“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”
— Drumpf on Fox and Friends on Dec. 2, 2015.
In his first military action, Twittler managed to both keep his promise to violate the Geneva Convention and to screw up bigly. According to a senior military source in contact with NBC, “almost everything went wrong.”
Once again, our new president was firing from the hip, shooting without thinking first. Only this time, they were real guns, and at least two Americans were killed, one sailor and one 8-year old child. William Owens will be mourned and honored, as he should be. However, as the daughter of a American-borne, radicalized jihadist, there may be few in this country that mourn the death of Nawar al-Awlaki. I hope that we, with all of our power, remember that no child chooses the circumstances of his or her birth.
Article 51.2 of the Geneva Convention states: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.” The article does not say that collateral deaths are a war crime. It says that you can’t target civilians. Reasonable precautions have to be taken, and a small, even important target cannot justify, purposeful slaughter of non-combatants.
The Founding Fathers were against having a standing army, in the belief that its existence encourages its use. I think we no longer have the luxury of not having one, but if we are going to follow the intent of the Framers, as many suggest we do, we’d be far more in tune with their vision by being substantially less bellicose. And until the burden currently borne by military families is spread evenly among the population, the desire to flex our muscle should be tempered with much greater empathy and foresight than have been shown in the last 16 years
I confess without shame that I am tired & sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies […] It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrills & groans of the wounded & lacerated (friend or foe) that cry aloud for more blood & more vengeance, more desolation & so help me God as a man & soldier I will not strike a foe who stands unarmed & submissive before me but will say ‘Go sin no more.’
–William Tecumseh Sherman
The Meta-Bug 
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