Somali Pirate Sentenced Today

[jim rosenthal]

This reminds me a bit of the discussion about Anwar el-Awlaki who just got blown up by the CIA in Yemen. Lots of discussion about whether we should kill Americans if they are participating in actions against the American state; I don't see the cause for discussion here. I thought blowing him up demonstrated an admirable economy of resources; honestly, if my finger had been on the button, I would have pushed it, no question. If you are waging war on this country, you get blown up if we can find you. No matter where you happened to be born.

I thought the SEALs who captured the Somali pirates followed orders to the letter as far as I can understand; the man who was threatening the ship captain got his head erased, and the rest of them got captured. Indiscriminately shooting every pirate they could would have made them more or less the same as the pirates. We are definitely better than that.

 

[Canuck Dennis]

So, do we just have the Pres. or a select committee declare someone an "enemy of the State" and then have the FBI or ?? do the rub out ??

If I remember correctly, some of the democrats were characterizing a few of the Fox newscasters as "terrorists" and did not Pelosi try to get a bill passed that would have had a "balanced reporting requirement"..

Slippery slope when a set of laws gets tortured for the sake of expediency.

 

[captddis]

What would do?
There is an American born terrorist who is in Afghanistan waging jihad against the USA. You are president and have a chance to take him out with a drone or air strike. Option two is to send ground troops in to capture him and put him on trial. However the chance for troop casualties is high. Do you risk troops or just kill the terrorist?

Idealism is great, but I believe in shades of grey too. I would opt for option 1.

 

[Boatsb]

This reminds me a bit of the discussion about Anwar el-Awlaki who just got blown up by the CIA in Yemen. Lots of discussion about whether we should kill Americans if they are participating in actions against the American state; I don't see the cause for discussion here. I thought blowing him up demonstrated an admirable economy of resources; honestly, if my finger had been on the button, I would have pushed it, no question. If you are waging war on this country, you get blown up if we can find you. No matter where you happened to be born.

I thought the SEALs who captured the Somali pirates followed orders to the letter as far as I can understand; the man who was threatening the ship captain got his head erased, and the rest of them got captured. Indiscriminately shooting every pirate they could would have made them more or less the same as the pirates. We are definitely better than that.

Capturing the pirates just makes news for the US. If they all were killed it would make news in Somalia. I think I would rather see the pirates get the message that we will not tolerate their BS and I could care less about the "world opinion" that is a political issue back here. I know no pirate is watching the US news thinking he should stop or he may be brought to america and fed, clothed, given medical care and a lawyer.

 

[Vincentc]

What I learned during my short tour of duty in the Army.

Your job in the army is to kill the enemy and blow things up.

If you are at war, that is what you do. If you complicate that simple rule, you put yourself and those dear to you at risk. I do not have a problem with that premise. Fortunately for me, I only shot targets and never had to put my teachings into real action.

Once you capture someone and they are no longer an eminent threat, things change.
Likewise if you are not at war, it is a different situation.

For example, I gather we dropped a few bombs in Libya, and there were probably some people on the receiving end of that ordinance with whom we are not at war.

OTOH, I thought we went to war against the people who attacked us 10 years ago and killed about as many of our citizens as were killed Dec. 7. Aren't enemy combatants fair game, what ever their citizenship?

How we could defeat Germany, Japan and Italy in less than 5 years, yet still be engaged after roughly twice that time in Afghanistan and Iraq does bother me.

The folks we killed in Libya give me more concern than killing an established enemy who presents an undisputed threat to us.

I do think it would be nice if we got back to the formality of declaring war before setting off to kill people.

Regards,

 

[Canuck Dennis]

Once an enemy declares war on you, all is fair game within the rules of the "Geneva Convention",

When a foreign Government does not declare war on you and you declare war on them, you are the "aggressor"...if you do not declare war but invade and kill without authority, you become in effect. terrorists

 

[MikeP]

Hmm...hate to think that I, along with the rest of the 101st Airborne Div, was a terrorist on two Vietnam Tours! But it is entirely possible that Uncle Ho and company saw us that way. And since they won, they get to write the history!

 

[Canuck Dennis]

1964


Debate on Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is approved by Congress on August 7 and authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The resolution passes unanimously in the House, and by a margin of 82-2 in the Senate. The Resolution allows Johnson to wage all out war against North Vietnam without ever securing a formal Declaration of War from Congres /

 

[rsmith]

"How we could defeat Germany, Japan and Italy in less than 5 years, yet still be engaged after roughly twice that time in Afghanistan and Iraq does bother me."

Seriously? You need to go back to school and study history. Go back to the Roman Empire and beyond and you'll find there has never been a clear victory or lasting peace with out breaking the will of the enemy civilian population. Wether it was the rape of the Sabine women or the utter destruction of Berlin, Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
The American media and the breast beating left have tied the militarys hands from doing what needs to be done. Bush was backed down in Iraq after the Abu Grab hype (oh the dog barked at me! boo hoo hoo) and failed to go after and clean out the rats hiding and running terror ops from the mosques. The surge worked and should have been done in the beginning. Bush 41 should have kept going in GW1 and took Sadam out then. But again the media backed him down. General Paton should have been alowed to push the Russians back to Moscow.
Here's another,

North Vietnamese General Giap Admits Near-Defeat

General Giap was a brilliant, highly respected leader of the North Vietnam military. The following quote is from his memoirs currently found in the Vietnam war memorial in Hanoi:

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it.

But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!"

 

[Canuck Dennis]

R.s's post is dead on, the media here is a non reporting media, it likes to think every story will get them some damn award or other, most only editorialize and don't do a good job of that, on e female anchor on cnn yesterday reported a story on an alternate party to the tea party, next words were "I would support them", certainly not independent reporting and lost me as a viewer. If they would just come out and admit publicly that they are involved in "hype" rater than journalism it would at least be true but they try to walk the line and fail.

 

[Vincentc]

RS,
Sounds like it bothers both of us. My "5 year expectation" is no criticism of the US military, rather our entry into a war situations where we lack the will to complete the mission, and there must be an identified mission. When you are fighting for you life, there is little room for doubt, and during the Viet Nam war a lot of folks, including me, had significant doubt.

Somewhat on point, after the wedding Marie and I took the newlyweds to New Orleans to catch a flight and after getting them off at the airport, the we went to the WWII museum. It is excellent, for the most part. It has Higgins boats, outstanding visuals and a lot of stuff from the war; however, they never used the phrase National Socialist, provided nothing I could find critical of the USSR's role and devoted a substantial section of the museum to our "racism" in pursuit of the war against Japan. Perhaps because the Smithsonian now runs it, they felt it necessary to present posters used to inspire us to defeat the Japanese, as evidence of our racism. I thought Japan was a country, not a race, and we were at war with that country. I suspect it is hard to kill and bomb people you do not dislike with at least some intensity. Any reference to race was coincidental, and putting "feelings" ahead of life and death, is not helpful to any war effort.

On the other hand, I came away from the museum with a greater appreciation of the difficulties involved in the war with Japan, their utter tenacity and unbreakable will, and a renewed belief that dropping the Bomb was the right decision.

Regards

 

[MikeP]

Dropping the bomb(s) on Japan dramatically reduced the casualties - American AND Japanese - that would have resulted from the planned invasion

Estimates are that Allied casualties would have been over a million; Japanese casualties over 10 million. Total casualties from the bombs - admittedly all Japanese but in wartime the point is to inflict casualties on the enemy - were reported to be 200,000. With invasion, Japan would have been, for all practical purposes, totally destroyed by the time it was over.

Taken just from the American side...I doubt there was a single soldier facing that potential invasion who didn't gratefully thank the US gov for taking that action.

Re other issues - I was appalled by the prison stuff in Iraq and firmly believe that any US military participants should have been punished for it. It's the action of small, weak-minded goons with no intent but to take out their own inadequacies on defenseless individuals and enjoy their suffering. The same people that would do that in the military would do the same thing as a policeman in any US city.

The battlefield is one thing - Kill 'em all. But it's interesting that you generally don't see combat soldiers torturing prisoners; it seems to be the provence of the REMFs (as we used to call them) - Rear Echelon Mother F----- who want to ACT like they're some sort of badasses, never had bullet fired at them, and then tell bull$hit stories of their service when they return home.

Sorry for getting wound up on this one but it's a BIG issue for me.

 

[Walter P]

All this discussion including the different views confirm that all War is Hell - for all involved. That being said I firmly believe that if we get into it then we should get in it to win it or get the hell out of there. During WW2 we had a pretty clear mission and the country and most of our allies were in agreement. Since then, the politicians direct our military into harms way and then seem to lose the committment to provide whatever support is necessary. Abe Lincoln was a hands on Commander in Chief, but he knew when to let the Generals have their way. Jeff Davis was of the same mind set and pretty much let Gen Lee and his other Generals do what they were best equiped to do.

I have the greatest respect for ALL our military forces and even though I like the description of our WW2 guys (and gals) as the "Greatest Generation", I think that the title equally belongs to the guys and gals from the Vietnam fiasco to the current mess and everything in between. In many ways the young men who participated in the Korean "police action" to todays warriors should actually be held in an even higher esteem because they went, fought and died without the total support of our politicians, our press and most important,,,,our public. How horrible it must have been to have been dodging bullets in Vietnam while knowing full well that back home some idiots were burning draft cards and some celebrities (Hanoi Jane) were publiclly supporting our enemy. I served in the USN for six years including our early involvement in Vietnam. Since I never set a foot on Vietnam, I will never wear my Vietnam service ribbon out of respect for those guys that did.

Sorry for the long rant guys.... I can get pretty emotional on this subject and at the same time very angry that political correctness seems to take precedence over reason.

Walt

By the way, I wonder how our US Marines delt with the Barbary pirates in Libya. I'll bet they were not sent to the US for trial. We kicked ass and the problem went away.

 

[MikeP]

In my opinion and the opinion of the guys I served with at the time, we disliked the war protesters back home FAR more than we disliked the "bad guys" we were fighting. They were enemy soldiers, doing their job as we were doing ours. They shot at us; we shot at them. Sure, it wasn't quite that clearcut but it was easy to understand why the bad guys were shooting at us, hard to understand why our own people were doing it with words and actions.

Of course the big difference that exists nowadays is the absence of the draft. Back then there was a threat to every male of college age that they could be called up/sent to Vietnam. That, of course, was the primary reason for the protests/antiwar feeling that took over the country. Today, there is no such threat. College-age students have nothing to fear and the only people in harm's way are people that volunteered to be in the service.

I am TOTALLY confident that if we still had a draft, the same level of protest and dislike of the military would exist today. I have very mixed views of this. IMO everybody should perform some sort of service to the country. OTOH, I realize that if such a requirement existed we'd probably be back in the days were nobody even paid lip service to "supporting our troop"...except for the mothers/fathers/sisters/brothers of the actual troops.

 

[krush]

It's a job. The military now serves the desire of oligarchs not country . Pay is pretty damn good.

 

[Boatsb]

Remember when it was an honor to serve the country? I the Military or even as an elected official. You were paid some money and lots of experience and or school and training.

Today's Military get the best training and solid support for school after they serve and a decent salary. Its still a respectable career.

Politics is another story.

I have still not met a politician that would not steal from their mother if it was "good for them". I think we should send them all to the military for retraining.

 

[jim rosenthal]

This is off-topic, but maybe not too much. We hear a lot of bitching about two things: not enough primary care physicians, and the high cost of medical training which creates huge debt for medical school graduates, who then avoid primary care specialties because they want to get paid enough to pay off their debts and do ordinary things like buy a house and start a family. (see item #1)

The solution to this probably lies in offering lower-cost medical education IF the graduate agrees to spend time in a primary care field after residency training. Not everyone who did this would stay in primary care, but enough of them would to change the entire landscape of medicine and patient care over a period of about twenty years. My medical school did this, and it's changed the way primary care is delivered and taught all through downstate Illinois.

Why did I mention this here? Because this is the kind of government service we should all be doing. It would benefit all of us. And, by the way, physicians who have primary care experience early in their training and then go on to specialize become better specialists. Medicine is one of those things in which the more you know, the better you perform at it.

Most of the cost of educating a medical student, which is the most expensive education one can get, is borne by the taxpayer in one way or another- about eighty to ninety percent. Even at the schools where the tuition etc are the highest, the cost of educating the student is still MUCH higher than the high tuition. Since we are paying to educate these folks anyway, we should perhaps pay a little more, and require primary care time of everyone. Other countries do this and it benefits their medical systems hugely. We ought to do it as well.

sorry for the drift....

 

[Boatsb]

Jim that is done in other areas too.

Teachers are subsidized for college if they teach in certain areas (studies and geographically) for a few years. Making it mandatory is not going to fly but with students that receive public money in grants and scholarships it should be a condition of getting the cash.

Remember no one is forcing you to do something for nothing. If you don't want to work where they assign you don't take the grant for school.

 

[jim rosenthal]

I agree. My point is that even with medical school tuition as high as it is, most of the cost of training a physician is down to the taxpayers etc. I believe that most people would rather practice primary care for a few years and NOT have 250-300K in debt even before they begin residency training- which doesn't pay enough to get out of debt. For example if you decide you want to be a thoracic surgeon, you are in for four years of medical school, five years of general surgery residency at a minimum, and two or three years of thoracic/vascular fellowship. Twelve years, if you're lucky, before you begin to earn anything resembling a decent salary for all the years you've put in. OK, if you add two or three years of primary care practice, the ordeal is even longer, BUT you don't owe 250-300K PLUS all the interest that's going to accrue on it, which is formidable, even at today's low rates. Would everyone make the trade- probably not, but enough people would to make medicine look a lot different, and, if you ask me, better.

 

[Boatsb]

Interesting issue I see is more people wanting to do a public service join the peace corps and do it in another country.