. Or they all "dressed up for the occasion". Probably a bit of both.
The pilot is chaged in a well built cage, as if on display for this exact purpose. It's smack in the center of a court among combat ruins. Roughly 10-20 soldiers standing around in a Mad Max aestetic setting, some further up on open floors of what looks like a half-bombed building. With very clean and neat combat gear, resembling a solid desert-spotty-camo US armed forces ripp-off.
You hear the cheasy allah sing-sang whawha pop chanting we've heard so much of lately build up as the clips soundtrack and see composited videosnippets and "news-bulletin" effects flying about. ... Don't know if that was Fox or not ... wouldn't be suprised if it was the video makers though, because:
What instantly strikes the viewer - me and anybody else I bet - is that the video is *very* well made. No shaky-cam stuff, but what appears to be corrected and composited top-quality HD footage, perhaps even 2 or 4HD. Cut together in a sort of MTV-videoclip aestetic, with extra room for the camera man to move about. A cut-up of closeups putting the victim front-and-center, to allow the viewer to get close to im and build a relation ... very smart. Think "Britains go talent" style personal engagement. The whole video is a barrage of quotes on western news/reality TV and action movie style quotes. ... These guys have done their homework and their message is for us, no two ways about it.
He's wearing clothing that pretty much resembles the orange/red clothes we see on all those Guantanamo pictures. Mmmmh, could this be a little "wave with the telegraph mast" as we say in Germany? ... I wonder. Anyway, the clothes are wet, obviously from the inflamable liquid they sprayed on him. He's pretty calm, standing in the center of the cage. Note: We're still seeing all this in a montage of shots in MTV/reality TV aestetic.
They show a shot of him praying, then a fighter in desert ski-mask (all of them have one) lighting a wooden torch and holding it to a stip of flammble. Bad guy action movie style it very much is. Intended, I bet ... After a few moments the man starts burning, waving his arms in pain, then flailing and running to and fro in the cage bumping into the bars, completely engulfed in flames. He goes down and unconscious after about 10-20 seconds. Couldn't really say exactly, it seemed like an eternity, and I sure as hell have no intention watching that again.
They give it another 10-20 seconds with a close-up to his face/head crisping in the fire - he's not feeling it anymore.
We do the same thing with dead animals on the barbeque, so if you think me putting it that way is cruel, think about your eating habbits.
They stop the fire and bury him with a wheel-loader dumping a load of debris and dirt onto the cage, crushing it, extinguishing the fire and burrying him all at once. The wheel loader is filmed with what looks like a seperate cam, shots change throughout the action. The whole procedure from start to finish looks very well rehearsed
Conclusion:
This stuff has happened throughout history. We know it.
What's new is that anybody - that includes the scariest of religious fanatics - can take a high end cam for a few bucks from a convenience store and make this sort of video of it.
My judgment is out:
These guys are serious. Not Nazi Germany serious - praise the heavens not - but like 14th century serious. Curely, fanatic and not to be reasoned with. A few more of these videos and I'd vote for two dozen
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In any "terror" campaign media is literally the conduit through which successful propagation of terror occurs.
Likewise when a loony toon expects to become famous doing something heinous medias job is to deliver.
I believe primary reason media is reluctant to show this as their effective role as a tool would become so trivially apparent as to negatively affect viewership.
The media is good at keeping people afraid and or entertained as deliberate story selection, repetition, nonstop trolling and comical hyperbole delivered with stunning lack of domain knowledge attests to every day. The whole system is fucked up with such little information content being delivered thru TV talk about "Journalistic purposes" is rather pointless in my opinion.
Yeah, you are right, the U.S. took over Afghanistan and Iraq and gave it right back to them instead of turning it over to their corporations. That's some conspiracy you have going in your head.
> A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation.
So no, they didn't post a snuff film.
You think there were special effects use? or that Fox is not in the entertainment industry or in any industry to make money at all?
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
It wasn't just Fox. Staid button-down CBC, not noted for sensationalism, also made the decision to air the video during the evening broadcast. And no, just describing it is not adequate to convey what happened.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You can argue somewhat over wars of defense fought on your home territory, but generally speaking war is fought for money and power, morality is just the flag the soldiers and populous are rallied behind. Certainly the US hasn't fought a "moral" war in, what, almost a century? You could argue we were drawn into WWI for moral reasons, but the atrocious, unsustainable wealth and power grabs made after the Allies won - that all but guaranteed the outbreak of WWII - quickly put a lie to that propaganda. Not to mention the fact that the unrest in the Middle East can mostly be laid at our feet as well - carving up the conquered territories with no respect for long-standing historical tensions, installing puppet governments loyal to the various Ally powers, and placing a bunch of Jews in the middle of a region rife with mutual animosity. It's like intentionally creating a powder keg in the middle of a spark factory, and for what? To make it easy for ourselves and our allies to exploit the mineral wealth of the conquered nations, while establishing a well armed military outpost right in the heart of it, that would by necessity be permanently allied with us for it's continued survival.
If morality was the goal we'd have been invading Africa to exterminate the genocidal monsters gathering power there, instead we went and conquered a bunch of our own puppet governments in the Middle East, who were getting uppity and refusing to keep the oil flowing on the terms we unilaterally "agreed" to.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"I guess those 12 million people killed..."
Wasn't it 6 million last year?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
" It's all about the integrity of, and our trust in, the information sources we use."
We're doomed.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Does it serve a journalistic purpose?
No. A textual description is all that's needed to convey what happened.
Does it serve a persuasive purpose?
Yes. It's a visceral and concrete illustration of the ruthlesness of $THING. (Where $THING can be substituted with whatever religion, racial group, ideology, or institution that serves your persuasive purpose. For Fox's audience, THING="Islam"; for an atheist it's THING="religion"; for a Shia muslim maybe it's THING="Sunnis".)
Should Fox be censored or penalized by the government?
Hell on. Fortunately, nobody's making this argument. Yay first amendment!
Did Fox help ISIS by publishing the video?
Counterterrorist Malcom Nance (the "Waterboarding is torture, period." guy) thinks so, but I'm not seeing a description of why. Perhaps it's a combination of morale boost and being able to exert fear-control over their own territory. Perhaps (as another slashdotter speculated) they want to provoke the West into military intervention in order to further galvanize the Islamic world against Western influence. On the other hand, gratuitous violence is generally a great way to undermine your own cause; it's hard to imagine the video winning them any friends.These are boy-apes, demonstrating dominance and waving their guns at the cosmos, thinking that they somehow matter.
Should Fox have self-censored themselves for the sake of civic duty?
Ah: that seems to be what the debate's really about, isn't it? Those who think Fox abandoned their civic duty long ago will be tempted to "yes". Those who think of Fox as "too liberal" will say "no". Those of us with a good selection of defense industry stocks in our portfolio will also say "no", while trying to stifle a sudden case of the giggles.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I think the apologists for the terrorists and Islamic extremists should definitely watch all the burnings, stonings, beheadings, and rapes. Apparently words aren't enough.
Problem is they'd probably get off on them. If they're still justifying this crap after everything that's happened, they're psychopathic narcissists.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
These things are hard to look at, but they must be seen.
I'm nitpicking, but something about this sentence compels me to do so. I think that is better phrased "These things are hard to look at, but they must be able to be seen".
The apologists will simply claim those atrocities were mere reaction against the West. It will get worse because they have to up the ante to keep the same level of hatred driving their nutjobs. How do you satisfy their bloodlust after you have raised it way beyond humane? And videos like this serve to attract the sort of nutjob who has no problems being such murderers and mass murderers. It is a Genghis Khan mentality which says that if their army is crueler than anyone else. Boko Haram is a prime example.
Daesh has pretty much expanded to their geographical limits, they are surrounded by countries and groups that are armed and just as pissy as they are. They are mainly supported by some local Sunni tribes, that is where most of their recruits are coming from. Sooner or later I expect the foreigners and the locals will have it out. It will be bloody, but no one will shed any tears over it. I doubt it will really go away because there will be no General Sherman that will run through their neighborhood and demolish their infrastructure or support.
On the other hand, you don't see Fox showing videos of victims of US drone strikes lying dismembered and bleeding to death with the rest of their wedding party.
the atrocious, unsustainable wealth and power grabs made after the Allies won - that all but guaranteed the outbreak of WWII
I'd like to think that the Nazis and Hitler's imperialistic and genocidal attitude had something to do with that too.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Yeah, things were much better when "reality" was dictated by official proclamations of the church-state.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"ISIS themselves made this video as a recruitment tool."
Do you know this for a fact? How?
"This video was planned and made solely for the purpose of propaganda."
I believe that is probably true. But it could also be American/Israeli propaganda as well, in an attempt to garner support for another bullsh*t war. They are the masters of propaganda.
After all, Al-Qaeda and Osama-Bin-Bogeyman were CIA assets, too
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Against their defense though, shouldn't their "fair and balanced" presentation also involve a lot of films of women and children dying horribly in our bombing raids? After all a realistic civilian:combatant kill ratio by our troops is estimated at, at *best*, about 1:1, and probably much higher. And that is fairly typical for air/missile/artillery strikes - it's pretty much impossible not to get horrendous civilian body counts in long-range urban warfare.
Let's just call it like it is - it's not like anyone rational still contests the fact that Fox is a government/corporate propaganda machine, and there's nothing like a good snuff film to rally the proles to the cause. Oh, look at the horrors perpetrated by the enemy - we must escalate our response to crush the enemy using valiant imagery of waving flags and patriotic music (that's what our troops are fighting the war with, right? It's certainly about the only thing you ever see on the news). And of course we must sacrifice ever more personal liberties here as well - god forbid terrorist sympathizers should perpetrate some domestic attack that kills enough innocents to rival our police departments.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
> A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation.
So no, they didn't post a snuff film.
As far as we know, neither has anyone else. Like many other things that generate outrage, "Snuff films" don't actually exist. As far as we know, no film that fits your definition has ever been made. Some murderers have filmed their acts, but the film was not the reason for the killing, and profit was not the motivation.
Great, so lets start seeing footage of the broken bodies of women and children we regularly kill in our raids.
So long as we only show the atrocities committed by the enemy it's not news, it's propaganda.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You mean like, when the United States massacrated the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right?
>All of the silent muslims are either secret supporters or complacent Or you know actively fighting ISIS, but don't let the truth sway your biased narrative. ISIS isn't killing westerners, they are killing Muslims. And who is on the ground fighting them, it certainly isn't the "Coalition of the Willing".
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Its one thing when a news organization decides not to show a video for editorial reasons -- its quite another when you go to the Internet and virtually all of the sources that come up with the major search engines have an edited-down version of the original video -- some of these edited-down versions include the title "FULL VIDEO" and show only the most horrific finale where the pilot is being turned into a crispy critter.
I took a look at the original by downloading its torrent (they haven't gotten around to suppressing that yet the way Hollywood suppresses downloading of their movies via torrents). The things that seem to be actually suppressed on the internet (as well as news organizations) are not the horrific scenes of the pilot burning, but rather 1) the horrific scenes of children/infants mutilated by the bombings, 2) the "testimony" of the doomed pilot describing the details of the bombing operation, and 3) the list of pilots, upon each of which ISIS has placed a 100 dinar bounty.
Seastead this.
But religious fundementalism is a right wing thing!
Not at all, religious fundamentalism applies just as well to militant leftists groups. They simply have a different idea of what gods they serve. The penalty for transgression is the same.
accept that the terms "right wing" and "left wing" aare nearly meaningless.
Yes, pretty much. As soon as you convince everyone else of that I'll stop reminding people that fascism can apply to leftist groups also, and historically mostly has. But currently there are a lot of people that do not realize this.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If we are taking the long view, then the whole concept of "war crimes" is kind of arbitrary and hilarious, especially the part where we start haggling over what is and isn't a legitimate military target.
In any event, I won't shed a tear if the people who support ISIS are systematically eliminated. I'll leave the agonizing over the moral implications of that to you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't know how "much" better that would be.
Our "reality" is dictated by propaganda-peddling controlled media outlets run by the pedophacracy.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
"...politicians may decide to send our military to go to war"
Maybe the military should send the politicians to fight if they want a war.
It would be a great start at cleaning things up around here!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
I wish I had mod points! :)
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
"I guess those 12 million people killed..."
Wasn't it 6 million last year?
Well spotted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
"My side" in the WWII didn't invade France. "My side" in WWII didn't bomb Pearl Harbor. "My side" in WWII didn't start the indiscriminate bombing campaigns by trying to knock London and other major cities to the ground with aerial bombing campaigns. "My side" in WWII didn't slaughters tens of thousands of Chinese. "My side" in WWII didn't exterminate six million Jews.
Yes,. the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrible, but if the purpose was demoralization of failing military powers to bring the two theaters to a faster conclusion, then so be it.
I will remind you that in Japan, at least, it took not one, but two atom bombs to force the Japanese Cabinet to finally surrender.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I noticed that too. The beheading videos that I watched looked quite fake and unbelievable. Something smells fishy...
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
About 20 years ago, the local newspaper made a big deal about changes to its journalism regarding crimes. They were no longer going to include the race of people suspected or accused of crimes. The purpose of this was social engineering -- they believed that reporting racial descriptions was just reinforcing existing stereotypes, mostly about African Americans.
Around the same time, there was a string of attacks on people in parks by young men riding around in cars with baseball bats. They would find a victim, jump out of the car and beat them with bats and then drive away. A victim of one of the early attacks had a very good description of the perpetrators but the newspaper rendered it basically useless because they eliminated most of the race-indicating descriptions. As it turns out, the perpetrators were black and there were 6-7 attacks before they got caught.
I know a couple of people who are journalists and I think they do believe they have to be responsible journalists and I think some of this starts to dovetail with political ideals.
"So why give ISIS any voice?"
Fear.
It is much easier to manipulate and control the herd if they are living in fear.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The whole point of total war is that everything becomes a legitimate military target. Since the entire economic, social and political engines of nation states become turned towards feeding the war machine, all targets ultimately have military value.
It is precisely the nature of total war, as opposed to the more limited kinds of war practiced in the past, that make it so important that we avoid it whenever possible. Each generation of total war, starting with the US Civil War, becomes ever more destructive to both soldier and civilian alike.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Obviously, first thoughts are for the victim and his family and the horror that had been brought on them by these ISIS animals. The family will be tortured for the rest of their lives by this.
As I tried to examine my emotions, my second thoughts went to the forensics:
Using astronomical data, sun angle etc., it may be quite possible to determine the longitude and latitude of the location of the crime.
The front-end loader used in the video also has extreme value: what make and model was it? Could we determine year? Where was it purchased? By whom? Can we use satellite data to pin-point it?
The clothing worn by the perpetrators may also have some value forensically.
Yes, Jordan has pounded the town where this event is believed to have occurred, but what if we croud-sourced the evidence so that, in future War Crimes trials, we can be sure to convict these barbarians.
Lastly, a comment: If I were the Prime Minister of Japan, I would form up an elite group of counter-terrorists, insert them into Syria, and have them capture and extract senior ISIS leaders to bring them to justice saying: "The Samurai are coming for you." [Yes, I know that, legally, the Samurai have been abolished in Japan but the thought of knowing that a group of 'Samurai' are coming for you would be extremely scary.]
*** Don't be dull.***
It most certainly did, but I think you're ignoring the environment that allowed a populist psychopath to rise and pull his people from the rubble that was imposed upon them. Hitler may have been the cause of WWII, but it's fundamentally dishonest for anyone in any Entente nation to disavow responsibility for putting the German populace where they would embrace such a monster.
It's legitimate to remind people of the enemy we are up against. Too many people think these terrorists are just disgruntled oppressed people that are otherwise good and decent. That is the furthest thing from the truth. This segment is Islam needs to be eradicated. The rest of Islam lives in fear of these terrorists groups.
There you go, being all logical. Wrong site for that.
I do agree with you 100%. However, I also think apologists for imperial superpowers should witness where those bombs they see launch actually land. I think they should definitely watch the children in the streets blown to bits by smart bombs. The man crying and holding their little broken bodies. If someone did it to you, would you really decide that you will not retaliate? If you decided to retaliate, how would you do it against a superpower? Would you perhaps be perceptive to some psychopath fucked up dogma in your grief? Nobody says you're wrong, but your point of view is so goddamn narrow it hurts.
"I refuse to watch them for the same reason I refuse to watch snuff films."
Because they are illegal?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Once again, Godwin's Law is proven.
Seriously though, you're making the wrong comparison. From descriptions I've read, the ISIS video contains quite a lengthy rant before the murder takes place. A more apropos question would be whether the Allies should have aired Hitler's speeches to the masses during the war.
Is the purpose of journalism to control the population, or to inform the population?
If it's to control the population, then these discussions are reasonable. If we share the message, how will the population react... will they be sympathetic, will they be fearful, will they be angry?
But, if the purpose of journalism is to inform the population, then, showing us things that might make us sympathetic are just as important as things that might make us angry.
I see no larger merit in journalism if it doesn't exist to provide us agency.
Journalism exists for more than one purpose, just like journalists do.
One of them is to get paid, which is why you get a lot of the fearmongering we get and why you have for centuries--newspapers want to sell copies/clicks/relevance.
Another is to control, which is why propaganda is a major part of every good military campaign today. Napoleon was a great general not because he won every battle but because he bought all the newspapers.
One is to create discussion in a community of people interested in the same things, albeit with slightly diverse views. This is why the Wall Street Journal tends Republican and the New York Times tends Democrat.
One is to inform. This is generally on the bottom of the list but is the most important function in some ways. Snowden is an example of this. Some reports into local projects and the like are examples of this. This is frequently subordinated to the services of the above priorities. And there are lots of things they don't really inform about. Sharing the video would *probably* fall on the inform side of the equation, because the truth is people don't want to watch it because they're uncomfortable with it, and hiding people from it is done to make *people* more comfortable, not to make it a less effective propaganda tool. It's a dumb propaganda tool in terms of a military campaign--the only people it helps with are the ones who it might convince to pay ransom. And the ransoms are not high enough that they will be a meaningful number for an operation of this scale; they are just something one subordinate can sell to his superior as "look what a good job I'm doing!"
Let's just put a price on that asshole's head and be done with it.
It serves no journalistic purpose. "legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video" very broadly misses the point. They don't need to show it any more than they need to show Mexican gang executions. It's lazy sensationalism meant to draw as many eyeballs as possible.
And what is the prevailing view of the drug war in Mexico? Most Americans are far away detached, aside from a few border towns whose sheriff gets shot. Maybe if the news did show the Mexican drug cartels who behead entire towns we would do something to help. http://america.aljazeera.com/o...
The Journalistic purpose is the same reason why there were so many pictures taken of the concentration camps when the allies liberated them. Lets not be ignorant of the world we live in. The news is ment to inform us.
As it stands now, Fox gave you a choice. Many people have died so that we can have a choice. Let's not denigrate their memory by obstructing the choices we have because you feel it is "lazy sensationalism".
What makes you think we gave it back to them? Or do you mean the same way we "gave back" Iraq when we installed Saddam in the first place?
We're only the undisputed military leader of the world so long as the other powers don't ally against us - which open conquest might precipitate. Black ops on the other hand allow us to expand and maintain our influence while allowing unaffected foreign politicians the latitude to ignore our actions in favor of focusing on things more conductive to advancing their more personally lucrative domestic power games.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The world went to war against Germany to fight Nazism
No. The world tolerated the Nazis. We went to their Olympics. We marveled their zeppelins. Their eugenics ideas were fairly debated in universities. We made business deals and traded heavily with them.
The world went to war against their imperialism, not their policies. Don't pretend we actually gave a shit about their internal affairs. If they hadn't started a war, we'd have treated them like we treated China today.
Fine, imperialism. ISIS has taken significant portions of two countries already and has vowed to conquer more. Should that not be enough to motivate the nations to crush them?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And, unfortunately, there are groups of people who deny that the Holocaust never happened. (I guess those 12 million people killed just "got lost walking home.") All evidence for the Holocaust is written off as inconsequential or part of a pro-Holocaust conspiracy.
I wonder if, a generation from now, we'll have terrorism deniers who will claim that there were actually no terrorist attacks in the middle east? (We already have the 9-11 deniers, so we're partway there.)
I had a discussion (over Instagram, >. ) on whether the making-available of this video was correct or incorrect, and what American response would be appropriate. I didn't understand her point of view until I realized she was 5 when 9/11 happened and didn't understand the visceral reaction to the live images of the towers being hit and falling.
Sometimes you need to see evil clearly to decide to act.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Increased rating/ad revenue. It is all about the profits.
The fact that terrorists exploit this to pass along their message - the media really does not seem to care about.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video -- which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause..."
Well said, I'm totally with you so far.
"... -- but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing 'strong, earth-shaking and decisive' retaliation."
They were not aiming to intimidate Jordan. A violent response is exactly what Islamic State wants. They want the opposition to take the gloves off. Islamic State gets its power from blood debts. They want more blood on the hands of the opposition, just like Fox wants Islamic State to engage in brutality to push more people into the fire-breathing anti-Muslim camp.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
When a major world power does a systematic genocide while trying to take over the globe it will have a parallel. Currently it's just a big group of thugs in an area of the world without a stable government. This would be better compared to pirates earlier in our history which the US handled very poorly. Religion may have something to do with it, but ISIS isn't killing people from Jordan over religion. Certainly not a major religious difference, maybe over sects.
There is still a difference in whether or not the perpetrators wants the public to know about their actions. The Nazis surely didn't.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Sure, but my response was to Immerman's post asserting that the US was in part responsible for WWII. The US was not an Entente nation and did not ratify its entry into the Treaty of Versailles, but (led by Wilson) backed a more reasonable and peaceful policy that wouldn't have pissed Germany off so much.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Well, by US military standards I suppose I'd be an enemy soldier - after all I'm of fighting age and might occasionally pass radicals on the street.
And no, I don't see that draftees versus volunteers makes a big difference. We could discuss the subtleties of the distinction, but once you've decided to the take up arms (and short of neural clamps, *every* soldier makes that decision), you have become a legitimate target for the enemy. That you made your decision under duress is of no relevance to the soldiers you're trying to kill.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I didn't see that- you're dead on, then.
I don't think I'm that brainwashed when I think that people who put someone in a cage and light them on fire are not the kind of people that any civilization should negotiate with where said civilization has a choice.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'd preferred to live in a flawed but still relatively virtuous Western nation than in whatever Nazi Germany would have transformed much of the West into had it been victorious.
The lesson in all of this is to avoid total war, because inevitably it will drag all citizens; uniformed or otherwise, into the conflict.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"My side" in the WWII didn't invade France.
But the US did invade Afghanistan and Iraq. So where does the logic lead us?
Yes,. the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrible, but if the purpose was demoralization of failing military powers to bring the two theaters to a faster conclusion, then so be it.
The calculus here seems to be that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is justified if it, ultimately, saves lives by shortening the war. Is that right? So, if the 9/11 attacks had saved some number of lives, would they have been justified? Can morality be determined only in hindsight? Or is the winning side always right?
Wait, Fox News is a comedy channel right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Seeing it on TV is probably not going to have much of an effect for the same reason that playing violent games doesn't have much of an effect. Vision is a powerful sense, but not anywhere near as powerful as the effect of hearing, smelling and feeling on top of seeing.
It's inevitable that any visual depiction is going to be different from the actual event, no matter how hard the people depicting it try to keep it accurate.
They are different, but it matters. That's why the US won't allow the media to show dead US solder's returning to the US. And that is just a picture of a coffin. A large part of the public opinion about the Vietnam war was do to the fact that the news did show the US bombing and burning villages. Footage of carnage and piles of returning body bags. The US does not allow any of that now.
And Fox News, the mouth piece of the Republican party, is glad to show you the gruesome truth of ISIS, but supports "our troops" and would never fight to show us the reality of our "liberation" of Iraq, or the children and families killed by constant drone attacks in Pakistan. I'm not even arguing against the drone attacks, I'm just saying that images matter and that's why we aren't allowed to see them when they reflect poorly on the US.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
no.
It's terrible. It's bait for clicks at the cost of decency.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
The lesson of Carthage, Dresden and Hiroshima is that you don't take on the pre-eminent military power of your day and then expect that you can be protected by rules of engagement you didn't even bother following when you thought you had the upper hand.
Not to be pedantic. Well, OK, a little pedantic, but Germany never attacked us and when Japan attacked us we were not the pre-eminent military power of the day. Germany was. They expected us to role over and stop sending supplies to their enemies. And they had reason to think that we might do that.
To be clear, I am not arguing against the US joining WWII, nor in taking the fight to the Germans. That was the right call. Just pointing out that in 1941 the US was not a major military power and had a history of isolationism.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
This is what Fox News' viewers want to see: the barbarity of Muslims.
While this may be the case, there also seems to be that pesky fact they seem to have put someone in a cage, lit them on fire, and burned them to death.
Absolutely true. Interesting that it's illegal for media to show "returning" fallen soldiers, even just a photo of a body bag or coffin. I am not apologizing for the extremist actions, I just wish our media was allowed to show "the whole truth." Hell, I'd be happy if they even tried to fight for the right to show the whole truth. But they rolled over and play nice with the military so all we get is spin and half-truths.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Entirely as an exercise in maintaining mental flexibility, absolutely and certainly not as a viable hypothesis describing reality, one might consider the possibility of a false-flag operation. How do we know whether the video really came from the Islamic State? What is the Islamic State, anyway? Is it an authoritarian hierarchy, like General Motors? Or could it be a loose coalition of semi-autonomous groups? What does it mean to say "the Islamic State did X", rather than "certain individuals did X"?
Look what the US Army did to Dilawar in Afghanistan.
So... this makes burning the pilot OK somehow? Just as FOX showing it is irrelevant to the fact it happened, that the US Army (apparently) did horrible things to someone does not make the murder of this pilot any less of a barbarity.
Fox News never showed the 60,000+ Iraqis we incinerated, shot, and crushed to death. Nor the burnt and mangled children and adults who survived our attacks. Or the prison camps, mostly holding people who we felt like might be a problem - and who are probably still in the camps. If you wanted to cover such things, you could go to hell, as far as the military was concerned. People died finding truth while Fox's old draft avoiding men and MILFy women pseudonewspeople in tight skirts sat in air-conditioned studios and made. Shit. Up.
Just to add, Mohammad did some pretty awful things and commands others to do the same in Allah's name to this day...
And the Catholics burned Protestants at the stake for heresy, until the Protestants got the upper hand and started burning Catholics. All to the greater glory of God.
Great, so lets start seeing footage of the broken bodies of women and children we regularly kill in our raids.
So long as we only show the atrocities committed by the enemy it's not news, it's propaganda.
Exactly. Where are the pictures of the returning body bags? No where to be found because it's illegal now. How is that for "freedom?" And the mainstream news has't fought it at all. They should be fighting for the right to show the whole truth, but they don't.
ISIS is barbaric. We should know that. The governments of where they reside should be fighting them tooth and nail. And we should be shown the consequences of our actions too. That would be "fair and balanced."
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
They published a terrorist recruitment video on their website. In my books that makes them part of the terrorist group.
Who is "they" in that sentence. If you mean muslims then that is highly misleading, anymore than saying the Christians bombed the federal building in Oklahoma city, because it implies that the religion as a whole is behind this rather than a few disturbed individuals with a very warped interpretation of their religion.
This is the false conclusion that Fox wants it viewers to take away, that all muslims are inherently evil and that even an association with muslims is traitorous. It sounds completely absurd and yet there are so many people who believe this.
While I agree that's what's going on. I do not, for a second, believe that was Fox News' intention--to somehow save lives.
Isn't that a non-sequitur? Every news agency in the world reported the news of this killing and described how it was done. That was enough. It's been a long-standing tradition not to show the actual moment when someone is killed, so this had nothing to do with reporting the news.
The fact that such a horrific killing was shown likely points to it having been mostly a political decision, i.e. either to make Obama look bad, to put pressure to send in ground troops or some other level of escalation, or perhaps all of the above. Kill two or three birds with one stone.
Fair and balanced to Fox means a counter view to what they (mistakenly) see as overwhelming dominance of liberal networks. So they make absolutely no attempt to provide fair news reporting on their own network. What they've failed to do (probably intentionally) is to realize that those other networks are attempting to be fair and balanced rather than intentionally adopting a particular extremist political view.
So Fox thinks there's a big heavy liberal weight on one side of the teeter-totter, so it gets the biggest fattest kid it knows to sit on the other side of the teeter-totter. And of course the fat kid goes crashing his ass into the ground because there wasn't anything on the other side after all except maybe a slight liberal reality bias. If Fox had instead decided to counterbalance with a slight conservative bias then they'd have been much more respected instead of coming across of wingnut buffoons.
Like I replied to the parent post, this is non-sequitur. Every news agency in the world reported this news. No one needed to actually show the deed.
Or do you want your local news to show videos and photos of actual murders and rapes on a nightly basis? Is that what you consider reporting the news?
Actually yes, that would qualify, though the word is massacred. Since those cities were not military targets, couldn't really fight back, contained lots of civilians and were attacked solely to cause damage to enemy morale then yes I'd describe that as a massacre. Given the context the decision was made in though I'd argue that it was still more humane than the alternative though which was conventional invasion. That would of resulting in civilian casualties at least an order of magnitude higher (if not two).
Does hiding news from people serve a legitimate journalistic purpose?
No but it serves political purposes. That's why it's illegal to show returning body bags and coffins. That's why the mainstream media refuses to show pictures of dead Iraqi women and children. I can't applaud the journalistic integrity of showing this video if they won't fight for the right to show videos and pictures that expose the whole truth.
ISIS is not justifiable, but that doesn't make it OK that the US media works as the propaganda machine of the US military.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Yes, I do deny this, because first of all, I don't think it would prevent civilian casualties, and second of all, if we're going to fight a total war, I want us to win.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Just a tip, if someone is defending NAZI Germany, they are trolling, deranged, stupid or some combination of all three.
60 million plus people died in that war. Anything that brought it to a swifter conclusion was merciful.
Also re the Atomic Bombings. The U.S. is still issuing purple hearts that were made in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. So those two bombs may have been the greatest life saving devices of all time, and not just American lives.
The estimates of the number of Jews killed typically range in the millions, with six million being the most frequently cited number. However, there were other "undesirables" mass-murdered, as well. I just presumed he must have included them in the 12 million figure.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
"My side in the WWII didn't invade France."
Yeah you did, asshole. Your side punished Germany after WW1 so harshly that it lead directly to Adolf Hitler, and therefore directly to WW2.
"My side in WWII didn't bomb Pearl Harbor."
Sure you did, prick. Your favorite fucktoy FDR purposely pissed off Japan and snubbed their diplomats' strong desire to make peace, thus forcing their hand. FDR knew when the Japs would attack and where, and he purposely waited until after the attack to send warning to Pearl Harbor. That's right, those sailors' blood is on his murdering hands.
"My side in WWII didn't start the indiscriminate bombing campaigns by trying to knock London and other major cities to the ground with aerial bombing campaigns."
Who declared war on who first? The international banking cartel in London declared war on Germany, in WW1, after WW1, before WW2, and during WW2. Hitler tried to make peace with the UK, but was rejected, because the UK was already planning war on him.
"My side in WWII didn't slaughters tens of thousands of Chinese."
Your buddy Eisenhower purposely starved tens of thousands of captured German prisoners of war to death after the war was over, shit-for-brains. Your ally the Soviet Union killed millions. Your hands are just as bloody as anyone's, asshat.
"My side in WWII didn't exterminate six million Jews."
Six million Jews? Fuck you, and fuck your mythical Jews. Over 50 million people died on WW2, because of the actions and beliefs of dumb fucks such as yourself.
"Yes,. the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrible, but if the purpose was demoralization of failing military powers to bring the two theaters to a faster conclusion, then so be it."
We are standing on the verge of World War 3. This is a war that the USA is starting, and it's a war the USA will lose badly. During this war, I hope you and your family slowly burn to death in a fire.
"I will remind you that in Japan, at least, it took not one, but two atom bombs to force the Japanese Cabinet to finally surrender."
You're a dumb, uneducated slave. Japan was already making overtures to surrender before the first bomb was dropped. The bombs were dropped a warning to Russia....and you, personally, are a fucking piece of shit for apologizing for that particular MASS MURDER event.
One minute is journalism. Twenty-two minutes is not.
Yes. For exampe, people on slashdot have, by and large, seen the horrific pictures of the US war crimes in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet there is a metric assload of apologists every single time the topic comes up. The normal people that are horrified of the cruelty are few and far between.
"Apologists"?
Have your read what Japan did to China long before America ever got involved? Did Japan have any legitimate claim to self defense in it's campaign of slaughter against the mainland? Meanwhile, the American's have Pearl Harbor, and a rather clear picture of who started the fight. That's why you see people 'apologizing' for the war. Most historians though note very accurately that we killed massive numbers of people, very brutally but efficiently. They also note that it was in the context of a defensive and existential war, were the options were be the winner and do it to their people, or be the loser and have it done to you as the Japense already had in China.
It should make intelligent people stop and think before they jump on the bandwagon of denouncing Muslims for their "barbarity."
What is ISIS doing that isn't as barbaric as the things we do every day?
Burning somebody alive. Big fucking deal. The American Christians burned thousands of people alive.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/... Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Black People by the Thousands
At least ISIS burned him alive humanely, compared to the way the Christians did it.
So let's apply the same standards to Christians and Muslims.
BTW, what was that pilot doing when he was flying over the area? He was dropping bombs, which killed a lot of innocent people, a lot of whom were burned just as badly and suffered just as much.
Don't get me wrong. It was not OK. Clearly for ISIS to burn a prisoner to death was [insert the same condemnation you use when Christians and Americans do the same thing]. But be consistent. Whatever you say about the Muslims, you should say about the Christians who caused just as much or more painful suffering and death.
FWIW, I opposed the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq left a power vacuum for ISIS to move in. So the lesson is, "Don't do stupid things (like elect GWB president)."
In fact, we drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. If the Soviets had still been running things, we wouldn't have this problem.
If you want to stop this brutality, then stop all wars. Get out in the street and demonstrate against it. And that's just a start.
Fox prides itself on being "Fair & balanced." So it should shown both sides of the conflicts on the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere in the middle east. How about showing some of the aftermath of US drone-launched hellfire missiles on wedding parties, children, and pensioners? Let's have a side-by-side comparison of killings and victims from all sides, allies and enemies. Let's see where the Jihadis learned all this barbarism from and let's see how their barbarism pales by comparison to the US' and its allies.
Or we could just call for a stop to ALL this unnecessary killing and oppresion.
In probably less than 50 years first-world countries and their poorer allies will have tools far more precise and forgiving than bombs for eliminating undesirables. Imagine land-based humanoid drones that from a distance or at night look and move convincingly as people whose mission is to apprehend enemies and only maim or kill as a last resort. Imagine air-based drones the size of an eagle firing small, guided rockets with a payload only large enough to kill their target but leave anyone standing next to them unscathed. Combine the current technique of dividing drone functionality between members of small teams (target acquisition, movement, etc.), the exponential increase in intelligence-gathering current trends indicate the future holds and the rapid development of smaller, nimbler robots with semi-autonomous systems and you have the perfect recipe for the precision engagement of distant enemies. The future will bring a redefinition of the word "drone" to include nearly everything a soldier or humanitarian worker could ever be asked to do and more.
So yes, the usual human issues will still exist (territorial disputes, religious differences sparking violence, dictators and warlords seeking power, illegal trafficking of whatever, etc.), but the ability of governments to shape and/or resolve them through force will be unrecognizable with respect to the casualties received and inflicted. For example, you can't execute a robot. Even if you do it in the most horrendous way possible, film it and post it on Twitter people will just laugh their asses off. Any weapon (such as a bomb) with a blast radius of more than a few feet is going to cause collateral damage. If a drone of a foreign power killed my dad because he just happened to be in the same area as a known terrorist I would be understandably upset. I probably wouldn't start burning people alive or anything batshit crazy like that, but I empathize with the anger some of these people feel. Granted, that is but one component of the extreme violence being committed by radical groups such as ISIS, but nevertheless human nature and the desire for retribution can't be erased by statements of how precise bombs are or that infants blasted apart in their homes are unfortunate accidents. I don't know if bombs kill more terrorists than they create, but there will be a better way to deal with them and with a little time many of us will see it in stunning 8K on the news channel of our choice.
To answer TFA's question, technically "Yes" in that it informs the public of a newsworthy event, though it's trash journalism in that it emotionalizes the issue through a depiction of violence atypical of what Fox News viewers are accustomed to witnessing on the channel. I think they did it for the lulz and ratings. I don't think it was wrong or un-newsworthy, just tasteless. Things like that shouldn't be shown on a channel not widely known for showing such things due to the static nature of television. You could have had your child in the room and flipped to the channel 1 second after the video started, for god's sake. Real asshole move, Fox (disclaimer, my HTPC serves all my needs; I have no cable/satellite).
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Germany never attacked us
Germany declared war on the USA. This is, effectively, a formal declaration of imminent intent to attack, and for all practical purposes as good as the attack itself.
Just pointing out that in 1941 the US was not a major military power
It sure was. Having a history of isolationism is one thing, but as far as military and industrial capacity goes, it was certainly in the big boys club.
I've got no issues with this either, but two wrongs doesn't make a right. Faux News does not have the monopoly on news reporting (yet), others can provide the balance. We should all be well acquainted with the costs of victory. I definitely agree, it's underplayed. The number of purple heart license plates and the number of people I see on a regular basis missing limbs has increased dramatically in the past 10 years, but listening to the news you'd think violence over there were isolated events.
If you cannot see the difference between an organization or government that is using violence and fear to force their beliefs on others, and the world's attempt to stop that, then I feel sorry for you.
Yet the 2nd US war with Iraq had our media doing exactly what you are referring to. Are you going to speak out about the fabricated tales of "yellow cake" that GWB used to steer Congress into declaring war? How about the fabrications of "Mobile WMD factories"? Fabrications of terrorist training camps? These things were playing on every US media channel every day for years?
If you are not speaking out against those things then you are a hypocrite, and be full of self pity.
If you understand that the US Government and US media lied to you about the last Iraq war, what makes you believe them now about anything in the Middle East? You do realize that outside of the US and UK most media outlets print very different stories of what is happening in the Middle East.
Unlike GW Bush, I know the quote. "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."
No, I'm not pro ISIS/ISIL or what ever the fuck politicians are calling them today. I am against our foreign policies which have only succeeded in destroying the lives of millions of Americans and many more people in the Middle East.
If you can't grasp the number of Americans I provided, ask a disabled Vet and his family about it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If they obey those commands, let's hold them accountable for the actions they themselves took, as with anyone who does awful things for any reason at all.
of denouncing Muslims for their "barbarity."
You know, you're right. I meant the subset of Muslims who make up ISIS, and I misspoke. Next time I'll be sure to say some Muslims. Care to retract your sweeping generalizations about "The American Christians"? The act of burning someone to death is a barbaric act. Doesn't matter who does it. I feel pretty confident this is a rational and defensible position.
What is ISIS doing that isn't as barbaric as the things we do every day?
Well, kidnapping, torturing and enslaving / selling children for one. Putting people in cages and setting them alight for another. Let's not get started on their treatment of women.
Burning somebody alive. Big fucking deal.
I'm... speechless...
The American Christians burned thousands of people alive.
So here's your source article, no citations for the "thousands" figure anywhere. There are two examples given, Sam Hose in 1899 and Jesse Washington in 1916. Note that these are examples of past barbarities Americans committed and they're documented so we can learn from them and not repeat history. This is not happening today in America, and there is probably nobody alive now who was not an infant when it happened. Can you say the same about the Muslims that murdered Muadh al Kasasbeh?
Clearly for ISIS to burn a prisoner to death was [insert the same condemnation you use when Christians and Americans do the same thing].
History? Speaking as an Atheist in America, I don't think Christians (or any significant number of Americans) have tortured anyone to death by burning them in a cage in a very long time.
But be consistent. Whatever you say about the Muslims, you should say about the Christians who caused just as much or more painful suffering and death.
While Christians may well have caused as much painful suffering and death as Muslims, I'm not seeing them doing that now. Once again, I can't say the same thing about ISIS.
Also note that your ideas of what I should say are largely irrelevant to me at this time.
Please feel free to continue grinding that axe though!
OMG. Someone dying in a war is not murder- especially in a war that we didn't start. Words have meanings for a reason.
This, a thousand times over.
I think it's good that they made it available. I chose not to watch. I don't condemn people that wanted to see the evidence themselves. I feel sorry for the people that only want to see it for entertainment value.
But I'd rather live in a society where this video can be shared, now that it exists, than one where it can't.
It's too bad the Allies released those photos of the concentration camps. They were literally working for the Nazis and their SS arm.
Excellent point. Especially compare the reaction most people have to "Nazi" vs their reaction to "Commie" or "Communist". I even see people on Slashdot joke about it. The Communists killed a lot of people too. Whether it was more or less than the Nazis is the subject of some debate, but they certainly killed millions and millions. But we have the pictures of the Nazi camps. How many pictures have you seen of corpses or sick prisoners in the Gulags? How many pictures have you seen of the corpses in the killing fields of Cambodia? The pictures of the Nazi atrocities make us want to say "never again". But communism? Too many people think we just haven't done it right yet and should keep trying.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Yes there is. Fox news is officially on record for saying they are an entertainment channel. That is their excuse for broadcasting lies as news, it is the only reason they are allowed to broadcast lies as news, because their news show is just "entertainment". No other news network has had to make such a defense, or needed to because no other news network deliberately broadcast lies as news.
but if the purpose was demoralization of failing military powers to bring the two theaters to a faster conclusion, then so be it.
That's my point exactly -- you're trying to find excuses for the indiscriminate civilian bombings. You're thinking exactly like the ideologues of radical Islam, who could repeat your statement word for word. 'You know what, we didn't bomb Iraq out of spite, we didn't destroy Syria for no reason, we didn't support the slaughter of Kurds by Turkey, and if it takes a burned body or two to make our point, so be it.' And so on.
There is little difference between one war criminal and another, and even less of a difference between one kind of war crime apologist and another.
Enough of your moral equivalence masturbation already. Do you honestly believe that in WW2 there was no morally preferable party between the axis or allied forces? That's the only question to be discussed.
Hitler and Nazi Germany had in essence seized control of and conquered the entirety of Europe. The option was simply let Hitler and the Nazi's have it, and likely Britain as well, or fight back. Fighting back meant committing horrific acts like the fire bombing of Dresden. Without such horrific tactics of targeting civilians and the means of your enemies production, victory wasn't going to happen. The choices were taking on horrible, horrible acts like Dresden, or standing aside and watching as Hitler and the Nazis made their concentration camps across all of Europe a long standing policy of a long lived Third Reich.
I'm glad our fore fathers chose as they did, and you should be too. Instead your just sniveling like a child unhappy that the world doesn't exist in the way they wish it would.
"My side" in the WWII didn't invade France.
But the US did invade Afghanistan and Iraq. So where does the logic lead us?
Yes,. the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrible, but if the purpose was demoralization of failing military powers to bring the two theaters to a faster conclusion, then so be it.
The calculus here seems to be that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is justified if it, ultimately, saves lives by shortening the war. Is that right? So, if the 9/11 attacks had saved some number of lives, would they have been justified? Can morality be determined only in hindsight? Or is the winning side always right?
If you are stupid and idiotic enough to accept the premise that Al Qaida and the US are morally equivalent actors in some Islamic holy war then you have a point. If the Nazi's were morally equivalent to the allies, then you have a point.
If you accept either of those premises though, you are an idiot, a fool, or a deliberately malicious and hateful person. Your entire POV and argument is based upon an assumption that both parties in any war are morally equal.
Not sure how to break it to you but Germany and Japan are (and were) not human beings or living beings. They didn't have eyes to melt out of their sockets with effects of the bombs, nor guts that stopped functioning.
Of the living beings that were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is no proof that all of them knew and/or approved of war "crimes" committed by "their" armed forces abroad. Even most human beings. So no, tit for tat argument of yours is shit, false, immoral and repulsive.
I can accept the collateral victims argument, I can maybe accept the reduction of overall casualties argument, but not this. You're a monster.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I at least never felt frightened after 9/11. I felt empathy for those 3000 people in the towers and on the airplanes, who were so senselessly murdered. I felt a deep anger at those who would do it. And I felt a deep desire to make sure it would not happen again.
So we have a decision: Do we want a presentation of reality, raw and un-truncated, or do we trust that the media companies are making good decisions that fairly (whatever that means) present a subset of the information that is unbiased and accurate? What news agency do you consider sufficiently comprehensive while at the same time completely without bias?
And no, just describing it is not adequate to convey what happened.
That's debatable. Millions of Americans saw Terminator 2. Millions of Americans watch endless torture porn movies, and have for decades now. I don't, so I can't name names, but I would bet money that one of the mutilation/murder franchises (Nightmare on Elm Street/Halloween/Friday the 13th) has depicted burning a person to death, in detail.
In fact, isn't that what you're blaming Fox for? Being blatantly pro-American? It's OK when the media biases towards your side, but as soon as they show a diversity of viewpoints, suddenly it's not OK. Nice system you have there.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There are some horrific videos that come out of Latin American, from the drug cartels. No immolations yet, but all kinds of murders, beheadings especially.
Sure, show the wanton destruction of ISIS, as well as Syria, Egypt, Israel, USA, UK, France--it is one thing to show the barbarity of the Middle Easterners, but also show our barbarity too. Only difference is we draw a bigger body count by far. It is one thing to read about our drones and bombers killing people, but it is another thing to show. If our society could see what we were doing on our foreign ventures, maybe we might start questioning the validity.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Sometimes people need to be connected to the visceral reality of what is going on. It is one thing to reference something in the paper with words... it is another to show the crackling flesh peel off a screaming human being as he burns to death.
A lot of people don't understand things if they just read about it. Just a fact. Even seeing it on the news blow by blow doesn't get everyone but it does clue most people in.
The only remainder are the idiots that need it to happen right in front of them to really grasp what is going on. And there's no way the news can practically do that.
So... yeah. I'm in favor of having whatever the news people gathered made available. By all means, put up disclaimers so people can't claim to be surprised by what they're about to see.
Those that say they were surprised... well, those are exactly the sorts of people I was talking about. They don't f'ing understand what they're reading. Suddenly when they're showed the images they are shocked to suddenly see what was obvious simply from the text. That they are shocked means they are the sort that don't understand.
A fair number of the people that do see the video but are not shocked are the last group that need it to happen in front of them.
And there is a group beyond this that needs it to happen to them to understand. Like... they can watch someone get tortured in front of them and they don't really process that it hurts unless you take the hot poker and push it through their own skin. Then suddenly "oh my god that hurts"... no shit.
So yeah. If we lived in a dictatorship then I'd say there was no point so long as the people running the society were people that could read or people saw the video. Then who cares what the public is fed so long as they do what they're told.
But in a democracy, people need to know. It isn't acceptable to be this ignorant.
In regards to ISIS... They're obviously worthy of death. But I personally am tired of the US being always tasked to do this sort of thing and then eating shit from our ingrate allies afterwards. I'm quite happy to have the regional powers deal with it themselves. Jordan etc can have a party with ISIS. The so called atrocities will be on their heads instead of ours. And to make my position clear, I don't consider it an atrocity when you kill 100,000 psychopaths any more then I consider it an atrocity to kill one. And I don't consider that an atrocity either. Someone might call me a monster or whatever for that. Meh. I reserve the right to judge my fellow man and I reserve the right to kill them when I feel it is appropriate.
That is a right human beings have had for millions of years and I really don't see what has changed to make that not so.
What makes the world civilized instead of barbaric is that there are more people willing to kill you for acting like a barbarian then acting like a civilized person. The instant the civilized are outnumbered by the barbarians, the civilized world is in trouble.
Historical solution to that issue was to build walls, motes, and get really good at killing barbarians trying to come over the walls.
Not sure if a better option has ever come up.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
=ISIS
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=21WqaDzztGk
WARNING - SNUFF (Like TFA but from Texas)
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Sounds like a contrived horrorshow designed to anger Americans into accepting yet another war in Iraq.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Well, there are a few niche news outlets which tries to focus on real news, but that is not what most people are following. Instead, we get whatever is going to make us buy, click or watch, and whatever is going to keep us buying, clicking or watching. You either get something very tabloid which has next to no news value, or you get something heavily politically laden which is basically a marketing machine for some political or corporate agenda - or a mixture of both.
Unfortunately, as "journalism" is gone and journalists love to sit on their high horses and play the pretend game that they are still journalists, there is noone to tell us about this trend in an honest way.
Of course, showing 22 minute videos of people burning has no journalistic value whatsoever. Probably 99.9% of people have enough imagination they know a 22-minute burning is a very bad thing, without having to actually watch it and be desensitized to watching snuff. A real journalist would leave it at mentioning the incident, and then talking about some important relevant stuff.
This is the problem with "newsotainment", the important stuff gets ignored and coverage has no proportion to the importance of the subject matter at hand. There is always the "personal angle" on anything, and whereas before you could get some relatively neutral coverage about e.g. a court case, these days it is all about how everyone in the process are "feeling", behaving and reacting. As the criminal behind some event which happens to get news coverage, you immediately become a focus of news attention, and their lawyers get lots of coverage about how the accused is "shocked", is "sad for the victims", etc. Everything is told as if there are two equal sides which sort of have 50/50 value, whereas in real life if there was a murder and there is already enough evidence that the accused fleeing from the scene with a bloody knife observed by 20 people, then why on earth do we need coverage about their perspective on the whole thing. Why? Because it is some kind of emotional porn/snuff/whatever, and in some ways similar to the burning incident though not as graphically horrible.
I wish we had real news. And in the absence of that, at least one would hope that newsotainment channels could show some self restraint.
Oh, most certainly. I simply wouldn't put it on the same scale as intentionally engaging in the mass-slaughter of civilians, such as our own troops are doing whenever they engage in long-range bombardment of urban areas.
And yes - they know damned well that a lot of civilians will be caught in the blast, that makes it intentional, whether or not they are the primary targets.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And, of course, war crimes are hilarious.
Way to twist words, champ. I said the concept was hilarious, not the actions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Let me make it clear that I'm just talking about the Christian extremists.
There were over 4,000 lychings in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and they were still going in in the 1960s.
If you want something more recent, there's for example the torture of Dilawar by the U.S. Army. Dilawar was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists for 4 days, while the Americans used him as a kicking target until he died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Barbaric? They could give the KKK some lessons on cruelty. (Or maybe they were in the KKK.)
You know that if they got caught killing Dilawar, there must have been a lot more that they didn't get caught on. How many? Hundreds? Thousands?
Overall, somewhere between 150,000 and 600,000 Iraqi people died in Bush's Iraq war, most of them innocent civilians and most of them children. You know they didn't all die humanely.
From reading the medical reports, it seems that a large number of them died from having their houses destroyed. Crush injuries, which are one major cause of death in those situations and take two or three days, are a fairly painful way to die.
A lot of the deaths are burn injuries, over several days, which are one of the most painful ways to die in medicine, especially if you don't have morphine. In fact, burning someone to death in a few seconds like ISIS did it is humane compared to the way we did it.
Tell me again why it's barbaric to kill someone by burning him to death with gasoline in a cage in a few seconds, while it's not barbaric to kill someone by bombing his house, burning him to death, and having it take three days.
If the Iraqis did that to your wife or child, how would you respond? Maybe you'd want to kill every Iraqi you could get your hands on? Say -- do you think they feel the same way? Do you think that could be part of the reason Muslims want to kill us? Do you think that if we killed 600,000 Iraqis, some of their relatives might want to kill us in return?
Do you think it would have been a better idea not to have attacked Iraq in the first place -- not because Iraqi lives matter, but just for selfish reasons, to avoid having them attack us in return?
If you want to know what my position is (for those of you who are so dense that you haven't figured it out), I think it's wrong to kill people just for some geopolitical reason, when it doesn't protect your country or anyone else.
It might be acceptable in a just war, but Iraq wasn't it. You may have missed the memo, but all the reasons for the Iraq war turned out to be lies. http://www.pbs.org/now/politic...
And no, just describing it is not adequate to convey what happened.
That's debatable. Millions of Americans saw Terminator 2. Millions of Americans watch endless torture porn movies, and have for decades now. I don't, so I can't name names, but I would bet money that one of the mutilation/murder franchises (Nightmare on Elm Street/Halloween/Friday the 13th) has depicted burning a person to death, in detail.
There's a difference when you know in the back of your mind that it's fake, and when you are very much aware of it being real.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Even if it were true that a lot of purple hearts were produced, what does this prove?
Your question proves that you are either a troll, stupid, deranged or some combination of the three. Seeing as you posted as an AC I'll go with jackass troll.
You're as brainwashed as you're ignorant of history and politics.
Seeing as the Japanese military attempted a coupe d'etat after the Nagasaki bomb, ill toss in ignorant as well.
Fox "News" is a right-wing extremist propaganda outlet that never was interested in unbiased reporting. Showing that video falls exactly in line with their fundamentalist conservative view on everything. In that sense they are not even a bit better than other propaganda channels from any form of extremists. If there is a legitimate journalistic purpose? Not at all!
I read an essay once where the author said that reality of human barbarity must not be hidden because otherwise we'll live in an infantile, delusional condition. As much as I don't want to see such things, I would have to agree. Unfortunately, I don't recall the author, other than she was a relatively famous writer (I want to say Joyce Carol Oates, but I'm not certain).
First we need to establish what a Legitimate purpose is.
Journalism is a mixed tangle of bags. There are many goals
one of which is honesty and transparency. Another is greed
and avarice to sell more pages, papers and air time than the
others. Another is to inform...
A journal or diary in history has been the best and most informative
connection we have with the past. Some of the content in the
"Diary of Ann Frank" is not rated G or even PG but had it
been lost the world would have less awareness of that bit of ugly
history. "The Voyage of the Beagle" based on Darwin's journals
has changed the world. The journals of the Apostles and yes
Mohamed have changed the world. Letters and collections of
letters like "The The Born-Einstein Letters" qualify as journalism.
For those that are in denial about the methods and motives of ISIS
this might qualify as a legitimate wake up call. For those that
share the TV with a family: children, parents, grand parents... this
is wrong in a number of ways too obvious to elaborate on.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If not for videos and broadcasting, perhaps the events depicted would be happening in our communities, at home, for everyone to see. Who knows. But this group wants us to know that they hate us and want to kill us. So its probably good that people are at least aware of their messages. And i think such standards would apply to other graphic videos used in journalism. If the video pertains to something that affects the populace at large then it serves a purpose.
Troll it was.
Except for very few people, FoxNews is 100% based on lying to their viewers. Chris Wallace and one or other guy there have a shred of integrity. The rest are just pawns.
The reason they decided to post the video is to help create outrage to push Obama to put boots on the ground to combat ISIS. With the end game of giving billions to the military industrial complex. Oh, and generate more anti american hate leading to more anti american fundamentalists.
Don't get me wrong. I'm actually in favor of american boots on the ground, but strict small special forces operations chosen for maximum effect and minimum loss of life. Just Navy Seals, Recon Marines, Delta Force, specially to interdict troop movements between ISIS strongholds, cutting their lines of communications and supply, then withdraw.
I'm against any kind of semi permanent deployment of american forces to occupy Iraq or Syria towns. That should be the job of the Peshmerga and the Iraqui Army. Better give them some weapons than create more hate from an ostensive american presence there.
But the US did invade Afghanistan and Iraq. So where does the logic lead us?
The calculus here seems to be that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is justified if it, ultimately, saves lives by shortening the war. Is that right? So, if the 9/11 attacks had saved some number of lives, would they have been justified? Can morality be determined only in hindsight? Or is the winning side always right?
If you are stupid and idiotic enough to accept the premise that Al Qaida and the US are morally equivalent actors in some Islamic holy war then you have a point. If the Nazi's were morally equivalent to the allies, then you have a point.
If you accept either of those premises though, you are an idiot, a fool, or a deliberately malicious and hateful person. Your entire POV and argument is based upon an assumption that both parties in any war are morally equal.
I suspect I can be far more stupid than you can imagine. For a start, I can't find anything in your response that addresses my questions. As far as I can tell, you seem to be saying that it's okay for the US to invade sovereign nations, overthrow governments, and kill, injure, maim, and render homeless various people, because the US is morally superior to its enemies. Is that right? One problem with that argument is that it's symmetrical: the US can say its okay to do evil things in order to defeat Al Qaeda, because Al Qaeda is evil, and Al Qaeda can say it's okay to do evil things to defeat the US, because the US is evil. So how would an objective observer decide who's right?
There are some objective facts: the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan and Iraq did not invade the US. So who has the moral high ground? Al Qaeda attacked the US, for reasons they probably found as compelling as the reasons you would give for why the US is more moral than its opponents. (See interview with Osama bin Laden, starting around 5m41s.) Al Qaeda is also, as I understand it, a successor to the mujahideen the US supported in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. Apparently, because Al Qaeda attacked the US, the US responded by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. I see the attacks by Al Qaeda as morally wrong, but I also see the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US as morally wrong.
I'm not sure what "moral equivalence" means. You seem to be suggesting that the Islamic State, controlling a small amount of territory in the Middle East, is somehow equivalent to Nazi Germany, a modern, industrial nation-state controlling much larger territories and which posed a direct threat to the United States. As far as I can tell, the Islamic State exists because the US overthrew and occupied regions of the Middle East, so what reason do we have to believe that further military intervention by the US will make things better, rather than worse?
It also appears that your definition of "moral" and mine may be different, but this may be due to different perspectives; in part, when we start history. Do we start before Saddam Hussein became ruler of Iraq, or do we start while Saddam Hussein was ruler of Iraq and a friend of the US, or do we start when Saddam Hussein became a Designated Enemy of the US?
Let's stipulate that Saddam Hussein was entirely evil and needed to be removed. But why was Saddam Hussein the ruler of Iraq? Because the US helped him gain and keep that position. So where does that leave us? Who is the more evil? Who is evil here, and who is good, and is there a more sophisticated way to decide than "my side is good, therefore our opponents must be evil"?
I suspect I can be far more stupid than you can imagine. For a start, I can't find anything in your response that addresses my questions...
Your first question regarding the Dresden and Tokyo firebombings in WW2:
The calculus here seems to be that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is justified if it, ultimately, saves lives by shortening the war. Is that right?
Your second question immediately follows as:
So, if the 9/11 attacks had saved some number of lives, would they have been justified?
You can forgive me if I 'failed' to answer what was clearly put forward as a rhetorical question. I DID however very directly respond to them. Your underlying premise supposes that the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo not be compared against the costs of abandoning Europe to the Nazi's or a land invasion of Japan, but instead be judged in a vacuum of killing people is bad. You then setup the notion that when considering the morality of the 9/11 attacks we consider, what, the cost in lives of an Al Qaida landing on the beaches of Florida?
I'm not sure what "moral equivalence" means.
I thought my context had been clear.
You ask us to consider the actions taken during the waging of WW2 in the context of Allies and Axis powers being morally equivalent. Considered in a sense where the Allies cause for waging war was no more moral than that of the Axis.
You ask us to consider the actions taken in Al Qaida's jihad in the context of Al Qaida and Infidels as being Considered in a sense where Al Qaida's cause for waging war is no less moral than the defenses raised by the rest of us.
You then pretend to be looking for complexity...
is there a more sophisticated way to decide than "my side is good...
The reality is that our world is far more complex than you are willing to accept from the outset. The reality is that there are men and powers in our world that WILL wage wars of conquest solely and only for their own benefit and no amount of good nature and moral superiority will slow them. The reality is that when those men and powers are not confronted with force and violence they simply kill more people and take more for themselves. In a situation like WW2, it needs to be understood that the Nazi party was demonstrably 'evil'. That coexisting with them was unpalatable. So far that, fighting back was morally a 'good' thing. More complex still, fighting back meant, yes, fire bombings of places like Dresden. I am GLAD the allies won, and I can hardly state with any confidence that if they'd been more gentle in their prosecution of the war that they would have triumphed.
As for you, how about providing your own answer to any of your questions. If you're given control of allied forces, do you wage war against the Nazis in Europe? Do you fight hard, or do you risk losing by being soft handed in your campaign?
You act like you are seeking complexity, but failing to try and answer some of the most difficulty questions of war you are in reality hiding from that complexity you pretend to be seeking.