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Russia Airstrikes 'May Amount To War Crimes'

Higgins86 said:
Not a big fan of Russia but didnt NATO just bomb a hospital?
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Probably speaks to the fact that we should be well more careful in whom and what we are bombing.
 
Simpleχity;1065387945 said:
Russia Airstrikes 'May Amount To War Crimes'


Amnesty: Russia may have committed war crimes by killing civilians in Syria


'We’ve never been bombed like this': Russia's military campaign in Syria has escalated to new levels




20151223-nga-bi-cao-buoc-khong-kich-khien-200-dan-thuong-thiet-mang-1.jpg

Workers search rubble for survivors from Russian airstrikes in Idlib city which killed at least 70 civilians

In addition to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, Russia is also using illegal cluster munitions.

Women, children, the old, and the infirm. Horrible. Just horrible.
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Good for the Russians !!

Looks like they are doing things in their usual thorough and Machiavellian way !!
 
Higgins86 said:
Not a big fan of Russia but didnt NATO just bomb a hospital?
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The hospital bombing by the USA was a mistake by the air crew however.

Nobody on the ground called-in that specific air strike target.

Slight difference.

No intent involved.

Negligence perhaps but no intent.
 
Ikari said:
If civilian areas are being bombed, those tend to be populated by....civilians. Your argument is nothing but hoop jumping to try to downplay the aggregate number of civilians who are being killed in this war. a 10% success rate is not very good, no matter how you cut it. And 90% of deaths being other folk is not good either.

I keep hearing that we're doing the "utmost" to avoid civilian causalities, but we have 90% of folk in drone bombings not being the supposed target we're after. You have over 1.3 million civilians killed in the Afghanistan, Iraqi, and Pakistani theaters combined. We have politicians talking about bombing friends and families, and people shrugging their shoulders when we target civilian areas to get at a couple terrorists. These aren't tactics of "utmost avoidance". These are tactics of apathy.
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First of all the vast majority of drone strikes are done with missiles some as little as 13lbs of explosives so there is very little bombing going on.
Next no we don not have a 10% success rate in our drone program. If the missile hits the target as well as 9 of his good buddies who were not the target that does not make the mission a failure.
You not understanding that the majority of drones strikes are targeted at known individuals and killing the 5 other bad guys with him means that 5 people of the six people killed were not the strikes intended target is simply your bias getting in the way. Not anyone jumping through hoops.

And the vast majority of those 1.3 million killed were killed by their fellow Muslims. I have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan and know the lengths we go to to avoid causing civilian deaths. Often times putting US soldiers at greater risk. Just because you wish to not believe it because it doesn't fit in your world view doesn't make it any less true.
 
braindrain said:
First of all the vast majority of drone strikes are done with missiles some as little as 13lbs of explosives so there is very little bombing going on.
Next no we don not have a 10% success rate in our drone program. If the missile hits the target as well as 9 of his good buddies who were not the target that does not make the mission a failure.
You not understanding that the majority of drones strikes are targeted at known individuals and killing the 5 other bad guys with him means that 5 people of the six people killed were not the strikes intended target is simply your bias getting in the way. Not anyone jumping through hoops.

And the vast majority of those 1.3 million killed were killed by their fellow Muslims. I have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan and know the lengths we go to to avoid causing civilian deaths. Often times putting US soldiers at greater risk. Just because you wish to not believe it because it doesn't fit in your world view doesn't make it any less true.
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You keep assuming that those in the vicinity of a "target" are guilty. That's the hoop you jump through

The "vast majority" of the 1.3 million killed were not killed by their fellow Muslims. Those were casualties caused by Western military intervention over the course of our war. Another hoop you're jumping through.

Just because you wish to not believe it because it doesn't fit in your world view doesn't make it any less true.
 
Ikari said:
Maybe wrong place, wrong time. But there's no justification in killing these folk just because they happen to be there. "Well they may be guilty of something" isn't a proper argument. It's a civilian death, we shouldn't be so caustically apathetic about the degree to which we've caused them.
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Killing them isn't justified nor is it intended. That's why we call it collateral damage. War is ugly. It always has been.
 
fmw said:
Killing them isn't justified nor is it intended. That's why we call it collateral damage. War is ugly. It always has been.
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Indeed, the best defense is the touting of these banal platitudes. It may not be "intended", but if bombing civilian areas it is purposeful.
 
Ikari said:
Indeed, the best defense is the touting of these banal platitudes. It may not be "intended", but if bombing civilian areas it is purposeful.
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Even the ISIS members are civilians. There are civilians anywhere there are ISIS members. There is nothing you can do except to avoid as much collateral damage as is practical or concede the war to the enemy. I don't think the Russians are bothered by collateral damage.
 
fmw said:
Even the ISIS members are civilians. There are civilian anywhere there are ISIS members. There is nothing you can do except to concede the war to the enemy.
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Or maybe not blow up crowded civilian areas to maybe get a handful of terrorists.
 
Ikari said:
Or maybe not blow up crowded civilian areas to maybe get a handful of terrorists.
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Not practical. If we mount a land invasion we can reduce the amount of civilian deaths. On land the killing is more individualized. The goal is to kill as many ISIS members as we can find. We won't kill that many until we mount the land invasion.
 
Simpleχity;1065387945 said:
Russia Airstrikes 'May Amount To War Crimes'


Amnesty: Russia may have committed war crimes by killing civilians in Syria


'We’ve never been bombed like this': Russia's military campaign in Syria has escalated to new levels




20151223-nga-bi-cao-buoc-khong-kich-khien-200-dan-thuong-thiet-mang-1.jpg

Workers search rubble for survivors from Russian airstrikes in Idlib city which killed at least 70 civilians

In addition to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, Russia is also using illegal cluster munitions.

Women, children, the old, and the infirm. Horrible. Just horrible.
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Oh, you mean paper rules are losing out to the reality of war? Amazing thing that. War is hell.
 
fmw said:
Not practical.
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Then neither is your war. Killing more civilians than terrorists do isn't actually a good thing.

fmw said:
If we mount a land invasion we can reduce the amount of civilian deaths. On land the killing is more individualized. The goal is to kill as many ISIS members as we can find. We won't kill that many until we mount the land invasion.
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Yeah, that worked well in Iraq.

Which is the larger point, this style of military interventionism we are engaging in doesn't work. But yes, to decrease civilian deaths, you would need smaller teams performing more tactical operations than merely dropping bombs from a plane.
 
fmw said:
Not practical. If we mount a land invasion we can reduce the amount of civilian deaths. On land the killing is more individualized. The goal is to kill as many ISIS members as we can find. We won't kill that many until we mount the land invasion.
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so that is how we measure terms of victory? the body count listing the number of Deash Members we kill?
 
Unitedwestand13 said:
so that is how we measure terms of victory? the body count listing the number of Deash Members we kill?
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Only if you ignore the number of civilians we kill because...you know....war is hell.
 
Ikari said:
Then neither is your war. Killing more civilians than terrorists do isn't actually a good thing.
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Nothing good about war at all. This war, unfortunately, is necessary if you want to reduce the number of terrorist attacks in the U.S. Ikari, I think you are probably a nice person and not one that would like the military.
 
Ikari said:
Easy to say when you're not the one being bombed.
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Ikari, get off it would you? These idiotic rules of war only work when ALL parties involved in said war play the rules, written by people who most likely never wore a uniform. When one side, or both ignore the rules then what? A bunch of hand wringing belly aching about cruelty and some half assed "penalties" that aren't enforced. Give me a break.

How about accept the reality, WAR IS HELL. It sucks, I hate war, but I'm not going to go around moaning because oh look, this side of this war is breaking the RULES!!

Whatever.

How do you explain to the families of a soldier their child died because the OTHER side ignored the rules of war but your child was following rules and died for it? That's what the Russian generals and leadership cares about, making the other guy die first.

Sucks, but that's that.
 
Unitedwestand13 said:
that sort of body count war did not work for us in veitnam and it won't work in the battle against Daesh.
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We failed in Vietnam because the war was managed by the white house rather than by the military. When we get a new president we have a chance of learning from those mistakes. If the president had simply told the military to put North Vietnam out of business and let him know when they were done, that is what would have happened. I was there.
 
fmw said:
Nothing good about war at all. This war, unfortunately, is necessary if you want to reduce the number of terrorist attacks in the U.S. Ikari, I think you are probably a nice person and not one that would like the military.
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War is not good, it is sometimes necessary. We didn't really have the number of terrorists attacks on our soil proper to warrant the type of war we're waging. Terrorism is near the bottom on the list of probable causes for my death.
 
Ikari said:
War is not good, it is sometimes necessary. We didn't really have the number of terrorists attacks on our soil proper to warrant the type of war we're waging. Terrorism is near the bottom on the list of probable causes for my death.
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That is true at the moment. Does it make sense to you to clean up something that could cause that probable cause to increase? If so you go to war. If not, you ignore future terrorist attacks.
 
Ikari said:
You keep assuming that those in the vicinity of a "target" are guilty. That's the hoop you jump through

The "vast majority" of the 1.3 million killed were not killed by their fellow Muslims. Those were casualties caused by Western military intervention over the course of our war. Another hoop you're jumping through.

Just because you wish to not believe it because it doesn't fit in your world view doesn't make it any less true.
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Yhe reason I make that assumption is due to the fact I have witnessed how both the US militar and the dirt bags over there operate. What are you basing your assumptions on.

No the vast majority were killed by their fellow Muslims that unless you want to try and tell me it was the West placing those IEDs and conducting those suicide suicide bombings.
Sorry you don't like it but those are the facts.
 
fmw said:
We failed in Vietnam because the war was managed by the white house rather than by the military. When we get a new president we have a chance of learning from those mistakes. If the president had simply told the military to put North Vietnam out of business and let him know when they were done, that is what would have happened. I was there.
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did it ever occur to you that we don't give millitary commanders free reign on all millitary decisions for a reason? Having a Commander like Douglas MacArthur running around making decisions without any regaurds to the political situation is a recipe for disaster. Truman was right to dissmiss MacArthur from command during the korean war.
 
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