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Old 04-17-2017, 04:56 PM   #1
killer_carlson
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Default CNN Report on Bombing of Syrian Civilian Evacuees

Damn. This is tough to see.

This is not for the squeamish.

CNN report shows a photo-journalist jumping in to help child survivors after the bombing of a line of buses evacuating civilians in Syria, including buses of children. The photographs are very difficult to see. I only post it as a reminder of the civilian toll that war takes.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/17/middle...rnd/index.html
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Old 04-17-2017, 05:23 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by killer_carlson View Post
Damn. This is tough to see.

This is not for the squeamish.

CNN report shows a photo-journalist jumping in to help child survivors after the bombing of a line of buses evacuating civilians in Syria, including buses of children. The photographs are very difficult to see. I only post it as a reminder of the civilian toll that war takes.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/17/middle...rnd/index.html
This really adds to the ####ed up nature of this.

Quote:
"There was a car distributing potato chips to the children," a man in an ambulance, purportedly a witness, told the opposition-leaning media outlet Zaman al-Wasl. "The children started to chase after the car, and then it exploded."
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...yrian-evacuees

seriously ... god dammit.
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Old 04-17-2017, 09:12 PM   #3
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These were car bombs targeting evacuees from the pro-regime Shia villages.

ISIS?
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Old 04-17-2017, 09:17 PM   #4
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Nm
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Old 04-17-2017, 09:22 PM   #5
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These were car bombs targeting evacuees from the pro-regime Shia villages.

ISIS?
Nope. This was in rebel-controlled territory. Allegedly, it was Nour al Din al Zenki - a so-called "moderate" rebel group - that prepared the VBIED in Darat Izza and then sent it to al Rashadeen in advance of the bus convoy from Kafraya.
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Old 04-18-2017, 10:51 AM   #6
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godammit do not click on that link if you have kids. Shut off your computer and go give them a hug instead.
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Old 04-18-2017, 10:53 AM   #7
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Old 04-18-2017, 11:33 AM   #8
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Nope. This was in rebel-controlled territory. Allegedly, it was Nour al Din al Zenki - a so-called "moderate" rebel group - that prepared the VBIED in Darat Izza and then sent it to al Rashadeen in advance of the bus convoy from Kafraya.
Are they on our side?
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Old 04-18-2017, 11:45 AM   #9
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Are they on our side?
Yes those are the ones the US are supporting.
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Old 04-18-2017, 12:59 PM   #10
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I looked at those pictures and just thought these type of scenes have been playing out in the middle east for as long as I can remember (I was born in 1965) and I fail to understand why people that live in these areas can't put aside their differences and try and figure out a way to live together. surely at some point you get tired of burying children.

that scenario witht eh chip truck sounds similar to that movie with Jamie fox and chris cooper where they drive the ice cream truck into the arera where there are kids playing (anme of movie escapes me right now)
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Old 04-18-2017, 01:23 PM   #11
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Yes those are the ones the US are supporting.
The US is no longer supporting the Nour al Din al Zenki. Yes, the US is supporting rebels, and they have in the past supported "moderate" groups that later became not moderate, including the Nour al Din al Zenki.

The Nour al Din al Zenki were initially part of the FSA, but defected to the Ahrar al-Sham. In doing so they lost US funding, but gained more Turkish and Saudi funding.

With moderate groups in the are constantly switching allegiances to non-moderate groups, any involvement whatsoever is going to put the US into a position where they've supported a nasty group. The only other option would be to simply not get involved and watch. Not really an option for the US, as that would allow ISIL to overrun Iraq.

The US and Russia have signed various secret agreements to try and keep theire respective funding to elements engaging ISIL, as opposed to each other directly. Who knows how much of the funding from the US is actually going towards that goal vs. engaging Assad directly. Given the scope of Russian involvement though, I'd guess the lion's share actually is going towards fighting ISIL. Anything else would be like pissing into the wind. As long as Russia backs Assad, he isn't going anywhere.
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Old 04-18-2017, 03:21 PM   #12
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Civil wars are always brutal as are religious wars, a religious civil war is always going to end with some attempt at the complete slaughter of one side or the other.
There is no middle ground or moderate opposition, there never was in truth
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Old 04-20-2017, 06:16 AM   #13
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This is Emotional manipulation to build public support for continued violations of international law.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017...manitarian-law

Spoiler!
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Old 04-20-2017, 12:34 PM   #14
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This is Emotional manipulation to build public support for continued violations of international law.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017...manitarian-law

Spoiler!
International law is tricky. With the exception of things like crimes against humanity, it really only exists if the other party makes a complaint. There is no international police force, and states must bring their complaints before international tribunals on their own behalf. In other words, theoretically violating an international charter is meaningless, until a charge has been put forward and an investigation done before a tribunal, which has taken jurisdiction of the issue. The laws and words themselves are meaningless as, unlike the laws within a state, there is no automatic jurisdiction.

Given Assad's recent track record, I don't see him making any complaints any time soon. Regardless of whether you think he perpetrated this chemical attack, there's no doubt that he's been using his planes to drop a plethora of weapons indiscriminately on civilian populations.

Basically, you're only really entitled to accuse another party of a breach of international law, if you come in with clean hands. Assad's regime does not fit that criteria. And even if Assad were to somehow bring this action before some kind of international tribunal and then find the USA guilty of an unwarranted attack on him, the vast majority of the process would be spent investigating his own plethora of breaches. As nobody is going to take any action against the USA, all that would happen would be Assad exposing himself to further repercussions. The USA has nothing to cover up. They've boldly attacked Assad. Assad, through his own actions, has put himself in a position where he cannot have any kind of breach of international law determined.

In the context of any kind of armed conflict, it's almost a certainty that all parties have violated some aspect of international law, so it often comes down to a question of who's worse. In the context of this conflict, things are a huge mess, and Syria really no longer exists as a sovereign state. You've basically got a bunch of bandits running around committing atrocity after atrocity, with various outside powers sticking their fingers into the mess.

As far as the public is concerned, do you really think they care that some of Assad's military planes were destroyed? Any criticism Trump is taking is because people don't like Trump, not because people are concerned about the state of Assad's air force of territorial integrity. What emotional manipulation does Trump need? The people on both sides of this debate are equally guilty of "emotional manipulation". Trump with his usual grandstanding, and the anti-Trump crowd with their usual attacks on moral character.
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Old 04-20-2017, 03:53 PM   #15
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As far as the public is concerned, do you really think they care that some of Assad's military planes were destroyed? Any criticism Trump is taking is because people don't like Trump, not because people are concerned about the state of Assad's air force of territorial integrity. What emotional manipulation does Trump need? The people on both sides of this debate are equally guilty of "emotional manipulation". Trump with his usual grandstanding, and the anti-Trump crowd with their usual attacks on moral character.
Violation of international law isn't that complicated.
There is a law, there is a plain violation of the law.
Your defence seems to be 'the jury won't convict' which is probably true, but that's not as abstract as you make it out to be. The US won't present evidence of their assurances of Assad's guilt before the public, the UN observers, nor the security council. Is international law defined by the most powerful army? The most populous faction? As you say, the charter itself is meaningless.

This is the ugliest implication of Bush's 'coalition of the willing' and Obama's 'consensus building'; the law is what we say it is, and anyone not supporting that argument is our enemy. Putin makes a very lucid argument of this attack on Syria, but Putin's argument doesn't matter because he's not part of the clique. He's a bad guy, so his argument is dismissed; what kind of legal principle is that?

It's a very nebulous approach to moral & legal questions. Generally, Trump/Bernie supporters were furious with the attacks, and Clinon/Bush supporters approved them (referring more to the chattering class than populace here). This is the neoliberal foreign policy that the country voted against when they supported Ron Paul, Bernie, and Trump. I don't have enough knowledge to reach farther back with populist candidates, but I'm sure it could be done. This manner of war propaganda is from the same playbook as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Your last line shows you've fallen into this morasse. Why are the two sides of this argument 'pro-Trump and anti-Trump'? Why is that dichotomy relevant in the context of the integrity of international law? And the line that precedes it, about both sides being equal, is the kind of lazy hand-washing that ######s any kind of introspection. Is emotionally manipulating the public into acquiescence of a war equal, morally, equal to emotional manipulation of not condoning a war of aggression in violation of the UN charter?
What is the emotional manipulation that my side is engaging in? My signature?

My criticism of Trump's actions are explained by my dislike of Trump? Because the alternative is that I'm concerned about Assad's airforce? Where, in that framing, do integrity and respect for law reside?
This is a very Clintonian framing; triangulate the variables, define the factions, and bully the refs until your position as the only conceivable consensus.

This is what an international police state looks like to any citizen of a country that doesn't have a seat at the table. As a Canadian, I'm protected from capricious use of deadly force because we have a seat at the table, nothing more.
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Old 04-20-2017, 04:49 PM   #16
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Violation of international law isn't that complicated.
There is a law, there is a plain violation of the law.
Your defence seems to be 'the jury won't convict' which is probably true, but that's not as abstract as you make it out to be. The US won't present evidence of their assurances of Assad's guilt before the public, the UN observers, nor the security council. Is international law defined by the most powerful army? The most populous faction? As you say, the charter itself is meaningless.

This is the ugliest implication of Bush's 'coalition of the willing' and Obama's 'consensus building'; the law is what we say it is, and anyone not supporting that argument is our enemy. Putin makes a very lucid argument of this attack on Syria, but Putin's argument doesn't matter because he's not part of the clique. He's a bad guy, so his argument is dismissed; what kind of legal principle is that?

It's a very nebulous approach to moral & legal questions. Generally, Trump/Bernie supporters were furious with the attacks, and Clinon/Bush supporters approved them (referring more to the chattering class than populace here). This is the neoliberal foreign policy that the country voted against when they supported Ron Paul, Bernie, and Trump. I don't have enough knowledge to reach farther back with populist candidates, but I'm sure it could be done. This manner of war propaganda is from the same playbook as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Your last line shows you've fallen into this morasse. Why are the two sides of this argument 'pro-Trump and anti-Trump'? Why is that dichotomy relevant in the context of the integrity of international law? And the line that precedes it, about both sides being equal, is the kind of lazy hand-washing that ######s any kind of introspection. Is emotionally manipulating the public into acquiescence of a war equal, morally, equal to emotional manipulation of not condoning a war of aggression in violation of the UN charter?
What is the emotional manipulation that my side is engaging in? My signature?

My criticism of Trump's actions are explained by my dislike of Trump? Because the alternative is that I'm concerned about Assad's airforce? Where, in that framing, do integrity and respect for law reside?
This is a very Clintonian framing; triangulate the variables, define the factions, and bully the refs until your position as the only conceivable consensus.

This is what an international police state looks like to any citizen of a country that doesn't have a seat at the table. As a Canadian, I'm protected from capricious use of deadly force because we have a seat at the table, nothing more.
I'm not going to reiterate the points on international law. I will say that international law is largely "consent based governance". So it relies on Assad to consent to have international law govern his conflict....he's not doing that, as he's a monster responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

Trump most certainly did state he planned to take actions like this in his campaign though. He criticized the Democrats heavily for over-projecting their actions, and stated explicitly that he would make "sneak attacks" against dictators and Islamists.

I also hate to break it to you, but there's already a war in Syria that will continue regardless of the recent US attack. Trump is clearly not escalating this into a full out war on Assad, as that would put him in direct conflict with Putin, who Trump probably consulted on this move.

Putin is a bad guy because he invaded the Ukraine and annexed a large portion of its territory. As for your argument that an attack cannot happen without proper procedure, we both know that's not possible. It take the international courts the better part of a decade to come to conclusions. That's if Russia would allow any kind of proper investigation. Even then, they'd veto any kind of action.

So the choice for Trump was make a token attack against Syria or do nothing. I also hope you will see how your obsession with all of this is playing right into Trump's hands. He made a relatively small attack, most likely with permission from Putin. By building this up into something it's not, the only thing your accomplishing is adding to Trump's typical BS grandstanding. Essentially the same mistakes the Hillary campaign made, which got Trump elected in the first place, despite being dangerously underqualified.
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Old 04-20-2017, 05:23 PM   #17
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Originally Posted by Gozer View Post
Violation of international law isn't that complicated.
There is a law, there is a plain violation of the law.
Your defence seems to be 'the jury won't convict' which is probably true, but that's not as abstract as you make it out to be. The US won't present evidence of their assurances of Assad's guilt before the public, the UN observers, nor the security council. Is international law defined by the most powerful army? The most populous faction? As you say, the charter itself is meaningless.

This is the ugliest implication of Bush's 'coalition of the willing' and Obama's 'consensus building'; the law is what we say it is, and anyone not supporting that argument is our enemy. Putin makes a very lucid argument of this attack on Syria, but Putin's argument doesn't matter because he's not part of the clique. He's a bad guy, so his argument is dismissed; what kind of legal principle is that?

It's a very nebulous approach to moral & legal questions. Generally, Trump/Bernie supporters were furious with the attacks, and Clinon/Bush supporters approved them (referring more to the chattering class than populace here). This is the neoliberal foreign policy that the country voted against when they supported Ron Paul, Bernie, and Trump. I don't have enough knowledge to reach farther back with populist candidates, but I'm sure it could be done. This manner of war propaganda is from the same playbook as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Your last line shows you've fallen into this morasse. Why are the two sides of this argument 'pro-Trump and anti-Trump'? Why is that dichotomy relevant in the context of the integrity of international law? And the line that precedes it, about both sides being equal, is the kind of lazy hand-washing that ######s any kind of introspection. Is emotionally manipulating the public into acquiescence of a war equal, morally, equal to emotional manipulation of not condoning a war of aggression in violation of the UN charter?
What is the emotional manipulation that my side is engaging in? My signature?

My criticism of Trump's actions are explained by my dislike of Trump? Because the alternative is that I'm concerned about Assad's airforce? Where, in that framing, do integrity and respect for law reside?
This is a very Clintonian framing; triangulate the variables, define the factions, and bully the refs until your position as the only conceivable consensus.

This is what an international police state looks like to any citizen of a country that doesn't have a seat at the table. As a Canadian, I'm protected from capricious use of deadly force because we have a seat at the table, nothing more.
As the US have killed thousands of civilians themselves in the last decade it is complicated, the US isn't about to be setting any precedents that would call their own drone campaign into question.
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