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An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

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Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#111

Post by minot »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #78
aerosmile wrote: post #17

There is so much gold in here. The human race would do well to explore how it's possible to turn hatred into love. It clearly happened here, and I've witnessed it on a smaller scale as a 16 year old in Vienna. As an immigrant, it was easy to find yourself in the wrong place at a wrong time. That finally happened one night, and the only thing that saved me was seeing a sign on one of the guys' jackets that belonged to…

> Rule #1: teams should not be divided on a country by country basis. I don't think I agree. It's great for individuals and countries to be friendly, but I see two problems with a one-world-government system: 1. It concentrates an extreme quantity of power in the hands of a few people. Power has a potential of corrupting those who hold it, and I believe that potential increases on an exponential (or at least an algeb…

> I don't think I agree. It's great for individuals and countries to be friendly, but I see two problems with a one-world-government system.

I agree that power corrupts but it doesn’t follow to me that power corrupts more at the top than at the bottom. I’ve heard some horror stories about small towns in Texas. I’m sure there are similar stories everywhere.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#112

Post by irjustin »

aerosmile wrote: post #17

There is so much gold in here. The human race would do well to explore how it's possible to turn hatred into love. It clearly happened here, and I've witnessed it on a smaller scale as a 16 year old in Vienna. As an immigrant, it was easy to find yourself in the wrong place at a wrong time. That finally happened one night, and the only thing that saved me was seeing a sign on one of the guys' jackets that belonged to…

Amazing story and I believe it's happening. The world is connecting on a global scale and people are beginning to realize there's other ways than simply "us vs them". A way to see it is how diverse food has gotten around the world.

One thing that really slows this progress is the nationalization of the news and specifically internet. It's much easier to keep the "us vs them" narrative going when the news outlets are controlled by the state.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#113

Post by lmm »

nradov wrote: post #105
sneak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the world would be better off if people simply refused the initial "Go here" order from someone who cares nothing for their own life, or the lives of those "there". War cannot be waged without soldiers, and no one is born a soldier. This requires the cultural de-glorification of soldering-as-profession. Millions of tax dollars are spent on advertising to ensuring it remains, and many companies are complicit i…

The US has had a volunteer military for decades. People who would refuse to fight simply never volunteer in the first place. Boycotting companies for extending a few minor courtesies to the troops is ridiculous and ineffective. If you want to make a difference then get active in politics.

> The US has had a volunteer military for decades.

It gets those "volunteers" by putting the lower classes in a position where their only way of getting education and healthcare is to sign up for the military, and then high-pressure sales tactics to get teenagers to sign a contract that'll bind them for decades.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#114

Post by zaik »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #107
whatshisface wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was not proposing a one world government. They were proposing that there be huge number of overlapping social organizations, based on natural similarities. The International Association of Basket Weavers is not even comparable to a one-world government.

Thanks, and agreed with that — organizations that transcend country boundaries are great, as long as they’re not vested with political power. Perhaps the OP was talking about sports teams in particular? Forming sports teams based on geographic area fits well, and gives people someone to root for without alienating other groups for what would amount to wrongfully discriminatory reasons in other contexts. But if geogra…

> organizations that transcend country boundaries are great, as long as they’re not vested with political power

The EU is an organization that transcends countries and is vested with political power, and despite being constantly bashed by far-right parties in Europe, has built a single market in Europe and many new freedoms for it citizens, like the right to move to and work/study in other member states.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#115

Post by jki275 »

effie wrote: post #81
jki275 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh stop the hand wringing. The US doesn't recruit child soldiers. The very few who actually sign up when they are 17 are almost all 18 before they go to bootcamp, and of the extremely rare ones who aren't they are 18 before they go to their first command or do anything at all. They are not allowed to deploy outside the US or participate in any hostilities until they are 18.

18 year olds men are mentally immature. Not children, but for sure they are teenagers.

And yet they get to vote.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#116

Post by hellotomyrars »

effie wrote: post #34
cassepipe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree more. "Just doing my job" is a pretty shallow justification for killing another person on vague grounds of "defend my country". Even more so when flying an airplane and just dropping bombs all over the fucking place.

Glad I'm not alone here. I can respect people in 2nd WW thinking "I believe they are evil and must be stopped and I will do anything to help that goal". I can't respect "I'm just working here".

Do you only respect that if you agree with their reasons as well? The kind of rah-rah patriotism for your country isn't one sided. Plenty of axis troops thought they were fighting against evil. Let's also not ignore the fact that service wasn't always voluntary.

It really just seems like you're looking at this with a very limited, black and white perspective. That's your prerogative but it doesn't really line up with the experience of most of the service members I've known and spoken with both personally and professionally.

I can't speak much to the experience of soldiers from other countries but people come into military service in the US from the full spectrum of the country. Wealthy families with generations of decorated officers to young people who really have no better option when it comes to their future. You may disagree with the entire idea of the armed forces but the reality is, especially for those who come from poor socio-economic backgrounds, there is no better option. A stable job that will provide housing, healthcare and education and a ticket away from whatever other negative things that may be going in their life. It's an alluring prospect. (Recruitment practices get pretty gross, I'm sure we can both agree there, but the benefits are very real).

Whether or not that is right is certainly something we can and should debate as a society, but there are a vast number of reasons people joined the armed forces and most of them aren't because they want to do bad things.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#117

Post by pluto9 »

effie wrote: post #80
pluto9 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about the men in this article. Both of them were career military officers. It's fair to say that that was their choice. Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers. I chose to enlist and so did everyone I served with. The vast majority of us do not regret it or feel that we were conned.

Why did you enlist, at what age? In retrospective, do you think it made you stronger/more mature? Or was it a money thing?

I enlisted right out of high school. Did my 4 years and got out.

I think it made me more mature, or at least less naive about certain things...eventually. The experiences were valuable but it took a long time for me to fully reflect on them and extract that value. I was 22 when I got out, barely past being a teenager.

Money wasn't a factor for me. I had 96% of my tuition to a good engineering school paid for by scholarships, which I gave up to enlist. My reasons were a combination of things. I had a lot of friends who enlisted and I felt bad that they were risking their lives and I wasn't. I was also sick of school and saw war as an adventurous alternative, and a way to prove myself as a man. And I genuinely believed in the mission at the time.

I think the influence of money on soldiers going into actual combat is overstated. It's true that there are a lot of people who enlist for a paycheck, vocational training, or as a way to pay for college. But you get to choose your job. I was in the infantry, and pretty much everyone I knew legitimately wanted to fight, which is the only reason to join the infantry. If you're after job security or education benefits, you can be a clerk or a mechanic or a thousand other things that will generally keep you away from enemy fire. There's an idea floating around that the government keeps people poor so it'll have an endless supply of desperate peasants to feed into the meat grinder, but that doesn't hold up in my experience.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#118

Post by crusty »

One aspect of this that lends itself to the type of "easy" reconciliation that makes us think avoiding war shouldn't be so hard, is that neither party here actually had a sustained interest in the other. Serbia didn't have years, let alone decades or centuries, of grievance against the USA, and vis versa. The same with the US and Vietnam, or Japan, or Germany, or just about every other war the US has gotten involved in. As far as Americans are concerned, not long before whichever war, most Americans didn't even know where they "enemy" country was, or if it was a real place at all.

There are conflicts for which a resolution would require one or both sides to compromise on a position they hold, sometimes that they've held for a significant time. Those conflicts are much more thorny and the stories of reconciliation are usually much more personal even though it's clear that the underlying cultural conflict remains. Probably the most obvious is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but for America, those unresolved internal conflicts that are unlikely to rise to war but just as fraught linger, regardless of the innumerable personal bonds between parties.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#119

Post by GiorgioG »

tharkun__ wrote: post #68
GiorgioG wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about 99% everywhere have the same instincts to survive and get along I just finished listening to The Doomsday Machine audiobook ( https://www.amazon.com/The-Doomsday-Machine-audiobook/dp/B07... ) and it's had a profound effect on how I see our military leadership's nuclear strategy. While the book delves primarily into the 1950s-80s, as far as the author is concerned (he worked as a consultant on nuclear strategy…

We've been very very close (probably more than once). https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stan... In short: Russian early warning system operator sees 5 minuteman ICBMs coming towards them. He does not have time to go check with someone. If they are to retaliate, he has to just launch now. No such thing as "waiting for the president to decide to launch". He didn't. Turned out reflections of the su…

It’s worse than that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

Beyond that, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the US warships harassed Russian subs that (unbeknownst to them) had nuclear torpedos. These subs thought the US ships were trying to sink them, and as a result they nearly launched their nukes as a last resort.

Re: An F-117 pilot and the officer who shot him down meet, 15 years later (2013)

#120

Post by zaik »

tharkun__ wrote: post #68
GiorgioG wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about 99% everywhere have the same instincts to survive and get along I just finished listening to The Doomsday Machine audiobook ( https://www.amazon.com/The-Doomsday-Machine-audiobook/dp/B07... ) and it's had a profound effect on how I see our military leadership's nuclear strategy. While the book delves primarily into the 1950s-80s, as far as the author is concerned (he worked as a consultant on nuclear strategy…

We've been very very close (probably more than once). https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stan... In short: Russian early warning system operator sees 5 minuteman ICBMs coming towards them. He does not have time to go check with someone. If they are to retaliate, he has to just launch now. No such thing as "waiting for the president to decide to launch". He didn't. Turned out reflections of the su…

The logic behind this was that a first strike is unplausible to be only 5 missiles. Stanislav Petrov knew a first strike would have involved hundreds of missiles launched at the same time.
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