Attacking a fractious middle eastern country based on dubious American intelligence about WMDs? What could possibly go wrong? Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Iran has to say that. Syria is really their last regional ally other than Iraq, maybe, depending on what the political situation is there on any given day. They see all this as a pretext to America isolating Iran, and frankly they're probably right when it came to Iraq, but not Syria. It's a huge mess.
While on the one hand I can understand chemical weapons as crossing a line that requires a response, I'm a little baffled that the first 100,000 civilians killed weren't important enough for help, but a few 100 killed the right way is cassus belli.
Part of that is because in US military parlance, a chemical weapons attack is basically tantamount to a nuclear strike, and if they'd used a tactical nuke on Damascus, we'd be doing something about it for sure.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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100,000 Could, given the circumstantial evidence I've seen could be rightly be considered ethnic cleansing.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Possibly I suppose. If my goal is to rid the world of Pastafarians and I hear about a gathering of 50,000 of them, I might decide to bomb them even if there are another 50,000 non-Pastafarian people there as well. Yeah that's a lot of collateral damage but for a depraved mind like mine, it's acceptable. If there are only 1,000 Pastafarians there and 99,000 of my supporters and various other undecided peoples I'd be pretty stupid to bomb them. Better to try and incite a riot against the Pastafarians.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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My impression is that the regime is of one particular ethnic group majority from a certain region and the rebels are largely made of another living in another part of the country, so I wouldn't be surprised.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Possibly I suppose. If my goal is to rid the world of Pastafarians and I hear about a gathering of 50,000 of them, I might decide to bomb them even if there are another 50,000 non-Pastafarian people there as well. Yeah that's a lot of collateral damage but for a depraved mind like mine, it's acceptable. If there are only 1,000 Pastafarians there and 99,000 of my supporters and various other undecided peoples I'd be pretty stupid to bomb them. Better to try and incite a riot against the Pastafarians.
Which begs the question: Is 50,000 an ethnic cleansing?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Possibly I suppose. If my goal is to rid the world of Pastafarians and I hear about a gathering of 50,000 of them, I might decide to bomb them even if there are another 50,000 non-Pastafarian people there as well. Yeah that's a lot of collateral damage but for a depraved mind like mine, it's acceptable. If there are only 1,000 Pastafarians there and 99,000 of my supporters and various other undecided peoples I'd be pretty stupid to bomb them. Better to try and incite a riot against the Pastafarians.
Which begs the question: Is 50,000 an ethnic cleansing?
If there are only 50,000 of them, yes. Any more than that and it's a good start. Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Possibly I suppose. If my goal is to rid the world of Pastafarians and I hear about a gathering of 50,000 of them, I might decide to bomb them even if there are another 50,000 non-Pastafarian people there as well. Yeah that's a lot of collateral damage but for a depraved mind like mine, it's acceptable. If there are only 1,000 Pastafarians there and 99,000 of my supporters and various other undecided peoples I'd be pretty stupid to bomb them. Better to try and incite a riot against the Pastafarians.
Which begs the question: Is 50,000 an ethnic cleansing?
The number isn't germane to the definition, only intent and the means.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: My impression is that the regime is of one particular ethnic group majority from a certain region and the rebels are largely made of another living in another part of the country, so I wouldn't be surprised.
I believe the ruling Alawites are actually a minority with Sunni Arabs being the majority and main group of rebels.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You're assuming all 100,000 are the same ethnicity. Can something be an ethnic cleansing if the variety of people killed identify with a different religion, ethnicity and political identity?
Possibly I suppose. If my goal is to rid the world of Pastafarians and I hear about a gathering of 50,000 of them, I might decide to bomb them even if there are another 50,000 non-Pastafarian people there as well. Yeah that's a lot of collateral damage but for a depraved mind like mine, it's acceptable. If there are only 1,000 Pastafarians there and 99,000 of my supporters and various other undecided peoples I'd be pretty stupid to bomb them. Better to try and incite a riot against the Pastafarians.
Which begs the question: Is 50,000 an ethnic cleansing?
The number isn't germane to the definition, only intent and the means.
That's kind of a bizarre definition.
So your contention is basically that ever lynching in the American South where one or five black people were killed was actually an ethnic cleansing?
Killing one person, so long as you killed them with the intent of killing someone of that race, is an ethnic cleansing?
I don't think you'd get many people to agree with that.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The Baku weren't being exterminated. But his point was also that all 600 of the Baku represented their entire civilization. So that, 600 of 600 wasn't just a cleansing, it was a sterilization. The end of a society.
Killing one Kurd, no matter what the reason, is more of a light dusting. The question isn't whether or not killing one vs. 100,000 is WRONG. It's wrong regardless of scale, which is Picard's point.
But the question is more of a definition of something we all agree is one. A question of terminology, rather than a moral absolute.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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My point is that "When does something become ethnic cleansing" we all agree that we shouldn't be coming up with a "hard number" or "red line" of how many does it take until it becomes X. So suppose its 50,000/6,560,000 if it succeeds at getting say a million to leave their homes? At vacating a city for others to move in? Whether its 10,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 it doesn't matter.
Obviously one or two people getting lynched is just a 'regular' run of the mill hate crime and isn't what I meant.
Wikipedia says: "Ethnic cleansing is a the process or policy of eliminating unwanted ethnic or religious groups by deportation, forcible displacement, mass murder, or by threats of such acts, with the intent of creating a territory inhabited by people of a homogeneous or pure ethnicity, religion, culture, and history." So I think this bears credibility to the notion that the actual "body count" isn't so much as relevant as other factors, most demonstrably would be intent.
As I said though, determining intent would require post occupation investigation by US and UN agents of memo's, communications, evidence etc that this at any point has or became the goal.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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*shrug* you offered up 'the number isn't germane' which seemed to me exactly what Lyrhawn was responding to. It's hardly his failure in doing so.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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It's a problem of imprecise communication, because in this case 'being too literal' was 'responding to your choice of words'.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Elison: If China and Russia go to war, and no other nations are involved, and the fighting goes long and bitter with hundreds of thousands even millions killed by both sides, do we say the Japanese are trying to ethnically cleanse the Russians because they are only killing Russians, and vice versa for the Russians trying to cleanse the Japanese?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Not automatically though we do have plenty of international laws in place (that they signed) meant to prevent relocating occupied peoples because in war that tends to happen more often than not, and was particularly egregious in WWII.
So if (China and Russia you meant?) went to war, suppose China was winning, it seems to me the only plausible reason to GO to war would've been to settle siberia. So at a minimum people who left their homes would likely find themselves unable to return; and likewise the Chinese would forcibly relocate people away from the front lines to deny the Russians military intelligence on their movements.
These are the sorts of things I think would be likely to happen, war crimes are just inherent to the act of war. We only need to look at recent "clean" wars like the Iraq war and Afghanistan conflicts to see how true that is.
So if two sides shoot at each other and people get displaced? Not in of itself, but it depends on how its handled and what individuals in a position of armed force act.
Though I believe I already covered this with "An investigation would need to be launched." Though if in Syria we saw reports of mass graves and routine executions of hundreds of people that would be a red flag for anyone I think.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You know what I think should happen? I think that an international interventionist community that would have ably and easily Milosivech'd the crap out of Assad if this were 1999 should instead be burned to the point of uselessness by the crap deal we got sold on Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a result the international community should spend a year being mostly useless even as neurochemical weapons start being used on Damascus children, and assholes like Putin can supply arms to an Iranian puppet regime and significantly disincentivize any productive response. Over the course of a year the fighting will totally destroy the country, flood the surrounding area with refugees, and the rebel groups will come to be primarily the affair of fundamentalist muslim nuts, the whole thing will become a complete godforsaken mess that will inspire further dysfunction in the region for decades, and I can watch liveleak videos of children white-frothing and seizuring to death after their civilian neighborhood was literally nerve-gassed, or see videos of regime planes looking all over the city to find any cluster of people they can drop incendiary bombs on, which they do (it's a school, too), and just be amazed at how much of a godforsaken mess it is.
Oh, wish granted I guess
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Ethnic Cleansing: Forcibly removing the majority of one ethnicity from a geographical area either through killing them, transporting them elsewhere under threat of death, or denying them access to the means of life in a given area. (Sure they can stay in the valley, they just don't get any water).
Assad is not attempting ethnic cleansing. He is trying to win hearts and minds of the majority through fear. Rebels were in the neighborhood. Destroy the neighborhood. Next time rebels try to enter a neighborhood, that neighborhood will kick them out without any help from Assad's thugs.
He used chemical weapons, according to one expert I heard, because the rebels in this area had anti-aircraft weapons that had succeeded in destroying a couple of his precious planes. As long as those anti-aircraft weapons were in this location, he could not fly aircraft to bomb the rebels and all the people around the rebels. He had to clean out this area quickly, and the nerve gas was the quickest solution.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: I think you had a freudian slip there.
Actually just muddled. I was originally going to do a conflict between Russia and Japan, but realized that while it has happened, the chances of a protracted conflict today are geographically unlikely. So I switched to China mid-post, but failed to correct all the places where I'd written Japan.
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