Remember when ‘ritual human sacrifice’ was an archaic term? …Yeah, I miss those days, too.
Yes, I am being perfectly serious. You have probably all seen the image of Islamic State (IS) ritually slaying two gay men by throwing them off of a building, but I want you to look at this:
See those two guys down there at the scene with their hands up? At first I thought that they were two of IS’s evil clerics, offering chants and leading the crowd. …Silly, stupid, naive me: they’re actually two more human sacrifices being crucified. Crucified, shot through the head, stoned to death, thrown off of buildings: apparently, this new god that IS worships** isn’t too choosy about how it gets his death energies.
By the way: I really, really resent the fact that I have to describe what’s going on in parts of Iraq and Syria in terms that would be better suited for a Conan novel or fantasy role-playing game. Particularly since it wasn’t like this when GWB handed over the Iraqi reconstruction process to Barack Obama in ’09. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better : the GWOT isn’t over, ladies and gentlemen. It’s simply going to get merciless.
Oh, yes. Things can always get worse.
Via @iowahawkblog.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*That is not profanity. That is a theological opinion.
**Please do not insult my nation’s Kurdish allies by suggesting that they worship the same deity that IS does. The Kurds’ Allah may very well be a false god in your eyes, but he’s still a much better one than the one getting sacrifices from IS right now.
And the crowd is no doubt cheering. Where is the line demarking “innocent” civilian, I wonder? If that line is out-of-frame, at what point would it become justifiable to raze the dump to the ground and sow it with salted bacon?
And the crowd is no doubt cheering.
I’d like to think of myself as a peaceful person, but that presumably approving crowd makes me wish for an A-10 set up to dump napalm.
The method of said razing is flexible. I would not be opposed to a parking lot with glow-in-the-dark pavement.
Do not use this site to advocate the mass murder of civilians and innocents.
Honestly curious – what is innocence, in this case? How do we determine it? What metrics should be used?
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I do have a point here – until the benighted fools of the anti-war left are willing to discuss the definition of innocense (beyond anti-colonialist platiudes and empty “all are innocent” bullshit) we’re either going to stay in the current bystander-to-the-carnography role or – if we lose a key liberal touchstone – we toggle over to the above.
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So.
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Do the metrics of the Nuremburg folks work?
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Mew
Everybody under the age of at least seven would be good for a start. And frankly a finish.
I can live with that.
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I would probably add some kind of screen to try and keep clear non-combatants above 7 alive as well – women and the cripples.
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Mew
Moe, I agree, but we cannot be deterred into inaction by the possibility of “collateral damage.” That is the whole point of hiding incivilian clothes and using human shields, so the useful idiots on the left can attack us as bloodthirsty killers. The Law of War exists for a reason and we need to be stricter in our application against the terrorist practices. We don’t have to nuke them into the Stone Age (they are there already), but if we want them to stop, we have to bring the pain. Where we draw the line is the problem and we have done so poorly to date. At least this former Strategic Air Command officeer thinks so.
Agree that we cannot be deterred… however a slow and meticulous prosecution can screen more finely than a hasty shamble or a reckless sprint.
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Let us be sure.
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Mew
Fair enough. The comment was rash. I note your separation into two separate, if less distinct, groups.
I think you’re painting with too broad a brush.
It was mainly civilians who suffered with the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yet there were legitimate strategic reasons for these attacks.
Taken at face value, your statement could be stretched to imply that Sherman and Sheridan were war criminals. (Which I hasten to add, they weren’t.)
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I’m open to the idea of introducing this crowd to Willy Pete, but I’m not at all clear on what that would actually accomplish.
The barbarism of ISIS is widespread, and wouldn’t stop because we managed to intervene one place, one time. They’re quite proud of it (as this video clearly shows), and aren’t likely to be deterred away from the practice.
Committing something so easily spun as an atrocity would give cover to all the idiots spouting their drivel about moral equivalence.
There doesn’t seem to be any special significance to the site. Attacking it would not deal a blow to the enemies’ conception of themselves.
Making the attack would not break supply lines, disrupt their command and control, or slow their recruitment.
Making the attack would not aid in the taking or holding of territory.
I just don’t see a good military reason to make the attack. There’s nothing to gained (except giving those crucified a slightly less horrible and much faster death). Worse, we know that making the attack would cost us the support of allies looking for an excuse to retreat into comfortable denial.
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I say this fully granting that if I were a Forward Observer with eyes on this atrocity, I’d have been calling for fire. “Having to live with yourself” isn’t especially useful in a military context, but I’d argue that it’s kind of attached to our humanity.
Do not use this site to advocate the mass murder of civilians and innocents.
Moe, I don’t want to abuse your hospitality, and please note that I wrote “wish for” rather than “advocate.” There are plenty of things that I (and likely you, too) fantasize about doing that would be disastrous, criminal, immoral, and reprehensible if actually performed; this was one such.
I was mostly upset about the nuke thing, but apologies were made for that, so let it be as if nothing was ever said.
I am past the point, I think, that words can convince me that someone is what I would consider a moderate muslim. Money speaks louder than words- donate 50% of your religiously required tithe to a fund specifically for non-muslim victims of islamic violence. Injuries? Pay the medical bills. At least. Deaths? Pay out as if a finding of wrongful death had occurred in the US. Buildings vandalized? Fix them. Buildings, especially houses of worship of other faiths, torn down? Restore them.
When they’ve fixed the problems of the last 50 years or so, we can talk.
And police yourselves.
That would be part of the concept. When it’s much cheaper for moderates in, say, Saudi Arabia to pay for an army to keep Boko Harim from killing thousands of people, than to pay weregild, things might change. Or they won’t, and that will be information too.
It has the advantage of having not been tried yet – the average middle-easterner not knowing he or she is alive because the west has not yet, as the punchline puts it, decided to play cowboys and ayrabs yet.
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Mew
May two angels go there seeking ten righteous men.
Considering that one of the insurgents in Syria was eating Assad’s soldiers after he killed them, I’d have to say that human sacrifice seems to be a step up from cannibalism on the civilizational scale. Not a good step but a step.
I’m waiting for ISIS to declare farming un-islamic following the pigeon raising and soccer watching killings. It sure looks likes ISIS is headed in that direction.
Just for the sake of argument, because this train of thought is too rational for our current society:
1) ISIS/ISIL claims in its name and in its proclamations to be a nation-state and sovereign within and in control of its borders. In that last, it is arguably stronger than we are.
2) They also say, on behalf of their government, that they are at war with us. That kind of statement by a government, or an entity that claims to be a government and does have territorial control has specific meaning under the Westphalian definitions of relations between nation-states.
3) It takes two parties to make peace, but only one to make war. We are at war with ISIS, even though we choose to allow ourselves to be attacked with impunity and without retaliation.
4) If a state of war exists between two nation-states, the civilian population of each is subject to attack as either primary or collateral damage under international law. If the attack was on ISIS troops [which are intermixed with their civilian population] the civilian casualties would be legal. And indeed, since the same international law requires the forces of a nation-state to wear distinctive markings to denominate them as military and separate from civilians to be covered by the Hague and Geneva Conventions [and ISIS doesn’t as best I can tell]; they can be treated as Hostis humani generis outside of the protections of international law.
5) We can legally, at will, slap them down so hard that three generations of ancestors and descendents both will scream for mercy. Since they attack and kill civilians by choice, any mercy is at our option.
#4 was my initial point, stated more clearly. Much of the civilian population support to an extent that they themselves become enemies. Sherman gets tons of flack Down South, but the effect was undeniable.
Except that … were the Westphalian bits properly updated for modern war?
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I don’t think so .. and thus we get to the question of whether liberals are correct that *all* civilians are off the table (hint: they are not) and .. if not .. just what civilians *are* valid targets? (hint: at bare minim, not kids)
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The trouble, of course, is that later revisions of Geneva were corrupted by liberals and did not actually establish realistic rules, instead simply codifying liberal claptrap.
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Mew
I agree totally. This is where one must look at what is allowed under the Law of War. We are entitled to “bring the pain,” if thar that means nuclear of conventional firepower to the entity that has declaired war on us. I do nort want to kill civillians, bur that is wha treally ends wars (see, WWII). This is not a pleasant topic, but we mustr have this conversation. I do not advocate the “mass murder of innocents or civillians, ” but what did we do to end the war i Japan. We at least need to talk about our options.
Many apoligies for bad spelling. I forget to read befoe I post.
And yet there are still people who will make excuses and tell us that if we only “empathized” with them.
I have no empathy for and no desire to empathize with people who cut children’s heads off, Hillary can go pound sand if she doesn’t like it.