The Confederate flag

[Thundercrack85]

Even when they surrendered or be captured?
Considering that some of them are non-combatants (civilians including women and children), got tricked or coerced into joining or even redeemable, I would say wholesale and indiscriminate killing is pretty much evil ( I wouldn't call them genocide, though close enough ) and/or insane.


Sorry for the thread drift.

I do wonder how this actually works in the field. I mean, what does one do with a bunch of captured, convicted ISIS members? Keep them locked up forever?

At least with the Nazis, including the ones who personally murdered people just went home and lived out ordinary lives. But I don't know what you can do with ISIS members.

 

[Mechanix]

I do wonder how this actually works in the field. I mean, what does one do with a bunch of captured, convicted ISIS members? Keep them locked up forever?

At least with the Nazis, including the ones who personally murdered people just went home and lived out ordinary lives. But I don't know what you can do with ISIS members.

Ludovico Technique?

 

[SerialPeacemake]

I do wonder how this actually works in the field. I mean, what does one do with a bunch of captured, convicted ISIS members? Keep them locked up forever?

At least with the Nazis, including the ones who personally murdered people just went home and lived out ordinary lives. But I don't know what you can do with ISIS members.

The same thing you do with any prisoner of war I suppose.Of course if that person have done war crimes then he/she should be put to trial.Just like the Nazis ,not all of their member are war criminals or even bona fide true believers .

 

[Thundercrack85]

The same thing you do with any prisoner of war I suppose.Of course if that person have done war crimes then he/she should be put to trial.Just like the Nazis ,not all of their member are war criminals or even bona fide true believers .

We defeated Germany. We literally destroyed and rebuilt the country. We rewrote their laws, and fundamentally altered their society. That's not going to happen in Iraq. We don't have the stomach for that anymore.

These people aren't even prisoners of war. They're stateless criminals. They don't obey any rules of war.

So if you don't have the stomach to kill them, and we're not going to try thousands of fanatics. I guess it's just catch and release. So, I hope you're ready to wage this war forever.

 

[Smashlilman]

The Nazi flag only represents about 13 years in German history though. The Southern cross has been a symbol of the South for... however many damn years it been since the war started.

Not true. The Swastika in the Nazi flag was an ancient Indo-European good luck symbol that dates back to the early Europeans. Which is why the Nazi's adopted it.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Not true. The Swastika was an ancient Indo-European good luck symbol that dates back to the early Europeans.

I don't think you understand what I mean. The Swastika has been around forever, but historically, it's not a symbol associated with Germany. Before the 20th century you didn't look at a Swastika and think Germany. Eagles, and crosses would be the go-to German symbols.

 

[SerialPeacemake]

I guess this drift won't go away ,might just as well jump in then.

These people aren't even prisoners of war. They're stateless criminals. They don't obey any rules of war

Most of them aren't stateless(unless everyone followed Australia's move).They can be returned to their country of origin ( provided that is an option ) and they can be held to the law there.Most of them are breaking the respective country's law by fighting for ISIS.

If they're captured in the battlefield, yes then they're are prisoners of war.ISIS may not follow rules of war , but that doesn't mean your country shouldn't.Of course that is if your country went to war with them, that is

So if you don't have the stomach to kill them

It isn't about having the stomach, it is about doing the right thing .I have no problem with killing of combatants in battle, we're talking when they're defeated.

and we're not going to try thousands of fanatics. I guess it's just catch and release. So, I hope you're ready to wage this war forever.

If they did some sort of crimes or were violating some laws, then yes they MUST held accountable by the law ( of their respective country or a war tribunal).As I said , most of these people are citizen of other countries in which joining ISIS is considered a crime, their court can sort them out.

 

[Dr. Evil]

I do wonder how this actually works in the field. I mean, what does one do with a bunch of captured, convicted ISIS members? Keep them locked up forever?

At least with the Nazis, including the ones who personally murdered people just went home and lived out ordinary lives. But I don't know what you can do with ISIS members.

That is true if you consider Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo or Bariloche, Argentina as "home."

 

[Thundercrack85]

Stateless in the sense that they don't fight for a recognized state. They're not POWs. They're criminals. I don't know how you expect that to work. Let's say you capture 100 ISIS fighters who are, at least officially citizens of Syria. Are you going to give them to Assad? He's going to murder them. Well, okay, problem solved.

But you're not going to do that because you're against summary executions. So then what? No one else wants them. Force Iraq to take them? They'll be out of jail by next week (the same day if they have money to bribe the guards), and then they're back to beheading and crucifying people.

This is why we're just bombing these people.

This isn't an army. It's a band of murderers.

 

[SerialPeacemake]

Stateless in the sense that they don't fight for a recognized state. They're not POWs. They're criminals.

Then the solution is even simpler ,charge them as criminals( or return them to the nation of origins where the court actions will took place)

I don't know how you expect that to work. Let's say you capture 100 ISIS fighters who are, at least officially citizens of Syria.Are you going to give them to Assad? He's going to murder them. Well, okay, problem solved.

If we're going by the POW route, then we could surrender them to Assad's regime( which they'll probably be summarily executed without trial, quite an unsavoury thought) OR wait for the Syrian conflict to resolve itself then deal with the victor .

you're against summary executions.

Yes, because it is EVIL

So then what? No one else wants them. Force Iraq to take them?

Technically , it would extremely likely be the Iraqis that captured them considering that they(Iraq) is one of the only two countries engaging them in a ground war.

They'll be out of jail by next week (the same day if they have money to bribe the guards), and they're back to beheading and crucifying people.

A more likely outcome would be that they'll be tortured or even die in Iraqi prisons.

This is why we're just bombing these people.

No, you're bombing them because your country is unwilling to commit a ground war.The Iraq experience (maybe even Afghanistan ) may have contributed to this.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

UT-Austin Removes Statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis

A statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, recently the target of vandalism and criticism that it is a symbol and celebration of racism, has been removed from the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Dallas Morning News, University President Greg Fenves said it would be moved from its place near the university clock tower to the Briscoe Center for American History.

“While every historical figure leaves a mixed legacy, I believe Jefferson Davis is in a separate category, and that it is not in the university’s best interest to continue commemorating him on our main mall,” Fenves said in a letter to students and faculty.

Last week, a judge ruled against the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who had sued to stop the university from removing the statue, the AP reports. But the Sons have vowed to keep fighting.

“What has happened was a cultural atrocity—this is a discretion [sic.] of art,” the Sons’ lawyer, Kirk Lyons, told the Morning News, going on to compare the statue’s removal to Pearl Harbor.

“Hiroshima is coming,” Lyons said. “Greg Fenves will rue the day.”

There are no plans to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, the Wall Street Journal reports.

http://gawker.com/ut-austin-removes-statue-of-confederate-president-jeffe-1727566865

Good riddance

 

[Victarion]

Respectfully, this (the statue thing) reminds me of when those fanatics wanted to burn Harry Potter books (or decided that rock was the devil's music..etc). Except in this case, you have someone that can't accept that our country had a rough, bloody history. Removing it won't change the past, and perhaps the idea of changing the present is too daunting, upsetting or uncomfortable a notion.

 

[Thundercrack85]

What exactly are we honoring Jefferson Davis for though? Treason?

At least with Lee you can respect his military accomplishments, or his post-war reconciliatory attitude.

But Jefferson Davis?

 

[Smashlilman]

Respectfully, this (the statue thing) reminds me of when those fanatics wanted to burn Harry Potter books (or decided that rock was the devil's music..etc). Except in this case, you have someone that can't accept that our country had a rough, bloody history. Removing it won't change the past, and perhaps the idea of changing the present is too daunting, upsetting or uncomfortable a notion.

The only difference is that Jefferson Davis was a real person that fought to enslave people and It just so happened that EVERY Generation of the people(African Americans) that he wanted to enslave wanted that statue to be removed ever since the period of time it was erected. It's not like people just woke up yesterday and start saying it needs to come down. The only difference now is that this generation actually has the power to get it removed.

As a mere historical fact, we have seen that African servitude among us ―confessedly the mildest and most humane of all institutions to which the name “slavery” has ever been applied―existed in all the original states, and that it was recognized and protected in the fourth article of the Constitution.

They see that the slaves in their present condition in the South are comfortable and happy; they see them advancing in intelligence; they see the kindest relations existing between them and their masters; they see them provided for in age and sickness, in infancy and in disability; they see them in useful employment, restrained from the vicious indulgences to which their inferior nature inclines them; they see our penitentiaries never filled, and our poor-houses usually empty. let them turn to the other hand, and they see the same race in a state of freedom in the North; but instead of the comfort and kindness they receive at the South, instead of being happy and useful, they are, with few exceptions, miserable, degraded, filling the penitentiaries and poor-houses, objects of scorn, excluded in some places from the schools, and deprived of many other privileges and benefits which attach to the white men among whom they live. And yet, they insist that elsewhere an institution which has proved beneficial to this race shall be abolished, that it may be substituted by a state of things which is fraught with so many evils to the race which they claim to be the object of the solicitude! Do they find in the history of St. Domingo, and in the present condition of Jamaica, under the recent experiments which have been made upon the institution of slavery in the liberation of the blacks, before God, in his wisdom designed it should be done―do they there find anything to stimulate them to further exertions in the cause of abolition? Or should they not find there satisfactory evidence that their past course was founded in error?

This is no different that the former Soviet break away states removing Communist propaganda from there city streets after the fall of the soviet union.

 

[Marvolo]

Ive seen so many trucks flying Confederate flags in my area that you can't turn any direction without seeing the thing. Most of these people are flying an american flag beside the Confederate flag. The US was nearly destroyed because of the Confederate rebellion, but that fact seems to be lost on these idiots.

Oh and have yall heard that some Kentucky fairs and flea markets are going to stop allowing vendors to sell the Confederate flag? NPR radio interviewed a vendor about it and the vendor said some people had come up to him wanting the flag and told him they never wanted to fly the flag until the government told them not to.

And I cant tell you the number of people that have said to me "That flag has nothing to do with racism". I actually had one person argue that the civil war wasnt fought because of slavery. The amount of of historical ignorance Ive encountered since the Charleston shooting has been overwhelming and depressing.

 

[regwec]

I have to say, I don't approve of attempting to extinguish evidence of the inconvenient aspects of our past. The thicker end of that wedge is the destruction of ancient archaeological sites for being "un-Islamic".

 

[Two-Face=Badass]

Do statues and flags really constitute evidence? I fail to see how removing the Nazi flag from Germany somehow removed evidence, when they better than most countries have confronted it.

 

[regwec]

Of course they are "evidence". Your question is so bizarre that it is difficult to answer more fully than that, but consider this: if you wanted to collect "evidence" to prove that America had a racially divided past, it would be remiss of you to ignore the monuments and icons that stared you in the face.

And of course the removal of Nazi iconography in Germany was removal of evidence of the Third Reich. The question is whether that was a bad thing- in the circumstances, I would say not, because Germany was trying desperately to avoid any political continuity.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

To me, flying the Confederate flag over the south makes about as much sense as flying the rising sun over Pearl Harbor. They're both symbols of an enemy that was defeated in war. And while we've reconciled over the years with Germany, Japan, and the American South, we don't fly the rising sun or the swastika. That would be considered highly offensive.

That's why I don't "get it." Racist connotations aside, it also represents treason, a failed revolution, a separatist movement that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. Why would Americans embrace that?

 

[regwec]

I suppose because the defeated enemy were Americans themselves, as are their descendants. Civil wars inevitably produce outcomes that are different and differently complex to wars fought between nations.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Burn all the damn rebel flags as far as I'm concerned

 

[hippie_hunter]

To me, flying the Confederate flag over the south makes about as much sense as flying the rising sun over Pearl Harbor. They're both symbols of an enemy that was defeated in war. And while we've reconciled over the years with Germany, Japan, and the American South, we don't fly the rising sun or the swastika. That would be considered highly offensive.

That's why I don't "get it." Racist connotations aside, it also represents treason, a failed revolution, a separatist movement that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. Why would Americans embrace that?

There's a very big difference between the Confederate flag in the South and the Rising Sun over Pearl Harbor. While the South's reasons for fighting the Civil War were abhorrent, they were still primarily defending their homeland from Northern invaders who were coming in to change their way of life. The Japanese on the other hand, committed a dirty sneak attack.

VERY BIG DIFFERENCE. And this is coming from someone who sees the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism and needs to come down from official government buildings. You have to keep in mind that many in the South view the Civil War as the War Against Northern Aggression, which is somewhat fair to a degree. And to the Southerners who fought in the Civil War, they weren't committing treason. To them, the North were the ones who violated the compact created when ratifying the Constitution by electing Lincoln, by refusing to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act, by successfully containing (and dooming) slavery, the abolition movement being dominated by radicals like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, etc.

Also, the Rising Sun flag is still being used in Japan to this day. Even in official capacities like being the flag of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. While many see it as a symbol of brutal Japanese imperialism, many in Japan (ignorantly) don't see it that way. Just like how in America that many (ignorantly) don't see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism.

 

[Wylie Times]

There's a very big difference between the Confederate flag in the South and the Rising Sun over Pearl Harbor. While the South's reasons for fighting the Civil War were abhorrent, they were still primarily defending their homeland from Northern invaders who were coming in to change their way of life. The Japanese on the other hand, committed a dirty sneak attack.

VERY BIG DIFFERENCE. And this is coming from someone who sees the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism and needs to come down from official government buildings. You have to keep in mind that many in the South view the Civil War as the War Against Northern Aggression, which is somewhat fair to a degree. And to the Southerners who fought in the Civil War, they weren't committing treason. To them, the North were the ones who violated the compact created when ratifying the Constitution by electing Lincoln, by refusing to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act, by successfully containing (and dooming) slavery, the abolition movement being dominated by radicals like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, etc.

Also, the Rising Sun flag is still being used in Japan to this day. Even in official capacities like being the flag of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. While many see it as a symbol of brutal Japanese imperialism, many in Japan (ignorantly) don't see it that way. Just like how in America that many (ignorantly) don't see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism.

Or some would say the North invaded the South to in order to free people that had been enslaved.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

There's a very big difference between the Confederate flag in the South and the Rising Sun over Pearl Harbor. While the South's reasons for fighting the Civil War were abhorrent, they were still primarily defending their homeland from Northern invaders who were coming in to change their way of life. The Japanese on the other hand, committed a dirty sneak attack.

Which is how the Japanese felt about US and European influence in the Pacific. Yes, they exploited the resources and peoples they conquered, but they also believed that an Asian nation--okay, Japan--should hold influence over that region, not what they viewed as White imperialists from the US and Europe.

Every nation who goes to war thinks they're on the side of right.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Or some would say the North invaded the South to in order to free people that had been enslaved.

Except the North totally did not do that. At all.