Me? Hah.
You're the one saying all our operators should be executed, not me. Long live Lewkowski the liberal, or something...
Well done. A quote I like about black ops, that's true enough is:
'Covert ops' are illegal by definition; if they were legal they wouldn't need to be covert.
(And a great show, by the way, in case anyone's not watching it.)
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Well, bravo for your opinion and all, but it doesn't mean shit. When you kill someone on a black op, odds are incredibly high that you are, in fact, committing murder, and if captured, you can expect to be punished as a murderer.
Of course, generally speaking, the opposition isn't going to be willing to actually put you on trial, which can be good or bad... either they'll try to capture you and trade you, or just kill you. Either bypasses the hassle of a trial, though one is preferable to the other.
Having said that, there are a non-trivial number of operators out there at this very moment serving prison sentences for what you don't consider to be murder, so again, yippie for your opinion.
And a lovely little justification you've got for yourself, but not all black ops targets are terrorists. Politicians, businessmen, even run-of-the-mill, normal civilians afflicted with wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time syndrome end up on kill lists, and operators kill them. And that's murder in every sense of the word, no matter how you want to try to justify or "consider" it away.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
See I'm no fan of government but I'm not a paranoid loon who thinks we have black ops folks gunning down civilians on kill lists.
Gunning down anyone without a trial in a country with a functioning judicial system is murder.![]()
Hope is the denial of reality
Terrorist runs at you with bombs and you shoot him its murder?
Was killing Bin Laden murder?
Black Ops generally don't involve killing people who are actively attacking someone. As for planning, you think if the police had good evidence that some guy in your town was planning to kill people, they'd have the right to kill him in the middle of the night if he wasn't putting up any resistance?
Hope is the denial of reality
Do you consider the non-defensive killing of any murderer without a trial to be murder?
Hope is the denial of reality
No, you just need a properly constituted authority *even if it's just honored in form and not reality* to declare what is lawful or what shouldn't be. In that respect the judicial system just comes along after a deed and affirms "yep, that done there was unlawful, it was." There really is a difference between adjudicating something and determining it. You might not find much practical meaning in the difference but it's there nevertheless.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Look, chickenhawk, I actually know what the hell I'm talking about here, and you clearly do not. I'm not generally one to argue from credentials, but when the fuck were you in the service? How much combat did you see? Were you ever attached to a special operations command? Ever go out on a covert op?
And since we all know what the answers to those questions are as they relate to you, maybe you should be exercising the better part of valor here and taking my word for it. You don't know a damned thing about black ops, and I do. Deal with it, and get over yourself already.
Operators murder people, by any reasonable definition of the word "murder," even by your less than reasonable definition, and that's all there is to it. Sorry for shoving a shade of grey into your black-and-white worldview, but that's how the real world is.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
I just realised that hate crime enhancement must be better (to Lewk) than no hate crime enhancement, given that we are apparently not sufficiently hard on murderers. I mean, letting some people get harsher punishments must be better than being lenient on all of them right?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Feel free to stop trying to out-dumbass yourself at any time, by the way. You've already set the bar so low you'd have to literally start flinging your own feces around as it is.
You'd think, but then again, that's kinda why I brought it up.
His black and white worldviews have collided irreconcilably on the issue. "Fry all murderers" and his sickening patriotic fervor that causes him to idolize/worship American soldiers are simply mutually exclusive.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Not even a clever way to avoid answering the question of where your misinformation on the subject comes from, or why you think you have any clue about it.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
You should just point out that he voted for Bush.![]()
Hope is the denial of reality
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
I think intentions and justifications should both be taken in, in court. In fact, if it wasn't so hard to pin down for sure, I'd say intention should be our most important signal when determining judgement. However, consequence is much easier,and usually fairly accurate to judge off. That said, the reason justification and intentions are important to consider is because if someone killed someone else because they thought their life was in danger, that's different that killing someone else for no reason.
They should be looked at. I don't see a meaningful diffference between a person killing someone becaues they're racist and a person killing someone because they don't like that person. Motivations should matter only so much that it offers some justification for doing it. (thought life in danger, or heat of the moment, or reflex, or whatever etc...) something to say they're not an outright killer, that many of us put in the same situation would reasonably do the same thing.