India's shame is its politicians

[nagarifle]

have taken a back sit on this issue till now.

Fact IAF bombed civilians in MIZORAM, THIS is from the mouth of IAF. well recorded . here who was fighting who is not the issue. INNOCENT CIVILIANS were bombed at someones orders.

even the IAF intended targets may have be someone else but those who got murdered by airplane bombs were civies.

as my last liner? seeking justices from the killers of the innocent is not going to happen. i salute the brave and noble solider of the nation.
there are many other acts done by the armed forces.

[brihacharan]

Since time immemorial acts of invasion & insurgency has been committed in the name of preserving territorial integrity or protection against attack from the outside...

World history has recorded these either in epics or edicts...

The question is - Can these acts be justified or be condoned for reasons whatever they may be...

It has happened, it's happening and will continue to happen as long as men who head Goverments continue to put the deplorable attributes such as, hunger for power, trechery, deceit, nepotism, corruption, jealousy, petty mindedness, lack of understanding & tolerenc and religious bigotory etc. above truth, honesty, commitment & selfless service to mankind.

Arguments & counter arguments for & against will go on till kingdom come...

What action can the common man / citizen take to stem the rot?????

Frankly I am at a loss.....
Briha

[gladiatorgarg]

Dear all hopefully this will be my last reply on this topic since i lack the art of dragging an issue....if you notice in any of my replies i av never supported the action of these poor souls...it was a wrong dicission...they paid for it....in a diverse country like india their will be heartburns amongst people of out of which resentment will brew and troubles will crop up with the help of outside forces...and a country will have to tackle it...remember an armed forces is as good as its country and the country men...we are no alien...we also belong to the same village town city to which u all belong....do not think that we get pleasure by being hard n harsh sometimes..we av families we av emotions we are human beings as well....just tell me what would you do to a terrorist who booby traps your unarmed colleague's body while he was returning from leave after visiting his first child...atrocities will be their its the evil of assimetric warfare...and unfortunately civilians will be the first casualty that include my family as well...

[airgun_novice]

have taken a back sit on this issue till now.

Fact IAF bombed civilians in MIZORAM, THIS is from the mouth of IAF. well recorded . here who was fighting who is not the issue. INNOCENT CIVILIANS were bombed at someones orders.

even the IAF intended targets may have be someone else but those who got murdered by airplane bombs were civies.

as my last liner? seeking justices from the killers of the innocent is not going to happen. i salute the brave and noble solider of the nation.
there are many other acts done by the armed forces.

I have to update my understanding of "taking a back seat" - sorry English isn't my mother tongue. That you salute brave and noble soldiers is quite commendable. I salute you for that. But like I said you should have taken the step of getting the rapists punished - once you heard of the crime from horse's mouth. Not sure if believing that confession and not reporting it would make you an accessory to the crime. I am not a lawyer nor a legal expert. But at least, you did not try to whip up passions on the forum by misquoting anyone on religion, much like a rotten politician - I salute you for that too. Incidentally, Aurangzeb was ruler of INDIA too. His army was the Army of India too. Readers will understand the skewed logic of equating the India of 1919 with India in modern parlance, since the original thread refers not to past but to recent.

Any person with a pea-brain worth of logic will see that the British use of armed forces against Indian (and for that matter Pakistani or Bangladeshi - why not ?) civilians does not equate/ translate in any way to "India having had to use its armed forces against civilians" when we speak of 1960s in the same breathe or inhuman and unprofessional slaughter of "Indian" jawans in 2013.

Now it has been repeatedly called in plain English these non-existent/ alleged casualties of Aizwal as "murder" - here's wiki definition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder.
To quote the same - "Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human, and generally this premeditated state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter)." So can you, nagarifle, please confirm if you believe that IAF acted with "malice afterthought" ? Should your answer be "YES" then please enlighten me further so that I stand corrected. This is one humble request.

I am posting two links for benefit of folks trying to understand the background of IAF action in Aizwal. One is a wiki and the other is a blog of defense forces. As can be seen, while the "official" sources reported ZERO casualties, even the wiki uses the word "alleged" when it talks of civilian casualties. Now I do not see anyone here blame the terrorists for using these Mizo civilians as shields. On the contrary, see how Indian military took pains repeatedly to clear them during 'actions'. Is there any proof with the supporters of MNF that these terrorists themselves may not have killed a few of their own for supporting Indian Republic and then blamed the same on IAF ?

Though I often take any "official" version with a pinch of salt - funny guys seem to take it as Gospel when the same sources bash the Indian Armed Forces - quite convenient, eh ? But propaganda and distorted truths, I simply flush down the toilet, so to speak, even if it comes from folks, either the self-aggrandizing types or those repeatedly blackmail my Nation with secession.

Anyway, this is a last one from me on this topic/ thread - since I know whosoever reads this unabridged topic from start to end will see merit in how selective targeting is carried out on India's Armed Forces. Jai Hind.

On thoughts, To each his own,
Against y'all I hold no personal bone,
But think twice when you attack India's "AAN" ***
For they are indeed our "shaan",
Standing in the ice they rot
Slandering them; tolerate we must not.

*** "AAN" -> Army, Air Force, Navy and "pun" too

Now for the two links -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1966 ... t_uprising

http://indian-defence-forces.blogspot.i ... zoram.html

regs
A.

[Moin.]

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed...

How shameful and disgraceful that serving and retired officers of the IA should read this. This for the soldiers who put their life on the line for their country. This thread should be locked and this blasphemy stopped.....

[brihacharan]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul. 
In the fell clutch of circumstance, 
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed...

How shameful and disgraceful that serving and retired officers of the IA should read this. This for the soldiers who put their life on the line for their country.
This thread should be locked and this blasphemy stopped.....

Briha

[essdee1972]

Gentlemen, without making any ad hominem attacks, my personal viwepoint is that the whole theory of the Nuremberg Trials - "you can and should refuse to follow orders" is not a very "honest" statement.

That statement was used to judge the defeated Germans, and to some extent the Japanese. The victorious Allies got away with all kinds of atrocities - firebombing of German and Japanese cities by US and UK, mass rapes of German women by the Soviets, etc. etc. Why, may I ask, did the crew of Enola Gay not protest against the use of nukes, and refuse to drop the Bomb? Why weren't THEY put on trial for war crimes? Because the victor writes history, that's why!

We have a movie on "Black Hawk Down". At the end of the movie, it says 19 American servicemen and OVER 1000 SOMALIANS died in the incident. So where's the Somali movie on the "invasive, imperialist UN and Americans"?

As a person who is employed (I mean, I am an employee, a "naukar" with "naukri", not a self-employed professional or a businessman), I can tell you that a very simple thing like refusing to work on weekends if your boss specifically asks you to, is damn tough. That too when the maximum "punishment" is a shouting from the boss. Two of our self-employed members could not make it for the last Sunday's Mumbai IFG get-together, because they had professional commitments. They couldn't say "no". Perfectly understandable, right?

Imagine how tough it will be to refuse when the punishment can be a court martial for "cowardice in the face of the enemy" or at the very least, a "dishonourable discharge"! Refusing to follow orders ain't simple. Sitting in my comfy chair, in an airconditioned office, I can wax eloquent about what "should" someone do, but the only guy who can make any legitimate comment is the one in the firing line (no pun intended here).

I have great respect for the guys in olive green (as well as for all servicemen, who fight the good fight against terror outfits, whether in Kashmir or Afghanistan) - probably equal to the respect I have for my parents. In my honest opinion, if you take up arms against a country which is feeding you (and face it, many of the regions which have anti-India terrorism cannot feed themselves without massive inputs from GoI) you should expect the whole weight of the GoI and the people to fall upon your heads. And yes, it can include any or all means available to the government, not excepting selective assasinations, or air-raids (pinpoint, carpet, whatever), or artillery bombardment, etc. These guys are traitors to the nation (sorry for the strong views, but many people have told me that my patriotism does border on jingoism). When we can countenance bombing of enemy civvies (bombing of Karachi & Chittagong in 1971, for example), why not traitors? After all, Julius Caesar didn't die of the knife injuries, he died of shock when the guy he trusted, Brutus, stabbed him.

And as for the civvies, it may sound callous, but there's a term called "collateral damage". Tamil civvies in Jaffna, Palestinian kids, Kashmiri youngsters, Vietnamese, Korean, German, British, Japanese civvies............. the 1000 Somalis mentioned above, all were "collateral damage". Sad, but true. You cannot eliminate collateral damage in warfare. At least the official forces try to limit it - unofficial forces (aka terrorists) thrive on collateral damage.

Moreover, differentiating between civvies and militants in a terrorist situation is damn tough. I once read an account by a Royal Marine in Ireland, where a nice smiling old lady approached their position with sandwiches - sandwiches which had a bomb in them!! A few Marines badly injured or killed. And if they had shot that old lady, they would probably have been court-martialled!

Instead of cursing GoI for violence against "legitimate demands of the "oppressed" people", why don't we follow the footsteps of the greatest President the US had - Lincoln. In spite of being a very humane person, he fought a massively costly Civil War against the Confederates not because he opposed slavery, but to keep the US intact. The Confederates, legally, had every right to keep slaves!! (I said legally, not morally)

Five soldiers have died. At the very most, what they did was a mistake, and they paid with their lives. In many cases, we make mistakes in our jobs and pay with our jobs, pay hikes, appraisal ratings, etc. Everybody sympathises with us. "Poor fellow, a simple mistake, and his boss sacked him!!!!" The political class do more than a simple mistake - they loot the country with both eyes open! And they get away scot free!

These 5 guys deserve more than sympathy. They had enough guts to join the army instead of a 9-5 job in an AC office. We should respect that decision.

There's a reason why, everywhere in the world, a service person's shroud (kafan) is his/her National Flag. No civvie is allowed that privilege. Let us respect that reason.

And what cheeses me off most is to see politicians having the Flag as a shroud when they die.

And as for the Father of the Nation, do we follow his injunctions on simplicity, khadi, liquor, truth, and so on? Or are we supposed to follow his injunctions only when it comes to separatist movements?

Finally, to borrow a phrase from Lata Mageshkar's immortal "Aye Mere Watan ke logon" - JAI HIND, JAI HIND KI SENA!!!!

[dev]

Although I am also from the North East and know about atrocities of the armed forces, I have no proof and only stories. In fact a writer has written a whole book on it.
But even if a few rotten apples have been there, I still love and respect our men in green. They have sacrificed more for us than any of us ever will.
So as my salute to them I shall lock this thread, wish I had done it earlier.