Royal Marine found guilty of Afghanistan murder

berbatrick said:
@Dwazza

For a contemporary example:

(check the parent comment too)
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Thankfully Holocaust denial is so fecking stupid that even alt-right wackos seem to have a hard time believing it and even hardcore twats who have staked their academic reputations on it like David Irving have been financially ruined and imprisoned because of it. It's a crying shame that bad science done on purpose (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuchter_report) is still repeated in 2017 when the truth is out there.

My real worry is we're coming to an era where people that lived through it are no longer going to be around. I'm not sure what the right word is here but I've been privileged (?) enough to speak to a holocaust survivor when I was much younger. A minute (if that?) of hearing that lady talk would be enough to dispel doubts of even the most ardent imbecile that apparently the mountains of scientific data and historical evidence can't (not that any of those pillocks on there will have looked at them).
 
Dobba said:
But, remember, nobody is treating him like a hero.
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The reason people are celebrating is there is a feeling in the UK military that troops are not supported by the government or the people, and this is a victory against that. There is next to no post service care, little help for PTSD and ambulance chasing lawyers are free to pick the bones of every battle. A few of the ridiculous comments in here like 'military types are thick' show it up.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Thankfully Holocaust denial is so fecking stupid that even alt-right wackos seem to have a hard time believing it and even hardcore twats who have staked their academic reputations on it like David Irving have been financially ruined and imprisoned because of it.
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That is r/debatealtright (outsiders asking fascists questions), not an alt-right sub (r/pussypass is one I think). The people downvoting holocaust denial are outsiders to the sub in all probability.
 
11101 said:
The reason people are celebrating is there is a feeling in the UK military that troops are not supported by the government or the people, and this is a victory against that. There is next to no post service care, little help for PTSD and ambulance chasing lawyers are free to pick the bones of every battle. A few of the ridiculous comments in here like 'military types are thick' show it up.
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And their poster/cardboard cut out/banner boy for this celebration is a guy who made himself judge, jury and executioner and then got his mates to cover for his actions (who did so with an ease that has been almost as easily glossed over by a lot of people while discussing this incident) until the video he didn't know about came to light? A video that isn't being released because the judge was worried it would be used as terrorist propaganda.
 
11101 said:
The reason people are celebrating is there is a feeling in the UK military that troops are not supported by the government or the people, and this is a victory against that. There is next to no post service care, little help for PTSD and ambulance chasing lawyers are free to pick the bones of every battle. A few of the ridiculous comments in here like 'military types are thick' show it up.
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This is very true, troops do feel they are not supported, particularly by the government and MOD.

In this particular case I believe the over exuberant celebrations were down to releasing pent up emotions. It has been a long hard campaign to get to this point, fought on many fronts but on the whole always peacefully and with good humour.

Supporters believe Al did not receive a fair trial at his original Courts Martial - no psychiatric evaluation, witnesses barred from testifying, no manslaughter plea allowed etc. They believe the MOD "pursued the prosecution case remorselessly" (in the words of Jonathan Goldberg QC) to cover up the failings of that tour and the higher chain of command. Indeed the published official report on the incident was so heavily redacted as to be worthless. It was only after an un-redacted copy was leaked and psychiatric evaluations performed that there was any basis of a case to be forwarded to the Criminal Case Review Commission.

The MOD is a charlatan department, they brook no criticism, but send our lads out to war zones ill equipped and massively under manned. When years down the line, they do finally send out "better" equipment, half the time it doesn't work. When the sh*t hits the fan and men come back dead, or maimed in body or soul they don't want to know and hide behind redacted reports so that families never really know what went wrong or why their sons died.
 
Red Diva said:
The MOD is a charlatan department, they brook no criticism, but send our lads out to war zones ill equipped and massively under manned. When years down the line, they do finally send out "better" equipment, half the time it doesn't work. When the sh*t hits the fan and men come back dead, or maimed in body or soul they don't want to know and hide behind redacted reports so that families never really know what went wrong or why their sons died.
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The Ministry has numerous projects that are years behind target goals and in some cases billions over budget consequently the forces in Iraq & Afghanistan have been woefully underfunded with equipment that would have saved many lives. When you read about some of the Vietnam era equipment still being used while the money is going towards planes that can't use the Aircraft Carriers that are being built and then when the carriers are re-built, planes that will not have the landing gear or the weapons necessary plus billions spent on nuclear warhead subs you begin to believe that soldiers in the field really are having to buy their own bandages for wounds in the field. When you read that twenty men have to share 3 pairs of night vision goggles between them you can believe just why morale is so low and so many feel let down. Of course some civilians never make it their business to find out these things for themselves before laying into 'thick' squaddies.
 
oates said:
The Ministry has numerous projects that are years behind target goals and in some cases billions over budget consequently the forces in Iraq & Afghanistan have been woefully underfunded with equipment that would have saved many lives. When you read about some of the Vietnam era equipment still being used while the money is going towards planes that can't use the Aircraft Carriers that are being built and then when the carriers are re-built, planes that will not have the landing gear or the weapons necessary plus billions spent on nuclear warhead subs you begin to believe that soldiers in the field really are having to buy their own bandages for wounds in the field. When you read that twenty men have to share 3 pairs of night vision goggles between them you can believe just why morale is so low and so many feel let down. Of course some civilians never make it their business to find out these things for themselves before laying into 'thick' squaddies.
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It isn't for nothing our Armed Forces have been called "the Borrowers" by other Nation's Forces over the years, in the various conflicts.
 
Silva said:
It's one of the main things holocaust survivors tried, and continue to impart to following generations. When Nazi propaganda dehumanised jews, gays, disabled, gypsies, minorities and so on, it made it possible to wholesale slaughter people.
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I hope your not making a moral equivalence between the Marines and Nazi's when it comes to dehumanising.

I am sure what you are really trying to say is that the Taliban/Isis etc are a far closer match to Nazism. And that makes them scum.
 
Fearless said:
I hope your not making a moral equivalence between the Marines and Nazi's when it comes to dehumanising.

I am sure what you are really trying to say is that the Taliban/Isis etc are a far closer match to Nazism. And that makes them scum.
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I'm making a moral equivalency between your posts and the Nazi propaganda, not the Marines. Al realised in the moment that he'd killed a human being.

War and mindless murder doesn't stop until both sides see and treat each other like humans.
 
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Silva said:
I'm making a moral equivalency between your posts and the Nazi propaganda, not the Marines. Al realised in the moment that he'd killed a human being.

War and mindless murder doesn't stop until both sides see and treat each other like humans.
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Absurd.

I find it frightening that you can't distinguish between the Nazi propaganda/genocide against innocent peoples and my accurate description of those who are, as I post this, carrying out the very same attrocities albeit for a not to dissimilar ideology.

Your clearly do not understand war, you just luxuriate in the freedom it confers to you.
 
Fearless said:
Absurd.

I find it frightening that you can't distinguish between the Nazi propaganda/genocide against innocent peoples and my accurate description of those who are, as I post this, carrying out the very same attrocities.
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As I'm sure you're aware, the Nazi's treated certain people reasonably well. British POWs for example, who were kept in relatively good conditions. Because they considered them people, rather than the groups they committed genocide against, who they considered subhuman. If an army now is executing prisoners, and their supporters are okay with it because those prisoners can't really be called men, then what's the difference? Is it okay to kill someone just because they're an enemy? Didn't we give even the worst of the Nazi's trials? Then, if isis or whoever is the Nazi equivalent now, then are we any better than them if we're excusing execution because they're subhuman?
 
Silva said:
As I'm sure you're aware, the Nazi's treated certain people reasonably well. British POWs for example, who were kept in relatively good conditions. Because they considered them people, rather than the groups they committed genocide against, who they considered subhuman. If an army now is executing prisoners, and their supporters are okay with it because those prisoners can't really be called men, then what's the difference? Is it okay to kill someone just because they're an enemy? Didn't we give even the worst of the Nazi's trials? Then, if isis or whoever is the Nazi equivalent now, then are we any better than them if we're excusing execution because they're subhuman?
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Yes. Simply because we are discussing it puts us light years ahead of their medieval psychosis.
 
Fearless said:
Yes. Simply because we are discussing it puts us light years ahead of their medieval psychosis.
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You're not discussing it though are you? You've stated your opinion, one that Silva correctly points out is one that those who would commit these acts that would make them 'scum' would use to justify their opinion, and are now simply trying to shout down people challenging you by telling others they just don't get it. That's not a discussion.

(And as a Medievalist I'd be a failure if I didn't point out that Medieval people did debate the ethics of war)
 
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Fearless said:
Yes. Simply because we are discussing it puts us light years ahead of their medieval psychosis.
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Medieval people had more advanced discussions than this. They also committed atrocities against people they considered subhuman, and some at the time even pointed out the hypocrisy. Yet, here we are, still trying to convince people that the enemy is just like us.
 
NinjaFletch said:
You're not discussing it though are you? You've stated your opinion, one that Silva correctly points out is one that those who would commit these acts that would make them 'scum' would use to justify their opinion, and are now simply trying to shout down people challenging you by telling others they just don't get it. That's not a discussion.

(And as a Medievalist I'd be a failure if I didn't point out that Medieval people did debate the ethics of war)
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The scum part is OK. People can be scummy. It was the part where he said if you can call that scum a man that opened the floodgates as it implied he was subhuman to some degree.
 
Dwazza said:
The scum part is OK. People can be scummy. It was the part where he said if you can call that scum a man that opened the floodgates as it implied he was subhuman to some degree.
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Yes you're right, it was the 'untermensch' connotations of what he went on to say that are the issue. Just thought I could condense as we were all on the same page.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Yes you're right, it was the 'untermensch' connotations of what he went on to say that are the issue. Just thought I could condense as we were all on the same page.
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Nazi's dehumanising Jews is not a valid comparison to my take on a Taliban killer whose already dehumanised himself.
 
Fearless said:
Nazi's dehumanising Jews is not a valid comparison to my take on a Taliban killer whose already dehumanised himself.
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Except he hasn't. Everything he's done, every atrocity is decidedly human (OK, dolphins are rapey and house cats like to terrorize mice and other prey but otherwise only we kill for sport and hate) any dismissal of his humanity makes it easier for us to kill him, willingly and with some degree of pleasure.
 
Fearless said:
Nazi's dehumanising Jews is not a valid comparison to my take on a Taliban killer whose already dehumanised himself.
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It takes a shocking amount of historical and ethical ignorance to truly believe that. The Taliban have a context and their members are people who saw their homes, families, loved ones and country decimated by a Cold War era proxy war. They didn't take up arms because they're inherently bad people, they did it because the Taliban was the latest in a long line of groups that came in at a time when they were starving, suffering from decades of fatigue and desperate for anyone to make it stop. Is it any wonder that when Afghanistan was, yet again, invaded by outsiders people tried to defend their land? The older generations still remember a time when they could grow something other than poppies and the newer generations knew nothing but the destruction brought on from the outside. They're savages? How about everyone else look in the mirror for a moment.

The regressive policies of the Taliban are well documented, but to pretend they're subhumans is just shocking.
 
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Silva said:
It takes a shocking amount of historical and ethical ignorance to truly believe that. The Taliban have a context and their members are people who saw their homes, families, loved ones and country decimated by a Cold War era proxy war. They didn't take up arms because they're inherently bad people, they did it because the Taliban was the latest in a long line of groups that came in at a time when they were starving, suffering from decades of fatigue and desperate for anyone to make it stop. Is it any wonder that when Afghanistan was, yet again, invaded by outsiders people tried to defend their land? The older generations still remember a time when they could grow something other than poppies and the newer generations knew nothing but the destruction brought on from the outside. They're savages? How about everyone else look in the mirror for a moment.

The regressive policies of the Taliban are well documented, but to pretend they're subhumans is just shocking.
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Thank you.
 
Fearless said:
Nazi's dehumanising Jews is not a valid comparison to my take on a Taliban killer whose already dehumanised himself.
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You justifying the killing of that Taliban killer because he's 'dehumanised himself' is absolutely comparable. Not in terms of scale, but in terms of logic. You can condemn his actions, hell you can even argue that he deserved to die because of them (although I would think that if that you're stressing the superiority of Western culture you'd probably want to argue for the existence of the rule of law, but whatever), but what I can't understand is how you can be so staggeringly unaware of the relationship between what you're saying and what you're willing to allow and how the Taliban themselves would use the exact same logic to justify the killing of British troops and more. From there it is a short and slippery slope to characterising everybody that ever supported the 'Taliban killer' as a valid target and, by extension, the whole race.

I'm not saying that thats what you think, but I do think that you need to have a think about why people have a problem with what you've said and its nothing to do with the realities of war or any love for the Taliban.
 
Silva said:
It takes a shocking amount of historical and ethical ignorance to truly believe that. The Taliban have a context and their members are people who saw their homes, families, loved ones and country decimated by a Cold War era proxy war.
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As much as I'm with you in general (although I'm careful with how far Nazi analogies should be taken), as much do I think you end up oversimplifying things on the other end.
Silva said:
They didn't take up arms because they're inherently bad people, they did it because the Taliban was the latest in a long line of groups that came in at a time when they were starving, suffering from decades of fatigue and desperate for anyone to make it stop. Is it any wonder that when Afghanistan was, yet again, invaded by outsiders people tried to defend their land?
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The Taliban never were a defensive force, and they weren't even a homegrown Afghan enterprise in the first place. They arrived from Pakistan as conquerors of the heads-on-spikes sort to establish a reign of terror, and this should not be forgotten. They were rightly considered an invading force by a significant portion of Afghans.

It's certainly true that these people were/are the product of an endlessly brutal environment, and I agree that this is a very tragic aspect of it all. But, and that's important, so were others who didn't make the choice to terrorize, oppress and slaughter their fellows. They have existed plenty in Afghanistan, and they were usually the first victims of the Mujahideen and Taliban murderers.

These, yes, better people (for whatever reasons) always disappear in the narrative that depicts terrorists/Islamist racketeers as desperates with no other option. What (involuntarily) gets negated too is the thought that there are people in the Middle East who simply don't want to bring the same suffering upon others that they themselves had to endure. A kind of automatism of this sort is often taken for granted, but luckily that's not true, which is one of the few glimmers of hope still existing.

So again, I generally agree with what you say and the points you make are important (especially concerning that 'scum' dispute). But I think there are also important parts missing or misrepresented to an extent.
 
Synco said:
As much as I'm with you in general (although I'm careful with how far Nazi analogies should be taken), as much do I think you end up oversimplifying things on the other end.

The Taliban never were a defensive force, and they weren't even a homegrown Afghan enterprise in the first place. They arrived from Pakistan as conquerors of the heads-on-spikes sort to establish a reign of terror, and this should not be forgotten. They were rightly considered an invading force by a significant portion of Afghans.

It's certainly true that these people were/are the product of an endlessly brutal environment, and I agree that this is a very tragic aspect of it all. But, and that's important, so were others who didn't make the choice to terrorize, oppress and slaughter their fellows. They have existed plenty in Afghanistan, and they were usually the first victims of the Mujahideen and Taliban murderers.

These, yes, better people (for whatever reasons) always disappear in the narrative that depicts terrorists/Islamist racketeers as desperates with no other option. What (involuntarily) gets negated too is the thought that there are people in the Middle East who simply don't want to bring the same suffering upon others that they themselves had to endure. A kind of automatism of this sort is often taken for granted, but luckily that's not true, which is one of the few glimmers of hope still existing.

So again, I generally agree with what you say and the points you make are important (especially concerning that 'scum' dispute). But I think there are also important parts missing or misrepresented to an extent.
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I know all of that. But I think by the time Bush invaded I think it's fair to consider them an Afghani force. Omar did ultimately unify the country by appealing to religious inclinations, most notably by gathering as many tribal leaders as he could and emerging before them with Muhammads cloak. I'm not trying to negate the horrific things they did, just trying to explain why an average Mo from x, y or z village who might have joined the Taliban and fought our troops did so. But I don't think it's relevant here. In the same way the millions of Afghans who welcomed western intervention aren't relevant in that very specific point.
 
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Silva said:
I know all of that. But I think by the time Bush invaded I think it's fair to consider them an Afghani force. Omar did ultimately unify the country by appealing to religious inclinations, most notably by gathering as many tribal leaders as he could and emerging before with Muhammads cloak. I'm not trying to negate the horrific things they did, just trying to explain why an average Mo from x, y or z village who might have joined the Taliban and fought our troops did so.
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I think it's the 'unifying' part that bothers me. It's too much of a Western view on Afghanistan as an even remotely homogenous society, which it isn't and probably never can be. I don't think it can be said that the country was unified in any way during the last 15 years, it has been as divided and fragmented as it ever was.

For example, the Hazara could never get into any alliance with the Taliban, they are mortal enemies. Many people welcomed the US-led invasion as a relief from Taliban barbarism, especially (but not exclusively) in Kabul and the North. Sure, the Americans have squandered that opportunity and are now widely despised even by former Afghan allies or neutrals. But many of those people will still prefer the current republic to any Taliban-led alternative. The police and armed forces were relatively stable for Afghan conditions, so hundreds of thousands of men actually took up arms in support of the NATO-aligned government (even if it's just because of their salary for some of them).

So I think this 'national resistance against foreign invasion' narrative just doesn't fit the situation, and it never did. It has all been as complicated and contradictory as Afghan politics always were. That means that the average Mo in your example also made a decision in the inner-Afghan struggle. Which is perhaps the best way I can put what I think was/is missing.

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Edit: Not to be misunderstood, the Taliban have indeed established themselves as an Afghan entity, there's no doubt about that.
 
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I thought what he did was understandable considering the circumstances. He didn't do himself any favors by saying he just broke the Geneva convention.

From being around guys who had spent significant time in the theatre, I don't think he did anything out of the norm. Rightly or wrongly.
 
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