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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Sure, maybe if they drew their weapons immediately, before his act. That'd make sense. They wouldn't know what he was gonna do.
The trouble is, based on the reporting we have, they drew their guns after he lit himself on fire, not before:
I'm thinking by the time the guy was engulfed in flames he was a little too preoccupied to do much else.
Can you imagine facing a living bonfire, and your first thought is "I should draw my gun and tell them to get down on the ground"? There's genuinely no excuse for that level of inhumanity.
If your job is to secure the embassy/ site/ scene you work down a list. They clearly followed the list.
We now know that he was no risk, but they couldn't.
They aren't equipped with fire extinguishers (aside from the guy who got one), so are you assuming they should jump on him? Smother a fuel fire with their bodies? Does that secure the site? No. It's also not realistic.
Seems like securing the site then 1 person getting a fire extinguisher is a completely responsible response.
He'd already fallen down and stopped screaming when they drew on him. What threat would he pose that a gun was going to solve at that time? Before you say bomb, think carefully about what a gun was going to do in that circumstance.
No, this was an example (once again) that "try to kill anything you don't immediately understand" is the default condition of our law enforcement. Last week's example was an acorn, and a very, very lucky handcuffed man in the back of a police cruiser.
This is not the acorn thing at all. They are trained to secure the embassy and they did that.
Thank you for ignoring everything else I wrote.
I ignored it because it's irrelevant. You're applying a subjective value assessment to professionals following training. It's ugly, but it's not meant to be "nice" or compassionate. They are there to protect the embassy
You ignored the context and circumstances because they're irrelevant?
Your answer to every comment has consistently been (paraphrasing): "trust the cops, they know what they're doing", irrespective of any surrounding facts that might suggest otherwise, or any past history that would suggest that law enforcement doesn't deserve that level of blind trust.
Given that, there's little point in further discussion.
Unfortunately for everyone here, the security staff do not care. That's the reality and the hard stop. There's nothing else.
Everyone is applying subjective value judgements, and hindsight evaluations on this. They don't apply.
I just want to know what they were going to prevent with guns, given he was immobilized and not even screaming anymore in addition to being engulfed in flames. You seem to have all the answers, so I'm sure there must be something dangerous he could have done at that point which could have been stopped by a gun - please just tell me what it was.
They don't know what they're walking into. We know after the fact what they had.
But they know possibilities right?
If I say "guy in a store with a gun" - he could be a robber, he could be a murderer, he could have hostages, etc.
This guy was down, engulfed in flames, and not screaming when they drew. So what possibilities come up when I say "guy on the ground, on fire, past the ability to communicate or travel under his own power" that is a problem a gun could solve?
In any case this:
Is just a more palatable (to you) way to say this, which is what I wrote in the first comment of mine you replied to:
See, we agree!
They are security staff. They approach anything and secure it. Everything else is subjective
Why even bother to reply if that's the only thing you are capable of saying? We both know there isn't a reasonable answer to the question I keep asking.
Fuckers threatening a service-member with deadly force for compliance while he burns to death, and lots of folks jumping up to defend it. At the very least I refuse to accept these empty platitudes.
Edit - clarification of wording
I mean, same to you?
You don't like the behavior of security staff who have one very cold, very unfriendly goal: keep the embassy safe. I doubt they have specific training on self immolation so obviously they used standard procedure.
They don't give a fuck about public perception, the feelings of the involved individuals, etc.
Everyone keeps asking " why weren't they this or that or the other thing". There's one root answer weather folks like it or not.
I guess I kept hoping for an actual answer to the question I kept asking, as one might expect during an honest discussion. Don't worry, I've given up now.
The actual answer is truly that these professional security types don't care. They go guns ready for anything that is remotely threatening to the embassy. A dude on fire on the perimeter apparently counts, no matter what we think of that.