murder or justification in the war?

[AAJagerX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh2zRBJcZ4Q

 

[ink]

Unless one has been in a live combat situation, one cannot even presume to form an opinion on this matter.

In war, one makes decisions that no rational man would.  The rules are different.  The question of "right or wrong" becomes absolutely moot.

I pray that you neither never have to experience it, nor make a decision like that.

This is the best response so far except that the rules of right and wrong.....they NEVER change, it is WRONG to rape a woman and that happened way to much in all the friggin stupid wars. 
    Ive never been through a "war" so its hard to say if they were right or wrong in doing it....but I woulda shot him too...if he truly did shoot the messenger, and I witnessed it. war it self in my eyes is "wrong"  I feel you should only go to "war" when "war" is brought to you.

  we will all pay for our deeds good or bad, we will not be able to say  "they told me to do it"    for our soul is in our keeping,  morality is a binding thing, no matter the situation Morality does not change because of "WAR"

  men are wretched things.

[MarineUS]

MarineUS:
If the sniper had known standard procedure was to kill captured snipers, why would he not shoot the messenger(s)?

The Americans were ordered to shoot any sniper that ignored surrender pleas to kill more soldiers.

because german snipers would board themselves in a hard to get place. and hold out as long as they could killing whoever when they were surounded. and THEN only surender because they ran out of supplies.


i think the americans did this because they wanted it to be known to the rest of the german snipers that if they ignored surender requests to take more kills. then they would be put to death on the spot.

Just like dropping the nukes on Japan.
It ended up saving lives.


As for the Japanese being the worst about POW's - that statement is 100% true.

[Babalonian]

I would err on the side of it being murder, but that's about as far.  Yes, if the intention was to kill/defeat the sniper after he forfeited his peaceful chance to surrender, I'm sure some mortars, artillery or other means of delivered devistation would of solved the problem of the sniper in the windmill quite promptly after he made his intentions of not surrendering peacefuly well known.  The fact they let him remain in place for long enough to run out of supplies and then bothered with waiting for him to walk all the way back to them and point blank range before shootign him, despite already offering him the chance to peacefuly surrender without any harm, leads one to believe they did not intend to kill him or at the least were laying in waiting until after they had him in custody, alive.

[Penguin]

Atrocities like this happened on a much more grander scales than the single life of a lone sniper, many civilians and alike were not even afforded an opportunity to surrender and were brutally murdered for nothing, the countless bombings of civilian towns on both sides was terrible enough.  

War is beyond anyones comprehension and certainly morality takes a back seat to survivability, its either kill or be killed.  

These types of things happened on all sides of the war, some more than others, too many of these types of stories are out there, Japan was one of the worst culprits of the time.

And got it the worst (per square mile)- it's largest cities were carpet-firebombed, and it was nuked not once, but TWICE.

It was wrong to bust a cap in that kid's head.  By doing so, you make yourself no better than him.

-Penguin

[Rino]

     I'm pretty sure the guys who did the deed could give a flying fig what you guys think of it.

[Jayhawk]

     I'm pretty sure the guys who did the deed could give a flying fig what you guys think of it.

Or it was a decision that has haunted them their entire lives.

[Ack-Ack]

As for the Japanese being the worst about POW's - that statement is 100% true.

I think the Germans that survived the Soviet prison camps wouldn't agree, nor would the Soviets in the German prison camps.

Out of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans between 1941 and 1945, 3.5 million died in captivity.

Out of the slightly over 3.5 million Axis soldiers in Soviet POW camps, over a million died.  The Italians that were in Soviet prison camps suffered a mortality rate of 85.4%.  A specific example were the 91,000 German troops taken prisoner at Stalingrad and out of those numbers only 5,000 survived the Soviet POW camps.

ack-ack  

[Ack-Ack]

And got it the worst (per square mile)- it's largest cities were carpet-firebombed, and it was nuked not once, but TWICE.


-Penguin

If Japan didn't put its factories in civilian neighborhoods, their cities wouldn't have been firebombed and leveled and if they never had attacked Peal Harbor we wouldn't have to drop the atom bomb twice.

ack-ack

[Penguin]

The war with Japan was inevitable, the US was not willing to lose its sphere of influence in the Pacific.

-Penguin

[Tyrannis]

If Japan didn't put its factories in civilian neighborhoods, their cities wouldn't have been firebombed and leveled and if they never had attacked Peal Harbor we wouldn't have to drop the atom bomb twice.

ack-ack

actually, we didnt drop the atomic bomb purely because of pearl.

we warned the japanese that if they did not surender,disaster would befall them.

they ignored these warnings so we droped on hiroshima.

when hiroshima was leveled, and word reached the japanese higher command. they made the choice to ignore what ppl were saying. they didnt think 1 bomb could do so much damage so they chacked up no transmissions from hiroshima to communication problems.

we sent them another msg telling them to surender and they ignored it. so we droped another one. finally they surendered.


there was some higher command people tho, who wanted to continue the fight even after seeing the bombs.


i read that one of the american generals suggested dropping the atomic bomb in tokyo harbo as a visual warning. but truman opted for it to be droped on a city to see its full affects of devestation.

[Yossarian]

     I'm pretty sure the guys who did the deed could give a flying fig what you guys think of it.

And?  I could say this about any number of events in the world, it doesn't make them any less worthwhile to discuss.

[M1A1]

Love the armchair generals ... I spent 16 long months in a combat zone and I'll tell you all this...It sucks no 2 ways about it.Let anyone of you spend day after day getting shot at sniped at, mortared, rocketed and IED'ed and tell me you wouldn't look at things differently. I have met very few that would say they went through their tours with the same attitude they had when they left. I for one sure don't. You spend 8 hours on a roof in 130 degree heat pinned down by a retard with a rifle taking pot shots at you and tell me that if you had the chance to put a bullet in his brain you would not take it. While it is no excuse because war in and of itself is an atrocity, the laws of war are very different and the morality on the battlefield is nothing like you have in your neighborhood at home. What you see as reprehensible may very well be nothing but a fact of life for the soldier on the battlefield. We have lawyers going over every incident that happens nowadays and it stinks. The laws that govern a society on a daily basis do not apply to the battlefield if they did then everyone with a gun would be tried as a criminal and we would all be in prison. Sorry if this seems like a rant but as someone who went to war one person and came back another it's hard to listen to folks second guess anything that they have not experienced themselves. It's even harder to take when you hear folks talk about it being wrong.
In the end was it right for those soldiers to do what they did, in a peaceful; society ofcourse not but on a battlefield yes. I looked at it this way I was gonna do whatever I had to do to get my young soldiers and myself back home to the people we loved and the lawyers be damned........

[MarineUS]

Love the armchair generals ... I spent 16 long months in a combat zone and I'll tell you all this...It sucks no 2 ways about it.Let anyone of you spend day after day getting shot at sniped at, mortared, rocketed and IED'ed and tell me you wouldn't look at things differently. I have met very few that would say they went through their tours with the same attitude they had when they left. I for one sure don't. You spend 8 hours on a roof in 130 degree heat pinned down by a retard with a rifle taking pot shots at you and tell me that if you had the chance to put a bullet in his brain you would not take it. While it is no excuse because war in and of itself is an atrocity, the laws of war are very different and the morality on the battlefield is nothing like you have in your neighborhood at home. What you see as reprehensible may very well be nothing but a fact of life for the soldier on the battlefield. We have lawyers going over every incident that happens nowadays and it stinks. The laws that govern a society on a daily basis do not apply to the battlefield if they did then everyone with a gun would be tried as a criminal and we would all be in prison. Sorry if this seems like a rant but as someone who went to war one person and came back another it's hard to listen to folks second guess anything that they have not experienced themselves. It's even harder to take when you hear folks talk about it being wrong.
In the end was it right for those soldiers to do what they did, in a peaceful; society ofcourse not but on a battlefield yes. I looked at it this way I was gonna do whatever I had to do to get my young soldiers and myself back home to the people we loved and the lawyers be damned........

I think the Germans that survived the Soviet prison camps wouldn't agree, nor would the Soviets in the German prison camps.

Out of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans between 1941 and 1945, 3.5 million died in captivity.

Out of the slightly over 3.5 million Axis soldiers in Soviet POW camps, over a million died.  The Italians that were in Soviet prison camps suffered a mortality rate of 85.4%.  A specific example were the 91,000 German troops taken prisoner at Stalingrad and out of those numbers only 5,000 survived the Soviet POW camps.

ack-ack 

I'm not talking about the ones who survived. I'm speaking of overall treatment. The Japanese saw POW's as cowards who were too afraid to die so they surrendered. They thought all POW's should be killed because they were not worthy of the title of a warrior.

There are stories and photos of Marines who had been taken captive only to have their arms, legs, head and genitals cut off. Once they did that they stacked the parts on top of the torso and stuffed the genitals into the mouth of the head and placed it on top of the stack.

[Penguin]

Love the armchair generals ... I spent 16 long months in a combat zone and I'll tell you all this...It sucks no 2 ways about it.Let anyone of you spend day after day getting shot at sniped at, mortared, rocketed and IED'ed and tell me you wouldn't look at things differently. I have met very few that would say they went through their tours with the same attitude they had when they left. I for one sure don't. You spend 8 hours on a roof in 130 degree heat pinned down by a retard with a rifle taking pot shots at you and tell me that if you had the chance to put a bullet in his brain you would not take it. While it is no excuse because war in and of itself is an atrocity, the laws of war are very different and the morality on the battlefield is nothing like you have in your neighborhood at home. What you see as reprehensible may very well be nothing but a fact of life for the soldier on the battlefield. We have lawyers going over every incident that happens nowadays and it stinks. The laws that govern a society on a daily basis do not apply to the battlefield if they did then everyone with a gun would be tried as a criminal and we would all be in prison. Sorry if this seems like a rant but as someone who went to war one person and came back another it's hard to listen to folks second guess anything that they have not experienced themselves. It's even harder to take when you hear folks talk about it being wrong.
In the end was it right for those soldiers to do what they did, in a peaceful; society ofcourse not but on a battlefield yes. I looked at it this way I was gonna do whatever I had to do to get my young soldiers and myself back home to the people we loved and the lawyers be damned........

16 months straight?  Ouch.  I've heard that after six months you start to go crazy, is that true?  However, there is a balance between letting US soldiers shooting anything that moves and completely neutering combat effectiveness.  If we treat the Iraquis and Afghanistanis the same way the Taliban do- we may as well be the Taliban.

It's a battle for hearts, minds and infrastructure (schools, running water, electricity), and the strategy of "Grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow" failed miserably in Vietnam.  Look at the Long March, the retreating troops did not steal, rape or pillage (or at least did so far, far less).  They were loved (in comparision to the previous Goumindang).

Think of it this way- you live in the Bronx.  There is a gang (corresponding to the Taliban), and the police (corresponding to US forces).  The gang steals, kills or maims anyone who gets in their way- but they get brownie points for being the home team.  If the police do the same thing, only using modern weapons, the gang will be supported far more than the police.  It's a simple question of survival.

However, I can't imagine what it must be like to be pinned down for hours, even days by just one guy with a rifle.  Seeing bullets whiz through your buddies, hearing the screams by the medic's or corpsman's tent.  It must change your thought process quite a bit. 

-Penguin