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If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

theatlantic.com

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Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#301

Post by AmVess »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #253
rdtsc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is profitable. If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to. So the direct financial and…

You realize that the fiction of a coherent "Military Industrial Complex" has been debunked several times right? One by the General Accounting Office showed that military contractors actually had higher profits in peacetime than wartime because they got money for 'research' and didn't have to actually produce any product.

One does not need to be at war in order to be a MIC.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#302

Post by baddox »

aroch wrote: post #242
crbnw00ts wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Would you like to make a bet as to whether or not the US military-industrial complex acts in its own self-interest when comes to the "War on Terror"? When it comes down to it, there is nothing particularly "extraordinary"…

>For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Just because it is true, doesn't mean those people aren't nutjobs or conspiracy theorists.

I'm curious what your definition of "nutjob" is, given that you would apparently apply it even to people who are correct about all of their theories.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#303

Post by baddox »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #199
bunderbunder wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics. Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program. Long story short, every politician who had a contractor working on the project in his constituency started making noise about all the jobs that would be lost if we were to shut down the program. No secret conspiracy; that was an open debat…

We know that people go after profits. Nothing extraordinary here. What is extraordinary is the assertion that people acted unethically and (probably) also illegally.

I don't really care if it's unethical or illegal. I personally just don't want to be taxed to pay for it.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#304

Post by mcv »

josefresco wrote: post #190
EliRivers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackstone's formulation is one of the most important parts of English and American common law. At the point where it becomes acceptable and legal to knowingly murder innocent people in order to punish the guilty, all legitimacy is forfeit. This, of course, has already happened.

If only our enemies operated on the same "presumption of innocence" as we (the US) claim to.

If you operate under the same principles as your enemy, then you're no better than them.

And also: what do you think the chance is that the enemy might decide to operate under this presumption of innocence is the US doesn't?

Do you want this spiral to go up or down?

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#305

Post by saraid216 »

crbnw00ts wrote: post #214
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real, if you have it. (note: I am not taking sides.)

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Would you like to make a bet as to whether or not the US military-industrial complex acts in its own self-interest when comes to the "War on Terror"? When it comes down to it, there is nothing particularly "extraordinary"…

I am very sad that we did not actually land on the Moon after all. :(

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#306

Post by mcv »

Zarathust wrote: post #293
sethbannon wrote: post #12

The way America is conducting the war on terror is both self-defeating and morally repugnant.

What you say is absolutely true. But another large problem here is that the targeted countries' governments are ok with those strikes for the most part. Have you noticed that those strikes only happen in poor countries with little means of retaliation? A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There a…

The fact that a foreign government is okay with killing random civilians, still doesn't mean it's okay for the US to come over and actually do it.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#307

Post by baddox »

mattlutze wrote: post #215
rdtsc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is profitable. If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to. So the direct financial and…

I will continue to refuse to believe American military personnel choose to strike otherwise-collateral civilian targets. You're talking about moral humans, here. Our soldiers/airmen/marines/sailors are not soulless automatons, nor are officers that develop strategy and provide direction. Nor would I consider their pay to be either incentive or motivation.

If only we lived in a world where refusal to believe a fact changed the reality of that fact.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#308

Post by samstave »

gdilla wrote: post #295
samstave wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too much peacetime going on: http://i.imgur.com/Mwe1jxG.jpg

surprising they'd forget the Korean war on there.

Ha, didnt notice that! Korea really was the Forgotten War.

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#309

Post by magicalist »

gaius wrote: post #179
tootie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would imply we people have trouble killing on a battlefield which would seem to be patently false.

Soldiers do have trouble killing on the battlefield; have a read about "operant conditioning", a psychological technique used in modern training to overcome it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-So... General Marshall discovered after WW2 that only 15% of front-line soldiers even fired their weapon at the enemy. Even soldiers don't like to kill enemy troops in the middle of a battle!

Well, first, his claim was 25%, and while my understanding is that it did end up leading to changes in training, you should at least acknowledge the large disputes on how he reached that number (e.g. based almost entirely on interviews available to him opportunistically, no documented methodology, etc).

Re: If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

#310

Post by rdtsc »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #253
rdtsc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is profitable. If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to. So the direct financial and…

You realize that the fiction of a coherent "Military Industrial Complex" has been debunked several times right? One by the General Accounting Office showed that military contractors actually had higher profits in peacetime than wartime because they got money for 'research' and didn't have to actually produce any product.

I didn't say it is coherent. Systems sometimes seem coherent, which feeds simplistic conspiracy theories (also serve as a straw man counter-argument). In reality complex systems are decentralized but often are evolving according to some rules. Those rules make it seem as it is a coherent large system. Think of an ant hill, a beehive, how large organizations are structured bureaucratically.

Chomsky, for example, analyses this in respect to the media. Large media ends up acting in sync with government's propaganda because there are set of constraints and incentive s built in. From outside they often act _as if_ they are centrally controlled by a single government party.

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