311–320 of 322 posts
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That's awful. I thought I knew of a lot of the "unreported war crimes" we've done, but I did not know of this.
I knew it had happened but didn't know the scale. Apparently Laos was 'the biggest bombing in history', but they kept it secret at the time. 580,344 bombing missions. Guess that's what you get for being a non violent Buddhist country. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-37286520
War! What is it good for?
Profit and population control, mainly.
Population control? Is the US worried about there being too dense population of arabs in the world? I don't think that's true - and not for when they waged war in Korea or Vietnam either.
Seems to me war is only good for absolutely nothing.
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The US has "slavery museums". You don't even name them. It's utterly incomparable to Auschwitz. Then you go on to compare the USA to China, Russia, and Brazil. High standards. Lastly, there's a lot to be said for 1984-style repression like in those three, and Brave New World-style repression like in America. Even comedians have nice bits about how a lot of Americans can't even really place slavery well in a timeline,…
> Then you go on to compare the USA to China, Russia, and Brazil. High standards. I am comparing one country to another, one that does better than the rest. You know, how any comparison is made in any discipline. You can't just hold up an imaginary standard that no country fulfills to make your point that X country could be better. Some people live in the real world.
I can't tell if you're joking. My post was literally about Germany, Nazism, and Auschwitz.
> Some people live in the real world.
The classic riposte of someone who prefers rationalizing to themselves why they are at an optimum than trying to do better. Nice try, Dr. Pangloss.
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> In addition, we simply don't acknowledge what we've done. This is spot on, and the biggest difference between America and other countries which commit atrocities. America is allowed to forget. And it's not a trivial or minor difference at all. Americans barely even really reckon with slavery. Compare to Germans with Nazism. Where's the slavery Auschwitz? There are minor museums here and there but it's completely in…
Normal history classes in the USA are nearly 100% about atrocities, from the large and obvious down to the trivial and questionable. Hardly anything positive is ever said about the USA. One might even get the impression, as you seem to have, that the USA is an especially evil country. The reality is that every nation, every ethnicity, and every culture has been build upon a hill of skulls. As these things go, the USA…
The USA is, on the whole, an extremely, extremely unrepentant country. Your average american will admit to a good number of crimes, but immediately contextualize so as to not really feel guilt about it. "Why should I pay for the crimes of my ancestors" type stuff, a disconnect from te past.
This is why talk of e.g: reparations is incredibly, incredibly controversial.
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Profit and population control, mainly.
Personally, I fail to see how that would be (except for stock holders of arms companies etc). Surely the American state would save a ton of money by having their army shrunk by 1/3. Population control? Is the US worried about there being too dense population of arabs in the world? I don't think that's true - and not for when they waged war in Korea or Vietnam either. Seems to me war is only good for absolutely nothin…
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Normal history classes in the USA are nearly 100% about atrocities, from the large and obvious down to the trivial and questionable. Hardly anything positive is ever said about the USA. One might even get the impression, as you seem to have, that the USA is an especially evil country. The reality is that every nation, every ethnicity, and every culture has been build upon a hill of skulls. As these things go, the USA…
What's a "normal" history class? Is that sufficient to impart the attitude on the population at large? The USA is, on the whole, an extremely, extremely unrepentant country. Your average american will admit to a good number of crimes, but immediately contextualize so as to not really feel guilt about it. "Why should I pay for the crimes of my ancestors" type stuff, a disconnect from te past. This is why talk of e.g:…
The whole thing is like an original-sin (inherited, as from Adam and Eve) version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-criticism#Communism
Groups that fail to build a large enough hill of skulls end up being part of a hill of skulls. There is no shame in being on the winning team, but there is plenty of shame if you undermine the success of your team and thus snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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>One man's terrorist is another man's hero. That "another man" is brainwashed too. Everyone's brainwashed by their local media and not just that, but we all are deeply biased because, at a personal level, we all look at our own interests first. Countries do the same. And since the planet is only this big, those interests quickly come in conflict with other side's plans and then countries do nasty things justifying th…
>That's just how the world works... Maybe the world needs to change then :)
Is there any realistic expectation that there be a news story for every airstrike? I'm not saying we're always the "good guys", but every airstrike looks bad without any context. We never get all of the intelligence that goes into ordering an airstrike, so how are we supposed to make the same judgements about collateral damage, effect, etc.? How many other airstrikes happen flawlessly? Aside from hindsight being 20/2…
Spare me, there's nothing difficult about deciding whether or not to blow up hospitals and children. This mission is not about freeing people from terror and was never about that. Rather, quite the opposite, we are there to terrorize them into being profitable to the hegemony. The propaganda about minimizing casualties is to keep civilians protected from the atrocities that they are sponsoring.
If I'm to understand correctly, "We" are there to blow up hospitals and terrorize children, but also create propaganda to protect civilians from feeling bad?
Can you describe to me this large, tens of thousands at least, group of people that murders children on purpose but also cares about the feelings of all civilians? Specifically, without reinforcing the point that you'd be responding based on a tiny fraction of the intelligence that goes into these decisions.
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>That's just how the world works... Maybe the world needs to change then :)
By all means, but problem is to what? If everyone's biased, who's right and who's wrong? So far people were "changing the World" usually just to make it closer to their own point of view, imposing those views on everyone else.