Wow... 1,700 air strikes just last year alone. That's more than 1 air strike every 6 hour for entire year! I'm wondering how much damage is being inflicted on civilians here. Not just people getting killed, but people becoming homeless or their livelihood getting destroyed. If these are not ultra-precise air strikes then we would be giving birth to future heavily disgruntled middle east population.
Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
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Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#22If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. Brainwashed by years and years of media programming. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity. If the bombed people retaliate, they are terrorists. The truth is not black/white. Same way U.S data surveil…
People complain about US govt surveillance all the time. It doesn't always lead to change but there's a healthy degree of dissent.
TBH, it is really only in HN threads I hear about any dissent. Snowden hasn't been pardoned and most of US appears against what he did. But China is universally seen as a repressive regime (which it probably is).
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#23i'm disappointed that hardly any members of the media or Democratic party establishment talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. we have a long list of names. the executive branch of our government curates the list unilaterally and in secret. then, we cross names off the list by killing them. sometimes, they're American citizens. often, they're in countries we're at peace or even allied with. there are chil…
"I just like solving interesting problems, I don't care about politics. And besides, if I don't do it someone else will anyway"
See, that quote felt like it applied to me... until we started talking about choosing whether someone lives or dies.
The thought becomes really scary when taken to its logical conclusion. After mulling it over a bit, I don't think I could work as a defense contractor.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#24i'm disappointed that hardly any members of the media or Democratic party establishment talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. we have a long list of names. the executive branch of our government curates the list unilaterally and in secret. then, we cross names off the list by killing them. sometimes, they're American citizens. often, they're in countries we're at peace or even allied with. there are chil…
> there are children in Yemen right now who are afraid of blue skies.
On that point, I would encourage everyone to read this article and watch the accompanying video:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/drones-dream-y...
The Yemeni boy featured, whose father and older brother were killed already in US drone strikes, is quoted as saying that children in his village have nightmares of the drones. The boy himself was killed in a drone strike just two weeks after the interview.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#25This is a definitional thing, right? Laymen think of "airstrike" in terms of anything coming from the air, but the military use of the term has always reflected the very different nature of long-range bombing mission and (say) helicopter support of infantry units. > "Apaches for example, conduct close combat attacks as a maneuver element supporting a ground force in contact with the enemy. I would not consider this i…
>unless the Army was also failing to include it in something like "groundstrikes".
The article includes multiple statements from army sources which indicate no such figures are published. If someone could turn them up, that would be something.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#26Other thing that is massively underreported on much bigger scale than actual air strikes are civilian casualties. Presumably so that Americans, or Russians or whoever of the other N countries that bomb people regularly can justify killing thousands of civilians in middle east a year by mistake. It is not a mistake though, it's a calculated acceptable collateral murder where the government determines some acceptable ratio of civcas vs combatant deaths and goes with that. Of course, now if civcas are underreported by the order of magnitude, ...
Other thing to ponder is that US claims it killed around 50 000 terrorists in the last two years. Think about that. Those are supposed to be people who are said to be threat to US citizens or allies and therefore are OK to be killed by USG even at the cost of killing bystanders. Americans should start asking themselves who are these people they are supporting the murder of. Don't stop at the terrorist label.
Humanizing "them" might not be fun though, because you'll inevitably run into your propagandized fellow citizens, and start feeling decidedly not good about their capacity for empathy or nuance in understanding the world.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#27> “I can tell you, unequivocally, we are not trying to hide the number of strikes," the official said. "That is just the way it has been tracked in the past. That’s what it’s always been.”
That may be true, but I do not have a high level of confidence that there's not someone further up the chain saying "hey, let's use the Army for this one, eh?" with a wink.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#28If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. Brainwashed by years and years of media programming. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity. If the bombed people retaliate, they are terrorists. The truth is not black/white. Same way U.S data surveil…
The older I get the more interesting and sensible Chomsky gets. Until a few years ago I was perceiving him as boring and monotone and now I am seeing a fierce warrior of truth* holding language as his weapon. This 9 min. excerpt on propaganda terms in the Media is especially appropriate. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc *I don't mean some objective truth out there but a viewpoint which is rooted in his very…
I wonder what aspect of Chomsky makes him uninteresting. Maybe it's that his message - trying to point out the human flaws of his governmemt - goes so much against the grain of hollywood aided propaganda that people presume it's either minute details or just wrong?
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#29i'm disappointed that hardly any members of the media or Democratic party establishment talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. we have a long list of names. the executive branch of our government curates the list unilaterally and in secret. then, we cross names off the list by killing them. sometimes, they're American citizens. often, they're in countries we're at peace or even allied with. there are chil…
>i hope the technologists who created this infrastructure think about that when they try to sleep.
Yes, because people flying planes instead of drones is so much better, right? (/s) The problem isn't in the technology people, it's in who's using it. Obama and Trump's expansions of these programs is what the problem is.
Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported
#30If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. Brainwashed by years and years of media programming. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity. If the bombed people retaliate, they are terrorists. The truth is not black/white. Same way U.S data surveil…
> The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity There's a lot of nuance here, because there isn't really a (current) clear-cut case of the US bombing a sovereign nation where the government has not given the US permission. Of the current active campaigns: - Afghanistan - Iraq - Pakistan Each of these countries has a functioning government, even mostly democratically ele…
'current', for small values of current.