Taliban attack army school in Pakistan

[ViolentPanda]

When I'm defending the accusation that I'm no more civilized than people who kill children, yes it is.

Pickman's decided to play the Tu Quoque card about Likefish's use of the word savages. Well, bollocks to that. Any person that can shoot a child is a savage. A group of people who can do such a thing are savages. And the dreary hand wringing, sniveling "well really are we any better" shite can just fuck off.

So we're all savages, then.
Because underneath our wafer-thin veneer of civilisation, most of us would be prepared to shoot a child if the pay-off was appropriate - if it, for example, saved our own child(ren) or bought us safety. History is full of examples of dead children who were killed for the sake of a host of reasons that might be considered acceptable, deaths considered to be "noble sacrifices".

 

[Pickman's model]

Bollocks. Savages states they are savages because they deliberately killed a group of defenceless children. And I am quite fucking happy to hand out a moral judgement on a group of people who shoot up a school.

no mention of intent here. why did you change your mind?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Tell you what, why don't you throw in a runaway cable car and a fat man while playing that game. Perhaps chuck in a question of whether I'd torture said child if they knew the location of my sons abductors, or other such hypotheticals...none of which have any relation to "would you be prepared to walk into a school and kill children who pose no threat to you or yours".

Apart from anything else, you're leaving the psychology of the actors out of the equation. Call them savages, or don't, but you should accept (because it's an accurate assessment, supported by strong evidence*) that those actors believe (not for religious reasons, but because of the ideology of their struggle) that their actions are valid - that the end those actions will achieve, justify the means used to achieve them. All calling them "savages" does is make a value judgement, without considering the motivation for the action.
And guess what? It's much harder to actually defend against such actions if you don't understand the motivations behind them.

*An easy-to-digest summary of the evidence is Robert A. Pape's "Dying to Win".

As for the hypotheticals, I'm trying to communicate the idea to you that nobody is innocent; none of us are pure - all of us have our line in the sand beyond which we strip off our veneer of civilisation, and carry out barbaric acts.

 

[quiquaquo]

Although that doesn't really tell us much as Arabic is a secondary lingua franca throughout the Ummah.

Not really, there's a big difference between being able to recite the Quran and pray to being able to speak Arabic. The vast majority of Muslims of who Arabs make up about 18% can't speak it and probably a majority can't read Quranic Arabic either. In some countries the numbers able to read Arabic are about 5% at best.

 

[Lemon Eddy]

no mention of intent here. why did you change your mind?

Fuck me, that is a tedious ploy. You asked:

"so you're saying they weren't savages yesterday but they are today."

I replied that I'm happy to class them as savages from the time they decided on this course of action. So yes, they were savages today, and all the way back to whenever they committed to this. And now you try to claim that somehow is a change of mind. Try harder if you're going to claim inconsistency. Find a point that actually has something in the way of merit. But piss off with the sophomoric attempts at sophistry.

 

[ViolentPanda]

don't you think so? the message is 'kill our families and we'll kill yours. we can, you know, we can strike at your homes'.

Quite, and in the context of the ongoing struggle in parts of the Pak/Afghan border zones, the action itself, horrible and despicable though it is, is no less despicable or horrible than some of the actions of the Pakistani and Afghan military, not to mention the US's covert elements.

 

[Diamond]

but you have done things which have facilitated the killing of children. if you pay taxes (vat, income etc etc) then some of that money's gone on weaponry, whether the weapons used at home (for example in the six counties) or abroad (for example drones, bombs in afghanistan).

Specious nonsense of the highest order.

 

[Lemon Eddy]

So we're all savages, then.
Because underneath our wafer-thin veneer of civilisation, most of us would be prepared to shoot a child if the pay-off was appropriate

And that cut off point for how you determine an appropriate pay-off for you I'm entirely happy to use as a benchmark of "are you a fucking savage/monster/animal" or whatever. And if you think that marching into a school with AKs and hosing down children is only a wafer-thin veneer away from being acceptable to you, you're a fucking monster.

Christ, this is as paper thin as Cheney's defence of torture. It's ok to do unspeakable things, because other people might be planning unspeakable things, and this may stop those bad things from happening to us.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck me, that is a tedious ploy. You asked:

"so you're saying they weren't savages yesterday but they are today."

I replied that I'm happy to class them as savages from the time they decided on this course of action. So yes, they were savages today, and all the way back to whenever they committed to this. And now you try to claim that somehow is a change of mind. Try harder if you're going to claim inconsistency. Find a point that actually has something in the way of merit. But piss off with the sophomoric attempts at sophistry.

it's an important difference: is someone a savage for what they think or for what they do?

 

[Pickman's model]

Specious nonsense of the highest order.

because...

 

[likesfish]

If you support is or the taliban your a savage one of the few regimes acitvily trying to make it worse for everyone

They are savages you can understand and identify where they are coming from and what they want while still calling them fucking dark ages savages

 

[Idris2002]

Suffering christ.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And that cut off point for how you determine an appropriate pay-off for you I'm entirely happy to use as a benchmark of "are you a fucking savage/monster/animal" or whatever. And if you think that marching into a school with AKs and hosing down children is only a wafer-thin veneer away from being acceptable to you, you're a fucking monster.

We're ALL fucking monsters, you muppet. We're all a single step away from doing unspeakable things.

Christ, this is as paper thin as Cheney's defence of torture. It's ok to do unspeakable things, because other people might be planning unspeakable things, and this may stop those bad things from happening to us.

Show me where I've made any claim that it's "ok".
You won't be able to, because I haven't done so. What I have done is consistently say "their acts are barbaric" and ask "what is their motivation, and does that make them feel that their actions are justified?"

 

[Diamond]

This may seem a bit abstract and whatnot but it's interesting to contrast yesterday's thread about the Sydney siege and this thread about the massacre in Peshawar.

Very quickly this thread has become a pseudo-postcolonial argument anchored in the identity and validity of individual posters' general opinions with almost no reference to or analysis of the underlying facts while the other thread, yesterday, was replete with sympathy and concern for the Aussies caught up in the matter.

Not sure what that says but it's worthwhile flagging up.

 

[Pickman's model]

If you support is or the taliban your a savage one of the few regimes acitvily trying to make it worse for everyone

They are savages you can understand and identify where they are coming from and what they want while still calling them fucking dark ages savages

so what you're saying is the isi are a bunch of savages.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Specious nonsense of the highest order.

I suppose it makes a change for it to be him to be the one supposedly talking specious nonsense, and you calling him on it, instead of the usual vice versa.

 

[Pickman's model]

This may seem a bit abstract and whatnot but it's interesting to contrast yesterday's thread about the Sydney siege and this thread about the massacre in Peshawar.

Very quickly this thread has become a pseudo-postcolonial argument anchored in the identity and validity of individual posters' general opinions with almost no reference to or analysis of the underlying facts while the other thread, yesterday, was replete with sympathy and concern for the Aussies caught up in the matter.

Not sure what that says but it's worthwhile flagging up.

it's because some people don't like being made to think about the language they use

 

[Diamond]

That doesn't sound like a comprehensive explanation to me Pickman's...

 

[Pickman's model]

That doesn't sound like a comprehensive explanation to me Pickman's...

yeh? get back to me about the "specious nonsense" & we'll see then.

 

[Pickman's model]

Bollocks. Savages states they are savages because they deliberately killed a group of defenceless children. And I am quite fucking happy to hand out a moral judgement on a group of people who shoot up a school.

here you say they're savages because of their actions. then you say they're savages because of their intent. are you being dishonest here or in your later insistence on thought-crime? or both?

 

[Patteran]

Are this rotten mob not considered another ISI proxy/creation? I guess there are levels, shades of influence & control. Why do shits like Khorasani not struggle to find six men willing to carry out another attack like this? What has to happen to a man to make this an option he'd consider on a Tuesday? Do their families get a martyr's pension? I don't expect answers, I'm just struggling to comprehend the horror of setting fire to a teacher in front of a classroom full of doomed children, of men saying 'Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable course of action, I'm in'. If they were speaking arabic, not urdu or pashtun, then the implication is that is not personalised revenge from recent events in Waziristan, but hatred fermented in Algeria/Saudi/wherever, bottled to use elsewhere. Maybe I'm soft or naive, but I can't get close to understanding it.

 

[gosub]

The 72 virgins waiting eagerly for them will just be other terrorists.

i hope its Ann Widdecombe

 

[Pickman's model]

i hope its Ann Widdecombe

you wouldn't be so keen to say that if you found you were fending off 72 widdecombes throughout eternity

 

[hash tag]

The thing all these states where massacres at schools have taken place is the easy availability of firearms. Here in the UK we haven't had anything of this type happen since Dunblane, thank fuck, and since then firearms restrictions have been tightened to the point of strangulation. What's more likely to happen here in the UK, because it's so much easier than acquiring firearms and ammunition, is more bombs, probably using home-made explosives again. [/QUOTE]

What ever you want to call these people and feel free spending hours on reaching/arguing about a decision, these acts were simply horrible. BUT has anyone considered that the arms, guns, bombs or whatever were given to those people or they were in part trained by the UK, either directly or indirectly, possibly going back to the days when Russia invaded Aghanistan or arms that we have given to somewhere like Syria, Iraq or similar. Before you shoot me, I am not saying this is definately the case but it is certaing a possibility.

A possible movtive; are these people trying to provoke civilised nations in declaring another war on them, except in a different country ( Again, before shooting me down, I know we/ou allies have already helped with the dealing of "terrosists" in Pakistan as part of other issues).

I mention this, because, as a major exporter of arms Etc. We could try taking a look closer to home for involvement.

 

[Pickman's model]

i think we could lower the possibility of terrorism from jihadis to a negligible level by the simple and positive expedient of guillotining our war criminals starting with blair (if not major) & ending with cameron and his foul cabal

 

[likesfish]

Tbf if the taliban were running around with SA80 or another fine product of BAE.
It would be less a massacre more some people standing outside looking at a piles of bits of plastic where there rifle had be wrapped up to be hidden and came out disassmebled

i quote an ira gunman to my platoon commander who was staring at scope which had just fallen off his rifle for no reason " we stole a load of those off the udr last week but they are shit do you want them back?"

Unfortunatly even 3rd hand knock off aks work

 

[hash tag]

There is nothing like lowering ourselves to this peoples level when it comes to the moral highground! Oh, sorry, we already do that.

 

[coley]

The thing all these states where massacres at schools have taken place is the easy availability of firearms. Here in the UK we haven't had anything of this type happen since Dunblane, thank fuck, and since then firearms restrictions have been tightened to the point of strangulation. What's more likely to happen here in the UK, because it's so much easier than acquiring firearms and ammunition, is more bombs, probably using home-made explosives again.

What ever you want to call these people and feel free spending hours on reaching/arguing about a decision, these acts were simply horrible. BUT has anyone considered that the arms, guns, bombs or whatever were given to those people or they were in part trained by the UK, either directly or indirectly, possibly going back to the days when Russia invaded Aghanistan or arms that we have given to somewhere like Syria, Iraq or similar. Before you shoot me, I am not saying this is definately the case but it is certaing a possibility.

A possible movtive; are these people trying to provoke civilised nations in declaring another war on them, except in a different country ( Again, before shooting me down, I know we/ou allies have already helped with the dealing of "terrosists" in Pakistan as part of other issues).

I mention this, because, as a major exporter of arms Etc. We could try taking a look closer to home for involvement.[/QUOTE]


Doesn't require extensive training to murder schoolchildren in their school and we, as far as I know,don't export AK 47s.

 

[coley]

Pretty ignorant thing to say. What they've done is a barbaric act, of that there's no doubt, but given the possible strategic value to be gained from having attacked such a target (a school where senior military officers - meaning ISI officers too - sent their children), they may well have manufactured themselves a lever with which to force the Pakistan military to withdraw from policing actions in the tribal areas.

Or invited massive retaliation?

 

[brogdale]

What ever you want to call these people and feel free spending hours on reaching/arguing about a decision, these acts were simply horrible. BUT has anyone considered that the arms, guns, bombs or whatever were given to those people or they were in part trained by the UK, either directly or indirectly, possibly going back to the days when Russia invaded Aghanistan or arms that we have given to somewhere like Syria, Iraq or similar. Before you shoot me, I am not saying this is definately the case but it is certaing a possibility.

A possible movtive; are these people trying to provoke civilised nations in declaring another war on them, except in a different country ( Again, before shooting me down, I know we/ou allies have already helped with the dealing of "terrosists" in Pakistan as part of other issues).

I mention this, because, as a major exporter of arms Etc. We could try taking a look closer to home for involvement.

I don't know what constitutes a civilised nation, but if that were the aim of the TTP, it would appear that they've achieved it already...