BF2S Forums Unbelievable Massacre

JohnG@lt wrote:

And a few hundred of us were cheering on the deaths of the people on the screen. Does that make us all psychopaths too?

No, just the tone of his voice and some of the shit he said.  Laughing about running over a dead body and laughing about all the dead bodies on the ground is pretty sick.  I don't quite know how to put it but there's a big difference.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

I don't understand how mikkel keeps dodging the question like what's being presented to him doesn't apply.

You're welcome to document any questions that I'm supposedly dodging.

eleven bravo wrote:

without shooting first and asking questions later in the middle of a city with more than six million people in it, just don't do it at all.

eleven bravo wrote:

really not how it works in real life.  as long as there is some kind of restraint on the use of force, what has been done here clearly falls under jus in bello

eleven bravo wrote:

replying to the "avoid conflict in a city with 6 million inhabitants" nonsense.

eleven bravo wrote:

I believe I did.  If you are able to master a new form of urban combat that deals with a non uniformed enemy who typically blends in with non combatants while simultaneously maintaining the combat effectiveness of the limited amount of troops at your disposal, then by all means please, I'd love to hear it.  honest injun.  if you cant think of anything practical and just go with the whole immorality of violent use of force against targets when the difficulty of establishing friend or foe is obvious, then I dont really have much to say to you.

These all directly address:

mikkel wrote:

I think what he's saying is that if you can't do it without shooting first and asking questions later in the middle of a city with more than six million people in it, just don't do it at all.

Not as far as I can tell. I didn't say anything about the difficulties of waging war in a city. I didn't argue, not do I care whether or not this kind of action falls under the rules of engagement, or whether or not it is permitted in war. All I said was that if you can't fight a war in a city without this kind of action being sanctioned and perfectly acceptable, then I don't think you should be doing it. I realise that he disagrees with me, but he didn't address anything I said.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

War necessitates command decisions.

Yes. Show me where I said anything contrary to this.

mikkel wrote:

What I said was that if you can't do it without shooting first and asking questions later, then don't do it at all.

These instances of "shooting first ask questions later" are clearly command decisions. You can't ask the insurgents to kindly hold up all of their weapons that could be a threat to American personnel so that they may be engaged.

Disagreeing with a specific type of warfare that leads to a specific 'command decision' in a specific situation is not at all the same as arguing that war in general doesn't necessitate 'command decisions'. Or do you disagree?

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

By your definition of "shoot first, ask questions later" (seeing as calling out a group of people dressed like insurgents and armed like insurgents, waiting over two minutes for the green light and then firing apparently counts as shooting first) war is impossible.

What counts as shooting first is seeing a civilian truck stopping in the middle of a busy city, men coming out of it to tend to an injured man on the side of the street, and then opening fire. Asking for permission to fire from someone who only knows what you're telling him does not constitute 'asking questions'.

Why not? The press should be informing the Army as to their whereabouts. The handlers of the Apache explicitly stated no friendlies were in the area before the Apache opened fire. Command was given accurate information as to the weapons the people were carrying, and as far as the U.S. armed forces knew there were no allies in the area. They could have had a video feed and the exact same decision would have been made. It's not like the pilots lied about anything.

I would agree with you entirely if we were talking about war waged on a battlefield where civilian encounters would be the exception, not the norm. I just can't really agree that merely establishing that no friendlies are in the area constitutes due diligence on establishing legitimate targets in a city where the civilian population outnumbers the number of combatants on both sides of the conflict by more than a thousand percent. Call me a hippie, call me an idealist, but it's just not something I see as being reasonable.

JohnG@lt wrote:

mikkel wrote:

This is why I prefer not to participate in these threads on this forum. I can't write a post without having three other posts directed at me in the interim, asserting asinine extrapolations that extend beyond anything I've ever suggested. This trench warfare mentality of assigning the same set of opinions and ideals to anyone in disagreement, and then hyperinflating them to make ones target easier is ridiculous. I'm sorry, guys, but if there's one thing I refuse to do, it's spending the majority of my replies sifting the assumptions and the inaccurately attributed opinions from the actual substance.

I'm not an idiot because I disagree with you. Nor are you idiots because you disagree with me. I do not need to be told the obvious realities of a situation unless I postulate anything that contradicts them.

I'm open to an exchange of ideas. I'm not open to being stoned indiscriminately for having a difference of opinion.

You're being called an idiot and being piled on because you haven't offered anything but 'this is wrong'. When asked how it should be changed and how soldiers should act in the future you have no answer and avoid the question entirely. You have no solutions, all you have is whining. Goodbye and good riddance.

The way I see it, I unambiguously presented how I thought it should be changed before I was even asked. I'm not avoiding any questions, I'm merely refusing to answer questions to which I haven't at any point suggested that I have an answer to. I'm not a military strategist, but that isn't a prerequisite for knowing what I agree with, and what I don't agree with. You say all I have is whining, but all I've presented is my opinion.

you believe that if 100% certainty isnt established on the status of a potential target, you must avoid conflict.  correct?  I disagree.

JohnG@lt wrote:

tazz. wrote:

well i feel sick.


no remorse.

The only thing that really ticked me, was "haha, Look at all those dead bodies" --"Nice."


Scum like that should be removed from the planet. From all nations.

And yet you play video games that highlight and glorify the same behavior. Kudos.

I'm killing pixels, not lives.

Also this is a prime example of the media needs to stay the fuck out of a war zone.

Chou wrote:

specops10-4 wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

And a few hundred of us were cheering on the deaths of the people on the screen. Does that make us all psychopaths too?

No, just the tone of his voice and some of the shit he said.  Laughing about running over a dead body and laughing about all the dead bodies on the ground is pretty sick.  I don't quite know how to put it but there's a big difference.

That's just the best way to deal with this shit.

No point really arguing this, I just don't understand how driving over a dead body is funny.  That type of mentality only discredits the very important decisions the pilots are making.  If part of their job is to tell the difference between civilian and combatant and they see it as a fun game, they are going to be looking for reasons to shoot them, instead of reasons not to shoot them. 

I'm not going to say the pilots did anything wrong, they didn't know their conversations were going to be heard by the world.

well in a densely populated area such as baghdad, the population usually knows to get out of dodge if explosions or gunfire is heard.  its assumed anybody near the area where fire is coming from or the mingling of individuals with weapons amongst people without are combatants or support elements (like a minivan ferryin troops from one end of the road to another)

Last edited by eleven bravo (2010-04-05 20:58:39)

mikkel wrote:

Not as far as I can tell. I didn't say anything about the difficulties of waging war in a city. I didn't argue, not do I care whether or not this kind of action falls under the rules of engagement, or whether or not it is permitted in war. All I said was that if you can't fight a war in a city without this kind of action being sanctioned and perfectly acceptable, then I don't think you should be doing it. I realise that he disagrees with me, but he didn't address anything I said.

You ask for the impossible. Any kind of urban warfare you find unacceptable, but that is what constitutes warfare in the present day. Now if you want to say that we shouldn't have wars at all, that would be hilarious.

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

War necessitates command decisions.

Yes. Show me where I said anything contrary to this.

mikkel wrote:

What I said was that if you can't do it without shooting first and asking questions later, then don't do it at all.

These instances of "shooting first ask questions later" are clearly command decisions. You can't ask the insurgents to kindly hold up all of their weapons that could be a threat to American personnel so that they may be engaged.

Disagreeing with a specific type of warfare that leads to a specific 'command decision' in a specific situation is not at all the same as arguing that war in general doesn't necessitate 'command decisions'. Or do you disagree?

Yes, it is the same thing. Command decisions are by definition the best judgment of the most senior person able to make and carry out a decision. You can't say you see the necessity of command decision in all but some cases, because command decision is defined by the possibly imperfect decision in all cases. It would be a command decision to decide what is to be decided on the field and what is not to be - nonsense.

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

What counts as shooting first is seeing a civilian truck stopping in the middle of a busy city, men coming out of it to tend to an injured man on the side of the street, and then opening fire. Asking for permission to fire from someone who only knows what you're telling him does not constitute 'asking questions'.

Why not? The press should be informing the Army as to their whereabouts. The handlers of the Apache explicitly stated no friendlies were in the area before the Apache opened fire. Command was given accurate information as to the weapons the people were carrying, and as far as the U.S. armed forces knew there were no allies in the area. They could have had a video feed and the exact same decision would have been made. It's not like the pilots lied about anything.

I would agree with you entirely if we were talking about war waged on a battlefield where civilian encounters would be the exception, not the norm. I just can't really agree that merely establishing that no friendlies are in the area constitutes due diligence on establishing legitimate targets in a city where the civilian population outnumbers the number of combatants on both sides of the conflict by more than a thousand percent. Call me a hippie, call me an idealist, but it's just not something I see as being reasonable.

Hanging around people with weapons that mean to do harm to the big boys on the block is hazardous to your health. I find the assumption that people with weapons or people in the immediate vicinity of people with weapons during a war intend to use them a very easy one to make.

mikkel wrote:

eleven bravo wrote:

well in a densely populated area such as baghdad, the population usually knows to get out of dodge if explosions of gunfire is heard.  its assumed anybody near the area where fire is coming from or the mingling of individuals with weapons amongst people without are combatants or support elements (like a minivan ferryin troops from one end of the road to another)

A lot of the coverage of these market bombings seem to show that it isn't unusual for people to stick around, but yes, it's probably different if you hear a helicopter opening up. It seems that these people came across the injured man a good while after the party had been crashed, though. A lot of speculation here that I'm not too fond of getting into, but all the possibilities just don't for me add up to a justification for opening fire. I'm all for better safe than sorry, but I feel that those considerations should extend to the safety of both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and that the chance of ending the lives of three or four insurgents shouldn't outweigh the very real chance that you're actually ending the lives of a couple of civilians and an injured bad guy.

Even by your logic it's not a direct 1:1. Not only does it mean how many Americans these people might have killed in this instance, it includes all the other instances where your absurd idea of caution would mean holding fire when the only casualties were of the enemy.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

eleven bravo wrote:

well in a densely populated area such as baghdad, the population usually knows to get out of dodge if explosions of gunfire is heard.  its assumed anybody near the area where fire is coming from or the mingling of individuals with weapons amongst people without are combatants or support elements (like a minivan ferryin troops from one end of the road to another)

A lot of the coverage of these market bombings seem to show that it isn't unusual for people to stick around, but yes, it's probably different if you hear a helicopter opening up. It seems that these people came across the injured man a good while after the party had been crashed, though. A lot of speculation here that I'm not too fond of getting into, but all the possibilities just don't for me add up to a justification for opening fire. I'm all for better safe than sorry, but I feel that those considerations should extend to the safety of both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and that the chance of ending the lives of three or four insurgents shouldn't outweigh the very real chance that you're actually ending the lives of a couple of civilians and an injured bad guy.

Even by your logic it's not a direct 1:1. Not only does it mean how many Americans these people might have killed in this instance, it includes all the other instances where your absurd idea of caution would mean holding fire when the only casualties were of the enemy.

That would be the obvious truth, yes. You can think it an absurd idea of caution to abstain from shooting in an urban and populated area without credible and overwhelming reason to believe that the people you're aiming at aren't civilian. I don't. That's fine.

Last edited by mikkel (2010-04-05 21:18:59)

Simple questions for you mikkel. Who is at fault for the civilian deaths caused in Iraq? Is it the American troops for not being diligent enough or is it the insurgents fault for not obeying the rules of war and fighting with uniforms on that designate them as combatants? Is it America's fault that the insurgents hide among the civilian populace and make themselves indistinguishable from it? Who is ultimately at fault when civilians are mistaken for combatants?

A rational person would lay the blame at the feet of the insurgents.