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Prof Michael Mandel on War Crimes and War Criminals: (vid)
http://canadiandimension.com/bestoftheweb/2337/
Oh look, Jaku supports the troops.
It certainly appears to be an important legal, political and moral question worth pursuing further. And definitely no joke.
Provocative, baiting, bullshit. True to form. Michelle didn't call Gus a liar. She repeated his posts for all to see what his game was. Banned for life? Michelle "a piece of work"? Your posts haven't got a humane or progressive shred to them. Your attacks on Michelle are a perverse kind of badge of honour to wear, but that's what they are.
Ok, I'll show everyone how to do an insincere psyops disinformation campaign, Zionist-style, by cherrypicking and massive diversion. The following is offered as a sample.
*** BEGINNING OF SAMPLE ZIONIST DIVERSION ***
What? Oh yes of course, let the Nazis go. After all, they're old, they're sick, and really, isn't it time to forgive - and forget? Gus, your "question" ranks with the lowest Holocaust deniers - worse, with those who admit the Holocaust took place but want to minimize and even JUSTIFY it!!! For calling into question the historic guilt of these worst murderers, genocidaires, and criminals that humanity has ever witnessed, you ought to be banned for life from this board - and consider yourself FORTUNATE not to be also charged with hate speech under the Criminal Code!!!!!
*** END OF SAMPLE ***
Maybe I should have done that - before Gus had a chance to "change his mind" a few posts later.
What a bunch of diversionary characters, out on a mission to prove that the left is antisemitic. Instead of pursuing that filthy mission, why not do something really direct, honest, and --- er --- difficult: Try to defend Israel for what it is and how it acts! I know, Herculean task and all that, much easier to do a McCarthy on its critics.
If those "brave soldiers" are committing war crimes, they are war criminals, every bit as much as those "brave Nazi soldiers" (if 'some' people do not get what I mean here, what I meant is that the Germans too thought their soldiers were brave and fighting for them against the evil terrorists) who have been hunted down and correctly brought to trial.
Of note, it is also easier to be brave when, you are technologically superior to those you are attacking/occupying, which superiority should be IMV a war crime in itself.
It is a maximum example of bullying that one can have, there is not 1 thing brave about their actions. Another good example of bullying war crimes would be Israels bullying of Palestinians
That said this thread is nonsense, Gus Williams trolled right from the moment he entitled the thread with the question he did. On ly to answer it himself in post # 13.
If he truthfully could not imagine it, and was not just baiting, he would never have started such a useless useless thread.
And his magnanomousness of testifying on the nature of babblers and 'courageously' excusing the "2" who supposedly transgressed the answer already answered is nasty actions all the way through.
No friggin' kidding. You know someone who supports the Israeli "Defence" Forces who doesn't also support the occupation and massacre of the Afghan people? Modern-day Zionism has associated itself with all the darkest forces in the world. Where else would it go?
What Michelle and Unionist have explained is so clearly the case that we must assume we are dealing not just with garden variety trolls, here, but a vastly ignorant species at that.
Man, I have been away from babble too long. Someone is actually playing the patriotism card on people who work on war crimes? Wow, but that hurts my head.
As I said above, Jaku, and in some detail, there are a number of politicians in this country, and a few people like, eg, Jim Judd, Mr "Deference Deficit," who have a lot more to worry about than anything our troops have done ... which is, of course, why they keep trying to divert attention and responsibility on to the troops.
As far as I know, no responsible critic of war crimes is focused on the troops at all. But I hope they're lawyering up at CSIS and DFAIT. Above that level, I don't think anything should save the worst criminals. It's not mainly a question of the grunts, Jaku. The criminals are the guys who give the orders.
Sorry skdadl, but that is not what the Nuremburg findings were, which were individual soldiers are accountable for holding the Geneva Conventions to all their individual actions.
If such were the case that individual soldiers were not accountable we would not have this bogus thread about a Nazi communications soldier.
If more of the "troops" understood the importance of this perhaps we would NOT be having crimes against Afghans committed.
remind, the first problem with the Nuremberg Defence -- "I was just following orders" -- was that it was used most famously and egregiously by fairly high-ranking officials of the Nazi regime. That was when the world decided that we just could not have that any longer.
It is true that any soldier -- indeed, any citizen, anyone -- who committed a heinous crime was then and should now be denied that defence. And there were individual soldiers prosecuted for taking part in atrocities, although most individual soldiers will usually remain anonymous in situations like the collapse of the Third Reich -- the numbers were just too large.
In my view, it is a deeply immoral regime that would prosecute only the soldiers in the ranks -- as is happening now in the U.S., when one or another case becomes too shocking for the boss criminals to duck, so they sacrifice a few privates to the courts. If you aren't prosecuting the guys who gave the orders, you have no ground to stand on, unless you're looking at isolated criminal behaviour, which is always possible. Abu Ghraib was not isolated criminal behaviour -- it was part of a system whose authors and facilitators still walk free.
As Unionist and I agreed above, it is not at all clear that the main concern with prisoner transfers in Afghanistan has much to do with the troops. All the evidence so far indicates that the troops have behaved well, have sent up the proper alarms and so forth.
And it is not at all clear that this case is complicity in the much more serious way that the CSIS/DFAIT cases are.
if they, the individuakl military person, are NOT coming forward and reporting what is occuring, they are at fault in as much as CSIS/DFAIT are IMV.
Have absolutely no use for "family" cover ups, nor scapegoating them from responsibility.
Yes, some might say taking a hard line might stop the information flow as the little grunts might want to protect their asss too...I say the information flow is already stopped, it cannot get any more stopped than it is..so perhaps threats of war crime charges might free it up a bit.
As well as civilian oversight of the military like the NDP have advocated for.
I watched a film called Nanking a few days ago. It was something of a combination of drama and documentary on the "Rape of Nanking," which happened during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.
While the subject matter is gruesome enough, the most chilling parts were interviews with whithered old men who were once privates and corporals in the Imperial Japanese Army. They calmly described how, for example, they tied up Chinese prisoners and then bayonetted them and gang-raped little girls. Some had nervous (at least I hope it was because of nervousness) little grins on their faces while they related their tales.
There were hundreds of thousands of these guys, but only a few dozen high-ranking Japanese were ever convicted of war crimes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893356/
Wow, a talking point straight from the Conservative Party. Haha! Very good, Jaku. That's exactly what Harper's been getting his backbenchers to repeat on political panel shows - whenever the opposition parties demand information about the Afghanistan torture scandal, they start hysterically screaming that the opposition doesn't support our troops! The opposition is calling Our Brave Soldiers "war criminals"!
For anyone who's interested, check out this video of Peter Braid getting slaughtered by Paul Dewar and Bob Rae on a political panel show, and how he keeps going back to repeating "our brave women and men in Afghanistan." Jaku sounds just like him here. :D
Testify, brother. ;)
I totally agree, skdadl. Glad you're back. :)
Actually, I think skdadl's right about the opposition parties not actually going after or focusing on the grunts in this matter, or saying that the grunts are the ones to blame in this Afghan torture scandal. My understanding is that it's not Canadian troops who are actually doing the torture in this case. They're being ordered by their superiors to turn Afghans over to Afghan troops, when those in charge in the military and the politicians in charge of running National Defence knew that those Afghans being turned over are being tortured by Afghan troops.
So if there are any "troops" being accused of war crimes, it's maybe the high officers. But it's also government officials like the Minister of Defence, and high ranking civil servants who ignored memo after memo telling them that Afghans were being turned over to torture.
That's true, in this case, but there have been other allegations that were never resolved. Recall this thread which I revived a while back, from 2007 - entitled Canadian soldiers abused Afghan detainees? - and have a look at the first few posts. What happened to all that? Who is demanding that those allegations be properly and fully investigated? Then there's the charge against Semrau of murdering a wounded captive.
There are war crimes large and small in this sordid story. When we prosecute those responsible, I hope we have the sense to start with the ones in charge. After that we can debate whether some kid in uniform ought to have known better than to follow orders and to fall into line with what Harper and the rest were giving him permission to do.
Is it possible that some individual soldiers have engaged in war crimes? Sadly, yes. However to label Canadian soldiers in general as war criminals ot to give that appearnce is simple wrong. Paul and Bob have both said as much.
And yes sticks and stones Michelle, sticks and stones
Right on Michelle!
It's a problem when you have a CDS who is calling Afghans (you know, the people who live in Afghanistan?) "scumbags" -- and making it perfectly clear that he was generalizing broadly -- "farmers by day, Taliban by night." The moment he came out with that rotgut, Bill Graham (I think I've got the timing right) should have had Hillier on the carpet, forcing a retraction, maybe even firing him.
Hillier was already swaggering around, clearly contemptuous of the Liberal government, and they caved shamefully to him. We can't have defence ministers and foreign ministers who are either cowed by the CDS or buddies with him (as now). The CDS obviously sets attitudes for the troops, and Hillier was a dangerous guy that way. I can believe there are soldiers walking around thinking "scumbags," and if they are, then atrocities are likely to follow. We also know that Hillier has lied during the Colvin investigation. I definitely think we need an inquiry, and Hillier would be a main focus.
Graeme Smith's book is not due out until next year, but the Globe reporter who first blew the whistle on what was happening, promises that his story is going to be "better" than Hillier's. Having read Hillier's work, I must say Graeme has not set his sights too high, perhaps, but I'll bet that better means more factual. It will come out just about the time Canadian forces leave that benighted land.
Back to yesterday's Holocaust era defendants, for those who need a reminder of how Helmut Oberlander's Eiszatzgruppe 10A(d) actually operated.
http://wearcam.org/decon/undress_search_special562000_13395.html
Remember this occurred while Oberlander was a member of the unit as a translator.
frankly would not click on your link if my life depended on it, and as for your comment, no one here defended anything in respect to the Holocaust, nor do I believe anyone needs a reminder of anything, as you so condescendingly tried to infer....
It doesn't surprise me that you would not want to familiarize yourself with what this thread was originally meant to be about.
No actually we know what it was to be about, trolling......but have a good day perhaps someone will bite, though I doubt it.
Oberlander's adopted Canadian hometown newspaper has carried exhaustive stories. As I pointed out, he was age 17 when conscripted. And I guess if I had read just one little story about nights of torment from a conscience that recalled what he obviously knew at the time, I might have thought differently. But this guy lived an expansive life as a developer, he would drink at one of the German clubs in Kitchener - perhaps the Concordia - and relive the exploits of the wermacht on Saturday nights with the boys. It was not all just beer and weinerschnitzel and the oompah of Octoberfest (the biggest Octoberfest outside of Bavaria).
Nope, not one goddam peep about even the existence of conscience, prophit. You might profit by considering that aspect of self in your postings here.
Unacceptable!
Gerorge with the depest of respect...why would you make such a terrible comment? It boggles the mind the lengths some go to to be insensitive.
Yes, it constantly boggles the mind at the lengths Israel, and its aplogists, will go to keep the plight of Palestinians alive and well, say nothing of their insensitivity to the plight. Why would they do such terrible things to Palestinians?
There are no Nazi war crims in Canada. They've all prolly died of natural causes while collecting Canadian pensions, and many having lived under their real names for many peaceful golden years while their birth countries demanded their extradition for war crimes. And our two old line party stooges were on the job through it all.