Xequecal wrote:
No, I'm not. The entire point was that killing is always homicide, even if it's not a crime. The systematic killing of an ethnic or national group is genocide. That's the definition. Why you're killing them is irrelevant, it's genocide regardless. Your logic would be like saying that Mao Zedong didn't commit genocide, because he killed people for opposing him, not because they were Chinese.
Except that it
is not killing of an ethnic or national group to shoot illegal aliens. They are neither a uniform ethnic or national group, and are not being shot for that reason. It's a systematic killing of people who are illegally crossing the border. The fact that the majority of them may be very vaguely of the same ethnic group insofar as most of them speak spanish is far from sufficient even for your criteria.
The systematic extermination, moreover, of a particular group, is criminal in and of itself, while killing isn't inherently criminal in and of itself so yes, you are are conflating murder and homicide.
Quote:
I'm well aware that "genocide" is a loaded word that brings up images of Stalin's purges and the Holocaust and other such things, but I think it's an appropriate label when people seriously suggest policy changes that have a very real chance of resulting in millions of Americans dying from starvation or exposure. (Note that I didn't say all, but even a very small percentage of those affected suffering this fate is still millions) It's also appropriate to describe shooting illegal immigrants at the border, especially because it's not a big step from there to start tracking down the millions already in the country and summarily executing them. They are after all guilty of the same crime.
Then, quite frankly, you are completely off your rocker. This extension of a crime form actively attempting to kill other people to simple refusal to expend resources to provide for him is appalling and absur. It is an attempt to hijak the emotional impact of the word "genocide" in order to criminalize a position you disagree with.
Furthermore, even if you tracked down and shot illegal immigrants, that wouldn't be genocide. They wouldn't be tracked down and shot because of their ethnicity; there are plenty of people here illegally from countries all around the world, while Hispanic immigrants here legally, and Hispanic citizens would not be shot. Again, you are trying to take a very vague, very general similarity among the majority of illegal immigrants and turn it into some sort of ethnic issue.
This dishonesty, of assuming that because most illegals are Hispanic, that therefore anything done to them must be racist or bigoted or whatever simply because it disproportionately impacts Hispanic people, or even just non-whites, is yet another example fo the inability of liberals to seriously address these issues. The fact that they are criminals who just happen to be of generally similar ethnicity is ignored in favor of claiming that anytihng done to them is because of ethnicity, or failing that, that the ethnic similarities make any enforcement of immigration law a form of "racism" regardless of motive.
Quote:
Here's another example. Let's say Israel gets sick and tired of all the crap coming out of the Gaza Strip and totally closes the border, along with shutting off all water, power, gas, and sewer service to the Strip. Within a few months, 90% of the population has starved to death. Have they not committed genocide? I mean under certain value systems (like, for example, the people who say we should have indiscriminately nuked Afghanistan after 9/11) they would be perfectly justified in taking this action, but they've still exterminated an entire ethnic group. That makes it genocide.
No, not at all. They aren't targeting an ethnic group; they are targetting people who are attacking them.
Genocide means more than just ethnic or national similarity. It means an attempt to exterminate them
because of their ethnicity or nationality. Not just kill off certain subgroups based on those groups' activity; that makes merely shooting enemy soldiers genocide. All your objections to shooting illegals run into this; even ignoring the fact that they are not an ethnic or national group, even if all illegals were Mexican, no one is proposing shooting all Mexicans, or all Mexicans in this country, or citizens of Mexican descent. The proposal is to shoot
illegals - based on their actions, not their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or any other group membership.