Kucinich, the only man against killing civilians

God bless the man.

I'm sure every Republican candidate would have jumped up from out behind their podiums to say yes .

Unfortunately, I was disgusted to see Democratic candidates would kill CIVILIANS just to get a military target. I know it's a hard question to answer, but I consider foreign civilians our equals. What if Osama was found in Arizona? Do we kill our own civilians?

this is why I continue to support Kucinich, as I did in 2004.

And Kucinichs answer is the main reason he will never get elected.

No one wants to kill inocent civilians but there are definately situations that warent it. If you answered no to that question you lost the election.

I dont like the question, but the answer was not no.

Heres something pitt posted about this and while its a rediculously extreme example there are other less extreme ones that also would force the commander in cheif to make that hard choice.




Imaging Adolf Hitler, or some other genocidal leader with similarly bloody hands, walking down a street. He is surrounded by 50 ten-year-old kids who are all carrying bunny rabbits, twelve Buddhist monks, and ten Normandy veterans. You're in a bomber above him, he's in your sights, but you know any bomb you drop will also obliterate that crowd of innocents.

Do you do it?

Of course you do.

Life isn't about choosing between good and evil, except in rare moments. More often than not, life is about choosing the evil that's more good.

I'm a retired social worker. It is virtually ALWAYS possible to head off an armed conflict. Apprehension of people such as Usama, a paid CIA operative, at least at one point, interestingly enough, should always involve international CRIMINAL APPREHENSION efforts, and virtually never has to involve BOMBING. We had many chances to apprehend Usama before bombing was necessary, but DimSon was probably too busy negotiating with the TALIBAN LEADERS over the gas pipeline they want to put north-south in Afghanistan; he was reportedly engaged in such negotiation right up until 9/11.

and that is the crux of it.

The question wasn't would you rather bomb them than arrest them. it was if faced with the choice of bombing them or letting them escape would you do it. Again it was a loaded question but to say you would ignore the security of the united states to keep from harming a few civilians is to completely lose the race for president.

Again I don't like it nor do any of our candidates but there may come a time in their presidency when such a difficult choice has to be made and if they arent willing to make that choice then they aren't qualified to be president in the eyes of the majority of americans.

Most of us want peaceful means but to deny that there are situations where these hard choices need to be made is not being honest with yourself or our candidates forced with such a loaded question.

The answer is to let the false opportunity pass, while keeping the target in your sights, and making a move when he is NOT surrounded by innocents.

Similar hypothetical: There is a mass murderer who has killed dozens. You arrest 5 people - evidence shows one of these five is that murderer, but you cannot determine which one. What do you do? Let all five go, including the murderer who will then kill dozens more, or execute all five, trading the lives of the four who were innocent for the lives of the dozens?

and your question is completely different. How bout keep the four imprisoned until you have time to make a better assessment of who the guilty party is? Once you have them incarcerated the threat is gone.

Sure you can make up all kinds of scenarios where there are better options but to pretend that a scenario might present itself where there wasn't a better option is putting your head in the sand. The president needs to be able to make tough choices such as these and again I doubt very seriously it would be any of their first choices to kill innocents if at all avoidable but if the choice was kill innocents or let the guy go with an almost assured high casualty rate as a result, wouldn't you be in effect killing more innocents by letting them walk?

How can you justify letting so many more die because you were too squeamish to address the problem when you could?

Look at the heat clinton gets for "letting osama go" instead of bombing him when they supposedly knew where he was. If you think for a second our candidates could have answered that question any other way than they did and still have a hope of achieving the presidency today .... well all I can say is I admire your idealism, but weep for your naivete

As a social worker, I worked with law enforcement many times, and a common technique was to let the suspect 'escape,' or to think that he had escaped permanently. Then you'd just pick him up a few moments later when he wasn't expecting it, with minimum danger to others. We, as a society, have to learn to fight that automatic urge to solve things with violence.

On edit:
You'd keep all five incarcerated? Not in the U.S. you wouldn't - there's this 'goddamned piece of paper (per Dubya)' that would get in the way of that - it's called the U.S. Constitution. I mean you could trump up some charge against each of them, and hold them, but that would certainly not be inherently legal, nor would it be just or in the spirit of justice.

I guess we just disagree.

Where you control the streets as in at home here in america, but when that same person is in a foreign land and we have limited resources to track and folow that person your scenario is just not plausable.

Why are you pretending that our candidates want to kill inocents first instead of taking other options assuming they were available.

The answer - with respect to the different location - is to get the cooperation of the international community, including locals. If you don't have it, then something is wrong.

There's always a way to avoid violence. Violence is virtually always unnecessary.

Now, I guess we have to agree to disagree. Take care! Talk to you later!

But clearly that isn't the case at the moment in a lot of places. You cant magically create cooperation out of thin air and you cant win the presidency saying you would let osama go until you had time to build that cooperation either. If the cooperation was there in the first place the scenario they were asked about wouldn't exist.

How would you have avoided violence during world war two?

How would you avoid violence as a woman who is raped?

How would you avoid violence as a child who is being abused.

Sorry there are not always ways to avoid violence I reject that assumption completely. Sometimes violence is forced on you no matter how hard you try to avoid it and in those times you need to be able to protect yourself.

It's always, in essence, kill the terrorist, or wimp out. What's wrong with arrest and trial?

Simple as that if you ask me. Wolf was looking for an opening to paint them as weak on national security. Thankfully none of them fell for it except kucinich.

the dems would never allow themselves to be painted as weak and wimpy.

And they aren't going down without a fight

is just wimpy.

:sarcasm:

The fact is that preemptive or preventative action is ILLEGAL - so is ASSASINATION. One may only use deadly force in response to IMMINENT deadly attack, in defense of oneself or another.

It is PROFOUNDLY SHOCKING that people do not seem to be aware of this.

I was very proud of Kucinich pointing to how wrong assasination was, and I'm motivated to back him now more than ever.

I guess that we just profoundly disagree about the necessity of killing innocent civilians.

on your Country, has already claimed responsibility for killing 3,000+ people, and continues to keep up his threats, I think a President has to make a decision of risk v/s reward. If the criminal can be captured and tried, for sure that's the way to go, but if he can't be, then the decision is risk having several thousand (or more) of your own innocent citizens killed, or "take out" the criminal even though a small number of innocent people could be injured or killed in the process.

Not a pretty choice and certainly not one anyone would want to make, but a potential choice just the same.

nt

I went and donated $50 to his campaign drive for 1 million $50 donations.

I bet not one of them would have put his/her hand up.

What makes their lives more important than ours? Nothing. Iraqi, American, Russian -- all civilians should be treated with respect and never as collateral damage -- especially in this age when we have a lot of other means.

That question was bad enough you want to throw an even worse hypothetical at them? WTF?

Underneath all of this lies that some serious bias - on the part of those carrying out our national policy.