Is it sane to try to kill innocents in Iraq?

[Boojatta]

[Iwasthere]

1. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost...

WTF... My God, when is it going to STOP? Impeach the madmen now!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. No, it's not insane.

People are killing innocent Iraqis for rational reasons... greed, hate, etc.

Which is what makes it worse, IMHO.

[TahitiNut]

3. Why do you hate America?

:sarcasm:

Let's ask the Psychopath-in-Chief in the Offal Orifice.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. not in the legal sense of the word "insane"

because that would imply the people who caused this war did not know the difference between right and wrong.

[BlooInBloo]

5. According to religion, members of other relgions/sects are NOT innocent....

... That's a cute little quirk with religion.

[AZBlue]

6. It's insane to knowingly kill an innocent person, no matter where or when.

I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know if it's the technical definition of insane, but in the general sense it is.

[Igel]

13. No, it's not.

You take a strongly communal mindset, and the entire tribe/clan/sect is guilty for either a member's (in)actions. The guilt can be an offense against honor or against what the proper order should be. So the people killed aren't necessarily personally responsible.

Then there's the question of the punishment, having decided guilt. Men kill women that hurt the man's/family's honor; tribes kill those that seriously offend their tribe's honor. Seriously, "the worst of us is better than the best of yours" is a reasonable way of looking at it. Then there's Salafist Islam, which considers Shi'ites and Christians to be polytheists, and worthy of death if they don't submit. Voila: Guilt and the death penalty.

Now, this might be insane, but the idea of tribal honor is a very ancient one, and religious death penalties are common. If it's insane, you're saying that the numbers of sane are small indeed, and the vast majority of human beings have always been insane, and sanity is highly aberrant, i.e., it's the sane that are really insane.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. They are "protecting" their own version of an "All Powerful" God.

Believing that an "All Seeing", "All Powerful", and "Everywhere", God requires protection certainly indicates a large degree of mental incompetence. Or, a large measure of hypocrisy.

[PVnRT]

8. To specifically, knowingly target innocents? Yes.

n/t

[quinnox]

9. I'd say evil instead of insane

There are brutal killers who don't value human life and they are not insane, just evil.

[pampango]

10. Not only is it sane (though totally immoral), I would say

that it is a very effective strategy of resistance and likely very successful, as well. They are much more likely to force a US military withdrawal than the French resistance ever did against the Germans with the targeting of Germans soldiers and a few French collaborators. Not sure that the French would have targeted their own civilians indiscriminately even if you convinced them that it would work, but it is a very effective strategy in these times.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. They aren't killing each other over there to get rid of us.

Us being gone, in the long run, is a given. They are fighting for the control of power against each other, and we are participant bystanders.

We made this possible by invading. We made it inevitable by blowing up the Golden Mosque. Now, it will not stop, whether we are there or not, so we might as well leave and let them sort it out, then give billions to the winner to atone for starting it in the first place.

[pampango]

12. I agree with you that it will go on after we are gone and that our

departure is inevitable. I do believe that there are factions there who think that the continuing civilian slaughter makes the US look bad or incompetent, at least to the American public, resulting in more domestic political pressure to withdraw.

While most Sunnis and Shias in Iraq seem to have long intermarried and lived and worked together, it is amazing how successful the extreme elements from both sects are at driving them apart. As you say, we empowered these elements by removing Saddam. We will owe the winner a huge check, just like we did for Germany and Japan.