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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| N R Scott wrote: | | The Gentiles were the people living naturally without the written law, the Gentium. The Uncivilised. |
And the Gentlemen Farmers.
Arr, git orf moi BRexit vote.
But give me the farming subsidies first.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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There has been a lot of finger pointing at who is to blame Ronald Fiddler AKA Abu Zakariya al-Britani, AKA Jamal Malik al-Harith. ended up in a war zone again, the second time after receiving a very large unspecified sum in cash from HMG ..........
As he clearly wasn't backpacking on the second occasion....and if we work on the basis of same cause same effect... it now looks like folks might have been taken in......
According to the U.S. government's official count of Guantánamo recidivism
653 detainees have been released.
Of that group, 117 it is confirmed have returned to the fight... and another 79 are under suspicion......
Gauntánamo might be a recruiting agent for new terrorists ....but it appears to have actually held quite a few of their best old terrorists.......until that is they were released back onto the battlefield .......
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Recidivism is an insoluble problem faced by everyone. Since it is well established that convicted criminals are likely to commit further crimes, what do you do? Keep everybody locked up for ever? Even if you aren't a liberal, this is not a paying proposition. You just have to do your best and accept when it turns out not to be for the best. As a British government trustie so cynically put it, "Well, we were quite right, weren't we? He posed no risk to British people."
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | what do you do? Keep everybody locked up for ever? |
Actually you exchange, you have something of value. It makes no sense to allow them back and get compo, when you could free your own.....
Isnt that what the ancients did?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Both you and President Trump are forgetting an important Rule of War. This is best summed up by the German general remarking about the Allied troops bottled up in the Anzio beachhead in 1944, "It's the biggest POW camp in Europe and they're paying for it themselves."
At present ISIS is at full stretch defending its territories in Iraq and Syria. They are killing a few Kurds and a few Shi-ites, all volunteers. Plus admittedly keeping millions of Iraqis and Syrians under a government they would not necessarily choose for themselves. So no change there. What would change is if, as President Trump has vowed, ISIS were peremptorily removed from their territorial bases. Then tens of thousands of ISIS militants would have nowhere to go except ... well, your guess is as good as mine but I'd much rather they didn't have to go anywhere.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Both you and President Trump are forgetting an important Rule of War. This is best summed up by the German general remarking about the Allied troops bottled up in the Anzio beachhead in 1944, "It's the biggest POW camp in Europe and they're paying for it themselves."
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That is a pretty weird Rule of War.... that I confess I haven't come across before.
Trump has less excuse than the Wolf, as he is after all Commander in Chief of the Army, Navy and Militia....and he has just appointed a shed load of military types.....to prod him on all matters when he is distracted by his Twitter feed.
I hope you will judge Wiley Coyote more leniently than Donald Duck.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Keep everybody locked up for ever? Even if you aren't a liberal, this is not a paying proposition. |
Bullshit. Shoot them or keep them. These people were released because our governments serve international interests. They do not serve us. The people in our government have contempt for the common people they govern. They would do shit like this if only to demonstrate their moral superiority. Virtue Signal to one another. Look at me! I'm the bloody pope! Screw you!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | What would change is if, as President Trump has vowed, ISIS were peremptorily removed from their territorial bases. Then tens of thousands of ISIS militants would have nowhere to go except ... well, your guess is as good as mine but I'd much rather they didn't have to go anywhere. |
This is not how things work. Massive, painful, murderous defeat is the most powerful of all arguments. Nothing has greater potential to change the mind.
(though I do appreciate you counter-intuitive thinking)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| (though I do appreciate you counter-intuitive thinking) |
I'm not putting either let-'em-out or bottle-'em-up as best policy. As ever with AE, it's horses-for-courses. It is only that conservatives and liberals both suffer from blinkered thinking and restrict themselves to a) constantly following their own familiar path and b) constantly denouncing the other side's familiar path.
Junior grade AE-ists can at least choose between them on a case by case basis (except when politics in involved) whereas senior grade AE-ists can produce new paths. Though when they do they are careful to term them something like An Important Rule of War.because nobody likes a smart alick.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An interesting statistic from CBS News last night.
| Sixteen hundred ISIS fighter have been killed in the last few months and only a dozen wounded |
Since the ratio is normally something like ten-to-one the other way, it is clear that a policy of no-prisoners is in operation. Individual soldiers, even whole units, can kill prisoners unofficially but when it is this extreme it must be everybody doing it. Of course it may be, in these particular circumstances, that all soldiers, all units have adopted the kill-prisoner policy unofficially but then it is for the command structure to take steps if it is not their policy too.
Is it a wise policy? On the one hand it encourages resistance à outrance which is why sensible armies do not espouse it. On the other hand, since it appears that ISIS are pursuing an à outrance resistance anyway and since a dead ISIS soldier is, for a variety of reasons, better than an imprisoned ISIS soldier, it may be sensible. Militarily and politically sensible. It is never my policy to push a moral agenda but one might observe that martyrdom in the Islamic world lasts rather a long time. Presently it is mainly a Shi-ite thing but ISIS might conjure it into a Sunni thing.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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You give no quarter unless your enemy is prepared to do the same. Any other choice is suicide.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Not necessarily. Would you, for example, have advocated that policy for Canadian troops fighting the Japanese in jungle combat? There were some Canadians defending Hong Kong whose surrender was accepted but maybe not so if notional Canadians had followed a tit-for-tat policy of not taking prisoners in conditions where doing so was not so easily arranged.
One of the difficulties of these questions is that rough justice is particularly rough since one atrocity leaves a very large footprint. Soldiers rarely need much of an excuse to commit infractions of the rules of war (as I might put it, though no soldier ever has). In any case these decisions are not symmetrical. The Japanese never surrendered but allowed 60,000 Brits to surrender in Singapore. It is always said that the prisoners were ill-treated subsequently because they had 'lost honour' in Japanese eyes but this is not the case. The Japanese mistreated everybody without fear or favour. They were perfectly familiar with Western ideas of military honour and would never have drawn this conclusion. The Japanese often massacred civilians though we did not (except by the hundred thousand using bombers).
Generally speaking your dictum is untrue, Ishmael. If the other side are not taking prisoners it makes no difference to them whether you are doing so or not. It might make a difference to your soldiers though.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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| Mick Harper wrote: | An interesting statistic from CBS News last night.
| Sixteen hundred ISIS fighter have been killed in the last few months and only a dozen wounded |
Since the ratio is normally something like ten-to-one the other way, it is clear that a policy of no-prisoners is in operation. |
You can probably guess what I'm going to say by now.
How much evidence do we have that any of this is actually even happening? Even the mainstream media has admitted that the ISIS "beheading" videos were fake.
No-prisoners means no loose ends to take care of.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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ISIS according to orthodox accounts took Mosul in 2014 with 1500 fighters facing a combined Iraqi force of 30,000 it took them just 6 days.........
They beat back a Peshmurga attack in 2015. The coalition then holds off for a year.
The latest attack started October 2016 its about 3000 ISIS, maybe a bit higher, up against 94,000 troops in an international coalition supported by airstrikes.
You have to add in that many of the best ISIS fighters always, according to news reporters, err slip out before the fighting begins (damn) .......the rest explode themselves in suicide missions......
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| N R Scott wrote: | | Even the mainstream media has admitted that the ISIS "beheading" videos were fake. |
Huh?
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