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The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

nytimes.com

131–140 of 150 posts

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#131
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Druggie is an utterly disgusting term. I urge you to indulge in some form of empathy. Btw. Everybody I’ve met in above average positions of our (US) military do drugs. Often, lots of them. In my anecdotal experience, it’s typically amphetamine stimulants, excessive alcohol, & various forms of sleeping pills. Opioids in those who have seen multiple combat tours or received injuries in various ways. Talking O-4’s and a…

By and large, excessive drinking is seen completely differently to ‘drug taking’. One is ok, or funny. The other isn’t.

No...you know what, everything can be funny in the context of gaining control of suffering. And anything you delegate living your life to can destroy you. I've met alcoholics in rehabilitation, it's no joke, they generally received a masochistic pill called...Antabús. It just punishes you for drinking even a tiny bit. It's a sneaky habit, every chemical is unique and has its own beauty and darkness.

Makes me grateful for drug control, yeah the DEA gets pimped by subhumans like the Sackler brothers to reduce competition for their scams, and reducing ADD medication availability (also the Sacklers in fact) leads very vulnerable people to substitute miracle drugs with crack and cocaine, but they also protected me from being coerced to use cocaine, which would have enslaved me completely. It's too tempting to get a really clean kid in your high school to just try this little bit, just so obviously vulnerable and afraid of drugs clearly addict material, and then well if you want more you know where to get it, oh it doesn't do the trick it's just you it's the same as before, oh was it extra strong you got lucky, and there's commissions from the dealers so they can pay for theirs, they want to harm you there's that, and then you can't tell your parents but like for real the initiators say its a bad move and they're totally right, and the impossibility of receiving medical attention because all the psychs want to exploit you much more than the dealers even, more coercive and more violent. And because it's so close to being good for you, it's a dangerous drug that's so close to what people with ADD truly organically legitimately need. It's a fork in the road, very easy to end up on either side but they lead to very different places.

But they have to protect your ability to say no. In my case it was critical not to try cocaine a single time, nothing. It's difficult, initiators carefully plan ahead of what they'll do if you say no, Just Say No doesn't work. You have to just say no and have backup. Not just letting you be coerced and punishing you when you became addicted to a terrible drug out of literally no fault of your own. I met people that I can't assign any blame to for their cocaine addiction, it wasn't a moral failing, drug enforcement and especially shrinks failed them. Drug enforcement needs to punish coercive initiation, and you get whatever you don't punish, so DEA has its own beauty and darkness too. They're a mixed bag of those two things.

Sacklers aren't a mixed bag though, just sacks of crap. There's no words, like if you want to know what they did you have to take Oxycontin exactly as they prescribed, it lasts 7 hours but you take it every 12. You withdraw 10 hours a day, I mean I think so because I got lucky with that drug too and never had it. And you need to have underlying chronic pain too. Follow their doctors orders. The judges judging them need to do that, they can't do their job otherwise, yeah it's obviously an addicting drug that will fuck your life up but how else will they have any idea what they did? Just try it one week, Your Honor. Any judge could have tried it over twenty plus years and known for certain what this was, any regulator could have said give me a taste of your medicine, I gotta see for myself, but apparently nobody did. And there's a chance it actually will do what it says on the box for the first time ever, they claim as much by pleading not guilty, everyone has the right to a fair trial, gotta give them a chance, right?

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#132
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not “dated.” The mechanics of why you try to preserve the lives of women and children in war haven’t changed at all. I can’t imagine the thought process that says “humans have had a visceral reaction to the killing of women and children specifically in war, across millennia and across cultures, but surely such thinking is obsolete in our generation.”

I think you can imagine it :) Our culture conceives of a universal egalitarianism across all domains of human interest, but it hasn't really thought through all the implications of that, which is why a phrase like "woman and children" can still be used in an era where it's supposedly abhorrent to make those kinds of distinctions. All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no re…

> Our culture conceives of a universal egalitarianism across all domains of human interest, but it hasn't really thought through all the implications of that, which is why a phrase like "woman and children" can still be used in an era where it's supposedly abhorrent to make those kinds of distinctions.

I think most people even in America embrace a pragmatic egalitarianism where they think it's okay for women or men to be lawyers or politicians, but men continue to have a unique role when it comes to fighting wars or fixing power lines in the middle of a storm, while women continue to have a unique role when it comes to reproducing the species.

I think it's a small minority who think the difference between 1930 and today is solely due to us being more enlightened about gender roles, and nothing to do with the fact that the primary achievements of that age had to do with things like building thousands of miles of highways, while the primary achievements of this age are quite different.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#133
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off tangent: Why do we still use the phrase “women & children” in 2022 in times of war? That language seems to exclude men that aren’t involved. Why not innocent adults & children?

For much the same reason adult men between 18 and 60 are barred from leaving Ukraine at the moment: they're the primary pool of conscripts and recruits. When young men die it's never clear who was a non-combatant, while women are much less likely to be enemy fighters, and pre-teen children even less so. If a drone strike kills five men, who knows whether they were enemy combatants? Your example is murky and vague, th…

An adjacent comment just responded with what I was gonna type.

> … All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no relevant differences between men and women and also that a phrase like "women and children" is useful. You have to pick one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070960

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval is moot, as US presidential approval is rarely that high, but most Americans will probably support their government over a foreign one, as most people will support their own government (it's only rational). I think China is big enough that it operates in much the same way as any large organization... that is to say it will be doing so many things that there will be plenty to disapprove of. Whether they do mo…

>but they think America is equally as bad... whereas most Americans are ignorant of our own problems. Takes more than a small serving of cognitive dissonance to say that here. We can't talk about anything but the most narrowly scoped niche technical subject without a bunch of people having a circle jerk about how America is doing it wrong/evil/should be more like (rich western) Europe/etc.

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t if something is slightly more rotten than the other thing or a lot more rotten. They’ll both end up spoiling.

I was educated in America from K to 12 and some college, across 3 different states and even 3 years in Canada (where they actually shat on America a lot). Most of what we are taught about freedom or democracy is bullshit. When it comes down to our foreign policy at least it’s really just us or them. The cognitive dissonance is in holding that belief that we are actually helping the countries we invade or topple via the CIA.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#135
post #75
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, these other countries are often not saints themselves (looking at you China). Depends on who you are, isn't it? Ask the Chinese. I am sure they love their government (I believe surveys have shown that there is high level of approval) Ask the Afghans. The Chinese aren't bombing weddings and schools. Ask the Yemenis. The Chinese aren't funding the Saudis which are causing a man-made famine in their n…

There is genocide going on in China committed by China right now. I mean seriously, it is possible to criticize USA without whitewashing genocides around the world. If you bothered. And that exact whitewashing of China, Russia is what weakens your point.

The article we are commenting on literally describes indiscriminate killing of people by the US military. If all you have to do to justify killing a people or imprisoning them in Guantanamo is to label them as terrorists then China is way ahead of you. They are just preempting their own terrorists. So is Russia. They are just fighting Nazis in Ukraine.

It’s pointless to argue who is more corrupt/evil. It doesn’t matter if one side is even a lot more rotten than the other. Any rotting system will continue to rot until they resemble each other.

My whole point revolves around the ignorance of Americans to their own atrocities, because, believe it or not, that Chinese citizen has the same line of thinking on their own country’s atrocities.

You might argue that Chinese citizens are also subject to propaganda on the atrocities. But actually many are well aware of that. The difference in America is that we think we don’t have propaganda. Propaganda is really just a prevailing spin in information. Just because there is free speech doesn’t mean some prevailing biased take cannot exist.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#136
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For much the same reason adult men between 18 and 60 are barred from leaving Ukraine at the moment: they're the primary pool of conscripts and recruits. When young men die it's never clear who was a non-combatant, while women are much less likely to be enemy fighters, and pre-teen children even less so. If a drone strike kills five men, who knows whether they were enemy combatants? Your example is murky and vague, th…

An adjacent comment just responded with what I was gonna type. > … All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no relevant differences between men and women and also that a phrase like "women and children" is useful. You have to pick one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070960

I deliberately sidestepped that whole can of worms by pointing out that it's combat presence that matters, regardless of the cause. The relevant difference is how many of them are wearing a uniform.

I would not be more outraged if the Taliban killed an armed American servicewoman than a serviceman. If you would, then that's your opinion, but you should stand by it instead of attributing it to me.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#137
post #6

I have no sympathy for the cowards who murder with drones. They know that what they're doing is wrong and nobody is forcing them to murder.

What about artillery operators? Why are drones special?

No post body was provided.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#138
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are asserting a critical thinking skill that really, most folks don't have. You are John LeCarre, most are Tom Clancy.

hey whats wrong with tom clancy now? (except all that jack ryan trash)

Le Carre wrote about the fact that espionage or s an allegory for all human interaction) is "all gray" with lots of moral ambiguity and nuance. Clancy's stuff makes for a decent plot for an action movie adaptation, but his ideas and characters are almost all one-note, one-dimensional "popcorn" nutrition conceptually.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#139

> There were missile strikes so hasty that they hit women and children, attacks built on such flimsy intelligence that they made targets of ordinary villagers, and classified rules of engagement that allowed the customer to knowingly kill up to 20 civilians when taking out an enemy. Why is the article focusing on the goon pulling the trigger, as opposed to these actual killed-dead casualties?

The thing is they're not "goons". They're good, solid people. Who thought they were actually going to be saving lives, first by going after, you know, the Bad Guys. And then by using (what they were told was) "precision weaponry" to do so.

Why is the article focusing on [an uncomfortable but lesser-known side aspect of war], as opposed to [the more obvious bad aspects of war we already know about]?

Because war is what you call "complicated". It is this complexity that the article was attempting to address.

Re: The casualties at the other end of the remote-controlled kill

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What, you want a druggie at the controls of lethal weapons? I don’t care in slightest what someone does in their own time if it does no direct harm to anyone else. As long as he’s not under the influence on the job, I don’t care.

> As long as he’s not under the influence on the job, I don’t care. That’s a bit of a sticking point. Where do you draw the boundary of “under the influence”? Pilots are not allowed to fly planes if they have had alcohol in the last 24 hours, which is much longer than the standard for driving for “under the influence”. Would you consider someone who is actively going through heroin withdrawals to be fit to fly an air…

> Would you consider someone who is actively going through heroin withdrawals to be fit to fly an airplane and control missiles?

Let’s be reasonable here. This is an unfit physical state for basically anything, so definitely no.

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