...At least 64 dead.

God dam the suicide bomber.

They never survive to suffer the vengence of earthly justice. They flee the jursidiction, their souls interloping within that great groan of expiring life that they have made their last will and testament. But their thuds are not the only throbbing bass beats in this Great American Requiem. For so too have our soldiers caused the mass evaporation of innocent life. Yet, we abjure the bombers and absolve our soldiers. Who claims the higher the moral ground?

The soldier who by definition, must stand to proclaim, "I kill, therefore I am", or the suicide bomber, who also, must fall to proclaim "I kill, therefore I am not."?

We are told that our soldiers are not "terrorists". In an Salon.com interview with "international terrorism consultant" Evan Kohlmann, "Terrorists are people"who set off bombs in marketplaces and deliberately kill innocent civilians for no good reason. Any suicide bombing is a terrorist act. It's not an insurgent act. There is no military objective in it. The vast majority of suicide bombings that take place in Iraq are either the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups. Al-Qaida are the terrorists." What distinguishes the killing of "innocents" by our troops from that of the "terrorists" is that it is that it is perceived by us as being done "intentionally" for no "good" reason.

Who are the true "innocents" in this war? At one extreme, all those not wearing military uniforms and/or bearing arms are innocent, hence all civillians, and "any widespread or systematic" attack" involving their murder is deemed a war crime.

At the other, no one is innocent, not even children, hence the "Mini Eichmanns" commentary of a Ward Churchill. Most would agree that wearing a military or para-military uniform and bearing an arm constitutes one as a legitimate target in a time of war. Thus military strikes and suicide bomb attacks against military installations, police stations, recruitment centers, training camps, checkpoints, and their personnel do not involve the murder of innocents, and are therefore not definitionally "terrorist" attacks. So too would most agree that attacks targetting children do involve the loss of innocent life, and the Beslan School Trajedy would be as pure a "terrorist" act as could be.

Where between the men with guns and the children with toys does innocence end? Eichmann was a bureaucrat who did not hurt a fly, who yet with his train schedules was as guilty as the SS guard prodding grandmothers into gas chambers. And so, direct enablers of the men with guns may also be guilty, and thus worthy targets. Our miltary strikes and their suicide bomb attacks against hostile governments, their infrastructure and personnel are deemed legitimate during a time of war. But with each step back from the men with guns, we near the children. Industrial slave workers who fill the artillery shells and weld the tanks constitute legitimate targets. Those who mine the iron ore and aluminum during a time of war are also culpable. To ask how guilty are the enablers of the enablers would be akin to asking when is a boy a man, an ill person to be left for dead. It can never with certainty be known, though a dead man certainly can. So, the suicide bomber's attack in a marketplace or a university quad is undoubtedly the killing of innocents. And the wholesale bombing of defenceless residential areas is also the killing of innocents upon a far grander scale: "terrorism" writ large, as in Fallujah or artillery salvoes into southern Baghdad. So both the suicide bomber and our soldiers share the ineluctable trajedy of killing innocents.

But does the suicide bomber share her intentionality with that of the soldier who also exterminates life? What principle differientiates the blasted Baghdad shopper from the burned babysitter of Fallujah? What makes one a victim and the other "collateral", not death, but "damage"? The Pentagon takes great pain to make the distinction, for how else to justify killing innocent people? It is argued that be it the 50,000 of Hiroshima or 5,000 of Fallujah, the much-deplored mass death arose as an unintended side effect to a military objective. Here lies the fundamental exculpation of our soldiers: they may kill all to kill the One, whereas the suicide bomber simply wished to kill all. Who is the more honest, and therefore the more honorable? Where lies the merit that because there is only a 50% chance of killing ten people to kill the enemy, I am innocent of intending their deaths versus the suicide bomber who kills with 100% certainty. Especially if I attack not once, but twice, or indeed, a hundred times. The heap of bodybags from suicide bombings in Iraq is but a molehill to the mountain of our soldiers. Yet by accepting this toll as mere collateral damage, perhaps we avoid the infamy of pure murder for our soldiers, but so too, must we dismiss the charge of mere murderer for the suicide bomber.

In further amelioration of our soldiers' guilt for the innocent dead, blame is affixed to the enemy, they who "hide" amongst the innocent, they who would shield themselves from our bullets, our white phospohorus, and cluster bombs with the bodies of babies. The definition of "war crimes" under the constituting Statute of Rome for the new International Criminal Oourt includes the crime of "utilizing the presence of a civillian to render ...forces immune from military attack." The presence of civillians does ideally ought to render the enemy immune from military attack. Yes, a man would be guilty of murder by placing a baby between himself and a charging bull. But our soldiers are not charging bulls, they are as equally compelled by the commands of their officers as by the edicts of their God. And so the collateral deaths of our soldiers and the victims of the suicide bomber merge and both share a common intention to murder their way for their own "good" reasons.

The final charge in our indictment of the suicide bomber is that she kills for no "good" reason, for "no military objective". Per pound of explosive, it is a horrifying reality that the suicide bomber who kills 40 innocent young people in a schoolyard, has a far greater effect upon the psyche of the enemy and his will to resist than a large scale air strike. And the impact is further magnified by a mass media that will replay without remorse the scenes of bloody carnage and the laments of mothers, ad nauseum, all in the name of selling toothpaste. If their suicide tapes can be believed, and surely one's impending death compells utter truthfulness, their stated objective is the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. As documented by Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago,
Dying To Win, suicide campaigns are mostly successful, and modern Western democracies are specially vulnerable.

This is not a justification or glorification of the suicide bomber, nor intended as an indictment of our troops as mere murderers. They are both nothing more nor less than simple soldiers, who kill on command. But in the suicide bomber we must recognize one aspect of soldiery that renders them the superior fighter: self-sacrifice. They kill, and they are not. Here's lies the chilling augury of our own defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan: they will kill and die rather than live with us, whereas we would simply kill and retreat rather than live with them.

The true blame lies with their masters, be they in Tehran or Washington, DC., or for Afghanistan in Ottawa.

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: Neocynic ]

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: Neocynic ]

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Yet, we abjure the bombers and absolve our soldiers. Who claims the higher the moral ground?

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With so much evidence destroyed, with the chaos of conflict, we would be gullible if we were not to believe in the possibility of the soldier and bomber (or planted device) being one and the same.

Remember the case of NATO troops found in Arab garb arrested by local police but quickly snatched by the military that "just happened by"?

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: bliter ]

Why blow ordinary Iraqis going about their daily business?

Twin bombs struck two markets in central Baghdad

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One hit the Ghazil pet market ... The second hit minutes later and barely two miles away at the New Baghdad pet market. Both markets are on the east side of the Tigris River, and both are in mainly Shiite areas. But they are popular with both Shiites and Sunnis.

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I have a hard time seeing anything postive coming from these deaths. The insurgents at least in this case, are simply killing random people, creating fear, anger and division among Iraqis.

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It's about groups with a little bit of power that want more.

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You mean like neocons?

Shouldn't the United States claim responsibility? Have you noticed yet that wherever Americans go lots of people die? Do you think that has anything to do with "groups with a little bit of power that want more"?

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

Resistance fighters are driven by love and sacrifice for their land and their people. Only the dimwit are hoodwinked to believe they are behind the bombings.

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: adam stratton ]

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The US has ignited this. No one is disputing that. But you can't absolve the groups sending suicide bombers, and in this case apparently mentally handicapped suicide bombers, into crowded markets of all responsibility.

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No motives for Iraqis to kill Iraqis?

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You were asking about claiming responsibility.

In the past couple of days it's been reported that over a million Iraqis have been killed since 2003, when the U.S. initiated its illegal war against Iraq.

We could have a useful discussion re: responsibility around that.

This is being discussed elsewhere, but I think it's very useful here and could give a few clues:

Friends of Death Squads

ETA

(YouTube - 1st post)

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: bliter ]

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Do the people who ordered these bombings get no blame? -CLD

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Groups within Iraq have taken the opportunity the US has given them to kill Iraqi civilians and police officers, among others, in an attempt to consolidate power in their own names.

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I thought those who hold the power are the USA and its puppet regime in Iraq.

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It is so much easier to do the US = evil thing. The US is responsible for many of those 1 million deaths. But the US is not responsible for all the deaths

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Yes they are.

If you set a fire in a crowded theater, a panic ensued and people were killed during the stampede out, you are responsible for all those deaths. Because panic would not have ensued. there would have been no stampede for the doors, and no one would have gotten trampled if you didn't start the fire. It is all your fault.

Everything that has happened in Iraq since 2003 stems directly from the invasion and the occupation.

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Yes they are.

If you set a fire in a crowded theater, a panic ensued and people were killed during the stampede out, you are responsible for all those deaths. Because panic would not have ensued. there would have been no stampede for the doors, and no one would have gotten trampled if you didn't start the fire. It is all your fault.

Everything that has happened in Iraq since 2003 stems directly from the invasion and the occupation.

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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So by your example, and if I understand your logic, the following statement has truth to it.

The government of Afghanistan allowed terrorist groups to train in their country and then allow them to conduct attacks from their country, therefore the Taliban are responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan from the United States of America.

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The government of Afghanistan allowed terrorist groups to train in their country and then allow them to conduct attacks from their country, therefore the Taliban are responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan from the United States of America. webgear

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Webgear,

When you start a story, it is best to start from the beginning, not from the middle or second last paragraph.

Here it is:

The United States (supposedly a democratic country, leader of the free world), well knowing that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and well knowing that Saudi citizens (women and men) are oppressed, supports the dictatorship, trains and equips its oppression apparutus for its and the dictators' interests, get into a deal with the dictatorship (Saudis were never consulted) and pitch its tents in Saudi Arabia to guard what by now has become de facto its properties (oil)..

Take it from here Web.

[ 01 February 2008: Message edited by: adam stratton ]

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So by your example, and if I understand your logic, the following statement has truth to it.

The government of Afghanistan allowed terrorist groups to train in their country and then allow them to conduct attacks from their country, therefore the Taliban are responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan from the United States of America.

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had Down syndrome and ... the explosives were detonated by remote control

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[ 02 February 2008: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

-"See, the United States has a job to do to bring order and security. We will not leave until Iraqis become capable of doing it themselves... Psstt! keep pumping the oil, filling American corporations' pockets".

- "Mmm! Things have become a bit calm! Does this mean we are to leave?"

- "No. Our agents are in the field hatching something soon. We are taking care of business.."

[ 02 February 2008: Message edited by: adam stratton ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

However, there would have been no Osama bin Laden nor Al Qaeda nor 9-11 if the United States didn't create them for the purpose of killing school teachers and inflicting religious persecution on Afghanis while carrying out attacks on Soviet troops who were in Afghanistan, so they said, to wipe out terrorism, and deliver progress.

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Your argument is flawed.

If the USSR had not invaded or help overthrow the Government of Afghanistan several times 1970s then the Americans would never have been interested in Afghanistan.

Or perhaps if Darius the Great had not it expanded the Achaemenid Empire to its peak then Afghanistan would not be in the state it is now.

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Your argument is flawed.

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Actually it is not. I think it was Francis of Assisi who said "remove the cause and you remove the effect".

The effect of British colonization, everywhere, was deep ethnic division and borders designed to exacerbate such divisions. The British learned, first in Ireland, that to rule one must divide and nothing divides like ethnic hatred. The lesson has been used to incredible effect by the US in Iraq.

Why is it in Afghanistan the "enemy" are all Pashtun? An ethnic enemy. It is British colonial racism at its finest.

But then we had the Russians stepping into the same trap that cost the British their empire. And so it cost the Russians theirs. However, even so, the US was not required to fund radical Islamic movements in the region to undermine the Soviets. They were not required to fund "terrorist" training camps in Afghanistan and in the United States, and they were not required to "export radical Islamic extremists" to Kosovo and around the world when it suited their narrow political agenda.

These were all choices made without thought of consequence.

We reap what we sow and we have only begun to reap what the US has sewn over the last century. The rest of the world owes the West and the US, in particular, not a fucking thing. In fact, the US owes a great debt to the rest of the planet.

Empires rise and fall and the fall of the US empire will be particularly nasty, Especially for Americans. They stand ready to reap the harvest they have sewn.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Why is it in Afghanistan the "enemy" are all Pashtun? An ethnic enemy. It is British colonial racism at its finest.

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The enemy are not all Pashtun, the Pashtun confederation is divide on many levels of support. President Karzai is a Pashtun and he is an American ally however that is a discussion of another thread.

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These were all choices made without thought of consequence.

We reap what we sow and we have only begun to reap what the US has sewn over the last century. The rest of the world owes the West and the US, in particular, not a fucking thing. In fact, the US owes a great debt to the rest of the planet.

Empires rise and fall and the fall of the US empire will be particularly nasty, Especially for Americans. They stand ready to reap the harvest they have sewn.

The sad part is, they are so poorly educated and ignorant of the world and their part in it, they will never, ever appreciate they are the engineers of their own misfortune.

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I agree, thier downfall will be nasty and harmfull to most of the world.

[ 02 February 2008: Message edited by: Webgear ]

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I'm not saying yr wrong, it just that yr only half right.

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