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Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#471

Post by smsm42 »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #457
smsm42 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, now US soldiers must take the blame for one set of terrorists killing other terrorists to prevent the latter from talking? Maybe also the police is to blame when Mafia is killing witnesses? Abu Ghraib abuses are bad, but it looks like you're losing perspective here and try to paint every wrong being done as US fault, no matter who did it or why.

Blame isn't as black and white as you are making out. If the police have a duty of care to witnesses, and the Mafia kill them, then the police should take some blame. Not as much as the mafia. Think of a witness protection program, if they fail at their task then they are partially to blame. So no, I am not trying to paint it all as being US' fault, you can tell that because I wrote "insurgents fired".

You wrote "insurgents fired" but also you wrote that "innocent lives" (supposedly talking about imprisoned terrorists) are at risk because of what happened in Abu Ghraib and brought other terrorists firing as an example. SO you laid the blame not on terrorists that fired but on US forces that captured the terrorists.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#472

Post by CamperBob2 »

smsm42 wrote: post #470
CamperBob2 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, actions of US government don't have positive consequences? I think you're getting way ahead of the facts here. (Shrug) Unless you owned a lot of HAL or another big contractor, the Iraq war didn't have a lot of upside.

For you, maybe. Some would think removal of homicidal maniac dictator that openly paid terrorists, invaded neighboring countries, used chemical weapons, mass-murdered his own population and bribed top functionaries of the UN[1] to look other way is some upside. But I guess who cares what foreigners do to foreigners, there are billions of them anyway. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/04/iraq.unitednati...

I don't pay taxes to police the entire world. I can't afford to. Maybe you can.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#473

Post by smsm42 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #472
smsm42 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For you, maybe. Some would think removal of homicidal maniac dictator that openly paid terrorists, invaded neighboring countries, used chemical weapons, mass-murdered his own population and bribed top functionaries of the UN[1] to look other way is some upside. But I guess who cares what foreigners do to foreigners, there are billions of them anyway. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/04/iraq.unitednati...

I don't pay taxes to police the entire world. I can't afford to. Maybe you can.

Changing the topic, are you? I take it as an implicit admission you were wrong implying there were no positive effects of US policy at all. It is good that you realize now you overreached, hopefully next time you'd use less hyperbole and recognize that you can't just ignore facts you don't like.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#474

Post by eliasmacpherson »

smsm42 wrote: post #471
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame isn't as black and white as you are making out. If the police have a duty of care to witnesses, and the Mafia kill them, then the police should take some blame. Not as much as the mafia. Think of a witness protection program, if they fail at their task then they are partially to blame. So no, I am not trying to paint it all as being US' fault, you can tell that because I wrote "insurgents fired".

You wrote "insurgents fired" but also you wrote that "innocent lives" (supposedly talking about imprisoned terrorists) are at risk because of what happened in Abu Ghraib and brought other terrorists firing as an example. SO you laid the blame not on terrorists that fired but on US forces that captured the terrorists.

in my initial comment, which applies as much to the staff as the people you assume are terrorists:

> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?

Depends on how you define innocent

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#475

Post by CamperBob2 »

smsm42 wrote: post #473
CamperBob2 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't pay taxes to police the entire world. I can't afford to. Maybe you can.

Changing the topic, are you? I take it as an implicit admission you were wrong implying there were no positive effects of US policy at all. It is good that you realize now you overreached, hopefully next time you'd use less hyperbole and recognize that you can't just ignore facts you don't like.

Yep, sounds like you win this one. GG.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#476

Post by mpyne »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #465
mpyne wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. Fair enough. But the people with the best understanding of events as they were happening, were those actually making the decisions at the time.... and they decided to drop the bomb. For years after that it's been 'backseat drivers' second-guessing that decision despite their own claims being total…

I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as muc…

Great insight, but I hope you don't think that Americans don't feel it was an awful, horrific action. It's considered exactly like you say, "something awful, but what choice did we have?".

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#477

Post by foobarbazqux »

mpyne wrote: post #476
foobarbazqux wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as muc…

Great insight, but I hope you don't think that Americans don't feel it was an awful, horrific action. It's considered exactly like you say, "something awful, but what choice did we have?".

"What choice did we have?" is very different from "We had choices but we lacked the perspective required to take them."

The first says, we did something bad, but it was justified, i.e. we didn't do anything morally wrong. The second says we did something bad, we thought it was justified, but it turns out that it was a mistake. Einstein is clearly expressing the latter, whereas official American policy expresses the former, and there has never been an apology.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#478

Post by mpyne »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #477
mpyne wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great insight, but I hope you don't think that Americans don't feel it was an awful, horrific action. It's considered exactly like you say, "something awful, but what choice did we have?".

"What choice did we have?" is very different from "We had choices but we lacked the perspective required to take them." The first says, we did something bad, but it was justified, i.e. we didn't do anything morally wrong. The second says we did something bad, we thought it was justified, but it turns out that it was a mistake. Einstein is clearly expressing the latter, whereas official American policy expresses the f…

So "perspective" is what's telling you to invade the islands and slaughter millions of civilians while causing millions of American casualties? Remember the goal here is to win the war that Japan started.

Presumably you have a proposed option to have done that without atomic weaponry and that the Americans should have recognized with the information available to them; what is that option?

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#479

Post by mpyne »

kevincennis wrote: post #106
Amadou wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But ultimately, you really don't want to set a precedent of "well, if you leak something and you really believe in your heart that it was morally justified, then we won't send you to jail." The precedent would be, "Go ahead and break the law, if you think your cause is worth serving the time. Then when it is all over and done, we will judge if your cause was worth breaking the law. If your cause was worthy, then we w…

I'm kind of divided on this. On the one hand, it's obviously horrible to think that someone who leaked only information about something as serious as war crimes, and only after exhausting all legal avenues, would go to jail. On the other hand, if we adopt a policy of exonerating people whose causes were found to be just, the number of people leaking things that really shouldn't have been leaked is pretty likely to in…

Just a note, Manning didn't exhaust a single legal avenue, let alone all of them.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#480

Post by foobarbazqux »

mpyne wrote: post #478
foobarbazqux wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What choice did we have?" is very different from "We had choices but we lacked the perspective required to take them." The first says, we did something bad, but it was justified, i.e. we didn't do anything morally wrong. The second says we did something bad, we thought it was justified, but it turns out that it was a mistake. Einstein is clearly expressing the latter, whereas official American policy expresses the f…

So "perspective" is what's telling you to invade the islands and slaughter millions of civilians while causing millions of American casualties? Remember the goal here is to win the war that Japan started. Presumably you have a proposed option to have done that without atomic weaponry and that the Americans should have recognized with the information available to them; what is that option?

First of all, I believe you're still missing my point, so maybe I need to be more clear. I'm fine with a simple "we didn't know better" since that's apologetic. That's not a falsehood even if it weren't possible for the Americans to know better; I'm willing to believe they acted in good faith on the best information they had. That's not even a falsehood even if there truly weren't any better options, which is of course impossible to know.

Instead you get "we did what we had to", which is unapologetic, and doesn't allow the possibility of there being better options. It basically comes down to admitting doubt vs. reinforcing belief (since asserting an unfalsifiable claim is a belief).

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that invading Japan was the only alternative. I mentioned somewhere, perhaps not in reply to you, that dropping atomic bombs on remote regions of Japan would have demonstrated military superiority with far less casualties.

And another post in this thread linked to this article:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di...

If you're actually really interested in this, and maybe you are since you're obviously interested in military stuff, I'm pretty sure there are entire bookcases filled with books and journal articles weighing the pros and cons of the decision to drop the bomb.

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