Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

militarytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 322 posts

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#131

Post by Ntrails »

educar wrote: post #5

If 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…

I saw a clip on the news recently of a reporter badgering Trump about his intent to create closer ties to Putin. "He's a murderer, he's killing innocent civillians", the reporter states as though this is particularly important. The President responded with something along the lines of "And we're so much better?".

I'll freely acknowledge his flaws but by Gods it felt good to see someone acknowledge the tricks of perspective we use to justify our actions whilst condemning others.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#132

Post by general_ai »

kurttheviking wrote: post #19
dcposch wrote: post #11

i'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'm disappointed that i haven't seen a single member of the media or Democratic party establishments talk about Obama's expansion of the drone program. I have been hearing and reading about the expansion of Obama's drone program for years in "the media". Some quick Googling shows several examples. - http://www.npr.org/2013/04/28/179597464/leading-senate-democ... - http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155389081/are-drones-…

It's just that we haven't seen people protesting in the streets for some reason. Hmmm, I wonder why that is. Dropping 100k bombs, killing 2200 people with drones, and toppling several governments sure seems like a bigger deal to me than a 3 month visa ban.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#133

Post by jacobush »

linuxkerneldev wrote: post #56
cyberferret wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was living in South East Asia when the USS Vincennes incident took place, and it was widely reported there. But I do remember when I returned to Australia, hardly anybody knew about what had happened. That was my first introduction to 'curated news' by various countries. Of course, a few years later when the family of the Captain of the Vincennes was targeted in a failed car bomb attack, we heard a bit about this '…

> the USS Vincennes incident took place Summary for those who like me didn't know about the incident. Our guy shot down a passenger flight, murdering 290 human beings, we gave him a medal but we then paid USD$213,000 in blood money per passenger to Iran without ever admitting fault. " Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was sh…

Makes the downing of that Malaysian aircraft over Ukraine with a Russian surface to air missile seem almost normal? A medal to mr Rogers even...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#134

Post by jacobush »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #99
chinathrow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree: it's not ridiculous at all when it comes to war crimes or crimes against humanity. Also, Iran was one example, the list of U.S. aggressions against sovereign nations without U.N. mandate goes on up to very recent times (Syria).

The system of getting UN mandates has become useless because Russia is both on the security council and an offender of the rules it was supposed to defend. By all rights, there should be a UN mandate to fight IS in Syria. There should have been a UN mandate to fight the Assad regime, for that matter. Not intervening did not lead to less destabilization, just to more war crimes by the original regime.

Make that Russia and the US. Still, it's better that they divide at least some spoils at the table in the UN. The alternative could be on the battlefield :-/

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#135

Post by js8 »

maxvu wrote: post #127
js8 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that if altruism (helping others) is a rational thing to do, then it's not really altruism? I find that argument a little strange.

Altruism isn't "helping others", it's "helping others for others' sake". Other motivations muddy the selflessness.

But isn't that the case here? US didn't expect anything in return other than side effects of Europe being stronger (which was an advantage for them as well).

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#136

Post by js8 »

fit2rule wrote: post #115
js8 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as different periods, really. The decisions are made by people, and there were different people in power in 1940s United States than in 1980s United States.

The decisions are made by people, following policies that have been in place for decades.

Sometimes, sometimes not. Marshall plan wasn't based on decades of policy, but rather on decades of experience.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#137

Post by jacobush »

Ntrails wrote: post #131
educar wrote: post #5

If 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…

I saw a clip on the news recently of a reporter badgering Trump about his intent to create closer ties to Putin. "He's a murderer, he's killing innocent civillians", the reporter states as though this is particularly important. The President responded with something along the lines of "And we're so much better?". I'll freely acknowledge his flaws but by Gods it felt good to see someone acknowledge the tricks of persp…

Yes, he doesn't give a shit and that is nice sometimes. The US had a Trump coming for some time, I think. The system was so corrupt, the only candidates to crystallise were unpopular ones. Let's just hope out of this mess comes something better.

Takes a thief to catch one and all that. Problem is, what happens when the thief caught the other thieves? :-/

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#138

Post by jacobush »

bpodgursky wrote: post #73
zumu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Afghanistan and Iraq really count given they were invaded and their governments replaced with puppet regimes? How could the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan ever afford to say 'no' to the US?

The current governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are reasonably democratically elected. The government of Iraq did, in fact, say "no" to the presence of US troops, which is why they all left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_U.S._troops_from... The much smaller recent bolstering of US troops in Iraq was also by invitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_I... Whether or not it wou…

I know they are, but come on... the US civil administrator ("Vice King") Paul Bremer sacked the Iraqi army and banned all Baath party members from jobs. Most publicly employed people of rank were members, that was just a necessity to keep the job.

So, you destroy the security apparatus, leave almost a million weapons trained without an income for their families and sack most competent civil administrators.

This was basically telling the Shia majority to get even with the Sunnis. 15 years later, the resentment is cemented and Isil is using it to their advantage.

Yes, technically a democracy but large parts of the populace cannot vote because they're under Sharia rule.

Thanks, Paul.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#139

Post by dmichulke »

EliRivers wrote: post #123
2bad4u2b wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assad is the President , he's extremely popular , he won the internationally observed election , hands down . If you say that Assad isn't the legitimate leader your the one spreading crap . I lived there 19 of the last 32 years .

"he's extremely popular" Oh right. So what's with all those people who want him to stop being in charge so much that there's been a civil war raging for years? How popular can he be if so many people are willing to risk their lives to move him out of power? To have a civil war, he's surely got to be massively unpopular with a large segment of society.

It's not a "civil war" just because you have units of opposing factions operating in the same country. The problem with the "rebels" is that they are not considered better, I assume because of their secondary motives (fundamentalism, Sharia law, ...) [1]

Also, some of the factions seem to be heavily influenced / supported by foreign powers [2]

Taken together, every war is somewhere on a scale between "civil war" and "ordinary war" and just calling it a "civil war" doesn't mean it's necessarily one.

Of course, since war is unpopular, all interventionist democracies would like you to believe that it's a civil war and they're not meddling at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012%E2%80%9...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#War.2C...

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#140

Post by bayesian_horse »

jacobush wrote: post #134
bayesian_horse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system of getting UN mandates has become useless because Russia is both on the security council and an offender of the rules it was supposed to defend. By all rights, there should be a UN mandate to fight IS in Syria. There should have been a UN mandate to fight the Assad regime, for that matter. Not intervening did not lead to less destabilization, just to more war crimes by the original regime.

Make that Russia and the US. Still, it's better that they divide at least some spoils at the table in the UN. The alternative could be on the battlefield :-/

The US isn't getting any "spoils" from the wars it fought. At best they are keeping trade lines open. In no sense did they profit from their actions.

Russia, maybe. The invasion of Crimea may have been profitable, if it weren't for the sanctions. Which is one of the best arguments in favor of these sanctions.

Post reply on HN