US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

No, it's not a joke.

When I see an article like this, I first think about the horrible lives lost in all of these wars. Many of them wonderful people who want to live their own lives.

But I also think of unofficial channels of information sharing among nations, like Iran and others. And I think it's an ironic answer to the information sharing push we saw after 9/11 with the Patriot Act.

Except I'm not laughing or thinking it's funny we got one over on a libertarian, or a conservative, or a liberal with an ironic story. I understand irony sucks when you're not writing the story.

And I'm thinking I fucking loved my Apple IIe growing up. And I hope the aerospace engineers and families in Seattle and Southern California and elsewhere who may see increased budgets for this spend it wisely on themselves and theie families but also how they want. Maybe they can more easily afford houses and that makes them feel more a part of the community.

That sounds noble until it doesn't work in reality and people always find reasons to justify wars. If it was so simple, it would be easy for most people to get on board with and most wars would end.

For example, do you agree that Britain's and France's appeasement of Germany before WWII was the right thing because an attack wouldn't have been self-defense? Or, what about attacking another country to help defend an ally who's being attacked by them? That's not defensive, so I guess it's wrong by your standard for any other country to defend Ukraine. What about defending them by supplying arms and soldiers? The line gets blurry fast.

How about re-taking some recently lost territory? Is that wrong? For example would it be wrong for Ukraine to attack Russia to regain its eastern areas that Russia took at the beginning of the war? Or for Russia to retake any other parts of the soviet union? How about either North or South Korea attacking the other? If everybody opposed such non-defensive wars, they would be severely disadvantaged to a country that incrementally takes pieces of their territory in a ratchet effect.

What about "liberating" the people of another country from a brutal dictator? I'm sure you'll oppose this because it's like Iraq or Syria, but is there really no case where it's justified? Not even Pol Pot's Cambodia where it might have saved a quarter of the population from death it somebody had intervened?