Posts in "Murder"

By Matt Cockerill at 7:15AM

Feb 17, 2010

The "Progressive" NATO Knowingly Slaughters Innocent People

The mainstream left is always fomenting about how we must have the "international community's" support before waging war. This Orwellian term should not be taken to mean the regular folks in allied nations -- who are overwhelmingly against both the "bad" and "good" war -- but their self-interested political leaders.

But apart from misleading, this attitude reeks of state-worship and naivete. If someone decides to bomb a residential area, are the innocent people maimed -- that is, the victims -- really going to care whether the "international community" sanctioned this aggression? NATO seems to think such a distinction is justified, as demonstrated by its recent decision to directly slaughter about a dozen Afghanis to get an alleged terrorist.

But of course, neither tough-talking NATO generals nor the chickenhawk politicians who employ them would accept blowing their children's legs off as a means to an end. The job of libertarians is to preach the Golden Rule and remind our fellow citizens that no government institution is above the natural law binding private society.

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By Brian Beyer at 6:28AM

Dec 8, 2009

An American Gulag? And It's Not the YAL Kind

Guantanamo Bay is once again causing a world of controversy for -- you guessed it -- inhumane treatment of its prisoners. The "military detention camp" is really just a place for US leaders to circumvent the US legal system and the Constitution, all in the name of wartime procedures. An illegal invention of Bush-era lawyers, the "detention camp" remains open despite promises by the current president to have closed it.

A new report by the Seton Hall University Law School reveals crime reminiscent of Soviet Gulags. What is even more unfortunate is that people are willing to defend this trash as:

a clean, modern facility that employs humane detention practices to prevent enemy combatants from causing harm in the future and that utilizes fair trial procedures that exceed standards accepted in comparable international tribunals to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of enemy combatants alleged to have committed punishable offenses in the past.

Opposed to killing, but not to war? You're just as hypocritical as an antiwar murderer.

How could the Fort Hood shooter be opposed to war, but not to killing? Perhaps in the same way other people are opposed to killing, but not to war.

I haven't been following the Fort Hood story very closely, to be honest, so I don't have much commentary to offer on the situation in general. However, this sort of puzzlement at an antiwar murderer is a reaction I've noticed, nicely summarized by the comic at right.

So -- while not diminishing the tragedy at Ft. Hood, for it certainly is a tragedy -- I'd like to take this opportunity to address this most interesting reaction (from Townhall, no less, which is anything but antiwar) to this killing spree. It's a recognition of the hypocrisy of murdering while not supporting war. But where is the introspection? Where is the realization that supporting aggressive war while opposing murder is just as hypocritical?

Nowhere to be found, it seems. So to make up for it, I've collected (below the jump) a few quotes on the difficulty of taking either oxymoronic position.

11/05/2009 Nightly Roundup

An army Major unjustifiably killed people. This is a horror, but regardless of the victims' nationality, hardly out of the ordinary considering the day-to-day activities of the man's "employer."
Run, Ron, Run, says entertaining -- if idiosyncratic -- shock jock Alex Jones.
Forget Swine Flu Hysteria, there is an all-too-real breakout of American stupidity. To steer clear of this pandemic, avoid contact with the government schools, says Walter Williams.
Obesity may be linked to cancer, according to some frightening new statistics. (How long, I wonder, until the state gets involved?)

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By Matt Cockerill at 3:36PM

Oct 29, 2009

The Hypocrisy of the State

The irony of the state is that its chief political actors want us to think of them as individuals. This is hardly surprising -- they are people, after all, and beholden to the same proclivities and social desires as is the rest of humanity.

The current head head of state, Barack Obama, likewise wants us to think of him as an individual. Someone who screws up sometimes, but loves his wife and beautiful children. Someone who abused drugs in the past, but has managed to become a responsible and effective member of society.

While many people are appreciate the personal nature of much of what politicians tell them, I am disgusted by it. Disgusted by the hypocrisy of a president who wants us to get to know and appreciate the family he undoubtedly loves, but dehumanizes the voiceless Afghan child he murders as expendable "collateral damage." Disgusted by the hypocrisy of a government which shackles and kidnaps people for making the same nonviolent mistake its sanctified leader did. Disgusted by the hypocrisy of a state that only seems to consider its power players, and those in cahoots with them, as fully human.

Hey Liberals -- The Obama Administration has, is, and will continue to torture

Those statists and "peacenik" celebrities who claim to oppose torture "on principle," yet sanction the Obama warfare state, are deeply naive.

It's either ethical to blow children's legs off for some "greater good," or it is absolutely morally unacceptable. While I consider the views of a philosophical consequentialist like Henry Kissinger deplorable, he at least has some intellectual credibility that the standard flag-waver lacks.

In their minds, (NB: explicit imagery) these sorts of things "don't count," as torture. After all, it was (sorta) sanctioned by the US state in its undeclared "war on terror." I'm sure the parents of the children are completely fine with their torture since this is considered to be "public policy," by US state and its "sacred" military.

(The haunting images are from Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory)

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