Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Rob Stowell,
My real kitchen's more Withnail and I.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to DexterX,
God, Stephen Hawking, contra Einstein, has assured us, does not play Tetris, but something involving dice and throwing them where they cannot be seen.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Have you read Gitta Sereny’s Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth? Speer received a 20-year sentence. Her conclusion is that if he had revealed at Nuremburg what he eventually revealed to her, by the standards that others were condemned to death, he would have been hanged too. Evidence that has emerged suggests more knowing complicity than some had assumed, and yet his stance remains, I think, somewhat ambiguous as opposed to being purely duplicitous.
It’s easy to make sweeping moral judgments for (eg. Boris Johnson) or against (eg. “Bomber”) the killing of ObL with the appearance of absolute certainty as if those accused were fully rational agents, and yet we all lie to ourselves and evil works by clouding and corrupting. I can’t find any means to describe ObL as anything but evil, but that doesn’t mean then that any action against him was purely one or the other – if it was a good act, then he was evil and therefore killing him was a purely good act, or if killing him was a bad act, then he must have been good, or at least not so bad and America is therefore definitely bad… those sort of arguments baffle me and seem self-deluding. The only relatively clear arguments I can see are those that are based on tactical and strategic considerations and those are confused enough.
Back to the Nazis, the case of Speer, as I interpret it, leads me to a great deal of disquiet over the death penalty under any circumstances, which is very strange considering that the sheer enormity of Nazi crimes and the collective responsibility of all involved (which Speer acknowledged) would initially lead one to assume that there could be no ambiguity.
I’m struck by two lines from a Neil Jordan film about cycles of revenge in Ireland, Angel :
Mr Bloom, a policeman: “‘Vengeance is mine’ – who said that?”
Danny, a revenge killer: “The Lord.”There’s the basis of my uncertainty over any killing on moral grounds, even under judicial authority… and I’m not a Christian.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to chris,
My mind, I think, resembles Gormenghast.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Absolutely. That's more or less what happened when an F-117 was downed in the Bosnian wars. Ironically, the principles of stealth originated with a Soviet mathematician.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Ah, thank you.
just to cloud matters
Fog of war and all that.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to chris,
Chiding intended in good humour of course...
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to chris,
<eng lit affiliation>Please do not besmirch the memory of Byron by associating Romanticism with such detachment! :) </eng lit affiliation>
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Simon Grigg,
In the end... Stalin wanted show trials, Churchill would have been happy with summary execution, and this was after victory.
Assassination during wartime has its precedents, such as that of Reinhard Heydrich and Isoroku Yamamoto. Both could be justified for tactical or strategic reasons - ie. they were active and effective and their deaths served military goals. In the case of the former, I wouldn't gloat, but I wouldn't argue that he didn't deserve it.
We seem to have taken a step back since Nuremburg, but on the other hand, the ICC in the Hague is now a permanent institution.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Roger,
Somehow I just can’t imagine this scenario appearing outside of a Monty Python sketch:
Scene: Osama bin Laden’s compound. In walks Inspector Harry “Snapper” Organs of the Yard, accompanied by a troupe of bobbies.
Organs: You’re nicked, me old fruit.
bin Laden: It’s a fair cop, but I blame society.
Organs: Excuse me while I call a taxi.
That would have been ideal, and certainly it is easy, because there is so much justification, to argue that the US sent in a hit squad, but sometimes “neutralisation” is not just a euphemism. ObL was the active head of an organisation engaged in prolonged and continuing warfare by irregular/asymmetric means against the USA. From a the perspective of a nation seeing itself to be at war, it was imperative that he be stopped.
During WWII, capturing Hitler would have been an ideal outcome, but far less practical in reality than assassination if the opportunity had presented itself, and likewise, the SEALs may have had orders to capture, but one helicopter was downed already, reducing space. The details are still uncertain (we certainly don’t have the full picture), the mission to put a stop to his activities may have included capture or killing up to that point, but killing could by circumstance have been the only remaining means to that end.
A missile strike on the compound from drones was considered, which would have been much easier and have exposed no US personnel, or highly secret stealth helicopters to risk.* The decision to send personnel in is significant. It may have been to ensure that ObL was dead, but the helicopters had significant load capacity and it is being said that the US wants access to his wives, that would perhaps have been taken if a helicopter had not been downed, and by implication, that might mean ObL himself.
I am not making a moral or legal assessment, but a tactical one. I think that it’s very naive to think that capture for future trial was going to be easy under the circumstances if neutralisation was the absolute goal.
*The wreckage left behind is much discussed on various aerospace forums. It is certainly not of an acknowledged production model but of a stealth variety, probably a modified Blackhawk. One of the paradoxes of such classified equipment is that on the one hand it offers an advantage, but on the other, if one is shot down, the wreckage can be analysed by an enemy, so there is often reluctance to deploy the very best, gee-whizz hardware.