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[Ioric Kittencuddler]

But we need our hate!  How else will we know the unknowable?  With hate, it doesn't matter that you're grossly oversimplifying things!  With hate, there's no need for reason!  Just look at the middle ages!  Some people survived that, so it must be a good thing.  Sure they didn't have nukes... but that's just details.  With hate there's no need for details!

It's kinda sad.  I wonder how many people willing to die for a cause ever actually realize what it's is all about.  It's just another pointless cycle of hate with religion at it's center.

Christians and Muslims have been slaughtering each other for their respective beliefs for centuries.  Christians managed to gain the upper hand, so obviously, Muslims retaliated in whatever way they could.  Obviously it didn't help that Israel was founded by a Christian nation in the middle of a Muslim country as a knee jerk reaction to the horrors of the holocaust.  How do you think Christians would feel if they were in that position?  And of course no one is mature enough to just fucking stop killing each other and deal with it like non-psychotic adults.

Remember children, kill for your god, and you'll be rewarded in Heaven/Paradise!
AS YOU WISH RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY FIGURE!

[Jreengus]

Hush! I want my 30 virgins!

D&D for all eternity.... 

[Dakk]

Let's not forget that the guy had apparently gone on some very extreme rants in the past, but people were afraid to complain.  I still think Strife was out of line, but let's not leap to the guy's defense either.  He killed 13 people, and "I didn't want to go to Iraq" isn't an acceptable excuse for that.

Well, see, there is no acceptable excuse for the man's actions.  There cannot be one, lest civilization's foundations of security and consistency be undermined.

Since there cannot be any excuse, there need not be any excuse.  That which is inexcusable needs no excuse, that which is indefensible needs no defense.  Therefore it should be possible to examine why this occurred without any objections to excuses being made & defenses being offered, because there can be none.

Instead, the whys and whats can be explored with an eye to prevention, to keep similar inexcusable events from occurring in the future.  Not that we have the perspective to accurately judge such things or the authority to make the correct changes, but this is the Internet and we are all armchair policy-makers.  That's the way of it.

Eep, wait a sec there,  stuff like this needs to be defensible, according to the Principle of the Contradictory and Legal(& ample) defense. The guy may receive severe military sanctions, but when he's procecuted for the 13 murders and other crimes, he has the right to have a lawyer and be defended in any means the legislation permits. Saying a matter like this is inexcusable and indefensible is a extremist and anti-constitutional way of seeing things.

It is quite the contrary actualy, if a matter like this can't be defended, thats when said "civilization's foundations of security and consistency" are undermined. While the crimes commited on the fact and very grave and serious ones, it must be defensible in some way, lest we risk damaging the golden principle of isonomy, which along with other principles holds the western civilization togheder.

[LegoLord]

Huh. I didn't know that. Can you give me your source, Strife?

Does he really need it?  I mean, if you plan on keeping an army, generally you want as many of them alive as possible before entering battle.  That kind of implies a want to keep them from killing eachother, rather than letting them shoot whoever they feel like.

[Strife26]

Cribbed from Wikipedia on False flag operations:

The outcome of the trial has been codified in the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Protocol I):

Article 37.-Prohibition of perfidy

    1. It is prohibited to kill, injure, or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:
    (a) The feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;
    (b) The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;
    (c) The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and
    (d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
    2. Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

Article 38.-Recognized emblems

    1. It is prohibited to make improper use of the distinctive emblem of the red cross, red crescent or red lion and sun or of other emblems, signs or signals provided for by the Conventions or by this Protocol. It is also prohibited to misuse deliberately in an armed conflict other internationally recognized protective emblems, signs or signals, including the flag of truce, and the protective emblem of cultural property.
    2. It is prohibited to make use of the distinctive emblem of the United Nations, except as authorized by that Organization.

Article 39.-Emblems of nationality

    1. It is prohibited to make use in an armed conflict of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
    2. It is prohibited to make use of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of adverse Parties while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations.
    3. Nothing in this Article or in Article 37, paragraph 1 ( d ), shall affect the existing generally recognized rules of international law applicable to espionage or to the use of flags in the conduct of armed conflict at sea.


You can't fight for a foreign army and wear your opponents uniform. Technically, what Nidal did was more of straight up treason.


I think that he has a right to a trial, but it's pretty clearly treason, and according the the UCMJ:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

You can defend him, but it's almost certainly a lost cause. The only real questions are how long he'll sit on death row and what the manner of execution is.

[loser]

Dakk, I'll give you that point.

And by "give" I mean that I'll acknowledge that the point is in your possession, I've no means to change the ownership status of that point, and I will still maintain a pretense both of some personal control over the situation and of any meaningfulness to contributions on my own part.

It's against the rules of war to shoot people wearing your own uniform.

War has rules?  Oh, Modern Era, you're a nutty one.  You and your quaint notions...

Of course war has rules.

And you'd damned well better respect them as long as the opportunity cost of respecting the rules of war is judged to be less than the greater of either the product of the benefit you get from your opponents following those rules and the likelihood they will continue to do so or the benefit you receive from non-opponent entities (including the fourth estate) observing you to be following those rules.

...

You know, that wasn't nearly absurd enough.  I'm confident that we can make that little ethics equation much, much more complicated without appreciably adding to its meaning or worth.

[Dakk]

Law school is a lovely thing, one year in it and it opens your eyes to stuff you would rarely would have the oportunity to notice without it, just 4 more to go 

And yea, its defensible, but not easily defensible though. The most obvious course is allegating temporary insanity. In cases like this, were the punishment practically can't be avoided, you gotta aim to attenuate it the most you can. Its possible to keep the death row at bay, even life sentence if the lawyer is convincing enough, but he's certainly gonna be heavily punished for this.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Of course this all accepts that war is acceptable.

[Dakk]

War is controversial, but legally acceptable. The state can take any measures to protect its people, though today the UN has a say in that (at the very least). Thats why the UN is currently all touchy towards the US, because they didn't approve of most of its military incursions.

Before the end of WWII, invading another country was completely legally acceptable and war was pretty much free of most rules. Its one huge irony that in fact, everything that Germany and Japan did during WWII, including jew burning, concentration fields, the rape of nanking and stuff were actualy not against any law! The declaration of human rights didn't oficially exist at the time, even though the idea was already floating around for quite a while.

[ChairmanPoo]

Before the end of WWII, invading another country was completely legally acceptable and war was pretty much free of most rules.

No... no it wasn't. The Ginebra convention predates WWII by a lot, there have always been warrior codes, and rulers have always made sure they had some kind of pretext to wage their wars (the fact that the term "casus belli" is in latin should give a clue that this predates the existence of internet)

If you mean that powerful nations could invade or otherwise meddle in the affairs of smaller ones with really lame excuses... well.. that hasn't really changed, now has it? 

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Just because something is legal doesn't make it acceptable, and vice versa.  It's legal to be a compulsive lier ruin people's lives.  That doesn't mean you won't be despised and shunned for it.

[loser]

Just because something is legal doesn't make it acceptable, and vice versa.  It's legal to be a compulsive lier ruin people's lives.  That doesn't mean you won't be despised and shunned for it.

And just because it's not acceptable to you, or perhaps even to anyone who knows it's happening, doesn't mean that someone who lies and destroys people's lives might not end up being very successful and even happy with the fruits of their labor.

Back on topic, I'm much more comfortable being intrigued about the fact that this guy who snapped and killed people is a certified shrink than I am exploring the potential influence his religion had on him.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

But thinking about stuff can potentially be complicated.  And dealing with complicated issues might lead to an expansion of the mind!

Nope, definitely best to just write him off as "evil" or "insane" and start looking for a scapegoat.

[Jude]

It sounded bad, but do note that I have no problems with Muslims. I'm quite good friends with a fair number of them. However, when you have a chappie who posts on a message board comparing suicide bombers to kamikaze pilots to the guy who jumps on a grenade to save his squad, then shoot up a base while chanting "God is Great" you pretty clearly fit into the extremist category. And he was pretty much definitely Muslim.

Turns out he may have been an Islamic extremist after all, but my point was that you made that declaration BEFORE any information came out indicating he was anything more than just a garden variety Muslim and you were jumping to conclusions

Honestly, I forgot to mention that he's a filthy traitor as well.

Oh yeah, forget the fact that he killed innocent people, a REAL vice is being disloyal to your country 

So calling a guy who shoots up a military base while chanting Allahu Akbar is lumping people together, but saying that such a response is "typical American xenophobic knee-jerkism" isn't?

Not since I'm already familiar with Strife's views, no

So anyway, philosophical question. If you have somebody who's mentally ill and a Muslim extremist (or any kind of extremist) and shoots up a military base (or mall or church or whatever) how do you decide whether to blame the extremism or the mental illness

People with political agendas are going to point to the extremism obviously but how do you really decide to what to attribute it

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Well if he's Muslim you point to the extremism.  If he's some less stigmatized religion you point to the mental illness.  Unless you're his defense lawyer, then you always point to the latter.  Of course this pertains specifically to the US.  Ok, now that we've gotten that bullshit out of the way...

I personally consider extremism a form of mental illness, so yeah... that's pretty much my answer there unless you want a detailed explanation of why I hold my opinions, but this is the internet, so that doesn't seem all that likely.