scribblings from a deist transhumanist libertarian minarchist citizen soldier

What makes a shooting a massacre?

Posted by Trevor in under other on Jun 1st, 2006 | View Comments |

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive points readers to a discussion of what makes a shooting a massacre that is worth reading:

There is one and only one relevant standard for this whole incident and that is the reasonable belief that your life or the life of others is in danger. If that is reasonably believed then deadly force may be employed, absent that belief it may not. There are other factors that would impact this, like rules of engagement, but in this case the Marines ROE obviously included the right to return fire. The question is was there any, and if not why did they fire? If the Marines killed people without reasonable belief they were in danger, then they committed murder. If they had a reasonable belief in their danger, they did not.

I haven’t commented on the Haditha investigation because it is an ongoing matter and the military legal system’s wheels are still in motion. I think it’s highly inappropriate for Murtha and other politicians to be talking about the matter other than relating that there is an ongoing investigation and that the facts will be made public once they have been determined by military investigators and a military court.

The constant attempts to smear our military sicken me. The vast majority of the servicemen and women I know are honorable people who are doing there best under circumstances that would make lesser beings crumble.

Consider for a moment that the enemies our Marines face every day in Iraq have no compunctions about killing anyone at all to achieve their goals. They attack from inside the homes of people who may or may not be sympathetic to their cause. They attack from inside the protection of houses of worship, knowing full well that the coalition must follow rules of engagement while they have none. The enemy we face in Iraq has no moral limitations and is not bound by the Rule of Law.

If the same weaponry that is available to Western nations were available to them, your city, your neighborhood and your home, with your family inside, would long ago have evaporated in a mushroom cloud.

Don’t rush to judge something you don’t fully understand. If crimes were committed, they will be punished. That is what makes our society worth fighting for – as imperfect as our dispensation of justice is – it is leaps and bounds above what the enemy lives by. If you doubt me, I challenge you to leave your home nation and move to Waziristan, Afghanistan or some other place where fundamentalist Islamic fanaticism is firmly entrenched. I’ll buy you a one way ticket.

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MissBirdlegs in AL

Trevor, I'll contribute some to that one-way ticket!! They won't, of course, but gov't officials and the press need to just keep their mouths shut until there is real news (truth) regarding the investigation's end. Instead, we'll be force-fed something about it daily (maybe hourly) if we care to get our news from the MSM.

SoldiersAngelCJ

Thank you for this! Whatever really happened there that day, the Marines have been wronged by Murtha and his crowd. I'm embarrassed to have John Murtha represent Pennsylvania! God Bless our Marines!

Dan Cameron Rodill

Since there appears to be no escape from "Murtha the Old Marine", not even on Memorial Day, here's a "gringotorial".......(first posted at Blackfive and Allthingsbeautiful)

Interesting on what's become of Congressman Murtha, who spent less time in Vietnam than I did---although granted, he was military, unlike me, and knew how to play that old "war hero" card so very, very, very useful in U.S. politics. He's become the Democrats' go-to drama queen on questions of war and peace and how to attack Bush (who once snubbed him, according to reports.)

It's the media-enabled theatrics which are so suspect. If there is a criminal case against these young Marines---and let's assume there is, without knowing all the facts---the Marines will court martial accordingly. Everyone knows that. Murtha the Old Marine has to know that. Yet now he seems increasingly like a deranged old grizzly,improperly medicated, as he keeps chewing on that chewed-up bone (but not too deranged to enjoy the media spotlight and adulation from the grateful who wouldn't be caught dead in the uniform of the nation that fattens them.) Even on the solemn occasion of Memorial Day. To what purpose, aside from acute Bushophobia and Dem lust to regain position and office (and avenge a perceived slight from the White House)?

Which raises the question yet again: Is today's Libstream intelligent, or just desperate and tone deaf?
Are polls and poll shakers and $500 an hour "consultants" convincing it that Americans will react "correctly" to this orgy of American Guilt and shame about the one sector of today's post-FDR U.S. entitlement society that truly sacrifices and understands responsibility? There used to be a time, on the other extreme, when Americans focused on the war crimes of the enemy. That ended, of course, with the Vietnam War, when the World Left turned on the U.S. which was no longer pals with the socialized "workers' states."

Do the Democrats and their media really think this will play---despite Republican failings (and the DemoPub mutual surrender of the U.S. border to Mexico and the Business/Illegal Alien Lobby---presided over by George Bush, our "Texan," i.e. our Connecticut Yankee in cowboy boots?

Do they really think that an old Murtha and his media enablers, exploiting the noble 'Duty, Honor and Country,' will be excused from the duty and honor of focusing on the daily unspeakable atrocities of the enemy, instead of grandstanding exclusively on what is, by most accounts, the atypical and alleged, of his own country? They gorge on aberrations (if proven) of the more disciplined sector of U.S. society. Have they no sense of shame left for what the enemy is doing to Iraqis, the daily carnage, cold, calculated, deliberate? One more question: Have they no sense of shame left about themselves?

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Gringofoto. Mekong Delta, 1973. Face to face, at last, with the Vietcong, down in that Delta, somewhere below My Tho. (Black and white original.)