Human Shields?

[Pilgrim]

Last night on one of the news channles there was an interview with 2 AMericans who had gone to Iraq along with 1000 others to serve as human shields in protest of an American engagement there.

Their idea is that to kill Iraqus, the US forces will be forced to kill them first.

What do you think of this idea?

Pilgrim

[Sozo]

Pilgrim:
Last night on one of the news channles there was an interview with 2 AMericans who had gone to Iraq along with 1000 others to serve as human shields in protest of an American engagement there.

Their idea is that to kill Iraqus, the US forces will be forced to kill them first.

What do you think of this idea?

Pilgrim

I say our government should offer to send anyone to Iraq free of charge who claims to be an American and desires to defend Sadaam!

[Pilgrim]

Very passionate, but their position is not that they are defending Saddam but that are defending civilian innocents and non-combatants.

They claim that they are true patriots because they see it as the duty of every American to question the policy of government to see if it is just and to oppose said policy when it is not. They see it as an expression of free speech as well.

I can't say as I agree with their position on this particular circumstance but their reasoning is not altogether uncogent.

Pilgrim

[Pilgrim]

Oh yes, it is important to note that they will never take up arms against the US. Rather they plan to use civil disobedience and passive resistance.

[drdeutsch]

I don't think Saddam needs their help. During the Gulf War, Saddam would march his troops into towns and take all the inhabitants as prisoners. He would then tie them onto bridges, buildings, and other military targets so that we, the Americans, would not fire upon them. As I understand it, he also wanted to tie them onto his tanks and trucks, so we wouldn't shoot those either, but some of his generals that that was a little too sadistic and refused to do it.

Anywho, Saddam already uses his own people to prevent us from blowing his stuff up; he doesn't need our help to do that.

Anyway, I don't agree with it. I think they are some "non-profit nutheads," as I like to call them, who need to get real jobs.

Dr. Deutsch

[Sozo]

Pilgrim:
Oh yes, it is important to note that they will never take up arms against the US. Rather they plan to use civil disobedience and passive resistance.


This is really a question of usurping authority by a group of people who don't have enough information to decide what is the best course of action.

[GrayPilgrim]

Is Alec Baldwin among them??? [one can always hope]

[Pilgrim]

Sozo:



This is really a question of usurping authority by a group of people who don't have enough information to decide what is the best course of action.

So is any protest against the governement such a question?

Personally I say, hey, if you want to go fine, but expect to get shot.

Pilgrim

[Sozo]

Pilgrim:


Personally I say, hey, if you want to go fine, but expect to get shot.

Pilgrim

Sounds good to me :thumb:

[Pilgrim]

One thing I did think was a little paradoxical is the fact that the two men who were being interviewed appeared to be gay. I wonder if they have given thought to what would happen to them if those they are protecting found out?

Also the women in the group were dancing around beating bongos (I don't know why the bongo has become the symbol of 21st century hippyism?) and generally doing everything they could to offend the culture they were there to protect. Of course I don't think they realized that but in their arrogance and egotism they sort of assume that they have the right to do what ever where ever. I think they are forgetting to think about their responsabilities.

Pilgrim

[Captain Ochre]

Pilgrim:
They claim that they are true patriots because they see it as the duty of every American to question the policy of government to see if it is just and to oppose said policy when it is not.


Why, they sound just like those anti-abortion radicals!
:bonk:

I see a potential avenue for hypocrisy, here.
I'd like to interview some of them. Where can I find one without going to Iraq?:huh:

[Captain Ochre]

Pilgrim:
One thing I did think was a little paradoxical is the fact that the two men who were being interviewed appeared to be gay. I wonder if they have given thought to what would happen to them if those they are protecting found out?


You don't need all of your body parts to act as a human shield, but being alive is definitely a plus.
I guess I don't know what Muslim countries do to gays, though.:hrm:

[Captain Ochre]

drdeutsch:
I don't think Saddam needs their help. During the Gulf War, Saddam would march his troops into towns and take all the inhabitants as prisoners. He would then tie them onto bridges, buildings, and other military targets so that we, the Americans, would not fire upon them.

:idea:
Well, I think I've got the plan, then!

We just need to round up a few million of these zealous peaceniks and send them over to Iraq. They'll start out protecting Iraqi infrastructure, but eventually their pervasive presence will bring them into contact with Iraqi governmental oppression, at which point either the Iraqis will have to take them off the streets, or they will peacefully resist and bring Iraq to heel . . . or something like that.

Think it could work?

[Rubia Warren]

Sounds like a plan. :yipee:

[Socrates]

There's a huge irony here, as with the anti-war protesters. Your President and my Prime Minister have told them, it's your perfect right to protest, because that's part of democratic freedom. But how many protest rallies occur in Iraq?

Same with human shields -- they hope that the conscience of the evil oilophilic West will be sufficiently pricked so that the soldiers will hold back from killing them, even though they have put themselves in that positions. But would human shields work against Sodom Hussein's armies? As Dr Deutsch pointed out, Sodom used involuntary human shields.

[ItalianGold]

GrayPilgrim:
Is Alec Baldwin among them??? [one can always hope]


heh heh :yipee:

Perhaps we can hope that Babs and Rosie are on the bus too!

[Pilgrim]

I agree. It seems they have every right to go over there but they should have every expectation of getting killed and people should not be outraged when those who throw themselves in front of bullets and bombs are killed. They chose to do it. And besides, civil disobedience is only really effective when you are willing to take the full consequences of your actions.

[Epoetker]

Humans do not make good shields. Especially thin, starving ones.(Punisher's rule for a gunfight in the morgue-Don't hide behind the thin guy.) Creating the impression that we somehow think they are impenetrable moral barriers will simply lead to more of them used as such. Let no innocent in the path of the guilty live, and the guilty will stop bothering to put them there in their haste to get away. (Rule for Spiderman villains-if you just remember to keep throwing people off buildings, you can commit all sorts of crimes and not get caught by web-head.)

[Pilgrim]

Umm, they're not talking so much about being a lieteral shield. They are hoping that the US will think twice before placing it's own citizens in harms way.

Pilgrim

[GrayPilgrim]

Pilgrim:
Umm, they're not talking so much about being a lieteral shield. They are hoping that the US will think twice before placing it's own citizens in harms way.

Pilgrim

Its one thing to order people into harm's way its another to allow them to put themselves there.

[Pilgrim]

true enough

[ollie]

Is America becoming totalitarian? My way or else. Is fascism becoming the way in America?

Why destroy the very thing worth fighting for, freedom.
Americans should not put one another down because of differing opinions on the world and its politics.

[Pilgrim]

I does seem ironic that we want to fight against a totallitarian regime that does not allow free speech proclaiming freedom and democracy the whole way and at the same time, mane at home or castigated and abused for excercising that very freedom.

[Captain Ochre]

Today @ 03:18 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
Pilgrim:

I does seem ironic that we want to fight against a totallitarian regime that does not allow free speech proclaiming freedom and democracy the whole way and at the same time, mane at home or castigated and abused for excercising that very freedom.

Come, now, Pilgrim! Is anybody being "castigated and abused" merely for "exercising that very freedom"? If I followed you everywhere you went and yelled obsenities and insults at you, and you called the police to have me taken away, am I being abused for exercising my right to free speech?

Let's have a concrete example, so that we can verify whether or not folks are being "abused" merely for exercising free speech. As for "castigating"--that just sounds like somebody exercising their free speech, afaics. You weren't castigating the castigators, were you? :wink:

[Pilgrim]

Well I'm thinking of the kid who got thrown out of the mall a week or so ago for wearing a shirt that said "No War." The security gaurds told him he could not be in the mall and wear that shirt. Ironically the kid had bought the shirt at a store in the mall.

[Captain Ochre]

Today @ 07:06 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
Pilgrim:

Well I'm thinking of the kid who got thrown out of the mall a week or so ago for wearing a shirt that said "No War." The security gaurds told him he could not be in the mall and wear that shirt. Ironically the kid had bought the shirt at a store in the mall.

Sounds like you may be talking about this story:
http://truthout.org/docs_03/030703F.shtml

The "kid" was a 60-year-old attorney, if this is the story you're talking about, and the mall management has the right to trespass persons who ignore their (legal) policies, right?

[Pilgrim]

If the policy is indeed legal and we'll see what the couts say about that. The attorney is right, the mall is not the same as a resident and in fact, in many statutes is considered a public building thus any states where smoking is prhibited in public places it is prohibited in malls.

We'll see. regardless, it's still punishing someone for acting on the very liberties that we are supposed to be fighting for in other places.

[Captain Ochre]

Today @ 08:58 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
Pilgrim:

If the policy is indeed legal and we'll see what the couts say about that. The attorney is right, the mall is not the same as a resident and in fact, in many statutes is considered a public building thus any states where smoking is prhibited in public places it is prohibited in malls.


You may be committing a fallacy of equivocation, here. If we take smoking as a mode of free expression, then the state is doing the very thing you deplore by prohibiting it in "public places". I happen to think that private institutions should have the freedom to develop their own smoking policies rather than having them mandated by the feds.



We'll see. regardless, it's still punishing someone for acting on the very liberties that we are supposed to be fighting for in other places.

How can you say that without assuming that the attorney is right? If he isn't correct, then his "punishment" is on the basis of trespassing, and it isn't a free speech issue. Even if the attorney is correct, then it is the policy of the mall management that is struck down.
Shouldn't the mall management have the opportunity for free expression, and to limit expression on their premises as they see fit, so long as it is within the law? Would you fault the mall management if they refused Klan-garbed persons the privilege of shopping in their mall?