Posted on 03/04/2016 10:51:27 AM PST by GIdget2004
Leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said Friday he wouldn't order the U.S. military to break international laws, addressing criticism from military and legal experts that his policies regarding torture and killing the family members of terrorists would violate the Geneva Convention.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The Geneva Conventions don't prohibit civilian casualties, but they do say you can't target them exclusively in an attack. What Trump is doing would be a war crime, against the Geneva Convention, and immoral (if you believe specifically targeting women and children is wrong).
Trump hasn’t ordered a soul shot.
How about looking for a clarification on something that could mean a number of things before getting your hair on fire that it’s the worst.
It would be excellent anti terrorism strategy to follow families of Islamoterrorists and “take them out” IF AND WHEN VERIFIED TO BE TERRORISM MENACES. Israel does it too.
That's a convenient fiction maintained to avoid the obvious legal issues. Does anybody think the bomb attacks on say Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima weren't intended to kill innocent people? Is there any legal justification for shooting some security guard at a house in Pakistan other than the desire to kill the guy who hired him? How is launching a Hellfire missile into a farmhouse in Pakistan not an intentional effort to kill everyone inside, including people other than the desired target?
The reality is that we, as a society, sometimes decide that killing people in pursuit of our objectives is acceptable. And some of those people are innocent by any test. We should do such things as rarely as possible, for the obvious moral reasons, and because we don't like it when people on the other side do similar things to us.
All 196 countries are part of the Fourth Geneva Convention, so your logic only works if you recognize ISIS as a state, which we do not.
That’s my take as well. I think it perhaps was not articulated clearly by Mr. Trump, but I believe he meant to express that under his leadership, our military would no longer have its hands tied with regulations and Rules of Engagement which prevent us from aggressively going after terrorists on the battlefield and which work against the safety of our personnel in the field.
It’s declared itself a state. Could we do worse than to believe it?
Clarification? With Trump? Yeah, sure. Even with his ADD/stream of consciousness manner of speaking, he should know that US Marines and Airmen are not going to murder families. Yes, Mr. Trump, they WILL refuse you.
Israel does it too.
No, they don't.
It would be excellent to push Mr. Trump to be clear on this, because of the danger of meaning something that we all know is wrong. Not so excellent to get our hair on fire before he does.
And in any case to believe he wouldn’t get mongo pushback from military advisors if he adopted the worst take, is not to be realistic.
Yes they do, they identify and verify known public enemies by many means and a sniper will often get them.
Yes, recognizing a terrorist state gives it legitimacy, and we have not recognized ISIS as a sovereign country. The civilians in those countries, including the men, women, and children who are related to ISIS terrorists, are covered under the Geneva convention as nationals of Syria or Iraq.
You don't get to bomb or machine gun a house full of civilians simply because they're related to an ISIS thug.
Public Enemies are not civilians! What is wrong with you people?
You are redefining what he said to suit your point of view. Our government regularly uses the argument that a legitimate "target" was present even if the net effect of the attack was to kill a large number of noncombatants. There are plenty of instances where a Hellfire missile kills the "target" along with women, children, and the neighbors. And even when the "target" turns out to be the wrong guy, or as we saw recently, a hospital, the legal position remains.
By the current legal position and operational rules of our government, "taking out" the family of a terrorist is fine, as long as they all die together in one explosion. Feigning outrage when a candidate proposes doing what has already been the norm for the current and previous President is hypocritical, unless of course you have been protesting the use of aerial attacks since they started.
There is such a thing as a legitimate enemy. If we shy away from believing that an enemy has formed itself because it might “give the enemy legitimacy” then we really have taken leave of our senses.
Sometimes war can’t be Marquis of Queensbury after all.
What’s wrong with YOU?
Drone operators and fighter bomber crews do it all the time. I doubt they like it, but war results in the death of innocent people, and those Airmen, like those before them, have to carry that burden.
Are you intentionally misunderstanding the issues here, or do you really not understand the difference between a combatant and a non-combatant?
Read the treaty, and tell me in what universe a person could be considered a combatant strictly by being related to a terrorist? Do you include children as well?
I agree. I know that Trump speaks in an impromptu style and that sometimes serves him well but in this case he expressed himself in probably the most counterproductive way.
He needs to spend some time with Greta or other good news source and take a little heat for his remarks and clarify them.
I have former military in my family and I could almost feel them bristle when Trump made those remarks, as I’m sure many current and former military did.
Trump needs to tone down his “strongman” routine a bit focus on bringing more concrete policy issues to the table. By now he should have memorized and can elaborate on all of his position papers posted on his website and should be improving his familiarity with other topics.
Hillary in the general will be armed with facts and figures and he could end up looking poorly prepared in a debate setting.
Uh, it’s your man who is constantly using silly, frivolous law suits whenever he feels his ego being bruised. I’m not sure what the hell you’re yelling about.
No, they don't. There is a difference between intetionally targeting civilians and collateral damage, and the fact that the Trump crowd here either doesn't understand that difference, or pretends not to understand it, really makes the whole thing sicker.
If you do not understand the difference between killing people specifically because of who they're related to, and civilians caught in the middle of fire on a combantant, you're an ignoramus and an immoral goon.
The bible sometimes did.
To declare war on ISIS with ISIS claiming to be a state and yet not being a Geneva signatory should mean very bad juju for ISIS. Geneva was supposed to be a shield for voluntary participants. Not an all excuser for the literal whole world no matter what transpires.
For humanitarian reasons we could CHOOSE to try to avoid the “women and children” problem but face it, some of these kids are sent out with weapons at absurdly young ages.
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