The Kill Team

[Chinahand]

Terrorism is quite simply the instilling in a civilian population raw fear in the hope or expectation that they will influence their government to act in a way that the terrorists desire.

That's purely referring to terrorism of individuals. Terrorism simply means the threat or use of violence against civilians for political or religious purposes. It can be conducted by governments or by individuals.

This is how the CIA classifies it! Deliberately saying terrorism can only be undertaken by subnational groups and clandestine agents!

 

The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d):

 

•The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.

•The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.

•The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

 

Soldiers in uniform - under this definition can't commit terrorism! I don't agree with this definition, but the US is at least up front about it. They say that soldiers commit war crimes, which is an entirely different section of international and military law.

[spook]

What you've done is to perfectly illustrate how so many people who THINK they understand Christianity don't even get beyond the first base, in fact usually fall short of the first hurdle.

 

The “Parable of The Talents” is a parable that illustrates how The Lord expects us all to use the gifts that he has given to us to the best advantage and those who do not but actually conspire against Him will should and indeed will be condemned to eternal damnation.

 

Incidentally, it was not the servants of Jesus who were commanded to kil those who conspired against the king, it was the servants of the king in the parable.

 

The “Parable of The Talents” is a parable that illustrates how The Lord expects us all to use the gifts that he has given to us to the best advantage and those who do not but actually conspire against Him will should and indeed will be condemned to eternal damnation.

 

Jesus disclosed this particular parable shortly before he was put to death as a message to his followers that they would have the responsibility to spread His teachings and also as a warning to those who try to downplay His message that they would be consigned to hell fire as indeed they will.

 

So also with the “Parable of The Wedding banquet”. That illustrates how salvation is open to all who accept it but with the only condition that they accept that with it comes The Yoke of Christ, in the Parable the appropriate clothes for The Banquet which is the Salvation which Christ offers to all.

 

The last line sums it up. “Many are called but few are chosen” The reason for that depends entirely if those who come do so with the right intent.

 

What a tragedy it is, and tragedy is not too strong a word, that so many reject what they don't even understand, and yet accept the rubbish that they do for precisely the same reason.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Terrorism is quite simply the instilling in a civilian population raw fear in the hope or expectation that they will influence their government to act in a way that the terrorists desire.

That's purely referring to terrorism of individuals. Terrorism simply means the threat or use of violence against civilians for political or religious purposes. It can be conducted by governments or by individuals.

This is how the CIA classifies it! Deliberately saying terrorism can only be undertaken by subnational groups and clandestine agents!

Which is obviously not the case, as you would agree. Such a definition may be the result of the legal framework that has formed from the development of war crime legislation. But a war crime can still be terrorist.

[Chinahand]

@Spook - I haven't said how I interpret these verses - I am saying people HAVE used them that way. You say they were wrong in doing that - they felt they were right.

 

Spook I realize you think you can understand the TRUE meaning of scripture - but surely you acknowledge that others disagree and as a result the history of Christianity is violent and verses from the bible, and even directly form the teachings of Christ, have been used to justify this.

 

You may go - they were wrong, but they will say the same about you. Personally I think it is futile to argue which interpretation is true as I think both are flawed, but I think it is factual to say both the Bible and the Koran can be used to justify violence, and both have been used to justify peace - they are large complicated books and if you cherry pick from them you can make them say anything you like.

 

Who is to say which interpretation is "right" and which one "wrong" - self appointed interpreters, like you Spook.

[P.K.]

Obviously a different war to the one in this thread, but when people suggest that the US soldiers deliberately fire upon ambulances, it becomes a bit more real when you read a first hand account of an English woman who happened to be in an ambulance that was repeatedly hit. If "we" are going to take the moral high ground, "we" need to occupy it with dignity. Repeatedly and routinely shooting ambulances? I think that counts as terrorism.

 

So if an English woman claims it then it just must be true then? What nonsense. ALL vehicles get fired on because people make mistakes and you've no way of knowing if it is a genuine mistake or not. The likes of Hamas regularly transport munitions and gunmen in ambulances anyway.

 

That's the thing - the fog of war. Some might be deliberate (and probably are), others are mistakes. There it is.

 

I'm sorry but also the bit about holding the moral high ground with dignity I think is laughable. There's nothing dignified about killing people. Besides which you can only hold the moral high ground with a sense of purpose.

[Keith]

So if an English woman claims it then it just must be true then?

 

Not at all, but if she was an Iraqi woman, her account would be dismissed as biased and anti-American lies, whether true or not. An English woman who detested Saddam Hussein is at least a credible witness. More to the point, had she been an Iraqi woman, her testimony would never have been heard. Jo's may have been ignored by the authorities, but at least she had a voice.

 

 

What nonsense. ALL vehicles get fired on because people make mistakes and you've no way of knowing if it is a genuine mistake or not. The likes of Hamas regularly transport munitions and gunmen in ambulances anyway.

 

That's the thing - the fog of war. Some might be deliberate (and probably are), others are mistakes. There it is.

 

I'm sorry but also the bit about holding the moral high ground with dignity I think is laughable. There's nothing dignified about killing people. Besides which you can only hold the moral high ground with a sense of purpose.

 

"What nonsense"? Are you dismissing it as nonsense after having read the account or you are assuming it is nonsense without reading the account? If you have already read the account and think the author is lying, then I will accept your point of view even if I disagree with it. If you are dismissing it as a lie without having read it, then I find it difficult to understand how you reached the conclusion, other than you don't like to think that "we" the coalition, deliberately and routinely fire upon ambulances? Where is the evidence that Hamas "regularly transport munitions and gunmen in ambulances"? There is evidence that the Israeli Defence Force regularly attacks ambulances and then 'claims' that they were carrying weapons or combatants. Of course an injured combatant is no longer a legitimate target and attacking ambulances is in breach of the Geneva Convention. But you knew that of course. Robert Fisk (another Englishman and therefore believable ) writes a compelling account of the aftermath of an attack on an ambulance. He was there, he saw it, there were no weapons.

 

"Besides which you can only hold the moral high ground with a sense of purpose". I'm genuinely not sure what you mean by that? Are you saying the forces in Afghanistan (and Iraq before) do not hold the moral high ground? In which case why are we there? Or are you saying we don't have a sense of purpose? Ditto, why are we there? Or that it is legitimate for us to act as the terrorists do because there is some justification for us to do so? In which case, that is where we disagree.

[P.K.]

"What nonsense"? Are you dismissing it as nonsense after having read the account or you are assuming it is nonsense without reading the account?

 

I'm dismissing as nonsense that it could be proved that it wasn't just a simple mistake. If you have proof that they were deliberately fired upon outside of the rules of engagement then let's see it. Of course, if a combatant states they saw someone on an ambulance with a weapon so they opened fire you then have to prove that they are lying. Good luck with that.

 

"Besides which you can only hold the moral high ground with a sense of purpose". I'm genuinely not sure what you mean by that? Are you saying the forces in Afghanistan (and Iraq before) do not hold the moral high ground? In which case why are we there? Or are you saying we don't have a sense of purpose? Ditto, why are we there? Or that it is legitimate for us to act as the terrorists do because there is some justification for us to do so? In which case, that is where we disagree.

 

It's simple. Take Libya for example. UN air forces are killing Libyan troops who are simply doing what they are told to do i.e. suppress a rebellion. They are doing this to avoid "civilian" casualties. The fact that the "civilians" they are protecting are armed rebels seems to have slipped below the event horizon. Of course, this is all being done for humanitarian reasons or "the moral high ground" as the naive like to think it is. The truth is the UN want that fruitcake Gaddafi ousted because he has a particularly nasty regime, that's their purpose...

[spook]

@Spook - I haven't said how I interpret these verses - I am saying people HAVE used them that way. You say they were wrong in doing that - they felt they were right.

 

More a case of they used them as an excuse to undertake acts that were and continue to be totally alien to Christianity. Not churches that use Christianity as the basis of their collective aims and objectives, even to the extent of recognising and worshipping The Lord for who he is, those who fall short of following the teaching of Jesus.

 

Spook I realize you think you can understand the TRUE meaning of scripture - but surely you acknowledge that others disagree and as a result the history of Christianity is violent and verses from the bible, and even directly form the teachings of Christ, have been used to justify this.

 

The history involving people CLAIMING to be Christian, often believing themselves to be Christians and often because of the obscenity of the direction of the Vicar of Rome, and so who acted in an absolutely un-Christian way is there for all to see. What is NOT well understood, if understood at all, is that what a man calls himself, or even thinks he is because he has been told so, and what he really is all too often amounts to two very different things.

 

But you touch on a very important point. What is the difference between a Christian and a person who is a member of a notionally Christian church. There can be no question that some genuine Christians attend so called Christian churches, but very few Christian churches are actually truly in line with the teaching of Christ.

 

You may go - they were wrong, but they will say the same about you. Personally I think it is futile to argue which interpretation is true as I think both are flawed, but I think it is factual to say both the Bible and the Koran can be used to justify violence, and both have been used to justify peace - they are large complicated books and if you cherry pick from them you can make them say anything you like.

 

There are many fundamental differences between the Qur'an and The Bible not least that the Bible is a narrative and the Qur'an is a collection of verses to be memorised and recited, each only loosely (if at all) related to those near it and each that can be truly cherry picked in order justify a thing.

 

In addition each version of the Qur'an, and there are many, each different in some way one to another) is not assembled in chronological order, not even in the sequence that Muhammed claims to have been “given” them. When the various verses are put in chronological order more on the nature of the Qur'an and so Islam, emerges. A code that starts gently while there is immense opposition to Muhammed's intended ways but that gets increasingly nasty as his power increases and resistance to his aims falls away.

 

Who is to say which interpretation is "right" and which one "wrong" - self appointed interpreters, like you Spook.

 

Another good point and the answer is of course no.

 

The right way, that is the way that is associated with the teaching of Christ, is what saw the emergence of the “Anabaptists” , a name given to us by people who objected to our views on infant “christening”, in response to the ever more divergent teaching of the Roman Catholic church. A singularly un-Christian organisation.

 

Our reversion to Christianity, as opposed to simply following church Canon, resulted when a collection of men became so concerned that what was taking place within the RC church that they established a Canon that was based not on what was convenient for the running of an organisation. Instead it was based on the Gospels and saw the renaissance of true Christianity rather than the soci-political rubbish that the Roman Catholic church was built upon. Our “protestantism” required that the Gospels and indeed the whole Bible, should be considered in their entirety, and nor cherry picked and when this is done not only is consistency found but so also is a common theme, that thing which we call Christianity, the way to live in accordance with the teaching of Christ first, middle, and last.

 

What a shame that later churches emerged became established that while they rejected Rome they still put their organisation before the Christianity they espoused.

 

So who is to say what is right and wrong when it comes to interpreting what the Bible tells us?

 

The Bible itself. No further interpretation is needed, and cherry picking will always result in error because or what is then lost in context.

[Keith]

 

I'm dismissing as nonsense that it could be proved that it wasn't just a simple mistake. If you have proof that they were deliberately fired upon outside of the rules of engagement then let's see it. Of course, if a combatant states they saw someone on an ambulance with a weapon so they opened fire you then have to prove that they are lying. Good luck with that.

 

"One ambulance comes through with us, the rest turn back. There are loads of supplies when we get to Falluja – food, water, medicine - at the clinic and the mosque which have come in on the back roads. The relief effort for the people there has been enormous, but the hospital is in the US held part of town, cut off from the clinic by sniper fire. They can’t get any of the relief supplies in to the hospital nor the injured people out.

 

We load the ambulance with disinfectant, needles, bandages, food and water and set off, equipped this time with loudspeakers, pull up to a street corner and get out. The hospital is to the right, quite a way off; the marines are to the left. Four of us in blue paper smocks walk out, hands up, calling out that we’re a relief team, trying to deliver supplies to the hospital.

 

There’s no response and we walk slowly towards the hospital. We need the ambulance with us because there’s more stuff than we can carry, so we call out that we’re going to bring an ambulance with us, that we’ll walk and the ambulance will follow. The nose of the ambulance edges out into the street, shiny and new, brought in to replace the ones destroyed by sniper fire.

 

Shots rip down the street, two bangs and a zipping noise uncomfortably close. The ambulance springs back into the side road like it’s on a piece of elastic and we dart into the yard of the corner house, out through the side gate so we’re back beside the vehicle.

 

This time we walk away from the hospital towards the marines, just us and the loudspeaker, no ambulance, to try and talk to them properly. Slowly, slowly, we take steps, shouting that we’re unarmed, that we’re a relief team, that we’re trying to get supplies to the hospital.

 

Another two shots dissuade us. I’m furious. From behind the wall I inform them that their actions are in breach of the Geneva Conventions. “How would you feel if it was your sister in that hospital unable to get treated because some man with a gun wouldn’t let the medical supplies through.” David takes me away as I’m about to call down a plague of warts on their trigger fingers.

 

Because it’s the most urgent thing to do, we waste the rest of the precious daylight trying to find someone in authority that we can sort it out with. As darkness starts I’m still fuming and the hospital is still without disinfectant. We go into the house behind the clinic and the smell of death chokes me: the dried blood and the putrefying flesh evoking the memory of a few days earlier, sitting in the back of an ambulance with the rotting bodies and the flies."

 

 

Jo Wilding, Don't Shoot the Clowns: Taking a Circus to the Children of Iraq, Page 233

 

Not "proof" of course, but this was the second time in three days that an ambulance Jo had been in had come under fire from US Marines and the other ambulances had all been destroyed. Perhaps not "proof" as you would be prepared to accept it but 'on the balance of probability' it certainly looks like marines routinely attacked ambulances. And the command of the soldiers were not interested in investigating (or stopping) the practice. How many "mistakes" does it take before you see a pattern forming?

 

So if "we" are content to attack ambulances and hospitals, can we be that surprised when "they" attack buses and trains?

 

When looking for that passage, I found this one which sums it up better than I can, because she was there...

 

Page 232:

...and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday: 'I know what we are doing in Iraq is right'. Shooting unarmed men in their back outside their family home is right? Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?

 

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they have nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anaesthetic because the hospitals are occupied or under sniper fire and the city is under seige and aid isn't getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you're in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man's chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house.

 

It's a crime and it's a disgrace to us all.

 

And I know that people who hated Saddam Hussein now hate the Americans and the British who murdered their children so much more. I know without any doubt, that when you take away a persons reason for living, you give them a reason for dying. It is widely accepted that internment without trial and 'Bloody Sunday' were a fantastic recruitment sergeant for the IRA, so how much hatred have we created from our illegal and brutal endeavours in Iraq & Afghanistan?

[P.K.]

Not "proof" of course...

 

There it is. End of.

[Terse]

Enemies, allies or neutrals - it makes no difference. American troops will open fire on anything that moves (and most things that don't).

[The Evil One]

Leave him alone! He's one of mine!

[Keith]

There it is. End of.

 

Sadly, not "end of". The ambulances keep getting attacked and terrorists will keep targeting us. Not end of at all...

 

Enemies, allies or neutrals - it makes no difference. American troops will open fire on anything that moves (and most things that don't).

 

An old soldier from WW2 said that "when the Germans fired, we ducked. When we fired, the Germans ducked. When the Americans fired, EVERYONE ducked"

[P.K.]

There it is. End of.

 

Sadly, not "end of". The ambulances keep getting attacked and terrorists will keep targeting us. Not end of at all...

 

Don't be deliberately obtuse. I meant trying to prove deliberate intent to go outside rules of engagement is pretty much impossible. War is not nice you see...

 

 

Enemies, allies or neutrals - it makes no difference. American troops will open fire on anything that moves (and most things that don't).

 

You're not being very fair here. It's an awful lot more challenging to hit a moving target than a static one...

[La_Dolce_Vita]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/afghans-face-three-month-raf-waiting-list-201104053688/