WI: Clinton nukes Belgrade during Bosnian conflict?
- Thread starter peterpandude85
- Start date
Now that's an overkill when it comes to taking out the Chinese embassy!
United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade - Wikipedia
The Interahamwe in Rwanda basically did the equivalent of this in the relevant timeframe. No one ever even considered nuking Kigali.
This doesn't sound like the US military. Sure, they're not perfect but they're also not gung-ho nuts itching for excuses to execute comrades. The Waffen-SS, I could see this behavior in. But the modern(ish) US military? Um.
Also, consider the OP: firing a nuke on a civilian target because... well, because Clinton felt like it. That is definitely going to cause some issues.
eadmund
Banned
Because nobody gave a fuck about Rwanda and they had French support.
Google Pat Tillman.
Regarding...? Unless things changed dramatically my understanding is that it was a friendly fire incident and the military was reluctant to admit it for image reasons.
Even then, one man does not equal erasing a cityful of civilians on the morality and should I break my oath scale. They're not even on the same level.
It's not necessary look to a simple soldier to see someone refusing to carry on an illegal order: launching a nuclear attack is a little more complex procedure then movie-big red buttons, you have to get a high-ranking member of Cabinet (usually Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense) confirm of the order, to avoid a President suddenly get mad in a psychotic raptus and decide to kill all us. So it will fall on Warren Christopher or William Perry's shoulders the responsibility to refuse the presidential order and then to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Clinton due mental health issues.
Let me get this straight. A bolt-from-the-blue nuke to take out a Serb strongman in order to destabilize a badly behaving Serbia. An F-117 with smart bombs could do the same, with far far far far less collateral damage. The notion of using nukes without some substantial WMD provocation is ASB.
Oh boy. First one would have to get FR of Yugoslavia at that point as an active overt participant in the conflict in BiH for any kind of military action against it to be considered and that causes enough butterflies that I am not sure how everything else would develop. FRY being an active participant is more likely than not bring Russian military presence beyond volunteers and peacekeepers into the region.
Al Gore becomes president about 30 seconds after he gives the order (which would not be carried out)
Repeat after me.
"Presidents and Prime Ministers in Democracies are not dictators"
Repeat after me.
"Presidents and Prime Ministers in Democracies are not dictators"
Well there was that one maniac who tried to start a war with Russia over that airport in Kosovo...
You don't have to be gung-ho nuts to not want war crimes to go public. In any situation where there's still punishments for atrocities there'll always be the motivation to silence dissenters.
It's really not that much to kill a few men and women with consciences. It's not like regular people are going to pay attention or that those in direct authority are going to take overmuch objection to it, if they ever find out in the first place. The sky isn't going to crackle and lightning isn't going to strike. There's absolutely nothing to stop someone in a warzone from getting dropped by their own just to make their lives easier.
It'd be nice if the military was full of just people and led by accountable officers who would bring these kinds of things to the light and actively refuse to carry out these war actions. But the US military (both the leadership in particular and as an institution) has too much blood on its hands to suffer that kind of exposure and it's demonstrably not the case that the rank and file are inclined to do so either.
The idea of moral obligations to refuse unlawful or immoral orders in a Nuremberg that can't survive actual social conditions. Soldiers who murder civilians or are witness to such murders also have families of their own they'd like to get home to.
Blowing the whistle on the entire apparatus that's responsible for getting you back home and supplying your benefits and paying your salary (that you need to live) is just not something that any significant number of people are going to be willing to do. Especially if the soldiers right around them are both implicated and hostile to the whistleblower exposing their crimes.
They sleep next to these people. They might die if they don't go about things carefully and under secrecy.
If you're going to allow the very purposefully tailored image of the US military as professional and restrained then you're going to be able to sweep every awful thing under the rug.
Millions of people are dead, impoverished and displaced because of the war in Iraq just on its own.
There are no clean wars and no clean militaries.
They exist to kill, that is what they are for.
The idea that an organization that can lay waste to an entire region for over a decade can't kill a few of its own people, should the need arise, is just ridiculous. Life is not a video game where someone is immune to bullets just because they're "on your team".
If Mikey is uncomfortable with something illegal he just saw his commanding officer order, and Mikey is talking around about who to report this to or trying to contact someone outside the military then Mikey is a problem and problems have to go.
It's not the first option, nor the most common, obviously. But that it could happen is just a "duh". It'd be a lot smarter to just have them court martialed and censured and put them under a gag order, but not everyone is smart and not every soldier or officer is going to be involved in something they can actually squeeze themselves out of if their superiors find out about it through a more legitimate process.
Point is, they have guns, if someone doesn't want something getting out bad enough that they're willing to kill them over it they can make the attempt, and there's no questions about that.
It can be done sloppy, it can be done well, it can be rare and it can be almost unheard of, but it can be done.
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SsgtC
Banned
I'm not sure if this is just military bashing, a really bad attempt at trolling, some weird conspiracy theory or if you've just seen way too many movies or books that don't give a damn about realism and assumed that was the way things were, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.
Look, whatever makes you uncomfortable is going to make you defensive but I don't live in the world where Chelsea Manning didn't spend years in prison for going public about the US abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
I'm not saying the military is this chaotic cesspool where they off every person who has a crisis of conscience. What I am saying is that it's more than conceivable that someone could end up dead to keep something truly awful from going public. Think Mai Lai or something along those lines.
Criminals do whatever is within their ability to avoid punishment.
I'm trying my best to stay cordial here, but if you're going to go to bat for the military simply off reflex, then you're not being realistic. Because these issues are deadly important. The ability for the public to know what the military is doing is paramount to ensuring civilian control of the armed forces. Unaccountable institutions get bolder as time goes on and the more interference people run for them only feeds the problem.
Seconded.
Sorry but this ASB imo. While the country of Yugoslavia's behavior in the Balkan wars was atrocious, nothing about it would merit the use of a Nuclear Bomb. Especially in the shadow of Chernobyl. Unless the US would want all of its allies to turn their backs after unnecessarily escalating a violent conflict, there is no one in the Clinton White House who would think this is a smart idea.
And really annoyed the Chinese or anyone else with an embassy in Belgrade.