I’m pretty versed in wingnut, having spent some time there myself and then continuing to study the species, but I gotta admit I didn’t see this coming. Apparently, the rocket scientists over at Hot Air have gotten around to reading the Rolling Stone piece on the kill teams in Afghanistan that targeted innocent civilians. The Rolling Stone piece is well worth a read, and it sure does look like the officers covered or attempted to cover things up again. But what has the Hot Air folks all worked up in a lather is the following:
The real question here crossed my mind while watching more than an hour of television coverage of this story this morning, as well as reading the Rolling Stone article which is more than eight pages and I don’t know how many thousands of words long. Many names are mentioned, ranging from the individual soldiers involved and their direct supervisors all the way up to General McChrystal. But one name seems to be conspicuously absent from all of this coverage. Can you guess who it is? I’ll give you a hint… his initials are B.H.O.
When I first heard about these kill teams, I know that like you, my first thought was how long has Obama been responsible for this…
Joe Beese
He’s been responsible since he tripled ground forces in Afghanistan.
Hope this helps.
Wisdom
I take it you missed the surge, hippy boy.
Superluminar
I’m bringing popcorn for this thread…
And comment #1 shows I made the right call.
cathyx
@Superluminar: That was my thought too. Is John trying to get his comment numbers up?
joe from Lowell
When there is actual documentation linking those crimes back to the president – as there was for the torture at Abu Ghraib, or the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed – then it will make sense to hold Obama responsible for the actions of a handful of low-level personnel on the ground.
The reason “a few bad apples” didn’t cut is as an excuse for Abu Ghraib wasn’t because the idea of some individual soldiers committing crimes of their own volition is implausible; it’s quite plausible. The reason why that excuse didn’t fly is because we had, for instance, actual documentation of General “Dirty” Sanchez being sent there to “Gitmo-ize” the prison.
Nobody has accused George Bush of ordering Scott Beauchamp’s unit to wreak havoc on the civilians in Iraq, because there’s absolutely no evidence to support such a charge.
BGinCHI
You mean like a deck of cards with pictures of people to kill or capture?
That’s crazy.
danimal
@joe from Lowell: Joe, don’t even bother. There’s no way for rationale discussion to thrive in this comment section, on this blog, on this day.
eemom
@danimal:
you mean because it’s a day ending in “y”?
joe from Lowell
@BGinCHI:
None of whom have the slightest connection to either the Beauchamp case, or this one?
Yes, bringing that up is crazy. You do understand that there’s a difference between fighting the enemy during a war and killing civilians for sport, right?
The Hague recognizes the difference. The Geneva Conventions recognize the difference. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (under which both groups of murderers were prosecuted) recognizes the difference.
Chyron HR
When I heard about that lady astronaut who kidnapped someone, my first question was, of course, did NASA act alone or were the Reptoids involved?
JPL
What did hot air have to say about Abu Ghraib? The President is Commander and Chief so I agree he is ultimately responsible for the war at this point. I just find Hot Air is full of shit.
stuckinred
WSJ Article about this motherfucker
Bob Loblaw
@danimal:
You’re right. Because if there’s one group of people we shouldn’t look to hold accountable for abuses in our sprawling, ill-defined, nebulous world of special forces applying modern COIN doctrine, it’s the upper reaches of our civilian and military leadership.
The direct guilt extends no higher than the platoon level. The question of why these operatives and mission types are being used so heavily with so little oversight should not be ignored, and the people who put them in the field to do our dirty business should be asked to account for what happened.
/what danimal will read: Obama is a war criminal! WORSE THAN BUSH, WORSE THAN BUSH! So much for “rationale” discussion…
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: This had nothing to do with special ops. This was a line infantry unit.
singfoom
Well, exactly. I thought that Rolling Stone piece didn’t do B.H.O. justice. Motherfucker was out there with his knife. He kept calling the others who just shot people pussies.
He liked the close quarter combat, preferring to call out “FATALITY” as he was gutting his victims. Then, he fed on their corpses.
War happens, you inherit war, soldiers go off the reservation and you are responsible for them going off the reservation?
Little do we know that the Future Combat System they’ve been talking about is an AI Obama urging our soldiers to KILL KILL KILL.
DonkeyKong
What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans, man? That he had wisdom? Bullshit, man!
Bob Loblaw
@stuckinred:
My mistake. It had been a while since I had read anything on the issue and couldn’t exactly remember who they were.
No matter who they were, the way the Afghanistan mission was designed with far flung FOBs with breakdowns in oversight was a very ineffective way of trying to carry out this war.
cathyx
If a corporation is found to be dumping toxic chemicals into a nearby waterway, and low level employees were caught doing it, is the CEO of the company ultimately responsible?
Moonbatman
Unlike Abu Ghraib the kill teams was not under secret orders from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld like Charles Graner “and his former fiancee,” Specialist Lynndie England were.
Peace Out. The Power is Yours.
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: roger that
Moonbatman
Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, AK was under secret orders from Sarah Palin to start the kill teams to embarrass the Obama administration.
Palin (with the Koch Brothers) also secretly ordered “Project Gunrunner” for the same reason.
Peace Out. The Power is Yours.
The Dangerman
Bill Hoover O’Reilly?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Well….the one place we really do need an exit strategy is Afghanistan, not Libya.
NATO needs an exit strat in Libya, not us.
And the parallel we should be freakin out about is not Libya/Iraq, but Afghanistan/Vietnam.
I am a stone Obamotaku, but I can’t figure Obama’s A-stan strat out at all.
:(
BGinCHI
@joe from Lowell: Actually, I was comparing the glee had on the right when Bush et al were tracking down Iraqis while content now to accuse Obama (indirectly, but still) of war crimes.
I was pointing up the hypocrisy.
Sorry if I confused you.
DonkeyKong
Git some! Git some! Git some, yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC! You guys oughta do a story about me sometime!
Cris
@DonkeyKong: Dialectic logic is there’s only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them.
Glen Tomkins
Of course Obama was personally responsible for those kill teams.
See, it’s all part of the Kenyan anti-colonialist MAU-MAU connection. Yes, the MAU-MAU were this Kenyan anti-colonialist force. That’s where the name MAU-MAU comes to us from, before the name MAU-MAU drives straight into white brains prepped for centuries to fear black slave revolt, brains for whom names like Toussaint or Nat Turner have lost the ability to inspire the same sort of nameless terror that MAU-MAU can still conjure.
At any rate, back in the day when the Mau-Maus were committing the unspeakable atrocity of fighting to free their country from foreigners, some of the British colonial occupying forces included Ghurkas from Nepal. Nepal is in the same Himalayas as Afghanistan, so it only goes to figure Obama has it in for anyone from Afghanistan.
Not that the slave revolters don’t have it in for all of us. It’s just that if you’re from the Himalayas, or any mountains, really, like, say, the Appalachians, they really, really have it in for you.
joe from Lowell
@stuckinred:
Not only that, but these were straight-up, premeditated crimes.
Bob’s point would seem to apply more to situation in which soldiers kicked down the wrong door, or a Predator was sent to hit a house that ended up having innocent people in it – somewhere in which people died actually applying the doctrines.
Not some guys who thought it would be fun to be serial killers.
Villago Delenda Est
C’mon, John.
You know, for a fact, that not only did Obama initiate the war in Afghanistan from the Illinois State House, he also personally flew the planes (with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright) into the Twin Towers to justify the war.
cathyx
@joe from Lowell: I would love to read your answer to my #18.
joe from Lowell
@cathyx:
Sometimes. Depends on the situation. It would be extremely rare for the CEO to be personally responsible.
Now, far more common would be the corporation being held responsible, but again, that depends on the details, on what the guys were doing that they were told to do, vs. what they were doing in direct contravention of their orders.
For the CEO to have personal liability, he’d pretty much need to have told those guys, or their boss, to do the illegal dumping.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Cole
Do you think the incidence of atrocities in Pak and A-stan is increasing?
Two on the front page of my islam blog.
here
and here.
Kinda like My Lai in Vietnam.
Villago Delenda Est
We don’t have any evidence that Obama directly authorized the kill squads.
Unlike with the deserting coward and the Dark Lord Cheney, who left their fingerprints all over the “torture is good!” memos.
jazzgurl
Methinks John is bored and is trying hard to stoke commenters and is being his usual shitstirring self. C’mon John, stop being so assinine and puerile.
cathyx
Should the CEO of BP be held accountable for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
Bob Loblaw
@joe from Lowell:
The enemy is shapeless. The local populations are at best indifferent. What is to be gained by building out all those FOBs in the farm country and sending out patrols without definable purpose? It’s the whole point of COIN, and it isn’t working.
This is Vietnam shit all over again. Without being able to secure the Pakistani border, you’re never going to be able to control the countryside. The best you can do is secure the urban areas, and that’s it.
Cris
Is that an unfair attack on Rush Limbaugh?
joe from Lowell
@cathyx: “Held accountable” is a vague term.
BP should be subject to legal penalties. Doing so would certainly have consequences for the CEO of BP.
I haven’t exactly gone over all of the information with a fine-toothed comb, but I don’t know if anyone at BP committed an specific criminal act, like those committed by the soldiers on trial. It looks more like a series of screw-ups, abetted by some sloppiness and cut corners. Maybe those cut corners amount to criminal negligence in the aggregate – meaning, criminal negligence can be attributed to BP as a corporate entity – but that still wouldn’t mean, necessarily, that any action by any one person, taken by itself, was criminally negligent.
On the other hand, he should surely get the bejeezus kicked out of him in the court of public opinion.
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw: I appreciate this as a critique of the strategy. I still don’t think it draws a line between Obama, or Gates, or Patraeus, and the murderers.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@cathyx: Did anyone personally hold LBJ accountable for My Lai?
joe from Lowell
Your turn, cathyx:
Should Franklin Roosevelt have been held responsible for George Patton slapping those two PTSD-suffering privates in the army hospitals?
There were far fewer levels of command between FDR and Patton than between Obama and even the highest-ranking members of this “kill team.”
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Joe Beese:
Don’t be silly. As Truman said “The buck stops somewhere else”.
John Cole
@Joe Beese:
You are seriously unspoofable. There is a fundamental difference between a chain of evidence attaching the Rumsfeld and his practices from Gitmo to Abu Gharaib, which is what Jazz Shaw is talking about, and Obama and these kill teams. At no time did Obama ever order anything like this.
Christ.
Linda Featheringill
@Cris:
Yes. Yes, it is.
[hee, hee]
Matt
No kidding! Like remember the time that our President openly admitted to conducting wiretaps in violation of the law and TORTURING people? Man, he got into SOOOOO much trouble for that!
Master of Karate and Friendship
c@singfoom:
Remember when Obama took office, and was like “well I could pull us out of Afghanistan, which would be the smart move since the government is broke and there are only 100 al-Qaeda in the country; or I could escalate our presence there by a few thousand troops”? Remember that? Now, remember what decision he made?
You can keep pummeling the strawman that people are accusing Obama of ordering X crime by Y personnel at Z time and place, but no one is actually–in the real world–saying that.
ruemara
@cathyx:
OK, let me help you. The CEO is guilty of a bad atmosphere if an attitude of laxity and short cuts were rewarded at BP. He is not guilty of a crime, except if there is evidence that he commanded all beneath him to ignore safety regulations and shirk their responsibilities in the name of savings.
Barack H. Obama is guilty for extending the Afghanistan War, if said crimes happened under his Presidency, which allowed such murderous folk a playground. He is not guilty of a crime in that this was a strategy he signed off on, approved or developed and forced said soldiers to operate under.
Which does not negate Coles’ point. Is this the “out, out damned spot” you were looking for from the degenerate masses of Obot sheeple littering the BJ comment threads?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@John Cole:
Whoosh! The point goes over another head.
It’s almost as if there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
The conservative deatheaters are going to try to blame O for this.
Big whup.
The most worrisome thing about this to me is apparently Petraeus and company are trying to suppress the Kill Squad pictures and videos because they are trying to negotiate PERMANENT bases in Afghanistan.
Permanent bases in A-stan means we can never leave or draw down because the bases will be overrun by the local population which pretty uniformly hates America.
We have been trying to wipe out/deligitimize the Taliban for a decade. This effort costs one billion dollars per month, 400 billion to date. There are more Taliban today than when we started. Even Petraeus acknowledges that the Taliban will be part of the government we leave behind. Is this rational behavior?
The Surge in Iraq was never anything but cover for America to get out of an unwinnable, immoral and unjust war. Obama and Petraeus (after McC bailed on an impossible mission) are trying to “surge” Afghanistan so we can get some cover to leave.
Obama doesnt “own” the Kill Squad. The Kill Squad is part of a cumulative message for America: time to leave.
The Kill Squad is part of a series. My Lai to Gharani massacre, Abu Ghraib, Baghram Theater Detention Center, Iraqi Rape Squad, Fallujah massacre, Camp No, MQ9 Reapers on afghan wedding parties, NATO choppers on boys gathering firewood.
What is the mission? Slaughtering muslim dads with drones while building girls schools for their orphaned daughters?
We are breaking our soldiers by using them for RL wargaming in our War on Islam.
Because we can’t “win” in Afghanistan.
In Egypt’s referendum 25% of All The Arabs There Are just voted for shariah law.
More muslim countries will become islamic democracies….like Cambodia falling to communism from the American military perspective, making the military more paranoid and crazy.
Unless Obama lines out an exit strategy I think we will be exiting Fall of Saigon style, with a new and improved Operation Frequent Wind.
soonergrunt
@joe from Lowell: A lot of people around here don’t see the difference.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cathyx:
Yes.
This has been another edition of “Easy Answers to Easy Questions.”
joe from Lowell
@soonergrunt: No, only a couple.
They do seem to be incredibly impressed by themselves, though.
cyntax
This sort of thing never, ever, ever is just the work of a few bad apples. This Colonel Tunnell will never get so much as a reprimand, but he’s the type that creates the atmosphere that makes these events much more probable:
But that’s what you get when you fight long, protracted counter-insurgency wars. The only answer is not to start them and not to keep them going.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
They should have.
This has been etc. etc.
John Cole
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Jazz Shaw is not arguing, as you morans are, that Obama is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on in Iraq. Of course he is, that is unarguable.
What you clowns can not figure out, probably because you didn’t bother reading the piece I quoted (hyperlinks, what the fuck are they!) or probably because it gave you the opportunity to have another hissy fit ala Joe Beese, is that Shaw was directly relating this event to Abu Gharaib. There is no direct link between Obama and the kill teams. There most certainly is a link between the events of Abu Gharaib, Gitmo, our detainee policy, and Rumsfeld and the upper echelons of the Bush admin.
I don’t know why the fuck Jane Mayer and others even bother documenting this stuff and writing books. You clowns are as fundamentally incapable of understanding the point as our the idiots thinking Ayers really admitted to writing the book. And what makes this even more depressing is Master of Karate and those like him thing they are the ones who know what is going on and we’re the dumb ones who just don’t get the point.
Hopeless.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cyntax:
If the American people wanted a halt to stupid wars, they should have voted for change in 2008.
Joe Beese
@John Cole:
“This” took place in the larger context of the crime against peace that Obama escalated and thereby “owns”.
I know you think it’s not really a war crime because he’s a Democrat and because he Means Well.
You’re mistaken.
joe from Lowell
Sometimes, when you’re having a conversation with someone about a fairly complex question – say, the effect of minimum wage laws on unemployment and poverty – there will be a few minutes of interesting back-and-forth, illuminated by cautions about keeping this or that in mind, which will have different effects in this or that time or place…
and then some jackass libertarian shows up and “Duh, regulations reduce growth and cause higher unemployment. You need to take Econ 101!”
It’s like a flat-earther interrupting two aerospace engineers talking about the best shape for a nose cone, but “explaining” to them that objects that are heavier than air don’t float off the ground.
Inevitably, the person who does this is incredibly impressed by his own knowledge and clarity.
So, you see that kind of thing crop up in many different situations.
trollhattan
@joe from Lowell:
BP does have a track record of lax practices that kill people. Now PG&E does too. Can corporate officers be held criminally responsible in this age of Citizens United? I wonder.
We can also consider the infamous Don Blankenship memo.
Criminal? I might argue so.
John Cole
@cathyx:
I will try this one more time, then I simply give up.
Should the CEO of BP be held accountable for the oil spill in the Gulf? Yes.
Should the CEO of BP be held accountable if some of his employees go out and murder the civilians of Louisiana while cleaning up the spill? No.
Do you understand the difference? Please say yes before I start pulling my hair out.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: yes. This is Vietnam shit all over again. And there were multiple My Lais.
The Other Kill Squad.
The difference now is social media and instant news. The mil brass can’t cover atrocity up as well as they did 30, 40 years ago.
Its time to go.
Before Petraeus and company get starring roles in the Fall of Kabul.
soonergrunt
@Joe Beese: Tell us all, where is the legal code describing a crime against peace?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@John Cole:
Don’t worry, John, I don’t care what the wingnuts you are talking about are saying. I’m sure I wouldn’t agree with them even if I did. Of course, impotent reactionaries writing for a right-wing noisemaker aren’t important because
NONE OF THAT STUFF WOULD HAPPEN IF OBAMA HAD DONE THE NON-STUPID THING AND GOT US OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!
If you care more about what some dog is howling at the moon than about what people with real power over real events are doing, that’s your prerogative.
joe from Lowell
@trollhattan: That memo from Blankenship implicates him to a much more significant degree than anything I’ve seen in the BP case.
That’s incredible – telling people to ignore orders to perform mandated safety tasks.
WaterGirl
President Obama is speaking in 5 minutes, I think, and I have yet to find a TV station that shows the speech will be on.
soonergrunt
@WaterGirl: It’s going to be on NBC according to Brian Williams, and of course on MSNBC and CNN, I’m sure.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@John Cole: I don’t think you should trivialize this. cathyx is a retard and unworthy of a reply.
Something very, very bad is coming.
I just don’t know if it is another Greenwood or another My Lai.
Maybe both.
:(
Joe Beese
@soonergrunt:
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Nuremburg Tribunal, the United Nations charter, and the Army’s Law of Land Warfare.
See?
cathyx
@John Cole: Should the CEO of BP be held accountable if there was known safety shortcuts made and corner-cutting thereby causing an explosion on an oil platform killing oil workers who were on that platform during the explosion?
Joe Beese
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
But insulting Jane Hamsher is so much easier than admitting that one got conned by Obama.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@John Cole:
Do you understand that there would be no BP clean-up employees out there in the coast of Louisiana in the first place if BP hadn’t ignored safety regulations and caused an oil spill?
arguingwithsignposts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Damn, it is m_c. and I was doubting it.
soonergrunt
@Joe Beese:
Well, since Afghanistan doesn’t fit that description, that’s pretty fucking stupid to equate the President’s order to continue to prosecute the war there with the actions of a few troops with a piss-poor chain of command.
cyntax
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Frankly, I don’t know that it’s much of a priority for most people. There’s a lot of crappy stuff going on everywhere and Afghanistan is just part of the mix.
Having said that, arguments trying to link Obama to the kill teams are absurd. Though I hope this inspires him to accelerate his timetable. None of this is all that surprising though, the Army is stretched thin and the deployment tempo is grinding down its people.
Years ago Joe Galloway was writing about how the Army lowering recruitment standards, and it’s inability to retain quality O3’s (captains) was some very serious shit. No kidding.
licensed to kill time
@WaterGirl: I’m watching it on CNN International right now.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Joe Beese:
Well, she did work with a Republican on a common goal that one time. So her criticism of Obama–who has worked with Republicans on a common goal hundreds of times–are invalid.
Joe Beese
@soonergrunt:
It’s not a “war of aggression” because we’re bringing them Freedom, I take it.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Joe Beese: no. you are wrong.
The surge in Iraq was never anything but cover to start the draw down without looking like whipped curs…a way for America to get out of an unwinnable, immoral and unjust war.
Obama and Petraeus (after McC bailed on an impossible mission) are trying to “surge” Afghanistan so we can get some cover to leave.
This is about leaving with some scraps of dignity.
But circumstances may turn leaving-with-dignity into a rout.
You see….no one expected the
spanish inquisitionarab spring.Obama certainly didnt.
stuckinred
@Joe Beese: Cool, two birds with one stone, fuck you and Jane.
Maude
@John Cole:
Who’s going to tell us that Afghanistan is in the West Wing of the White House and so Obama had to know?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cyntax:
Yes, I think we can all agree that pretty much anything written at Hot Air is absurd.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@cyntax:
No, that is not true.
Afghanistan is going to be Vietnam II if Obama and Petraeus don’t wise up.
soonergrunt
@Joe Beese: I would normally say something along the lines of “you can’t possibly be that fucking stupid” but having read you for several weeks, I just don’t think that.
LT
Did they edit that out? Can’t see it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I am admiring your ability to avoid the WAI, OODA, WEC, MENA, cudlip loop, i must say.
Joe Beese
I’m not following the speech. Has Obama said “Let me be perfectly clear” yet?
Bob Loblaw
@danimal:
I apologize danimal. You were right. And to Master of Karate, Joe Beese and Hermione_chan, start being funnier or shut the fuck up. Stupid trolls are pointless trolls.
Joe Beese
@Bob Loblaw:
Oh, yeah? How about you come down here and make me be funnier?
cyntax
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
That wasn’t my assessment of it’s importance, I was characterizing how I think people perceive it. Remember that only 1 in 10 are serving or have served, so I think with the economy in the dumper, Libya, nuclear reactors, and what all, it’s just not front and center.
Master of Karate and Friendship
John Cole, I’m reading the Rolling Stone article now, and all I can say so far is that every paragraph drips with American contempt for every inch of Afghanistan. They hate the locals, fear the locals, and not only expect to kill locals but–in many cases–eagerly look forward to killing locals.
This situation is a powderkeg. If there weren’t pointless killings in Afghanistan, that would be a surprise.
Anyone who worked to prolong this situation is a FOOL.
Joe Beese
Oh, right… the 20% real unemployment rate.
Well, not to worry. Obama has named his golfing buddy, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, to be jobs czar.
And a guy who can get away with paying zero taxes must be an all-around whiz.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@cyntax: it is the forgotten war. Libya is just radar chaff, and people are wilin’ out on Obama over it.
Dumb.
We should all be demanding an exit strategy for Afghanistan.
Right NAOW.
You see….the Arab Spring and the escalation of atrocity incidence have stepped up the spacetime continuum.
The probability of Afghanistan morphing into Vietnam II increases with every atrocity picture released, and with every Arab dictator that gets deposed by a muslim popular uprising.
The Taiban are not our friends.
We could totally have a run for the choppahs moment in Kabul if local islamists from Pak and A-stan start a populist uprising against the US.
The US is Afghanistan’s Mubarak.
danimal
@Bob Loblaw: Apology accepted.
There’s a lot I don’t like with Obama’s foreign policy, BTW. But these anti-Obama trolls really hurt their own cause.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Bob Loblaw:
“Stupid trolls are pointless trolls.”
You know what’s stupid? Using a word whose meaning you don’t know.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@danimal:
“But these anti-Obama trolls really hurt their own cause.”
Seriously, there are online dictionaries. You can find out what “troll” means.
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Look, the troll thinks it’s people.
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese:
…and yet you know exactly what you think of it.
Funny how often it works that way with you.
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese:
I’d say he just did. Lolz
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: I don’t think atrocity is funnie.
sorry.
Like I said, something very, very bad is coming.
I feel it.
shaitan is vain….it preens, it wants to show itself.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: Perhaps you can find humor in this photo gallery.
Perhaps in the horror of the smiles.
John Cole
@Joe Beese:
Fuck off.
Dan
I just dropped in to make sure the phrase “command responsibility” appears at least once in this thread.
soonergrunt
@Dan: That phrase does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Dan
@soonergrunt: Would you mind telling me what I think it means? Because I suspect your answer will be very, very wrong.
soonergrunt
In the context of this particular post, what John said with irony, I think you would say with conviction:
Svensker
Every single person who supports the war is responsible for the “kill teams”. That’s what happens in war, people kill other people. When they’ve been doing it a long time — 8 years now — and the “enemy” are civilians, killing folks and thinking it’s normal is what you do.
If the citizens and government of the USofA want to send young men into danger, give them big weapons, and tell them “those people” are the enemy, guess what’s going to happen?
Of course, I blame Obama. I also blame Bill O’Reilly and John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, and John Q. Citizen and everyone else going along with being there. If you don’t want kill teams, don’t have wars.
The military is incidental.
soonergrunt
@Svensker: The several hundred thousand combat veterans of the recent wars, and the tens of thousands who are veterans of multiple tours who didn’t commit atrocities or war crimes would probably tend to disagree with you.
Dan
Sooner, you are very, very wrong. Please don’t presume to know what I mean.
Had you simply asked me to clarify here’s what I would have written:
The RS article makes the clear case that command responsibility is involved. Right now we know as much about the kill team as we did Abu Ghraib when it first broke. Instead of saying, we need to have a full investigation and see how far up this goes, Cole is insisting it stops with the soldiers in question.
He is not just uninterested in but actively hostile to the prospect of finding out more. Which negates the concept of command responsibility entirely.
THAT is what I meant.
Svensker
@soonergrunt:
I’m not blaming the soldiers. And obviously every soldier doesn’t do this. But it happens. In almost every single war. And the longer we’re at war and the more diffuse the “enemy” is, the more chance there is for this kind of thing to happen.
Young guys, lotsa testosterone, weapons, alien scary environment, civilian combatants who don’t look like you…it’s what happens.
You don’t want it to happen, you don’t put soldiers in that position.
NedPointsman
Your collective concern for the victims of your death squads is overwhelming.
John Cole
Lol. It is amazing how much I have said that I never really said.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: I “quote” you all the time. If I need a source for something, I just make up a quote and attribute it to you. You don’t mind, do you?
soonergrunt
@Dan: Then there are two problems with your position–
The first is that it’s incumbent on anyone but you to make sure that others understand what you say. Asking for clarification isn’t necessary. If you want to be understood for what you mean, then say what you mean and beat everyone to the punch.
And second, not that he needs me to step up for him, but where did John ever say that or anything remotely like it?
Dan
@John Cole: John, pretty much all you’ve had to say in the post and in the thread is: 1) The soldiers in question are solely responsible. 2) Obama had nothing to do with it. It’s a false choice – it implies that either you think Obama did it or you think the soldiers did it. No other positions are possible. To me that shows a real hostility to learning any more. If I’ve missed some nuance somewhere please let me know.
And incidentally, that’s the same kind of response Bush’s defenders initially had when Abu Ghraib broke. It was all “a few bad apples no need to find out more move along now.” Unless you’ve completed a full investigation (hyperlink to it and I promise I’ll read it!) you really can’t say anything about how far up it goes. Yet you’re willing to emphatically set down a marker. Knowing nothing. Do you really think that indicates an openness to finding out anything else?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan: What do you think the probability is that anyone outside of that brigade had any awareness of this as it was happening, let alone approved of it? I am absolutely in favor of investigating the hell out of this and in punishing any and everyone involved. I just do not see how something as described in the RS article could possibly been on the radar of anyone higher than the O-6 commanding the brigade, if awareness even went that far.
Fuzz
@Dan:
John actually isn’t saying that at all. He’s not saying it stops with a bunch of PFCs and corporals, he’s saying that it doesn’t go all the way up to the president.
Dan
@Fuzz:
And I’m saying he – none of us – has any way of knowing right now how far up it does go. Neither he nor anyone else is in any position to say that at the moment.
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s more like it. At least you’re open to the possibility that it goes higher.
Based on our history doesn’t it seem much more sensible to say something like: “It seems like a vanishingly remote possibility that this goes all the way up to the president. But we need to find out how far up it does go, and that means a full, independent and uncompromised investigation. Let the chips fall where they may. Even in the extremely unlikely event it goes all the way to the White House.”
And what the hell, I’ll link whore this as well: “Put enough people in a meat grinder for enough time and some of them will do shocking things. It’s not an anomaly, it’s a certainty.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan: Nothing Cole said is contradictory of what you just said.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Dan:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate, huh?
There’s a brief story shared in, iirc, Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers (or possibly Fussell’s The Boys’ Crusade) by a guy who was an NCO during WWII, about another soldier in his platoon who on a couple of occasions, because his brother had been killed by the Nazis earlier in the war, would casually pull out a sidearm as German POWs were being marched by him and shoot one of the POWs.
Word of this soldier’s actions never made it past the lieutenant in command of the platoon. The guy was an otherwise good soldier. They dealt with him by making sure a couple of buddies were there to keep an eye on him if POWs were in the area.
Fucking Roosevelt. He didn’t have to get involved in the war. Amirite?
Cunning Linguist
What does a Browser Helper Object have to do with the war in Afghanistan?
Dan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): It would be irresponsible not to investigate. Sorry that’s such a provocative thing to say.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Dan:
Based upon what, exactly?
Shit, the way you’re throwing this around makes me suspicious that you’re somehow involved and trying to throw investigators off your scent. Let’s launch an investigation into Dan’s possible involvement. I mean, how would we know unless we left no stone unturned? We’ll put your face on tv every night, go to your workplace and ask questions about you. I mean, c’mon, it’s possible you’re connected. You’re living, you obviously write in English, ya know?
See, insinuations abound.
jwest
John Cole can’t blame this all on Joe Biden. As Commander In Chief, Obama is ultimately responsible for the actions of his Kill Teams.
Just because a precedent was set by people blaming Dick Cheney for Abu Gharaib, there is no evidence that Biden directly ordered the murders. Hopefully, this will all come out in the World Court trial when Obama and Biden are brought to justice.
Also, there is the possibility that Obama had a good reason to order the killings. Perhaps these “civilians” were secretly plotting against the U.S. I find it hard to believe Obama had these people murdered just for the fun of it.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
I wish I could explain this to my old homeslice, AllahP, but of course I’m banned there.
What we saw last night in O’s Libya speech was the first practical application of the Obama Doctrine…which is essentially–
The Bush Doctrine and COIN are the FP decisions that informed the ongoing horrorshows of A-stan and Iraq.
So Bush is responsible for the Kill Squad.
;)