-
Yeah, I totally agree. It's more that I'm just struggling to think of a way through this that involves the least amount of death. Sticking to our principles might mean that more people die and I find that a hard pill to swallow.
I hope you don't think I'm some blood thirsty mental - I agree with everything you just said. It's just a very tough test of one's principals but thanks for bringing it back down to reality.
Well_is_it-
Sticking to our principles might mean that more people die and I find that a hard pill to swallow.
If you're already proposing killing people, which people dying becomes a bitter pill to swallow? It feels as if you're buying into the us and them narrative which is basically coming out of organisations like ISIS and the nazi-ish asshats like EDL, BNP, Tory Party etc. Because even if there really is an us (The West) and them (ISIS etc) then there's also all the other people in the world such as the Syrians and the Yadzidi and the Kurds who all of the above want to treat as not our problem and not welcome. Then there's the peripheral, and perhaps not so peripheral, regions such as North Africa, Indonesia, the Caucasus, the Arabic nations, even places like the disputed Kashmir. They're all impacted by our actions and decisions. Frankly this involves the whole world. There's too many identities for an us and them that functions in any recognisable sense.
But the real bottom line is that people are going to continue to die in this conflict in huge numbers. I honestly believe that more people would die if we started a wholesale slaughter of anyone in, and by necessity connected to ISIS. Alas I can't make any promises, it's just a theory. When we consider how we tackle this conflict, as we absolutely must, we have to resolve ourselves to the fact that people will die. What then becomes important is deciding the reasons why people will die and who we will try to keep alive and how.
The_Seldom_Killer
The simple answer to this is that if we abandon our principles with regards to the rule of law, capital punishment and basically killing people because they're inconvenient then we're strying very deep into the territory of being "no better than them". Not only that but we're actually giving the likes of ISIS exactly what they want and exactly what they want to support further radicalisation and recruitment. In this war that we're currently in, where the enemy has no sovereign territory and no recognisable borders beyond the range and accuracy of a rifle shot or mortar shell, principles matter. They matter a fuck of a lot. So while you think it's a waste of resources, I think it's a wise use of resources in order to make the long game and all of it's costs a lot smaller. This is a war of decades and generations that will make The Troubles look like a flash in the pan.
Coming out of the cold war era, we made frightening advances in military technology and practice that meant we virtually didn't have to lose any lives in combat. The new enemy, if you'll reduce them to that simplistic term, changed all of that by redefining who they'll see as the combatants. They're now counting all of them and all of us. Any of them can take up arms and any of us are fair game.
And yes, you do start to look like a bit of a Nazi loon.
Sorry.