The language of war: It's OK when we do it
I realized the other day, while watching our media's coverage of the war in Ukraine, that no one has accused Ukrainian forces of using their civilians as "human shields". Remember human shields?
All of the nations the U.S. has ever bombed used their citizens as human shields. It wasn't our fault that our bombs were killing thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians. It was the devious machinations of our enemies.
How dare they put their own people in harm's way, thus forcing us to blow up innocent civilians.
Ukrainians, on the other hand, wouldn't do that.
Hmmm. I found this claim by Russia in only a couple foreign news sources.
The American news media never reported it at all. I guess because the American people have heard this ridiculous claim so many times that we would probably accept the premise so we might actually believe it.
I've seen videos of Ukrainian forces battling Russian invaders in the suburbs of their cities. That obviously puts the nearby civilians in danger, and some Ukrainian civilians have probably died because of it. That means that Ukraine has been using human shields, and that is, according every American war, a war crime.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Iraqi military commanders Wednesday that using human shields against U.S. bombs would be punishable as a war crime.
...
"It is a practice that reveals contempt for the norms of humanity, the laws of armed conflict, and, I am advised, Islamic law, practice and belief," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "These are not tactics of war, they are crimes of war. Those who follow (Hussein's) orders to use human shields will pay a severe price for their actions."Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that the price would be a war crimes tribunal. Any deaths of "even those people who may volunteer for this purpose" could amount to "grave breaches of the Geneva conventions," he said.
It's crystal clear. According to the standards of American wars, the Ukrainians are the ones committing war crimes, by fighting invaders where civilians are living. The American media should be outraged at Ukraine right now, and demanding a military tribunal for the Ukraine president for his crime of using human shields. This is inexcusable!
The brave Russian Peacekeepers/Liberators are the victims here.
This is exactly how the U.S. media is reporting the war, amirite?
What every military should do is to put all of their soldiers in the open and away from the city, so that whichever nation controls the skies can slaughter them quickly and cleanly. Thus avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths.
Oh wait. I forgot the most important rule: It's only OK when we do it.
Here's a few more:
Torture = Rendition
Terrorist = Moderate Rebel
Dictatorship = Pro-Capitalist Democracy
Comments
they're all insane crooks/killers
crooks and killers go hand in hand. The idea: get more money and control. The means: whatever it takes.
Wanting our government or any government to do right is misguided. Once you realize the government is the mob (not necessarily *the* mob, just a mob) it seems silly to say "excuse me, Mr. Mob Boss, could you ask your enforcers to be nice?"
I assume all phrases of the "human shield" kind to be gibberish, intended to make people not notice that it's all a dispute between mobs.
Government is not a very good word, anymore, is it?
It doesn't imply consensus. Or consent. It doesn't specify whose will it represents. And human apes cannot resist the temptation of corruption, which seems to riddle all governments.
Linguistics and semantics are probably the keys that unlock enlightened thinking as language evolves. Here, we've broken down. Preserving an old constitution only serves the corrupt, because its archaic and degraded language are the infected cysts that allow the corrupt to hide from justice.
The people cannot understand the meanings and context of the words, anymore. It is written in a dead language. So they must rely on a panel of political appointees with lifetime terms and diminishing capacities to grope for the meaning for them. Without hope of evolution, such documents in government (and religion) have eroded the sovereignty of all new generations who are born into the long-established human-resource trap of the un-evolved dead-thinkers.
Dead-thinking is what is fueling our extinction event. It works as an embedded doomsday device to erase the genomes of sentient species everywhere that have (among the majority) become trapped in a spiritual/evolutionary dead end. Science in the hands of dead-enders speeds their sterilization.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Big difference.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki the u.s. targeted the civilian population.
In Dresden during world war II the u.s. and g.b targeted the civilian population.
In Iraq the coalition targeted the civilian population.
On and on and on.
Who are the war criminals?
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Is there the proverbial silver lining even though at a cost.
Would all of this moral grand standing prevent the US in any more violent imperialistic wars as there is absolutely no moral ground to stand on?
That’s what hasbara apologists for Israel always say about Gaza
Israel’s “mowing the grass” bombing operations in Gaza always have such high death tolls because “human shields”…
This tweet
sums up the hypocrisy of how we phrase things based upon whether or not we do or someone else does.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy