I guess I have none, DA.  Other than the fact that anyone who picks up a gun is now a warrior.

Gang members who kill for turf and drugs?  Warriors.

Al Capone's torpedoes? Warriors. 

Quantrill's terrorists? Warriors. 

Chivington's people? Warriors. 

AQ types? Warriors. 

Me, when I pick up my hunting rifle? Warrior.  Never really thought of myself as one, since the deer can't exactly shoot back, but I'm now a warrior in the same class as an elite SF type in Afghanistan or a samurai.  Makes me feel warm and fuzzy, but it's not accurate.

 

I guess you and I differ on the definition of a warrior.  I see gangbangers, Mafia gunmen, and terrorists as criminals who should be treated as such.  You apparently do not.  At some point one crosses the line between a soldier with rules and a criminal who kills for fun.  Do you see what I'm saying here?

Shooting unarmed people makes you a warrior, then.  Wow.  You're splitting hairs here, DA, and I don't know why.

Still with the moral equivalence, too.  London as a terror bombing, I can see.  Dresden you can make a case for.  But Hiroshima? That was not to spread terror; it was to end it, by ending the war before the US was forced to annihilate Japan as a people.

Do you see evil anywhere in the world, DA, or just differences of opinion?

 I think you have a poor grasp of the U.S. legal system and the liabilities involved in this approach. There's a lot of things which could get them off the hook here due to technicalities, and there's far too much in the way of intelligence means and sources which will be exposed in civilian court.

 

There is no legitimate practical upside to trying them in NY. 

 

 I think you have a poor grasp of the U.S. legal system and the liabilities involved in this approach. There's a lot of things which could get them off the hook here due to technicalities, and there's far too much in the way of intelligence means and sources which will be exposed in civilian court.

 

There is no legitimate practical upside to trying them in NY. 

GOG, the women of Afghanistan disagree with you about the Taliban being "no threat to anyone."  The ones who are still alive and not permanently disfigured anyway.  Oh, and let's not forget the number of capital offenses available in Taliban territory...flying kites, listening to rock music, doing anything the Taliban doesn't like, etc.

 

Yeah, they're no threat, just as much as the Gestapo was no threat to anyone so long as you did exactly what you were told.

 

DA, by comparing the terrorists of AQ to soldiers, you are insulting your own profession.  Unless the US Army has now made murdering civilians wholesale to be SOP, AQ's fighters are not soldiers, no more than the Einsatzgruppen were.  All they deserve is a firing squad.  Simplistic? Perhaps.  But it is the only language they understand.  To paraphrase William T. Sherman, they have chosen war as their remedy and we should give them all the medicine they can hold.

 

 

Sorry if i sound heartless, sentinel, but who cares? Is the priority of the US Army to fight so that people can fly kites in Kabul? I maintain that if the Talibs are so terrible, their own people will overthrow them. I bet a lot of the women support the status quo. You'd be amazed at the success rate of acculturation and brainwashing. And it is misguided and ultimately futile to barge into someone else's culture and try to 'rectify' it. Such efforts are always always doomed to failure. The Afghans deserve the system they have. If a change is to come they must make it themselves; if it is imposed from the outside, it is meaningless.