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The Falkland Islands: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tell Argentina to STFU
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I didn't know you had to wait to be attacked before you could take action against an enemy vessel.
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I didn't say it was a crime - it was it was unethical. These are two different things.
The Belgrano's crew did not start the war. Many of them probably did not even wish to participate in the war; the Argentinian used conscripts, as I've said before. Obviously that doesn't mean you have to sit there and just let them shoot at you, but hounding a vessel that is attempting to disengage and blowing it out of the water is not a direct engagement.
(Then again, the USAF does seem to enjoy strafing unarmed & unarmored civilian vehicles that are trying to escape a warzone, so perhaps you feel differently about what constitutes an 'engagement').
i.e. they were flagrantly trying to take advantage of an exclusion zone to gain advantage in battle, if anything Belgrano was acting unethically. The captain has even come out and said they were fair game, so I've no idea why the fuck you're even arguing this point.
So because Argentina used a system that is the norm for most parts of the world and its history, the UK didn't have the right to fire on the ship? I guess from now on we should draft people into our forces, attack people, and then run away saying HA HA, CAN'T GET ME!
I'm not a fan of drafts or conscription for a number of reasons, but this is a really dumb thing to say and your understanding of warfare is just beyond ignorant.
Um, no you did, you called it(wrongly) ILLEGAL.
'Are you willing to give peace a chance?'
.....I didn't know we were at war with Argentina right now? Or if we don't give the Falklands to them there won't be peace? Pretty awful ambassador.
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From what I've seen it's a pretty awful government.
Actually, no, if you go back and actually read my posts you'll see that I qualified several times that the Belgrano sinking was not illegal or a war crime. The Geneva Conventions are not really recognized by most NATO members as actual laws; just a framework.
To put it more clearly: according to the Geneva Conventions, sinking the Belgrano was illegal. But the Geneva Conventions are not considered law by the UK (or most NATO members).
EDIT: I don't see why you're offering these rationalizations anyway. I mean, you're a right winger who wouldn't care even if the Royal Navy had gone steaming through the wreckage of the ship and start machine-gunning life rafts, so arguments related to wartime ethics coming from you is pretty dishonest.
Actually, I didn't say that at all. You said that the crew of the ship were responsible for starting the war. They weren't; they were forced to be there at the end of a gun.
I said they're responsible for fighting the war. Which they are.
So were most of the soldiers on every side in WW2.
War, it turns out, is hell, and you can't unilaterally disarm.
"The Belgrano was sunk outside the 200-nautical-mile (370 km) total exclusion zone around the Falklands. Exclusion zones are historically declared for the benefit of neutral vessels; during war, under international law, the heading and location of a belligerent naval vessel has no bearing on its status. In addition, the captain of the Belgrano, Héctor Bonzo, has testified that the attack was legitimate (as did the Argentine government in 1994).[14][15][16][17][18]"
The Belgrano wasn't fleeing or surrendering. According to every involved party the attack was legitimate.
The sinking wasn't unethical by anyone's standards but yours, and it certainly wasn't against the terms of the Geneva Conventions.
So, I will ask again, why exactly are you beating this fucking drum?
I mean christ, you really are all over the place. You start off saying it was a war crime, then it wasn't illegal, then it was illegal again. Then you accuse me of making some kind of statement about Goose Green and calling some dude a liar though for the life of me I can't remember ever talking about anything but the Belgrano.
And believe it or not I'm even going to agree with you, war is immoral, killing people is immoral, killing people who had no choice but to be there even more so. But none of those things change the fact that is how a war is, this is why we have lots of people saying war is a bad thing. We were not wrong to sink the Belgrano, conscripts or not the sailors on that warship would not have shared your hippy attitude toward conflict. The pilots that sunk HMS Sheffield certainly didn't but you don't see anyone bitching about that.
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See, I disagree. I think war can be moral. In the case of a nation deciding to just outright invade another nation for no good reason, for example. Kicking their butts out can definitely be considered moral.
EDIT: And as far as the Olympics ad goes... maybe the junta killed off all the intellectuals who could oppose it back then, and now what's left in charge can't string a coherent thought together between them.
Oh yeah, in the grander scheme of things defending your territory against agression is not immoral, but even in a just war many individual actions tend to fall into a grey area when talking in strict moral terms.
This sinking of the Belgrano was one of these, when it was attacked it probably was trying to get the hell out of dodge, so yeah we could have let it go on its way and 350 people wouldn't have had to die that day, that crew could have survived long enough for the war to end. That's what ender seems to be hung up on.
What everyone else argues though is "tough titty, alls fair in love and war". Which is the only proper attitude to have to a war, the British commanders rightly decided that allowing that ship to live was unnacceptable risk, it could easily have come back another day and cost British lives. The decision we made that day was that UK lives were more important than Argentine lives, which is war in a nutshell, which is why in strict terms it's immoral.
As me and everyone else has already said though, it's a moot point. Morality doesn't come into it, in a military sense sinking the Belgrano was the right call at the time, and in hindsight it still is.
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Actually most observers think it was deliberately skirting the exclusion zone in order to enter it at a more advantageous point closer to British forces. It's position was related to ensuring it's safety at that time, but only in the same way a ninjas black clothes are, it's moving (as safely as it can) to the best position to attack.
Indeedly do, and it's this kind of shit that makes war not the land of puppies and fairies that some people around here seem to think it is.
Personally, I'd be fine if they had sunk the Belgrano in Buenos Aires' harbor.
Me too. Warship is a warship no matter where it is.
I'm not debating it was skirting the exclusion zone with a view to attack. Just that it may well have been withdrawing at the moment it was sunk, I think (?) it was aware that it was under attack before it took the torpedo that sunk it. This is why it was sailing in a way that suggested withdrawing from the fight, hence the controversy. But yeah like I said to ender I didn't say it wasn't withdrawing, where I disagree with him is in saying it wasn't a valid target because it was withdrawing.
Putting stupid rules on what military assets can be attacked and when is utterly counter productive, it just encourages bullshit like housing missile batteries in hospitals and schools.
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Yup.
They tend to be a problem on the Falklands, but a lot of the negative coverage can also be blamed on this.
Oh yeah, they have tons of cool economic policies. Like lying about inflation rates and forbidding their "free" press from reporting the real figures.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
As I understand it, none of the ships knew the sub was there; the Belgrano was caught broadside by a pair of dumbfire torpedos, and her escorts didnt start dropping depth charges until after the attack.
Also of relevance, last December, the British released intelligence intercepts showing that the Belgrano had been ordered into the exclusion zone, not back to port.
And yet they, along with Iceland, are doing pretty well while the "responsible" European powers are going down the toilet, and that drives them nuts.
What do you mean "doing pretty well". They are running at something like a 20-30% inflation rate, they have gagged economists (literally threatening them with criminal prosecution) from reporting Argentina's real inflation rate, normal people are having real, real problems getting the money together to buy daily necessities. They are on the brink of (another) total economic collapse.
That is not "doing pretty well" by any metric.
This. If you actually buy the Argentinian line that everything is super awesome over there and everyone is just super jealous at how awesome everything is you seriously need your bullshit detector checked. Argentina is on the brink of some serious internal problems and instead of addressing those problems, they're muzzling the press to pretend they don't exist and banging the Falklands drum to try and take everyone's minds off it. Granted so far it seems to be working but the "LALALA I'M NOT LISTENING LALALA" approach to economic crisis will eventually blow up in de Kirchners face. And when it does the Falklands will be the last thing anyone in Argentina is worrying about.
So no this is not some 1%'er plot to suppress how well those south American commies are doing. This is just a bad government causing more damage in it's death throes.
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It's not just "Western" press that is covering it, either. South American publications are reporting the same thing. The funniest one that's popped up in the last few months is the deployment of money-sniffing dogs at border crossings to help detect capital fleeing the country.
I love how even after doing this their ambassador to the UK still said Spain and the rest of Europe would support Argentina since Argentina backs Spains claim to Gibraltar. Other than the hundreds of millions of dollars Argentina just stole from Spain, yeah they're best buds. I swear the people in the Argentine government are just living on a different planet.
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Both have had their populace say "Nah, we like things how they are" and both have been told "No, you belong to us, we don't care what you say!" by their respective neighbors.
So the fact that Argentina supports Spain's claim to Gibraltar is really not surprising.
Their claim is worth zero.
Because of the treaty.
This is the basis of thousands of years of geopolitics.
I agree totally, maybe I'm expressing myself wrong: This is not a bunch of penguinized rocks in the middle of the sea; it's a single huge monkeyfied rock at the edge of the sea that people have been living on for more than 200 years. While I think Spain has no legal claim to it, I can understand their desire to reclaim it more than Argentina's claim, if that makes sense.