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Hello Guys !!!
I already have a couple of threads here in the special abode dealing with war:
Civil War 2.0 and
World War III
This thread takes the idea a step further.
Let's, for a moment, scale it down. Instead of talking about full-scale war, let's talk about one-on-one conflict. Ever since humans have roamed the Earth, people have fought each other. They've fought each other with sticks and stones, and eventually fought each other with swords and guns. Some fights are spontaneous. People become enraged. They shred each other apart. We have our earliest conflicts on grade school playgrounds. Most people, in the process of going through childhood, wind up in no less than one fight. Is this as prevalent as it used to be? Probably not. We live in a world of cameras, now, and we live in a world where they'll tag you as crazy and put you on psychiatric drugs if you do it too often. When I was a kid, though, it was common for people to call each other out. "I'm going to beat you up after school!" A crowd would gather around and start to hem and haw. There would be a location off campus where you would meet. You would be toe-to-toe with someone who didn't like you. The crowd would form a circle around you.
These moments shape character. Are you a tough guy? Are you a coward? Are you a good fighter? Are you a klutz? These moments shape who you will later become. And, there's rules of engagement. When I was about ten years old, I witnessed many fights on school playgrounds. I participated in a few. The rules of engagement? This might differ place to place, but where I was at, it went like this: You would size each other up. One guy would get in the personal space of the other guy. No punches would be thrown yet. It was typical to start pushing each other, often one guy's shoulder butting the other's. Why not simply start swinging punches? Well, during the first phase, there's a chance to "chicken out". The fight can be over before it ever begins. One guy would storm away and yell something like, "I don't even know why you hate me so much!" The guy remaining would feel courageous, and the guy leaving would feel like a coward. This didn't happen often, though. Usually, the conflict elevated to the next level.
Somebody would throw a punch.
There were understood rules. Hitting somebody in the stomach was okay. Tripping them and throwing them to the floor was also acceptable. Headlocks were fine. But? Don't kick a guy in the nuts. These rules weren't written down anywhere. People just knew what you were allowed to do, and what would get you branded as a dirty fighter. Throwing rocks? Out of the question. Poking eyes? Nope! Scratching? Only girls did that! Same for pulling hair. Usually, each fighter would have a couple of friends watching. No jumping in! You let the fight finish, and you're only allowed to break it up once one of the guys had too much.
I learned something weird back then. Different campuses had different understood rules. The first school I went to didn't allow socking to the face. That was a no no, and it would get you branded as a dirty fighter. I changed schools, though, and found myself in an unexpected conflict. A guy sized me up, engaged me for a fight, and skipped the "pushing" phase. He went straight for the punching. And? Wow! He socked me in the jaw, which wasn't allowed at my other school. Not without gaining a reputation for being a chicken shit. Years later, when I heard the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam, I thought about the lyric, "And he hit me with a surprise left. My jaw left hurting. Dropped wide open." I swear to you that I wondered if Eddie Vedder knew about my personal life and put it in his song! I'm sure millions of kids have gone through it, though.
There's an escalation of violence. I got hit in the face, which was a no no at my first school. In future conflicts? My personal rules changed... and the next guy paid for it. We met after school, and I didn't bother with the trivialties of engagement. The moment I realized the fight was inevitable, I socked him in the face. I can still see him blush. I can still see the blood rush to his face. He didn't know what to do! My across-the-street neighbor was watching, and she cheered me on. I hit him in the face a couple of more times. He was like a deer in headlights. Then, he snapped out of it and ran away. In the next month, we fought two more times. I had become a bully. I beat him up, and he stopped walking past my house on his way home as he had usually done.
The point about this is civility. I never kicked another guy in the nuts. I never picked up a rock and started smashing somebody's skull in. I've never owned a gun. I think about the movie, Friday, where there's a neighborhood bully named Deebo. He used to pick on everyone, and he used to humiliate them. In some ways, hilarious as the movie was, it was a parable for David versus Goliath. Craig was way smaller than Deebo, and when he was enraged, he was tempted to grab his dad's gun and shoot him. However, Craig's dad convinced him to fight with his fists. Craig did, but he also knocked out Deebo with a brick. In the Bible, David slays Goliath with a stone from his sling.
The rules of engagement seem to change, and there's exceptions to the rule. On the playground, you wouldn't eye gouge. But if you're an adult being jumped by a gang in a back alley, nothing's going to stop you from surviving. All is fair in love and war. When I heard that phrase as a kid, I didn't make much of it. The older I got, I realized it happens all the time. People make their own rules. This applies to war, but why love? As I grew into adulthood, there were similar customs about dating within your social group. These unwritten rules dealt with cheating, having sex, dating friends and siblings of an ex, moving on after a breakup, and so on. Just like I saw the civility of the rules of physical fights wane as the years passed, I saw the same thing with romantic relationships. All is fair in love and war. That's what many people conclude as they reach later stages of adulthood.
Why do I bring this up in a thread about war crimes? The same thing applies.
Let's continue talking about physical fighting on a personal level, though. You go through grade school, you have tussle here or there, and maybe you find you're good at fighting! You discover you're a tough person! Perhaps you can make a living in the mafia! Perhaps there's a mob boss somewhere who needs a strong man to collect debts! But why do it? Why not head to your local gym and learn to box? You can make millions if you're good! And you have control of your own life!
Boxing has certain rules, and there's a discipline to it. You wear gloves, you can't punch below the belt, and there's no kicking. In the 1990s, the Ultimate Fight Championship came around and threw most of those rules out the door. Basically, they stuck with the same playground rules most of us grew up with, including striking with bare knuckles. There was no time limit, no biting, no eye gouging, and no kicks to the nuts. Over time, as MMA developed, more rules were added including required wearing of thin gloves, having timed rounds, and no rabbit punches. Still, nobody would mistake MMA for boxing.
Let's get back to war crimes. I mentioned that all is fair in love and war. There's another saying. War is Hell. Once a war starts, nobody really wants to be in it. If you're sadistic, and you're kicking ass then, yes, it feels good. I've spent hundreds of hours on conspiracy forums, my own included. I've seen many mentalities on many subjects. I learned about:
-- legal positivism
-- the law of the sovereign
What is this? They are legal terms. They don't mean the same thing, but they're related. In essence, it means that it doesn't matter what laws are on the books. The thing that absolutely matters is
who enforces the laws. If you're working for a mob boss and he directs you to cut off a finger of a guy who's delinquent on his payments, it's par for the course. You do it, and ya' get rewarded by your boss. If you're a deputy in a county jail and you don't like an inmate, yo can't cut off fingers! It's different rules, and different people enforcing them.
We've reached a point where criminals are living in the White House. They are playing by their own rules. They know what laws are on the books, but they figure the laws don't matter. They have cronies working in the Supreme Court, so they can get away with shady activities. The government has become kleptocratic. There are international laws. There is the Geneva Convention. There is the Constitution which says only Congress can declare war. There is the War Powers Act of 1973. We've gone through shit as a nation, and as a World. War is Hell, and we don't want to repeat mistakes.
Ancient Greece had many great thinkers. Aristotle realized humans are moved by ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos deals with following orders of a leader. This could be a parent, a teacher, or a coach. Pathos deals with emotions. "I just feel like it!" Logos deals with logic. What makes the most sense? We live in an era of whims. That means we're pathos-driven. But? Where do the whims originate? "At the very top!" This means there's an ethos-based element to it! Some guy with orange tanner is plopped on a marble toilet in the White House tweeting about this or that! Is it based in the Constitution? Article This, Section That? No! Is it based on wise quotes from historical leaders? No! Is it based on the Geneva Convention? No! It's based off whims, then it spreads like a virus to the populous. The political right used to be a place of logos. George HW Bush made a case to the United Nations about going to war with Iraq. George Will was a level-headed commentator. Congress was consulted when an armed conflict was impending because Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 says only they can decide if the military can engage in conflict. They War Powers Resolution was passed for rare emergency situations, and limited conflict to 60 days before Congress allowed further confrontation.
I've always thought that "war crimes" in a redundant term. War is a crime after all, but I've been enraged in my life, and I know what it's like to be caught in the middle of a fight without wanting it. War can exist together with civility. None of us want nuclear warfare, so there are international laws to prevent it. None of us want chemical warfare, so we have laws to try to curtail it (it still goes on domestically in the form of tear gas, by the way). None us want to get kicked in the nuts! That's the equivalent! We don't want our eyes gouged out! We don't want parts of our ears bitten off! Not if we're boxing! We have rules, and we expect our leaders to follow them.
Though most on the political right are subsumed in the pathos and ethos of the day, destructive as it might be, there are a few who are following a logical path. They still care about the laws on the books! They aren't pretending the laws aren't there, and they're not twisting the words around. Senator Rand Paul and judge Andrew Napolitano have condemned the US drone strikes in the Caribbean! They are against international law! France and the UK has agreed! These are WAR CRIMES that are going on!
In this thread, we will discuss the difference between civility and barbarism. We will discuss the rules we're presented with, and we'll ask ourselves if there's any easy way out. The answer? There's not! Somebody started kicking someone else in the nuts, somebody grabbed some dirt and threw it in another's eyes, then their buddy jumped in and blindside punched somebody, somebody got knocked to the ground and got kicked in the face, somebody got their wallet stolen in the middle of it, then at the end, somebody pulled out a knife and stabbed somebody in the throat. We are in a mess! The rules don't apply at this moment, but outsiders are watching a keeping score. There's no guarantee, but logos might return, and people might have to pay for dirty shots. It's a free-for-all as it stands, and nobody knows when it's going to stop.
I wish you all the best! I have a few songs and movie clips in mind to share. That will happen in the days to come. I have historical videos, and I have memories lodged in my head. Since I operate a conspiracy site, I haven't vetted everything just yet. Somebody had said that the first Civil War (1860-1865) never ended. What do I mean by this? Somebody said martial law was declared back then, and it was never officially undeclared. Same for the Korean War. I heard that officially, the North and South are still technically at war with each other. Congress has not officially declared a war since WWII, but they've passed many resolutions. Why does this matter? Rule of law! Will it ever return? We have a lot of time to discuss these issues. Right now, Pete Hegseth is taking the brunt of the war crimes accusations. Donald Trump has been accused as well. As long as there are Republican puppets in Congress, not much will be done in the near future. However, the anger is growing, and the popularity and support of the guy in the White House is getting weaker and weaker by the day. We'll see where it goes ...
-- Demented
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