The myth of "free speech".....

[Murat Baslamisli]

The result is the same. People are dying. And yeah, I consider using the atomic bomb on Japan one of the biggest war crimes in history.

I don't believe in collateral damage. Go tell the families of the dead children of Gaza that their sons/daughters died as "collateral damage." I'm sorry, there is no such thing. And it's not like this sort of thing wasn't committed by the Americans in Iraq.

Tell me how does the massacre of Fallujah in 2004 where the Americans used White phosphorus differ from Al Assad's use of chemical weapons.

The atomic bomb saved an estimated 1 million American lives and an estimated 15 million Japanese lives. The targeting of Hiroshima was also based on its military value, and the US had dropped leaflets days earlier warning Japanese civilians to leave before bombing. In fact, on August 9, Nagasaki was not the original target; it ended up being bombed because of bad weather over the original target (Kokura was).

It's wonderful that you don't believe in collateral damage, but just wars require hard choices. is Israel supposed to let Hamas shoot thousands of rockets at it from behind Gaza's civilians and never return fire because a civilian will be killed? There's a reason international law prohibits the use of human shields. That reason is because collateral damage is inevitable in war.

White phosphorous can be legally used to illuminate targets and to create smoke cover for one's own forces. In Fallujah the Americans were fighting in urban combat door-to-door against insurgents who wore no uniforms and hid behind the city's civilian population. Again, any attempt to compare Americans fighting insurgents in Fallujah to Assad dropping barrel bombs on towns or using chemical weapons is ridiculous.

You see the highlighted area there? That's the key. The "justification" for going into Iraq was that they took part in 9/11 (they did not), and they had nuclear weapons (they did not). so what do you do with the thousands of lives lost there for nothing? Just go "Oops"?

 

[Kieran]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

 

[calitennis127]

Again, any attempt to compare Americans fighting insurgents in Fallujah to Assad dropping barrel bombs on towns or using chemical weapons is ridiculous.

Assad did not use chemical weapons. That was a lie concocted by the Obama administration.

 

[calitennis127]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

I think they absolutely should not publish the cartoons. They are only putting lives at risk, and they are doing so by doing something ignoble no less.

Obviously, I prefer Christianity to Islam, but I don't see the use in insulting the prophet of Islam just to taunt Muslims. There are better ways for Westerners to defend themselves, like beginning to look in the mirror to contemplate how they have destroyed and continue to destroy their own civilization.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

Their choice. If it makes them happy (and probably get them sales never thought possible).
As far as major news outlets, maybe they do not want to offend 1.6 billion people.Maybe they are scared. Maybe they do not want to lose the everyday Muslim. Who knows...

 

[Kieran]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

I think they absolutely should not publish the cartoons. They are only putting lives at risk, and they are doing so by doing something ignoble no less.

Obviously, I prefer Christianity to Islam, but I don't see the use in insulting the prophet of Islam just to taunt Muslims. There are better ways for Westerners to defend themselves, like beginning to look in the mirror to contemplate how they have destroyed and continue to destroy their own civilization.

The magazine aren't putting lives at risk, the terrorists are. This is a very important distinction and there's a principle which I bet the magazine feel is at stake: Western values can't just bow down to threats and practice self-censorship for fear of offending minorities.

I agree that the cartoons are ignoble - although this time the cover depicts Muhammad in tears, under the banner "Je Suis Charlie" - but the principle of free speech, where nothing illegal is being printed? This is why they're publishing, I think, and for this I applaud them, and wish the mainstream media had similar courage to simply report the news, which they claim is their job.

I understand the poison chalice, because there are nuts out there trying to foment trouble, but unfortunately they win if we go silent...

 

[Kieran]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

Their choice. If it makes them happy (and probably get them sales never thought possible).
As far as major news outlets, maybe they do not want to offend 1.6 billion people.Maybe they are scared. Maybe they do not want to lose the everyday Muslim. Who knows...

The news outlets report and show the news. Muslims should be more offended by what's being done in the name of their religion, than by newspapers reporting this...

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

Let's wheel back a bit:

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. These guys know it can only provoke some Muslims, so should they have gone ahead? Or are they correct to insist upon their right to publish what they want to, so long as it's within the law?

And again I ask, why are all the major news outlets censoring themselves on this one, by reporting the fact, but not showing it?

Their choice. If it makes them happy (and probably get them sales never thought possible).
As far as major news outlets, maybe they do not want to offend 1.6 billion people.Maybe they are scared. Maybe they do not want to lose the everyday Muslim. Who knows...

The news outlets report and show the news. Muslims should be more offended by what's being done in the name of their religion, than by newspapers reporting this...

Maybe they are looking at it kind of like the beheadings of isis. They are always in the news but nobody ever shows them, even though the footage exists online.

My money is on them being scared. The example is right in front of them. And nutjobs are easy to come by.

 

[Kieran]

I think your money would be safe, in that case, Murat. They're scared...

 

[britbox]

Again, any attempt to compare Americans fighting insurgents in Fallujah to Assad dropping barrel bombs on towns or using chemical weapons is ridiculous.

Assad did not use chemical weapons. That was a lie concocted by the Obama administration.

Agreed, either that or it was a rogue commander in the Assad camp or a blatant false flag. The timing of it would have been absolutely nonsensical for Assad to have ordered it personally.

 

[britbox]

Replace millions with thousands. Do you deny it?

How many civilians have Americans killed in Iraq? Afghanistan? Recent nondiscriminatory drone strikes? Are we rewriting history here?

Or is it fine unless it's under the "casualties of war" umbrella? It's funny how we justify killing when convenient. It's like when Bashar el Assad gassed his people. Everyone was up in arms. When he was bombing them to death, that was OK, apparently.

If you can't shoot 12 people to death (and you can't), then why can you bomb hundreds? One actually leads to far more casualties.

The context kind of matters. As do just wars. America killed millions of Japanese and an untold number of Germans and Italians during World War II. would you call that a slaughter? would you argue that the US shouldn't have fought against the Axis?

I also wouldn't call Western drone strikes "nondiscriminatory" when they're targeting individuals. The fact that innocents can be killed as collateral damage doesn't make it a war crime; international law requires leaders to weigh the military value of the target. To compare drone strikes or other American activities in the Middle East to Assad's use of chemical weapons is preposterous.

Wrong. A combatant for drone strikes in Pakistan is counted as any male of military age in a strike zone.

 

[CanIHaveYourRaquetErnie?]

You see the highlighted area there? That's the key. The "justification" for going into Iraq was that they took part in 9/11 (they did not), and they had nuclear weapons (they did not). so what do you do with the thousands of lives lost there for nothing? Just go "Oops"?

No. You can absolutely criticize the rationale for the Iraq war, but the vast majority of the time, Western armed forces observe international law in combat. The fact that the Iraq war was stupid doesn't mean that American forces fighting insurgents in Fallujah are war criminals simply because their commanders shouldn't have sent them there.

 

[CanIHaveYourRaquetErnie?]

Wrong. A combatant for drone strikes in Pakistan is counted as any male of military age in a strike zone.

I think you're right that the administrations have been downplaying the number of civilian casualties caused by assuming men of military age are combatants, but the drone strikes themselves are not indiscriminate. they're launched in real time at individual targets. it's not like American drones simply fire the missiles randomly. under international law, it's legal to engage in strikes that have a high chance of hurting civilians if the military value of your target is high. thus, targeting Osama bin Laden would justify collateral damage to a certain extent, whereas targeting one of his underlings would not justify the same amount of collateral damage.

people may be uncomfortable with how that works, but without those laws in place, it'd be impossible to fight any war, or the wars would be fought like World War II (or the way terrorist groups like Hamas operate in urban combat behind human shields)

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

You see the highlighted area there? That's the key. The "justification" for going into Iraq was that they took part in 9/11 (they did not), and they had nuclear weapons (they did not). so what do you do with the thousands of lives lost there for nothing? Just go "Oops"?

No. You can absolutely criticize the rationale for the Iraq war, but the vast majority of the time, Western armed forces observe international law in combat. The fact that the Iraq war was stupid doesn't mean that American forces fighting insurgents in Fallujah are war criminals simply because their commanders shouldn't have sent them there.

You cannot separate the two. If the war itself is illegal, what you do during the war is illegal by default. "We were obeying orders" defence did not work in Nuremberg trials, and will not work in any other one if it comes to that, give or take an opposing voice.

 

[brokenshoelace]

The result is the same. People are dying. And yeah, I consider using the atomic bomb on Japan one of the biggest war crimes in history.

I don't believe in collateral damage. Go tell the families of the dead children of Gaza that their sons/daughters died as "collateral damage." I'm sorry, there is no such thing. And it's not like this sort of thing wasn't committed by the Americans in Iraq.

Tell me how does the massacre of Fallujah in 2004 where the Americans used White phosphorus differ from Al Assad's use of chemical weapons.

The atomic bomb saved an estimated 1 million American lives and an estimated 15 million Japanese lives. The targeting of Hiroshima was also based on its military value, and the US had dropped leaflets days earlier warning Japanese civilians to leave before bombing. In fact, on August 9, Nagasaki was not the original target; it ended up being bombed because of bad weather over the original target (Kokura was).

It's wonderful that you don't believe in collateral damage, but just wars require hard choices. is Israel supposed to let Hamas shoot thousands of rockets at it from behind Gaza's civilians and never return fire because a civilian will be killed? There's a reason international law prohibits the use of human shields. That reason is because collateral damage is inevitable in war.

White phosphorous can be legally used to illuminate targets and to create smoke cover for one's own forces. In Fallujah the Americans were fighting in urban combat door-to-door against insurgents who wore no uniforms and hid behind the city's civilian population. Again, any attempt to compare Americans fighting insurgents in Fallujah to Assad dropping barrel bombs on towns or using chemical weapons is ridiculous.

Oh boy... I guess that's the byproduct of living in a Western bubble.

If you genuinely think Israel's history of targeting civilians is just a result of the country defending itself, you know nothing of Israel or its bloody history. Please read about the Israeli's massacres in Lebanon and Palestine. Please read about the first Massacre of Qana, where Israel bombarded a United Nations compound that was used as a refugee for 800 women and children. Please go to Youtube and watch a video of the slain children, if your heart can stomach it. Was Israel defending itself when it invaded Lebanon in 1979 and committed countless acts of atrocity? Was it defending itself in 1982 when it killed thousands of civilians in West Beirut? Please....

As far as Israel being supposed to "let Hamas" fire rockets... We can have a debate over what should you do if I occupy your house, restrict your space to your living room, then gradually start to occupy that space too, while treating your family like garbage, and kill them if you respond... but that's another thread for another day.

 

[CanIHaveYourRaquetErnie?]

If you genuinely think Israel's history of targeting civilians is just a result of the country defending itself, you know nothing of Israel or its bloody history. Please read about the Israeli's massacres in Lebanon and Palestine. Please read about the first Massacre of Qana, where Israel bombarded a United Nations compound that was used as a refugee for 800 women and children. Please go to Youtube and watch a video of the slain children, if your heart can stomach it. Was Israel defending itself when it invaded Lebanon in 1979 and committed countless acts of atrocity? Was it defending itself in 1982 when it killed thousands of civilians in West Beirut? Please....

Ah yes, you think the Israelis randomly invaded Lebanon. Apparently the scores of terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organization firing rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel and crossing over Lebanon's border to conduct attacks against Israeli citizens were just a figment of everyone's imagination! Funny how people always love to strip away the context of Israeli military action in the area, as if the IDF just randomly picks the country it invades every few years. Let me guess: you also think Israel was randomly attacking Lebanon in 2006 too. Why am I not surprised that the word Hezbollah appears absolutely nowhere in your post?

I'm quite familiar with what happened at Qana, and other examples of UN buildings being hit in the Gaza Strip this past summer. Once again, you're placing the blame on the IDF's response to attacks made by fighters who don't wear uniforms, hide among the civilian population, and use civilian sites to launch attacks. At Qana, it was Hezbollah. In Gaza, it's Hamas. International law makes clear that the war crimes are being committed by the ones using the human shields.

As far as Israel being supposed to "let Hamas" fire rockets... We can have a debate over what should you do if I occupy your house, restrict your space to your living room, then gradually start to occupy that space too, while treating your family like garbage, and kill them if you respond... but that's another thread for another day.

Nice try. Israel pulled out of Gaza 10 years ago, and Hamas has been the sovereign power there for about 8 years. There is no occupation of Gaza, and yet Hamas has fired about 10,000 mortars and rockets against Israel from there since the Israelis pulled out. The reality is Hamas continues to attack Israel because it considers all of Israel occupied, and because its stated goal is to murder every Jew on the planet.

As for the West Bank, Jewish settlements in the West Bank comprise less than 1.5% of the land, and the Oslo Accords that the Palestinian Authority signed gave the PA the power to govern over 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank. At the current rate, Israeli settlements will eat up the whole West Bank about 2500 years from now.

If you think Israel is being attacked because of the occupation following the 1967 war, go ahead and explain to us all why the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded 3 years before the occupation started. In 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians 95% of the West Bank, land swaps in Israel to make up the other 5%, a land bridge to Gaza, and the division of Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital. The Palestinians didn't just say no; they didn't even bother making a counteroffer. Why? Because they're not interested in accepting the existence of a Jewish state of any size there.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Well, all of Palestine IS occupied. That's reality. You can keep trying to spin it any way you want, you can never escape this matter of fact.

Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006 because Hezbollah decided to be assholes and stir up the pot for no reason and kidnap three Israeli soldiers. But somehow, Israel's response to that was to pretty much destroy the country in its entirety, including bombarding Christian areas that have no Hezbollah presence.

Nice of you to gloss over the Qana massacre part.

 

[shawnbm]

Just like in Palestine today--it is very difficult to speak on these emotionally laden issues here or anywhere. There is so much remembered by both sides as to the Six Day War, 1982, Hezbollah shenanigans in 2006, Hamas last year and the tunnels into Israel. It is hard to talk about, but Israel's offers over the years have not been well received by the displaced Arabs in Palestine and it really gets down to whether a Jewish state can be tolerated in Palestine. That is really where the rubber meets the road. I think Jordan and Egypt could live with that--but, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran or Syria?

 

[brokenshoelace]

I'm quite familiar with what happened at Qana, and other examples of UN buildings being hit in the Gaza Strip this past summer. Once again, you're placing the blame on the IDF's response to attacks made by fighters who don't wear uniforms, hide among the civilian population, and use civilian sites to launch attacks. At Qana, it was Hezbollah. In Gaza, it's Hamas. International law makes clear that the war crimes are being committed by the ones using the human shields.

Lol, you edited your post after I pointed out that you glossed over this. Clearly, you're just flat out misinformed. There was NEVER any attack from the UN building by Hezbollah building. In fact, Isreal's justification that bombing the building was a case of procedural error. So by doing that, they're pretty much acknowledging that no rockets were fired their way from that building. Also, do yourself a favor and read the UN's report on the issue. But I'm sure they're biased.

Do me a favor, at least try to be informed on the topics you're discussing. And no, saying "I'm quite familiar with what happened" only to prove that you totally aren't a sentence later doesn't cut it.

PS: You could also do some research on the massacre of Mansouri, when Israel bombed an ambulance carrying children. Again, UN soldiers provided testimonies that denied the existence of any weapons in the ambulance.

I'm sorry but Israel has one of the bloodiest, most violent histories out of any modern country. Quite a feat, really.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Also, I would advise Googling the role of Israel in the Sabra and Chatila massacre, and the details. There were no longer Palestinian fighters in the camp, yet the Lebanese Phalangists (Christian Militia), under direction from Ariel Sharon and the Israelis (as well as military support), committed one of the most heinous acts of extermination in recent history. In fact, in addition to the kill count at the sight of the camp, some 5,000 Palestinian civilians were taken away never to be heard from again.

In fact, the day before Elie Hobeika (one of the massacre's catalysts) was going to due to appear before the International Court of Justice to testify regarding his and Ariel Sharon's roles in the massacres, be was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad, in 2002.

I'm not a hypocrite. Lebanese people were a disgrace during the civil war, and committed acts that would make even the Israeli's blush. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, not because it defends its country against the Israeli invaders, but due to the countless bombings and assassinations in other countries. Likewise, the Muslim world right now, is an utter embarrassment. In fact, Islam has a culture of violence, whether we want to admit it or not.

But to somehow deny that Israel has a history of war crimes and actually justify this with what the Western media stupidly relays shows some baffling ignorance and naivety.

PS: To Cali, there's a documentary called "War Of Lebanon" on Youtube. It's pretty extensive. Try finding a subtitled version and watch it in its entirety. Christians have committed some pretty messed up acts in the names of Christianity and the extermination of Muslims in Lebanon. This isn't a read in between the lines kind of thing, this was explicitly stated by Lebanese Christians at the time. Of course, the massacres were mutual, to be clear, by Christians were the instigators. "Black Saturday" remains one of the darkest days in Lebanese history.

The problem with living in the West is very few actually fully understand what goes on in the Middle East. I don't mean to condescend on anyone but most in this thread are pretty uninformed about these things.