Men-with-guns will take the supplies and sell them at inflated profit to buy more guns.

Then ban gun sales. enforced by men-with-bigger-guns.

@OP: I reject your premise.

To say that the act of war necessarily involves committing war crimes is an argument for pacifism in the general case. The specific application to this situation is irrelevant, and there is no paradox.

Either you believe:

a) all war results in war crimes, so all war is immoral, so no war should ever happen for any reason, including the specific one that you posit. There is no paradox because all war is already defined as bad, therefore the casius belli (humanitarian aid) is irrelevant.

- or -

b) some wars may be justified despite the inevitability of war crimes, in which case the possibility of war crimes alone is not enough to establish a paradox.


------

Fail less at logic,

your pal,

YJ

But YJ, i was having fun poking smaller holes... your trolling needs some work :p

YJ, thank you for your helpful exposition. However due to the problem of human political and ideological dissonance. This is a constant factor in human opinionating. People can and do hold both A and B simultaneously. It may be clean logic in a coded digital system to say you can only believe on or the other. But if you have ever dealt with human beings you would realize people maintain contradictory beliefs all the time. This is especially so in politics.

It remains a dilemma (even if you are correct that it is not a paradox in the strict sense)

@ orathaic

The B-52 and the B-2 bombers each have a service ceiling of 50,000 feet. The B-1B can go a little higher, up to 60,000 feet. Syria's three fighter types, the MiG-23, MiG-25, and MiG-29 all have service ceilings at or above 60,000 feet.

"How about non-violent intervention - drop medicine and food from super-high altitude bombers (left over from the cold war, these things which can't be reached by the best anti-aircraft missiles)"

SAMs might not be able to touch high-altitude bombers (debatable, depending on how good the Syrian SAM crews are), but MiGs sure as hell can.

Yeah, but the chances of commiting a war crime while shooting down a MiG are considerably lower than the chances while targeting a ground missile (probably place in a school/hospital)

"But if you have ever dealt with human beings you would realize people maintain contradictory beliefs all the time. This is especially so in politics."

What rot.

Just because human beings are idiots doesn't mean I need to cater my beliefs to make sure they remain ignorant of their own doublethink. As you say, the situation you posit is not valid as a paradox. As a dilemma, it is is only interesting insofar as you can ask the question, "is the expected result worth the risk?"

What you can't get away with is trying to paint it as "one of many liberal paradoxes."

@ orathaic

So we should send unarmed and vulnerable subsonic (in the case of the B-2 and the B-52) to violate a sovereign nation's airspace in order to provoke an engagement with MiGs who are legally defending their homeland? Brilliant. THAT would be a war crime.

I've got one!

dirge paradox: It would be better if I didn't post so webDiplomacy doesn't know I'm a complete idiot, but it's just sooooo much fun to post anyway!

@gunfighter, nah get permission to cross their airspace first, maybe use concord, it's the civilian jet with the highest service ceiling, if i'm not mistaken, and super-sonic!

Why is this my dilemma?

Because when you give yourself a name in line with one of the most controversial leaders on the planet, you're gonna attract some attention to yourself.

Rather like SSReichsFuhrer did, back in the day...

Whom I can only imagine either got bored or was banned, since I haven't seen him in ages.

Also--

+1 YJ's first response, you win the "Sensible Post in a Nonsensical Thread" Award!

And to answer the eventual question--

No.
Putin was not as bad as Hitler.
That being said--
Saddam wasn't as bad as Hitler,
Gaddafi wasn't as bad as Hitler,
Pinochet wasn't as bad as Hitler,
Kim Jong-Il wasn't as bad as Hitler (you may like him, the rest of us are glad he's gone.)

So Putin's not as bad as Hitler...and probably not as bad as most of the folks I just mentioned...that still doesn't mean he's not a controversial figure and I'd certainly rather see someone in power in Russia who DOESN'T ban "gay propaganda," jail gays, jail female rock bands for protesting him, and back Assad and stonewall Western and UN attempts to relieve the crisis in Syria.

*Putin IS not as bad as Hitler, either...

Claims of Putin's being worthy of being mentioned in the past tense being greatly exaggerated (or merely the result of a typo.) :p

Comparing Putin to Hitler? That's mute worthy. You don't say anything worthwhile and this just takes the cake.

I don't share that paradox. Intervention, when necessary, is better even with some causalities than the greater casualties no action will produce.

CAR is a great example. If America actually held the moral high ground as leader of the free world and beacon of human rights as we popularly believe, we would be manning a UN peacekeeping mission there right now.

Instead we are content to pay lip service and make no push for anything, allowing France to half ass it as lukewarm support exists for a full-blown peacekeeping mission, which is what is necessary to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe and increasingly, full blown ethnic cleansing.

And naturally we don't have to know anything about La Republique Centrafricaine in order to plow in with guns for a 'peacekeeping mission'. We can even call it ethnic war when it is primarily a religious conflict and still feel good about ourselves.

YJ: "doesn't mean I need to cater my beliefs"

Don't really give a crap about your beliefs.

OK, well let me say instead that it doesn't mean I ought to cater my argument, because whether or not you give a crap about that, you lost this one.

When I refer to something as an "ethnic cleansing" I mean an attempt at extermination or expulsion of a particular group or minority within a region, which is exactly what anti-Balaka is doing now. Letting this spiral out of control will result in incredible human suffering, already, hundreds of thousands are displaced. The Muslim minority is being literally run out of the country.

There is in fact a paradox. It is YJ who fails at logic. The paradox is most so-called "humanitarian interventions" involve the crime of aggression against a UN member state , which is in fact a war crime. A very serious one in fact. It's not that all war is a war crime but wars of aggression certainly are.

There is violence on both sides. The Seleka are not being run out of the country. They are committing attacks in areas like Sibut. Atrocities are alleged on both sides. These 'humanitarian interventions' always end up being highly partisan which does nothing to help the situation.

I didn't say the *Seleka* is being run out of the country, now did I. And of course there is violence on both sides, all the more reason for it to be brought to an end immediately.

Seleka are the Muslim militia. So if Muslims are being driven out then the Seleka would be driven out.

You're not going to end the perennial conflict between pastoralists and agriculturists with humanitarian intervention. Rwanda was left to its own devices and while the result was bloody it is now one of the most functional polities on the continent. Ditto Somaliland.

@ Putin33

Forgive me for being direct, but is your username out of admiration for Vladimir Putin?

Yes.

Surprisingly, we have something in common. I'm a Putin fan myself, but probably for different reasons than you. I view Putin as sort of a Russian Teddy Roosevelt, for extreme loyalty to his home country and for extracurricular badassery.

Is that all you care about in a president?