The real effects of leaving ISIS recruiting videos on youtube is people dying. They actually do succeed in recruiting people and those people do bad things. Shouldn't this be stopped?
That is really a trollish comparison. The US military is under the under the control of a democratically elected government. Even considering that there have been abuses, There is a categorical ethical difference.
The ISIS videos are often calls to violence, showing beheadings and encouraging beheadings. Consider which group intentionally targets civilians, which groups condone vs punish rape, which groups answers to people vs outdated books.
Either way its not my choice, its Google's choice. Oh and the law has some say, calls incite to violence are not protected under even the first amendment. Google has to remove at least some of these because they are illegally asking for violence and people. This law has just been selectively enforced because that is how strong the First Amendment is. It is so strong it protects even more speech in more places than was intended.
I don't consider this trollish at all, I'm legitimately asking. Just because you don't like that your argument can be flipped around doesn't change anything.
> Consider which group intentionally targets civilians, which groups condone vs punish rape, which groups answers to people vs outdated books.
I do consider that and I can't defend America in this case. We have historically targeted civilians, condoned rape, and definitely answer to a book that I strongly consider outdated.
This is the problem that I have with censorship: It usually ends up being OK if the "good guys" do it, but we can't let "them" do the same thing, or people might listen to them!
The argument cannot be flipped and that is why I called it trollish. There is no hypocrisy.
The US military does not post beheading videos, or any of the rebuttals I pposted easlier. There are periods were we did bad things, but those are the exception, and we take active effort to fix. the US military has ethics panels and a court system. Can you show me the ISIS court system?
Today the level of scandal is places like gitmo or drone strikes. We have an army of lawyers overseeing both. Waterboarding as inhumane as it is not the condoned rape of 14 year girl every day for 6 months because she was born into the wrong ethnicity.
One side has done wrong things. The other wants to do wrong things. The ethical line is clear.
EDIT- Also thank you for finally bringing up the real issue, the slippery slope.
My rebuttal to that is that what was posted was generally not legal as it was. Speech that incites violences is not protetected in the United States. The government is allowed to silence people doing things like calling for "Death to all Infidels". This isn't censorship this is enforcing laws we have already had for centuries.
I'm sorry, but I can't disagree with you more. Your decision to make this an "us vs them" issue seems to be clouding your judgment on who should be able to speak their mind, and who shouldn't. There is a huge amount of hypocrisy here, and if you can't see it, then I'm not sure I can help you.
I wouldn't oppose videos promoting many other militaries, including at the extreme end of the "them" spectrum the Russian military. Because they would follow Youtube rules and US laws. The Russians for whatever their other flaws understand bilateral communication and have the ability to treat people like people. This is something specifically ISIS (and some other extremist groups) cannot do.
Just like the US military the Russians are imperfect but after WWII they didn't promote rape as a benefit of joining their armed services. ISIS today presents the option of raping infidels as a virtue and a reason for potential rapists to join. Russia doesn't promote attacks on unarmed civilians, ISIS does.
This is only us vs them issue I have is difficulty endorsing people who embrace rape, attacks on non-combatants and other embracing of war crimes. No other group that is a world power does this that I am aware of. No group is perfect, but most groups at least make an attempt to punish people who participate in war crimes like this. ISIS promotes these war crimes.
> The US military is under the under the control of a democratically elected government
Democracy is not an blank check that allows anything. Even some of the worst leaders in History were actually elected through regular, due process. And there is no principle that shows that Democracies don't engage in Mass-Murder of civilians (erm, Dresden? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? And many others)...
Allende is another one, actually elected by a small minority of people because of the voting process. Before the coup by Pinochet, he used Pinochet (then a general) to brutally repress the political opposition in his country.
Clear Whataboutism, If we do nothing but look back we cannot go forward. We understand those were mistakes and we learned from them and we are better now. ISIS is not our ethical equal, they endorse attacks on civilians, not as a means to an end, but as the goal itself. If the infidel is a civilian then it doesn't matter.
We did commit all three of those atrocities you mentioned. We are imperfect. We also did the best we could the time. We have also improved since then and attempt to actively prevent nuclear proliferation. We have developed bombed that can destroy a single building making arms and leave the hospital across the street untouched. Consider the 1991 gulf war. It had the lowest rate of civilian casualties of any war up until then. We have never set out with the goal of killing enemy civilians out of some direct malice, sometimes we did it because we saw an existential and no other choice.
We blew up cities because we thought it was the best way to destroy factories making arms and we mistakenly thought it would scare the enemy into defeat. Our leaders didn't understand the psychology of our enemy. We have never demanded "death of all infidels" or beheaded our enemies and used that in promotional material. ISIS is the ethical equal of a military of any modern world power.
What does that even mean? You can still have speech you dont agree with, nobody is forcing you to see it.