Comment on I'm surprised it hasn't been taken down yet ...well maybe not that surprised
OrnateLuna@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks agoI am genuinely curious why do you think that you have a right to kill someone in war but not outside of it. Like what are the main differences there (unless you are using law as a basis for this)
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
No worries. War is unavoidable at times - dictators exist, people get desperate, and so on. There are legalities involved, but they aren’t my main concern. Morally, there’s a difference to me between killing someone because I hate them and killing someone because I’m protecting my homeland. There are strict rules to war that help keep things somewhat ethical - war is never going to be “clean”. Policies like rules of engagement, being able to surrender, treatment of POWs, genuinely avoiding targetting civilians (the world could use more of that right now) and stopping when your country tells you to all matter to me.
Soldiers are not asked to make decisions about who they’ll kill, thus the individuals are not being relied upon for justice. That is a big difference from vigilantism, where a person or mob of people decides who lives and dies. Ideally the leaders of the military and country are making sure a war is necessary last resort, and if that isn’t happening then other nations should be condemning and opposing them. It’s like how I think nations need prisons, but I don’t think I should be allowed to take someone hostage because I’m pretty sure they deserve it.
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
But haven’t you seen countless cases of examples where those strict rules for war have been completely ignored? Russia is just ignoring them completely in Ukraine, Israel is just straight-up conducting a genocide and no western country gives a shit apparently, for the US there are countless cases of shit like the My Lai massacre or the US sponsorships of terrorist organisations in South America…
States are just big systems that exist to give people a monopoly on violence.
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Perhaps you didn’t know this, but Russia IS being opposed by to the tune of billions of dollars of support and widespread condemnation for their war of aggression including meaningful economic sanctions and asset seizures. The only reason NATO won’t deploy troops is because no one wants WW3. Nations are even now considering escalating their support following the deployment of North Koreans.
Israel IS being opposed by huge swathes of the world. If the US wasn’t providing veto cover for them and lethal military strikes against everyone who fights Israel, they’d have been censured in the UN by now. Long story short, the US is at fault for the genocide as Israel wouldn’t have the means to conduct genocide without their decades of “blank check” support. Do you think US policy means that civilians should start killing Zionists in America and abroad? Should people have killed Biden and his whole cabinet a few months into the war because boundaries on war are being broken?
Your argument that rules shouldn’t matter because sometimes they are broken is flawed. You want me to agree that civilians being free to murder other civilians the world over because who follows the rules anyways? There are unjust trials. Doesn’t mean people shouldn’t have the right to a trial before they’re killed. There are bad politicians, doesn’t mean all politics should be banned. There are bad marriages. There are bad police. There are bad doctors.
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m totally with you, I’m opposed to violence just as you are. I just extend my opposition to violence a bit further, including violence inflicted by states. I don’t want you to change your opposition to violence, I think that’s great. I’m just asking you to consider whether your exemptions given to states engaging in military conflicts is actually justified