printIf you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana
From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.
The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/
I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.
About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10) (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):
If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.
Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?
Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.
BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason”
* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/
UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.
Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”
It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”
Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”
The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.
I don’t often differ with you, Ilana, but this time I do. Please listen to this half-hour-long YouTube selection (15 hours ago) by Curtis Yarvin — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv-pqUJLqoc — he reaches some interesting conclusions about what Israel ought to be doing… specifically, about your “mens rea” argument.
“Going door to door in Gaza to root out Hamas terrorists will not be easy, but I have confidence that the Israeli Defense Force will ultimately prevail…” Matt Rowe (Idiot)
The invasion of GAZA will unleash the dogs of war and they are not Chihuahuas this time.
HAMAS is embedded like 6 kinds of cancer in that strip and radiation, chemotherapy and surgery are all just what the same doctors who told us we needed to “flatten the curve” will tell us as the patient goes onto the ventilator.
To the north, in our freshly remembered past, Hezbollah fought the IDF to a standstill in 2006, but are now exponentially stronger, more armed and far more dangerous.
Our “Armed Forces”, at this point, are diminished and led by gelded Fisher King Generals who worry more about “White Rage”, inoculating soldiers with poison and putting dresses on the rest.
We are, now, 75 years into government overthrows, ill advised wars and Presidential executive actions (Who needs Congress, or the vox populi?) like the Bourbons. We have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The Mess In Gaza.
Billy Mitchel was a genius, prescient and ahead of his time, but there is no way, he would support giant iron bathtubs as our first line of defense today. They are sitting ducks. Mig-31Ks are patrolling neutral air space over the Black Sea 24/7, equipped with hypersonic Khinzals, which would take only six minutes to visit the Mediterranean. Air Craft Carriers are the American “Maginot Line”. It’s like the anencephalic archons in the Pentagon think there is a Star Trek Cloaking device protecting these fin de siecle relics from 80’s.
The Iranians will mine and close the Straight of Hormuz immediately. The Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day.
This will rock the world economy to it’s core.
The insanity/stupidity of the Republican & Democrat neocons (Read: tip of the spear, bumptious bell cow Nikki Haley, foppish fake tough guy Lindsey Graham, the corrupt putrescent Pelosi/Biden et.al.), can in no way be underestimated. Their record is pristine, predictable and pernicious. They are American Bourbons, they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
The reason we Americans are used to losing wars now (It’s going great in the Ukraine.), is because we lose so many wars.
The shores of history, is strew with the wrecks of empires.
Since the Vietnam War, ours, has been an Empire of Lies.
The resolution? This will be resolved with chemical warfare.
The IDF will use gas. They can’t fight a door to door and worse, a tunnel to tunnel war in Gaza.
Real Politik negates the lives of the hostages & are already figured in to the coming narrative.
This makes sense for both sides. The supporters of Gaza, no matter how nihilistic, suicidal and ideologically committed they are to their cause, do not want nuclear war.
A cessation of hostilities in conjunction with a now, DRAMATICALLY different narrative (People in the streets all over the world supporting HAMAS, is, literally, already the victory they hoped for.) is in the best interests of Tehran, Hezbollah, the Russians and Chinese and, in fact, considering the Occident’s weakness in anticipation of a worst case scenario, best for the U.S. too.
Lies will be told, statues erected, memorials, treacly elegies sung, ongoing apotheosis of the dead will fill the pages and screens of the jejune hoi polloi and the Pyrrhic victory of the west will be portrayed as if it were Agincourt and we will continue to be diminished until the next crisis.
We as a nation, are in precipitous decline by way of our own policies and the inane vapid politicians we “elect” in “fair and free” elections.