Iraq in ruins

[AN_Inkling]

I agree that the overblown language is unhelpful, as is the overfocus on the threat. According to ASIO there are 60 Australians fighting in this conflict. 60. This is somehow a major threat to our safety when hundreds, even thousands, of Australians fighting in Bosnia was not. The atrocities committed in that war were no less grave. Is the possibility that some of this violence could be brought home greater in the case of ISIS? Maybe, but I've not seen any direct threat from ISIS to Australia.

Our overreaction to these kind of events makes us look hypocritical and only helps to foster the very extremism we are trying to stamp out. I see that there is a difference, but it would surely be difficult for those more invested to fully process that Israel's killing of civilians is fine, not a problem, but when Muslims kill it's "barbaric" and "evil". Some here have bemoaned the effectiveness of the "Palestinian propaganda". That's rot. Turn it around: 2,000 dead Israelis at the hands of Hamas and only 60 dead Palestinians and the media reaction would be many magnitudes greater. No journalist would be losing their job over criticising Hamas, that's for sure.

Agree with much of that, but there was no history of Bosnian terrorists causing events like 9/11, nor was the grievance of Bosnians, Serbs etc against the fundamental principles of Western culture. Islamic terrorism has been indiscriminate for a long time, and apt to be pointed at our society.

I understand that and do see the difference, even though ISIS has not yet exported its terror to the West. There is another difference though and that is in numbers. The number of Australian fighters in Bosnia was upwards of 10 times the number claimed to be "fighting" for ISIS.

The threat this posed to Australia was in continued ethnic hostility when these fighters returned. There was definitely some unease in the general community over this, not particularly over fighters (I do not remember this ever being raised as much of an issue) but over Bosnians, Serbs, Croats in general. Given the much larger numbers, even without mentioning the migrating fighters or non fighters, this fear seems more logical than the fear of Australian ISIS combatants.

I guess I just get nervous whenever a terrorism threat is overstated. The chance of bad anti-freedom laws to be passed in this environment rapidly approaches 1 as the rhetoric ramps up.

[sixpoints]

Here we go again..
Our side kills justifiably, the other kills like nut jobs.

Somehow everything changed after 9/11??
That must come as a disappointment to the 8000 Muslims who were shot, and when the bullets ran out were clubbed/throats slit in Srebrenica. I guess they just didn't matter as much as the 9/11 victims.
Again, was the killing of muslim civilians in Srebrenica evil?

Absolutely barbaric. Didn't the US come to the aid of the Bosnians? - admittedly far too late.

Yep, I'm confused. Sixpoints, are you saying that it's legitimate for someone (eg the Us) to bomb throat-slitters like ISIS and Mladic if it can serve a
strategic purpose, or not ?

I'm confused too!
My input only started in response to the definitive labeling of ISIS as "evil".
I'm questioning how this labeling is applied in light of other mass killings that are somehow ignored or justified.
Every side in a conflict can justify their mass killings. I'm just questinong ad to how we seem to apportion such traits so selectively.
ISIS act terribly. They are killing in a most horrible way. But are they worse than the Serbs who also killed civilians face to face or Hutus who did the same to perhaps a million civilians in essentially the same way that ISIS
does or to the West who invaded Iraq on what we know to be a lie.
How do we forget/ignore/dismiss/categorize so easily?
The comic book apportion of "evil" to ISIS bemuses and confounds me.

[watt price tully]

I agree that the overblown language is unhelpful, as is the overfocus on the threat. According to ASIO there are 60 Australians fighting in this conflict. 60. This is somehow a major threat to our safety when hundreds, even thousands, of Australians fighting in Bosnia was not. The atrocities committed in that war were no less grave. Is the possibility that some of this violence could be brought home greater in the case of ISIS? Maybe, but I've not seen any direct threat from ISIS to Australia.

Our overreaction to these kind of events makes us look hypocritical and only helps to foster the very extremism we are trying to stamp out. I see that there is a difference, but it would surely be difficult for those more invested to fully process that Israel's killing of civilians is fine, not a problem, but when Muslims kill it's "barbaric" and "evil". Some here have bemoaned the effectiveness of the "Palestinian propaganda". That's rot. Turn it around: 2,000 dead Israelis at the hands of Hamas and only 60 dead Palestinians and the media reaction would be many magnitudes greater. No journalist would be losing their job over criticising Hamas, that's for sure.

Agree with much of that, but there was no history of Bosnian terrorists causing events like 9/11, nor was the grievance of Bosnians, Serbs etc against the fundamental principles of Western culture. Islamic terrorism has been indiscriminate for a long time, and apt to be pointed at our society.

I understand that and do see the difference, even though ISIS has not yet exported its terror to the West. There is another difference though and that is in numbers. The number of Australian fighters in Bosnia was upwards of 10 times the number claimed to be "fighting" for ISIS.

The threat this posed to Australia was in continued ethnic hostility when these fighters returned. There was definitely some unease in the general community over this, not particularly over fighters (I do not remember this ever being raised as much of an issue) but over Bosnians, Serbs, Croats in general. Given the much larger numbers, even without mentioning the migrating fighters or non fighters, this fear seems more logical than the fear of Australian ISIS combatants.

I guess I just get nervous whenever a terrorism threat is overstated. The chance of bad anti-freedom laws to be passed in this environment rapidly approaches 1 as the rhetoric ramps up.

Got your mind off the disastrous budget & the current dysfunctional government though (some would say)

Team Australia oi, oi oi.

[Mugwump]

Absolutely barbaric. Didn't the US come to the aid of the Bosnians? - admittedly far too late.

Yep, I'm confused. Sixpoints, are you saying that it's legitimate for someone (eg the Us) to bomb throat-slitters like ISIS and Mladic if it can serve a
strategic purpose, or not ?

I'm confused too!
My input only started in response to the definitive labeling of ISIS as "evil".
I'm questioning how this labeling is applied in light of other mass killings that are somehow ignored or justified.
Every side in a conflict can justify their mass killings. I'm just questinong ad to how we seem to apportion such traits so selectively.
ISIS act terribly. They are killing in a most horrible way. But are they worse than the Serbs who also killed civilians face to face or Hutus who did the same to perhaps a million civilians in essentially the same way that ISIS
does or to the West who invaded Iraq on what we know to be a lie.
How do we forget/ignore/dismiss/categorize so easily?
The comic book apportion of "evil" to ISIS bemuses and confounds me.

Thanks, I understand your point better. I think most people would equally have applied the term evil to the depredations of Mladic in Sreberenica, and to the Hutu massacres, though we tend to understand and notice these things more when they involve a people who share at least some traditions with our own, amd where we could meaningfully intervene. That is probably wrong, but it's very deep-wired.

Where i disagree is over the comparison with Iraq. Unlike ISIS, Mladic et al, I do not believe that Western armies went into Iraq with the explicit purpose of killing as many bystanders as possible because of their race or their tribe, or whatever. The great majority of the killings in Iraq have been perpetrated by sectarian Muslims, not by Western forces. It is very probable that these killings were precipitated by the deposing of Saddam, and I have sympathy with the view that the War was a terrible error and an act of terrible hubris : but it was not evil in the same way as ISIS and Mladic are/were.

We have a tendency to relativise away everything, nowadays, but the intentions of actors and their specific actions relative to those intentions matter. Bombing Dresden was a very undesirable thing to do - but it was not the same as the German bombing of Coventry, because it was an act in the context of a struggle to prevent the ideology of Nazism from destryoying Europe's humanity. An act may be a reckless strategic error with appalling consequences, but that does not itself make it evil. What makes it evil is the ideology behind the act, amd the purpose for which the act was committed. We recognise this in sentencing in courts, and it is true in intermational relations.

[Mugwump]

Dp

[AN_Inkling]

^^I don't disagree with that. But I think more care needs to be taken than we often see. This is because the kind of rationalisation you've just made is not possible for those actively affected by the attacks and will almost always lead to further resistance. For those closer to the action killing just looks like killing. One side will see their killing as justified the other will see it as barbarism or opportunism (eg. America involved in Iraq for oil or to purposely foment unrest in the Middle East so it can be remade. If we accept this, then the war does become evil).

And that's even without muddying the waters by getting into the relativism you warned against. Isn't the "clean" war only open to the rich and powerful nations? Do these smaller groups have much of an alternative? If you don't have powerful airstrikes for your shock and awe, do less savoury options become legitimate?

[David]

[Mugwump]

^ so Himmler was not evil ? I think the words describes sadism and cruelty very well.

[David]

I think we all have the capacity for cruelty. It's a natural human trait, even perhaps a natural animal trait.

Personally, I don't think a) exercising that capacity, b) being in a position of power where one can exercise that capacity on a huge scale or c) being in a societal context where that cruelty is seen as 'good' and 'necessary' makes a person evil. It's a judgement call about the psychology of the person, and the scary thing there is that Himmler and the Nazi leadership probably weren't that psychologically different from the rest of us. Just people who abided by the status quo of the time and place, as abhorrent as it was. Who knows what you or I might have done in those circumstances?

On the flipside, if you assign the label of 'evil' based on consequences as opposed to motivation, you'd have to call earthquakes and meteors 'evil'. You'd also have to conclude that Harry Truman was about 1000 times as evil as Anders Breivik. I don't know many people who would argue that.

[Mugwump]

Ah, I see your point. I have a lot of sympathy with it, though I suspect it's a slightly theological argument, where the answer depends more upon faith than any evidential proof. I think the important point, though, is that some ideologies marshal human cruelty and sadism, and these are evil. Churchill got this point about Nazism quickly and clearly. Many people are alive and living in democracies today because he did.

[Pa Marmo]

Excellent discussion guys, but it think David has hit the nail on the head in relation to evil. If were all evolved (as 99.9% of you are sure we are), then we are all only animals anyway, so all this killing is just what animals do, no need to cite evil. Who are we to determine what is right and wrong, animals have no moral code.

[Mugwump]

I think calling an individual evil is really just a language device by which we we mark their consistent propensity to act in a certain way. Acts can be evil, and an ideology committed to acts of that type can be evil. An individual who follows such acts can be reasonably said to be evil at that time. Himmler, Breivik - both evil. It may be that the soul of an evil actor can re rehabilitated over time, but that's another issue.

Most of us, but not all, probably have the potential for evil, given the right conditioning. But as some people resist it despite pressure, and others act badly only up to a limit, and others will die for the sake of avoiding harm, it's hard to say anything very conclusive about it.

[swoop42]

Here we go again..
Our side kills justifiably, the other kills like nut jobs.

Somehow everything changed after 9/11??
That must come as a disappointment to the 8000 Muslims who were shot, and when the bullets ran out were clubbed/throats slit in Srebrenica. I guess they just didn't matter as much as the 9/11 victims. In that one Bosnian town, eight times as many deaths occurred as in 9/11.
Both were disgusting criminal acts, but one seems to be treated far differently to the other. The one where far far less lives were lost seems to be regarded as the greater crime.
Again, was the killing of muslim civilians in Srebrenica evil?

The civil war in the former Yugoslavia was very much different to what's occurring now.

It was a war contained within it's own borders and the fighters involved wouldn't have been seen as a threat to the wider world.

If it was occurring today in a post 9/11 environment that mindset would probably be different.

The people fighting for ISIS, al-Qaeda pose a genuine threat to the security of western nations as well as countries throughout the middle east and it's people.

People bitch and moan when the US get involved in a conflict and bitch and moan when they don't.

The US had no moral obligation to get involved in Bosnia unlike what's occurring now and hell here's a thought how about China or Russia do something positive for the world for once and get involved when they see a genocide unfolding.

No I thought not.

[Culprit]

We took most of the weapons from Iraq and now we will do air drops and give them weapons back. This is going around in circles and the winner is the people building the weapons.

[David]