[blueray]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
They do work in the majority of cases. Your example is just one example (from the anti-Semitic Iranian state television company, no less).

Looking at the independent figures for the civilians killed in Pakistan, the number is remarkably low (bearing in mind the high population density in Pakistan). At the low end, the Long War Journal has 138 civilians being killed from 2006-2012. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann who use 'reliable press accounts', 80% of those killed have been militants and 2010 that figure rose to 95%.

2 actually, did you read the guardian link?

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by blueray)
2 actually, did you read the guardian link?

Wow, two? As I said, even despite the civilian casualties it is still the most efficient, least-destructive form of warfare and does not kill anywhere near as many civilians as a conventional war.

[blueray]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Wow, two? As I said, even despite the civilian casualties it is still the most efficient, least-destructive form of warfare and does not kill anywhere near as many civilians as a conventional war.

I am a pacifist, so I disagree, I think all human life is valuable and war is wrong.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by blueray)
I am a pacifist, so I disagree, I think all human life is valuable and war is wrong.

Pacifism is merely the implicit support of the strong. Suggesting that removing ourselves from the question of who gets killed is a de facto endorsement of whoever has the better guns. It may be America in Pakistan this time, but when Serbia was raping and pillaging its way through its neighbouring states in a war for ethnic purity then the concept becomes more troublesome. G.K. Chesterton once put it that pacifism means if you see a man beating a woman in public then the moral course of action would be to ignore the situation and walk away rather than hit him and stop him. If you actually think human life is valuable then you wouldn't have too much of a problem with 'humanitarian bombing' as Vaclav Havel put it - highly precise air-strikes against aggressive, genocidal forces, a la Bosnia.

[blueray]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Pacifism is merely the implicit support of the strong. Suggesting that removing ourselves from the question of who gets killed is a de facto endorsement of whoever has the better guns. It may be America in Pakistan this time, but when Serbia was raping and pillaging its way through its neighbouring states in a war for ethnic purity then the concept becomes more troublesome. G.K. Chesterton once put it that pacifism means if you see a man beating a woman in public then the moral course of action would be to ignore the situation and walk away rather than hit him and stop him. If you actually think human life is valuable then you wouldn't have too much of a problem with 'humanitarian bombing' as Vaclav Havel put it - highly precise air-strikes against aggressive, genocidal forces, a la Bosnia.

I help people on the street and I support the police, I don't support wars, I support self defense

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by blueray)
I help people on the street and I support the police, I don't support wars, I support self defense

So you'd hit the man who was beating the woman? Then you're not a pacifist. I mentioned before that your view ignores the normative obligations of states in the international community vis a vis international law. A first, and very obvious, counterpoint to your idea of a defensive army only is that we are signatories to the Genocide Convention. Geoffrey Robertson QC argues that, 'when the State takes life pursuant to a policy of genocide, this right is so forcefully protected by international law (it carries every Latin tag from jus gentium and jus cogens to opinio juris and erga omnes) that it justifies armed intervention by other states, whether pursuant to Chapter VII or by way of a unilateral humanitarian mission, and the ICJ may order "provisional measures" against a government under the Genocide Convention.' This is what gave us the authority to act in Bosnia and it is what would have given us the authority to intervene in Rwanda, or anywhere else where genocide takes place.

So long as the following preconditions are met, the use of a degree of force sufficient to stop crimes against humanity is certainly justified, morally as well as legally, especially considering the enormity of the harm. (Quoting Geoffrey Robertson QC in Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice):

(1) A target state where there is convincing evidence of continuing commission of crimes against humanity either by the government or, if the country is a failed state (i.e. ungovernable), by armies, militias or organized terrorist groups.
(2) Security Council resolutions which have identified the situation as a threat to world peace and imposed sanctions or other non-violent inducements which have been ignored. Peaceful solutions must have failed.
(3) An intervention with the primary and dominant object of stopping crimes against humanity or punishing their perpetrators. Where victims are an ethnic majority within a definable territory, the overall object may be to assist their right to self-determination from a state which has by its barbaric behaviour forfeited any entitlement to rule them.
(4) A collective (never individual) armed response, preferably through a regional organization or a 'coalition of the willing', supported by the majority of the permanent members of the Security Council. (The mission must end if, notwithstanding that support, it is subsequently condemned by a Security Council resolution).
(5) The mission states must not stand to profit, e.g. by acquisition of territory or resources or through settlement of old scores.
(6) The methods of warfare must comply with the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions, and be proportionate to the legitimate objectives.
(7) The intervention must be assessed, at its outset and in subsequent stages, to have a reasonable prospect of securing those objectives.
(8) The interveners must be prepared to pick up the pieces, not hit and run. That means commitment from the outset to resource whatever reconstruction or reconstitution is necessary for a return to normality, preferably under the aegis of the UN.
(9) The interveners must not only be confident of winning on the battlefield, they must be equally sure of winning a subsequent battle in the courtroom. The enemy leaders they accuse of committing crimes against humanity (precondition (1) above) must (if possible) be taken alive and then fairly tried on those charges before an international tribunal.

Of course these are merely guidelines offered by Robertson and we can imagine a nation acting prudently against one of these preconditions to bring about a favourable set of circumstances. Taking point (4) which states, 'The mission must end if, notwithstanding that support, it is subsequently condemned by a Security Council resolution': we can imagine broad support for the military commander who continues the mission illegally in order to pursue a war criminal that the army was very close to capturing. (If, for example, the UN ordered the Coalition out of Iraq hours before the capture of Saddam Hussein then I, and many others, would still respect President Bush if he were to ignore the UN's demand, continue to capture Saddam, then proceed to try him in The Hague where he should have been tried.)

Succinctly, my point is that a well-ordered and UN Security Council-sanctioned humanitarian intervention can be both legal and moral, and is certainly something that the United Kingdom would be a major player in as a member of both NATO and the UNSC. A 'right of humanitarian intervention' is a long-established legal precedent and the right, or obligation, to intervene exists in international law. The United Kingdom should not sit back whilst genocide takes place, and those who championed an army purely for self-defence during the Balkans conflict had to live with the consequences of their beliefs when they saw concentration camps and open-air graves and the ideas of lebensraum and wars for 'ethnic purity' brought back to European soil by Milosevic and his criminal gang.

My second major point of contention with your idea of an army purely for self-defence is that you have a very confusing definition of 'self-defence'. Is it not an act of preventative, or preemptive, self-defence to carry out tougher measures against the Iranian regime? Here is my argument, in brief, adapted from a blogging acquaintance of mine:

(1) Any sovereign nation (A) has the right to act preemptively against any other sovereign nation (B) to prevent B from harming the ability of A's citizens to enjoy liberty and its fruits. In fact, if A could afford to do so, and if it would serve the interests of A's citizens, A might act preemptively against B to prevent B from harming C's citizens because of the resulting harm to A's citizens.
(2) If A's preemptive act results in A's violating its treaty obligations, A simply has put its reason for being above an obligation that was supposed to serve its reason for being, but which patently does not. A nation dedicated to liberty is obliged, first and foremost, to take the course of action that best serves its citizens' liberty and their enjoyment of it.

Self-defence can be preemptive. It is important to understand that it is widely accepted that if one wrestles a would-be mugger to the ground before he has the chance to steal one's belongings then this is an act of self-defence. We need not wait (indeed, it would be palpably absurd to wait) until we are actually attacked before we can take action against a threat to our life or property. As Randy Barnett of The Volokh Conspiracy puts it, 'It is not aggression to seek out and destroy the aggressor before he attacks you, it is self-defense. If you were armed and you knew that another armed person meant you harm, why would you not shoot first? This isn't just about Iraq, where there seems to be some nit-picking debate about what weapons Saddam might or might not have been making or intending to use, and about what sort of relationship Saddam might or might not have had with al Qaeda. This is a matter of principle. Let's get the principle right, then argue about the facts.' The relevant parts of the article:

Spoiler:

Show

[The] rule of law doctrine of "imminent threat" is not a necessary prerequisite of justified self defense in all cases. As I discuss in The Structure of Liberty, what is needed to justify self-defense in principle is a communication of intent to invade rights in a context that suggests its seriousness. A communication constitutes a threat that violates the rights of another if it puts him in reasonable fear of being the victim of a battery or worse.

The example I give in SOL is of someone, let's say it is me, who takes a full page advertisement in The New York Times announcing my intention to murder [a certain person] at some time within the next 7 days. Assuming it is not obviously a joke, and that I apparently have the means to carry out my threat, would [that person] have to wait until I came around to his house and made an overt threatening act, which ordinarily is required by the law of self defense? Given the nature of this "standing threat," need there also be a showing of imminence?

I think under these special circumstances, [that person] should not have to wait until I chose a time and place convenient for my attack but could seek me out to preemptively defend himself against me at a time and place of his convenience. In SOL I call this "extended self-defense." What makes this hypothetical unusual and unrealistic is the unambiguously objective manifestation of intent in the advertisement. The advertisement is what constitutes the threat that is the necessary condition of self defense and no further overt act is required. Under these circumstances [that person] is entitled, in my view, to "preempt" my attack before I ever perform an act that can be deemed "imminent" (like produce a weapon and point it in his direction). But this is so abnormal a hypothetical (criminals do not normally advertise their intentions) that it does not undermine the normal importance of imminence or to the law of self defense.

But advertisements and imminent acts (like massing armies on borders) are not the only ways to communicate a threat. So would speeches coupled with less normally obvious behavior. If the content of these other communications are sufficiently clear, then self defense would be warranted even in the absence of an overt act that constitutes an imminent threat. So "imminence" may not be a requirement of even a defenseist foreign policy (assuming that a [defenseist] foreign policy is logically entailed by libertarianism, which I doubt). What is required is a threat. ...

None of this however, is to argue that a military invasion is always (or ever) a good foreign policy. Many libertarians are "noninterventionists" who seem to oppose almost any military invasion outside the territory of the US on the ground that the unintended consequences of such actions are likely to be terrible, as indeed they often are.

My original point was simply that this type of noninterventionism, whether right or wrong, does not follow from Libertarian principles as some of its adherents apparently assume. It is more a pragmatic judgment of the sorts of rightful actions that will or will not yield good consequences. This judgment could lead to certain principles of foreign policy, but these should not be confused with Libertarian first principles. In addition, while I respect those who hold to this position, it tends to ignore the unintended consequences of nonaction, which can be just as harmful. Unintended consequences is a concept that, logically, runs in both directions. ...

Finally let me hasten to add that, though I have thought a lot about Iraq as a citizen, with these posts I have only just begun to think about the relationship of Libertarianism with foreign policy. I am completely open to being persuaded that this analysis is completely wrong (as well as to encouragement that I am on the right track). Indeed, I had hoped that, by raising the issue, someone else would [do] the [heavy] lifting and save me the trouble.

So, what is the object of preemption in the case of foreign interventions? (Again adapting the theory slightly from the aforementioned blog.) The object of preemption must be to prevent a foreign state or entity from acquiring or deploying the means of attacking the interests of British citizens where the foreign entity's behavior clearly indicates that an attack is almost certain to follow from said acquisition or deployment. When is preemption a suitable course of action? Preemption may be necessary when several conditions are met:

(1) The failure of diplomatic efforts, which may include the United Nations but need not depend on the UN’s course of action.
(2) The failure of the sanctions regime and/or threats made by us towards the enemy state.
(3) The likelihood that preemption would not cause a breakdown of diplomatic, military, or economic relations with foreign states, where such relations are important to the well-being of the British people.
(4) The prospect of a successful preemption, where the costs (in life, limb, and money) are judged to be less than the costs of failing to act.
(5) An open debate resulting in an authorisation by Parliament.

The relevant sections of the UN Charter are as follows:

All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. (Article 2, Clause 3)

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security. (Article 39)

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. (Article 51)

[Michaelj]

As an ex-serviceman some of the comments in this thread are quite frankly offensive and disgusting.

[ANIGAV]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Yes, it does show my intellect actually, because I am somewhat more educated than you obviously are on the way that classical anti-Semitic motifs present themselves in the modern media. The representation of the Rothschilds here is steeped in it, and it's worth bearing in mind that this family was prominent long before the Federal Reserve was created by an act of the US Government in the 1910s. I am against the Federal Reserve, but I gather that most people who are educated on the issue wouldn't use this video as an argument against it considering how pathetically weak it is.

Have you mastered the use of ad hominems? or are you going to refute the points raised in the video? The video serves to show how the banks were established, this is not an argument.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by ANIGAV)
Have you mastered the use of ad hominems? or are you going to refute the points raised in the video? The video serves to show how the banks were established, this is not an argument.

Barely any decent arguments were raised in the video. Rothbard's The Case Against the Fed raises arguments against it; this does not.

[unruly1986]

(Original post by Michaelj)
As an ex-serviceman some of the comments in this thread are quite frankly offensive and disgusting.

I'm currently on Ops and if this thread is a typical representation of the 'best and brightest' our once fine country has to offer, then no wonder it is going down the pan.

Bunch of naive ****s. We do not live in a Utopia. There are nasty people out there who want to kill YOU. There are men and women dying whilst fighting those evil people on their own doorstep, and all you can do is make offensive remarks.

[ANIGAV]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Barely any decent arguments were raised in the video. Rothbard's The Case Against the Fed raises arguments against it; this does not.

okay, thanks.

[Michaelj]

(Original post by unruly1986)
I'm currently on Ops and if this thread is a typical representation of the 'best and brightest' our once fine country has to offer, then no wonder it is going down the pan.

Bunch of naive ****s. We do not live in a Utopia. There are nasty people out there who want to kill YOU. There are men and women dying whilst fighting those evil people on their own doorstep, and all you can do is make offensive remarks.

I went to America last year and the Americans generally loved their military. They buy free drinks for them and cheer them on. They were lovely to me when I visisted when I served the royal marines. Come to England and... People refusing entry to armed forces people, general rudeness and comments in this thread. Lets not forget the positive rep that these people have been getting for posting such posts.

[unruly1986]

(Original post by Michaelj)
I went to America last year and the Americans generally loved their military. They buy free drinks for them and cheer them on. They were lovely to me when I visisted when I served the royal marines. Come to England and... People refusing entry to armed forces people, general rudeness and comments in this thread. Lets not forget the positive rep that these people have been getting for posting such posts.

True. About the positive rep - they are probably the same lot who took part in the violent student protests or riots over the last year or so. No respect or decency. Probably won't get anywhere in life.