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Danish troops told to 'shoot first, ask questions later' if US invades Greenland
- freedoem124 10mo ago[flagged]
- akagusu 10mo agoFinally someone with balls.
- dingaling 10mo agoWell it's how Denmark defended their claim on Greenland in the late 1800s, attacking any European ships that tried to land there. But this time, the other side has more "might".
- manarth 10mo agoIt's a provocative headline. A more reasonable statement of the army standing orders / Rules of Engagement would be: > The military has authorization to counter-attack an *invading force* without waiting for further approval from the command chain I've emphasized invading force – it's not a general free-for-all fire-at-will. This is a standing order which dates back to 1952, and hasn't been created as a response to the recent aggressive posturing.
- iammjm 10mo agoThe headline explicitly mentions an invasion, and the whole debate is within the context of potential US invasion of Greenland, so I dont see what makes this headline "provocative".
- tylervigen 10mo agoBecause it’s not like they were given new orders to “shoot first and ask questions later.” It’s just a normal standing defense directive that has always been there. In normal times, no one would describe standing defense orders as “shoot first, ask questions later.”
- saubeidl 10mo agoThe news is that they were explicitly told those orders apply to the US.
- myrmidon 10mo agoThe article says no such thing, it just makes sensationalist implications. The actual meat is: Danish newspaper approaches government and asks if the 1952 order is still in effect-- government replies "yes". Which is a complete non-story because it's the same unchanged, expected outcome since 1952.
- HoJojoMojo 10mo agoProvocative is a stretch. A year ago a Danish soldier who responded to an ambiguous situation involving US bases that might be real or might be an exercise would have been court martialed and probably not able to justify their actions with this law despite it being on the books. The reminder is an emphasis that the US can be presumed to be such an invading force.
- atoav 10mo agoSure. But a year ago the US didn't have a ministry of war and the head of that ministry didn't say he wants to betray and invade an ally. Even the thought of this would have been laughed at for being to satirical a year ago. But hey, Kamala Harris is really radical, right?
- pamcake 10mo agoYou know this how?
- HoJojoMojo 10mo agoThe only NATO-NATO exchange of fire where it wasn't deemed a friendly fire incident or an AMOK that I am aware of are between Greece and Turkey. But feel free to enlighten me on cases where a European country has had soldiers fire on the US and decided this wasn't an internal discipline issue.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- seper8 10mo agoAmericans reading this, please, get your mad dogs under control, one way or another. What the hell has it come to.
- mpalmer 10mo ago[flagged]
- saubeidl 10mo agoAnd yet they're not doing shit. Look at what Serbia's been doing. https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jc0yn4/the_largest_protest_against_corruption_in_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1jc0y... Be more like Serbia.
- mpalmer 10mo agoYou know you're talking to a few thousand people, max, right?
- voidfunc 10mo agoNot much we can do, our system of government is broken at the moment and we're too sparsely spread out for protests to be treated as meaningful.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- OutOfHere 10mo agoAlmost every statement coming out of the administration contains a lie, and the ones who vote for the liars only speak more lies. Their relationship with truth is nonexistent. There is no way to snap these people out of it because they are agenda driven, not evidence driven. It has to run its course until betraying the truth costs more than driving the agenda. Counterintuitively, this means driving them further into the abyss, not taking them out of it.
- pjc50 10mo agoUnderlying this are two serious questions which a lot of military forces probably had to remind themselves of after 2022's invasion of Ukraine: - how do you tell when a threat is real or bluster? Especially from a speaker who makes blustering threats all the time - how do you tell when a war has gone hot, without too much of a risk of false positives or negatives? (see also Stanislav Petrov)
- bilekas 10mo ago> how do you tell when a war has gone hot When attacks are carried out or when an annexation is taking place. It's really quite simple to identify when a hostile force is moving in. > Stanislav Petrov Was litterally under the sea with no communications and took the prescient approach of better to wait. This is not some ambiiguity of hot war or not.
- ben_w 10mo ago> Was litterally under the sea with no communications and took the prescient approach of better to wait. This is not some ambiiguity of hot war or not. 1. Was actually on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow. 2. Was absolutely an ambiguity. The USSR's land radar was incapable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon, his ultimate confirmation that the satellite warning was in error was the subsequent non-arrival of an exploding nuke. The argument that Petrov relied on to make an informed guess in advance is essentially "it would be strange and surprising for the USA to attack in this way". Nobody could make such an argument to justify failing to respond to a suspected attack while Trump is in charge, because Trump is repeatedly observed doing strange and surprising things like calling for an annexation of multiple allies or violating the US constitution and apparently getting away with it.
- bilekas 10mo agoOkay. I'm wrong, he was a cog in the chain to report an attack in order to facilitate a response to a nuclear attack. It's not the same though, Greenland is litterally saying don't wait for confirmation of invasion. The stakes are completely different and not comparable. A hot war in Greenland is extremely obvious and to claim it's compatible to the cold war is nothing but gaslighting in my opinion. What's more troubling, that is being ignored by this debate, is the fact that we are even considering this with an ally.
- nkmnz 10mo agoHow should Germany treat the 35.000+ US soldiers on their soil when the US invades our neighbor? We don't have that many cells for prisoners of war.
- pjc50 10mo agoDoes anyone know what the actual treaty arrangements are for these bases? Is it still the legacy of the WW2 settlement? (not that that will make a huge amount of difference if shooting starts)
- skdkbdjdbd 10mo agoThere is no expiration. They are in effect as long as either party is in NATO. The same applies to … drumroll… Greenland… Hence why they want to invade it. Most likely they are planning on leaving NATO. They are positioning for this event.
- rasz 10mo agoGerman Police is ready https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-mistakenly-shoot-soldier-on-training-exercise/a-74465052 https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-mistakenly-shoot-soldier...
- M95D 10mo ago> It later transpired that the person carrying a weapon was a member of the German armed forces They shot one of their own. I wouldn't call that "ready".
- suddenlybananas 10mo agoDe Gaulle proven right again.
- myrmidon 10mo agoThis is exactly how a lot of "misinformation" spreads in reality: The article implies to a typical reader that the danish governments stance changed in some way, or that there was some kind of posturing regarding US/greenland. This is not the case. A newspaper asked the danish government to comment on the rules of engagement, and those are unchanged since 1952. So there was neither a change in stance nor posturing by the government in any form.