Talk:Supreme crime

Religious Affliation Chart

How useful is this chart exactly without considering the number of people listed as each religion? If there are only 10 Presbyterians versus 200 Catholics it is not a very useful chart. Also, for all the talk about Judaism in the article the creator of this chart doesn't actually include their beliefs about the Gulf War. Zeus1233 07:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Jewish vote was split evenly with 21 Jewish members of Congress voting against the war and 20 voting for the war. You can find this information and detailed information how these votes were counted in the References section. Clicking on the "Request reprint" you can download it in no time. David Cruise 12:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Um, 20 and 21 are not equal. 72.145.148.12 03:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

And Plus, Intra-Jewish denomination (Reform, Conservative and Orthodox) inside the category of "Jewish" also have a weight on the subject. So i guess it's safe to say that the research isn't really comprehensive if he doesn't include jewish denominations. Oren neu dag (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

James Roosevelt

When first published in 1980, the James Roosevelt's narrative about his father's and Joseph Stalin's agreement on nuclear balance was so explosive, that Simon and Schuster placed on the book's cover:

A Novel

by
James Roosevelt

and on the book flaps repeatedly stressed that this book is not a memoir, but a fiction.

James Roosevelt wrote this book toward the end of his life when other people write memoirs. However, he could not write: "My father gave Stalin the atom bomb," for many obvious reasons, especially when other people were executed (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) for being accused of similar action.

But think, how could the war ravaged Soviet Union explode the nuclear bomb after only a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Using the information from spies who, at best, could have known only small details of the (for security reasons) tightly compartmentalized Manhattan project? David Cruise 19:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC).

P.S. After I wrote this, I went to the James Roosevelt entry on the Wiki and spent the rest of the Sunday afternoon writing about this issue.

Deleted Introductory Quotes

Among the highest forms of military leadership is to absorb enemy through alliance. Do not resort to war unless the situation is critical that there is no other alternative.
Art Militaire des Chinois

The guilt of war is always confined to a few persons.
Plato, Republic

Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?
Barbara Bush
ABC's Good Morning America
March 18, 2003

Hi Wally,
I agree that to use intro quotes is rather unorthodox on Wikipedia, and even though they are relevant, I did not restore them. However, I restored the picture, as this is an article about a crime, a supreme crime. If somebody murdered your little daughter, would you ask the judge to keep a picture of her remains out of the jury's eyes? Or do you think that during the "just war" it is all right to kill little children? If so, please state it on this discussion forum. David Cruise 11:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC).

What I think about war is irrelevant (though I do agree with you); we have an obligation to present a situation in a manner without bias and to let our readers decide for themselves how they feel. That picture does not further, in my opinion, the objective of an unbiased article; it immediately establishes a negative context for the discussion, which is not of war as a supreme crime but instead what a supreme crime is in historical and metaphorical contexts, how that enters the debate over warfare and positive and negative views of the "supreme crime" theory. Wally 04:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Wally,
I see your point, however, to write a one-page article about a topic that could fill books was challenging, to say the least. I self-censored many issues attempting to keep the balanced point of view. With respect to the picture, it is relatively less horriffic than other pictues of war victims. And then, as the saying goes, one picture is worth of thousand words... Best Wishes, David Cruise 06:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC).

This is an extrodinarily well written article, so I feel guilty to put in my own criticism. However, my feelings about the picture are that it does implicate the Amiriyah shelter bombing as a supreme crime. Poignent and compelling as the picture is, I'm not sure that this is neutral point of view since (to the best of my knowedge) the bombing or the war in Iraq was an example of a supreme crime is still controversial, and no court has called it such. Thus, I tend to think the picture should be removed. --Hansnesse 17:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi you guys, Thank you for your interest and concerns; to get an instant feedback on one's writings is one of the major advantages of the Wikipedia. And, by the way, you convinced me and I deleted the picture. Best Wishes, David Cruise 00:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC).Thanks Cruise. I echo the sentiments: great work!

Deleted material from religious dispensationalism

On second reading I deleted the following passage from the religious dispensationalism:

This phenomenon is explained within the context of Elie Wiesel’s (Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1986) search for the unifying commonality underlying Holocaust, inexorably leading to the conclusion that "all the killers were Christian" (Wiesel, 1985, p. 33). Christianity, grafted upon Judaism, frequently defines Jesus Christ as primarily the God and only incidentally a Jew, killed by the Jews. This line of reasoning leads to anti-Semitism. An alternate line of reasoning is that Jesus Christ was primarily a Jew and that Jews are the chosen people, this reasoning leading to philo-Semitism. Ellis (1971, p.51) elaborates this poin as follows:

"The contemporary prevalence of philosemitism within the context of Christianity is due to the Christian encounter with the Holocaust. If it is impossible to chart a Christian future that leaves behind the death camps, it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision a positive expression of Christianity with the death camps it helped to construct at its center. Instead, what occurs is an attempt by Christian theologians to use the Holocaust as a way of bypassing the "terminal" condition of Christian belief. If the Holocaust symbolizes the demonization of the Jews and in this way represents the alienation of Christianity from its source, by recovering the beauty of the Judaic faith and by realizing that Israel is chosen and that gentiles are grafted onto that choseness, the history of Christianity can be confessed and jettisoned. By looking to the Jews as the authentic people and themselves as a secondary, grafted upon people, the history of triumphalism comes to be seen as alien, a detour which is now realized as such.”

• Wiesel, E. (1985, Vol. 1, p.33) in Abrahamson, (Ed.) Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel. New York: Holocaust Library. ISBN 0896041573.

It took a long time to type, so I pasted it here in case someone is interested in this issue. David Cruise 06:55, 17 February 2006 (UTC).

Hi Dustimagic,
Thank you for your interest in my writings. If you think that the above passage is relevant, then let's it leave there. Best Wishes, David Cruise 07:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC).

Hi Hansnesse,
This evening is full of surprises, as the article is flip-flopping before I finish typing a reply. The above issue is controversial to the marrow of a bone, so I let you two guys decide what we should do. Best Wishes, David Cruise 07:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC).

Thanks, I suspect that Dustimagic (talk • contribs) mistook your edits (since you seemed to have been logged out temporarily) as vandalism, and reverted it. There are on the order of a few hundred attempts at vandalism per hour, so the folks at recent changes patrol move pretty quick; perhaps a bit too quick in this case. I'm certainly happy to go either way on this, and defer to you as to what seems the best. I'll contact Dustimagic on his talk page to be sure that was his intent. Thanks, and again, great article. --Hansnesse 07:54, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

That indeed looks to be the case. Dustimagic replied on his talk page. Thanks for the great work. --Hansnesse 08:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

"Nuremberg Trials, taking place at the end of the Second World War, before atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki" Uhhh, someone wanna get a history book out and perhaps read it? Thank you for pointing this out. Jackson introduced the notion of the s.c. during the initial phase of the NT, before the H&N, but you're right and I took this misleading sentence out. David Cruise 14:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi

I just edited this page to correct a date following a mention of "Carl von Clausewitz". Probably didn't do it very well since I messed up the hyperlink to his name.

Just became a member of Wikipedia, so you now have a name if you want to know who I am.

Also I'd like to suggest that since he is so honored in political/military history that his first name at least should begin with a K.

Hi again

Just found out how to sign discussion post.

````

Thank you for your editing help. Don't worry, I checked the CC links and they are OK. With respect to spelling of his first name, I typed to Google Karl von Clausewitz and on the first page got about six Carls, two Karls, and one Karl(Carl). So it seems that there is a marked tendency to Anglicize his name. Best Wishes, David Cruise 00:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm

Hmm

Ok got it now

Rkochany 00:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Relevance and tone

This isn't the sort of thing I normally stick my foot into, but I would like to encourage people to revisit this article and re-read afresh. It reads as though the topic of supreme crime was a launching pad for someone's essay on war. Having dispensed with the chore of describing a bit of the history and use of this term, it then goes all over the place, into crusades, islamic jihad, iraq, and so on, with no mention of supreme crime anymore.

I think this needs a heavy rewrite, with a lot of the material being deleted or shipped out to others articles. This article should really focus on the topic at hand. I would have expected to see more in this article on the IMT and a lot less on all this other stuff.

I also have a minor question about the title: shouldn't it be "supreme international crime", following the judgement of the IMT? Which brings up another question: among all the other things quoted, where is "...it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of whole" anyway? Isn't that the root of the article?

Best regards, --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 17:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Two things

Isn't Judaism the closest to the Old Testament? And yet it says, "Congressmen associated with religious denominations closer to the Old Testament were more likely to support the initiation of the 1991 war against Iraq." AND "The Jewish vote was split evenly with 21 Jewish members of Congress voting against the war and 20 voting for the war." Furthermore, isn't it POV to decide which Protestant denominations are "closest to the Old Testament?" And that aside, who would say Presbyterians and Episcopalians are closer to the Old Testament than Baptists? Episcopalians are very nearly Catholics, just without the Pope. And there are two types of Presbyterians (PCUSA and PCA) that are as different as night and day. And how is "Protestant" listed as just another denomination among demoninations? Doesn't that description include most of the others?

Second thing... "Reverend Graham," as he is referred to here (he does have a first name you know), is not a Catholic priest and would not grant absolution. Maybe he counseled President Bush and made him feel better... but there is no way he ever "absolved" anyone of anything. 74.224.88.140 03:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio

I removed a speedy for copyvio which linked to this site. While the article is the same, I am reasonably confident it is a copy from Wikipedia, and not vice versus. There is a great deal of development in Feb. 2006 by the original contributor User:Cruise. I suspect that he, as the principle author, copied the article to his own website (visual statistics seems to be part of "Cruise scientific"). Certainly not a speedy in any event. --TeaDrinker 23:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I'll let it drop. I just noticed this editor, 71.211.66.24, claiming ownership, tried it before, and succeeded in getting the material removed from most of the similar pages except this one. Nothing happened of his threats to sue, so maybe he realized you're right. –Sarregouset (Talk) 23:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Relevance?

It seems to me that most of this article does not actually relate to the concept of the 'supreme international crime', but is instead about religion and attitudes to war. Perhaps the page needs to be renamed, or split into two pages, but it is clearly inadequate as it is. Terraxos (talk) 06:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Important and overlooked

Who's E. W. Russell??? One (potentially biased) scientific article may be academic material but it hardly constitutes ECYCLOPAEDIC material. This guy doesn't even have an article on Wikipedia, how does his opinion count. For now all we've got here is one guy, writing a biased article, using as a definitive source things written by another guy in one study. Hardly NPOV, hardly presenting all points of view concerned. For exmple one MAY argue, that a certain wormonger finds within himself rationalizations AGAINST the his own religious principles or that his rationalizations use a modified version of those principles to wage war. This says nothing about the principles per se, say somthing only about greedy/angry/etc. individuals who try to ease their conscience one way or another while pursuing an aggressive war. BOTTOM LINE: this article does not present the consensus of the academic community on the subject, and doesn't even try to present MULTIPLE VIEWPOINTS in the absence of a NPOV take on the subject; furthermore NPOV hasn't even been pursued to begin with. I know that we should assume good faith, but all this together with the fact that everything on relationship between religion and war is awfully off-topic here, this article showing classical signs of a coatrack article, well all this suggests that the person writing this article MIGHT have created this article intentionally biased, and tried to hide a controversial topic (relationship between religion and war) under a normally uncontroversial title (a supreme crime of war). I urge any well intentioned person to do something about this article URGENTLY, in the interest of academic truth.

Hopelessly flawed

This article should be a redirect to war of aggression. This article begins by defining "supreme crime" as a synonym of war of aggression, then it launches into an anti-Jewish/Christian/Islamic polemic and becomes US centric in the second half. The Fig.1 chart's reliance on congressional vote is not a good sample size as congress is not an accurate demographic slice. The line that certain denominations are "closer to the Old Testament" is extremely subjective. Episcopalians, for example, are the Protestant denomination most closely resembling the Catholics. Because of the general bias of this article I think it should be deleted and redirected.--Countakeshi (talk) 04:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I hope it sticks this time. –Sarregouset (talk) 12:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This is not about the details of the current legal definitions of war of aggression. There is a separate article for that. This is about historical and moral bases for claiming that to wage one is indefensible. Research is presented on social conditions enabling or hindering the view of war of aggression as indefensible. -98.69.198.85 (talk) 05:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move. Favonian (talk) 16:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

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Supreme crime → Morality of war – Relisted. Favonian (talk) 13:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC) As it is, this article is basically original research: although the title is 'supreme crime', the sources provided don't specifically describe war as a supreme crime. Renaming it to 'morality of war' (or something similar, like Religious and philosophical views on war) would better reflect the actual content of this article. Robofish (talk) 12:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose – "Supreme crime" seems to be what sources call this concept; I cited a source. Dicklyon (talk) 03:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.