Jolt Country

So I'm trying to send a buddy of mine in Afghanistan one of them viral videos so popular with the younger generation, when he informed me that the computers over there lack audio. This lead to the following conversation. Our names are redacted, as sensative military communication doctrine demands.
9:35:02 PM me: What
9:35:39 PM me: Are you serious? $150 billion a year and they can't skim a 10 dollar pair of speakers off the top? I thought this was the American government we were talking about.
9:36:50 PM me: I bet you'd get speakers with your computer if you worked for a merc^H^H^H defense contractor.
9:37:32 PM him:it's funny that you say that, because i'm looking into XE services formerly known as blackwater
9:37:50 PM me: Down that path lies only darkness.
9:38:04 PM him:may I quote Hemingway for you?
9:38:16 PM me: You read Hemingway?
9:39:14 PM him:"There is no hunting like the hunting of men, and those who have hunted armed men long enough, and liked it, Never cared for anything else thereafter"
9:39:49 PM me: Interesting. Well, I'm sure you mean that in the context where that is not creepy and sociopathic. Yeah?
9:40:33 PM him:my truck has already been dubbed "Kiddy Crusher" it's stenciled on the front bumper. in my defense, the kid had an AK-47 and was shooting
9:42:14 PM me: Oh, well, kill the kid then, absolutely. Little kids are fuckers.
9:43:10 PM him:Aren't they though? I still enjoyed the hell out of it though, we don't use humvees anymore, we use MATV's which are the size of monster trucks and weigh in at 36 tons
9:44:29 PM me: Okay, how old was this kid? And was he, like. Shooting it at the giant death machine roaring down on him with it? Or someone else? Set this scene for me, uh, if you don't mind.

9:45:42 PM him:on the side of the road, trying to get at our gunner with his ak, i drove off the road and smashed the kid, he was like 8 or something, looked pretty prepubescent before he was a squishy liquid pancake
9:46:28 PM me: Was he a good shot, particularly? And do they commonly arm their under-10s with guns?
9:47:17 PM me: WTF. It's not as if the guy had any sort of chance of like, winning. I'm not trying to call a small child an idiot, but did whoever gave him the gun not have any sort of, you know, plan
9:47:31 PM him:fuck no! you kidding, a kid with an ak that fires 7.62 with no recoil from the hip?
9:48:19 PM me: Right right, dumb question. I bet he didn't even remember to squeeze not pull! Hah hah, these small children, thinking they're expert marksman. Oh, my sides
9:49:13 PM him:dude, most taliban around here don't aim down the fuckin sites they just scream ALAAAH and shoot like mad people
9:50:28 PM me: Er, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly why I find myself suddenly rooting for the terrorists. Let's move on.

Those kids are very impressionable at that age. Plus they get to shoot guns! It's sad that they have to be roadkill, but they're shooting GUNS!

I have a friend that served four tours in Afghanistan and he has told similar stories, just not very loudly and with much hesitation. It was not a good time for him.



THE
ROADSIDE BOMB (3X)
AARDVARK

I posted in my blog once back in 2009 as a backhanded comment that sometimes being in war zones causes soldiers to become calloused and potentially to lose their humanity:

I wrote:Those who try to justify the unjustifiable, like claiming waterboarding isn't torture, use flawed or clearly invalid arguments. One of which are the claims by those who have been subjected to the simulated drowning procedure (as part of their military training) that it wasn't that bad. Forgetting one small detail: an army or navy trainee is not actually going to be drowned or killed by his supervisors and the trainee knows this, the person captured by the U.S. Military has no such assurances. CNN's recent report of three sergeants in the army in 2007 who shot, execution style, four suspected Iraqi insurgents and dumped their bodies in a canal, makes this very clear, despite the fact that, going as far back as the trial of Lt. Calley in the My Lai Massacre back in the late 1960s that the practice of troops performing summary executions in the field is generally frowned upon.

Note I obviously underplayed the above example for sarcasm, but it may be less recognized than even I state. An associate of mine who served in Vietnam during the '60s pointed out that killings of civilians were routine, especially if mortar fire was coming at them from near a village, they would often go in and kill everyone there. And nobody ever got punished over this. I pointed out that as long as everyone keeps quiet about it and nobody reports it up the chain of command, there won't be any evidence of a crime having been committed because the higher-ups are going to presume the reports that an enemy base were attacked are true. It's only when someone is willing to come forward and report violations of the "laws and customs of war" (as the Fourth Geneva Convention refers to such unacceptable behavior) that anything is done about it.

Don't quite see what you're getting at. I mean, the guy is a little too excited about child murder and that's kind of bad, but I can't say I blame anyone for shooting at anyone else who's shooting at him first.

Lysander wrote:Don't quite see what you're getting at. I mean, the guy is a little too excited about child murder and that's kind of bad, but I can't say I blame anyone for shooting at anyone else who's shooting at him first.

I think it says something when someone thinks it's "fun" to crush someone to death, and especially moreso when it's a child. I can understand having some disgust or hatred of your enemy, but when you take pleasure in the infliction of gruesome modes of death upon the enemy, or worse, upon innocent children illegally turned into combatants, it says a whole lot more about your mindset.

LOL.

LOL.

I raelly dig how you threw that "illegally" in there. "Not only are these international terrorists multiple murderers, religeous extremists, and rapists who wish nothing but death on all of us for beliving in the wrong mystical star man, but they're also completely apathetic about child labor laws!"

I don't disagre, per se, but illegally or not they are still combatants. We can have these silly little arguments over responsibility and cpsychoogical conditioning because we aren't hanging our heads out in front of enemy rocket fire. I have no patience for these savages or anyone attempting to coddle them.

At some point, Tdarcos, I think a line gets crossed. We have never had the experience of a child trying to fucking end us, so they are still little balls of joy to us. The right move, when they are trying to kill you, is to squish them with a tank.

If Lysander's friend didn't want to squoosh the enemy's ground troops with a tank, well, he could instead play Starcraft 2.

/crosses arms

Lysander wrote:LOL.

LOL.

I raelly dig how you threw that "illegally" in there.

It is a war crime and violates the Geneva Convention along with several other treaties - that these countries have ratified - to use children as soldiers. It is a death-penalty eligible offense to do so and those running the war, up to and including the head of the government, can be held liable anywhere in the world under universal jurisdiction.

"Not only are these international terrorists multiple murderers, religeous extremists, and rapists who wish nothing but death on all of us for beliving in the wrong mystical star man, but they're also completely apathetic about child labor laws!"

It is not a "child labor" issue; it is a war crime same as murdering civilians, using rape as a combat tactic, or faking surrender. If it was a child labor issue there would be standards under which it would be acceptable, such as the rules for use of child labor on farms. (Without these standards and exceptions, it would be a criminal offense to have your kids work on the family farm, or to give kids chores to do around a household like taking out the trash.)

Use of children as soldiers is a violation of the laws and customs of war; anyone training children for this purpose, supervising them as combatants, allowing them to be used in combat operations, or supervising those who do so, is jointly and severally liable for the act of use of a child soldier in combat as well as the actions of the child soldiers themselves.

Children lack the full understanding of the consequences of their actions. Their brains are not fully formed, are growing and they haven't always developed a full understanding of the world. This is why we generally protect children in order to allow them to properly grow up and become adults.

I don't disagre, per se, but illegally or not they are still combatants.

And the answer is to grab the sons-a-bitches who allow this to happen - and I mean the leaders of these countries that do this - charge them as war criminals for the actions, and execute them after conviction. Seeing that being at the top of the food chain makes you responsible for your subordinates does wonders to focus on not doing things that can get you hanging from the end of a rope.

We can have these silly little arguments over responsibility and cpsychoogical conditioning because we aren't hanging our heads out in front of enemy rocket fire. I have no patience for these savages or anyone attempting to coddle them.

I'm not talking about coddling anyone. What I am concerned about is someone who doesn't realize, these kids are forced into this, usually through torture and threats, and thinks its fun to kill them rather than see it as an unfortunate response you have to do as a matter of self defense.

And we need to hold those who do this heavily responsible, including going up the food chain and holding commanders and heads of state in personam responsible for the acts of their subordinates, as the Geneva Convention requires. But since virtually every country violates the Geneva Convention - including all of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - only weak countries that don't have political support get called on the carpet, and even then, only low-level people get charged.

Dick Chaney wouldn't be so freely and humorously admitting his complicity in crimes against humanity in his memoirs if the Geneva Convention was properly enforced. His support for waterboarding while in a position of power was a serious war crime (as the sanctioning of torture, an act which is always unconditionally prohibited) which, in a world where criminal misconduct was not tolerated even in high officials, would at a minimum get him several years in prison.

It is a war crime and violates the Geneva Convention along with several other treaties - that these countries have ratified - to use children as soldiers. It is a death-penalty eligible offense to do so and those running the war, up to and including the head of the government, can be held liable anywhere in the world under universal jurisdiction.

And the assholes that use children as soldiers are SO SCARED of violating the Geneva convention rules. These are teh* same butt-fungus-ses that blow themselves up just to make a point.

Well, I'm in favor of drone strikes if it saves American lives. let's see them hit one of those with an IED.



THE
MOVE TO POLITICAL BASE
AARDVARK



( I've noticed a decline in my typing skills. Particularly the word 'the'. I feel positively Friday-ish)

AArdvark wrote:

It is a war crime and violates the Geneva Convention along with several other treaties - that these countries have ratified - to use children as soldiers. It is a death-penalty eligible offense to do so and those running the war, up to and including the head of the government, can be held liable anywhere in the world under universal jurisdiction.

And the assholes that use children as soldiers are SO SCARED of violating the Geneva convention rules.

As I pointed out, the countries of the world are basically not enforcing the Geneva Convention, probably because there's money to be gotten by selling weapons, potentially to both sides, as happened in the case of the Iran-Iraq war. The Chinese and Russians sold weapons profitably to Iran - which we rightfully hated for their taking of American citizens - and the U.S., British and probably French sold weapons profitably to Iraq.

Consider the following. A DEA agent in Mexico was murdered. One of the people allegedly involved was a Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican National. So somebody in the US government hired some Mexicans to kidnap Dr. Alvarez-Machain and bring him to the United States to stand trial. basically over the dead body of the Mexican government and without even bothering to follow the terms of the treaties we have with Mexico and do a regular extradition.

The trial court originally decided that the government can't just kidnap people out of other countries when we have extradition treaties, and decided the arrest wasn't legal. In the case of United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992), the Supreme Court said it was legal to invade another country to remove someone for trial here, despite there being an extradition treaty with that country, and so he could be placed on trial for the murder in the United States. The most embarrassing thing about this whole issue is Alvarez-Machain was found not guilty at trial.

If countries treated the violation of the Geneva Convention by the rulers of those countries with the same seriousness that the U.S. did over the murder of a DEA agent, this sort of crap would come a cropper so fast as to make people's heads spin. The threat of being brought to trial in the U.S. was enough to make some South American drug lords to discontinue operations and basically plea bargain over their offenses.

The threat of invocation of Universal Jurisdiction for war crimes and the real potential for execution of heads of state for their involvement would make this sort of thing stop. The only problem is that invocation isn't happening and to the extent anything happens, it's basically feel-good lip service.

The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, basically has laughed at the fact that he has been indicted by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands for his involvement in the war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur genocide. Since the court has no troops to come get him and enforce the indictment, the court is nothing but a paper tiger. Like the U.S., Sudan and any of the countries in Africa Bashir might visit are not parties to the treaty establishing the iCJ, he is not going to be extradicted back there to stand trial.

If the requirements of the Geneva Convention were made applicable and the sort of thing as this indictment enforced, as I said, the serious threat that war crimes would get tried and the death penalty potentially imposed would make this sort of thing stop. Fast.

Since these leaders know they can get away with it, they don't care.