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Behind the Scenes With America's Drone Pilots
An anonymous reader writes "As President Obama meets with advisors on an Afghanistan strategy today (who are now leaning more toward Joe Biden's more-drones policy), and even as Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones, the new issue of Esquire takes the first real in-depth look at the American military's UAV build-up. Defense geek Brian Mockenhaupt spends some time on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as back at the Pentagon, where the pilots ('more like snipers than fighter pilots') are playing a kind of role-playing game, getting to know terrorists' daily ins and outs. Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?"
I've heard UAV pilots refered to more than once as the ChAir Force.
I wonder how long until the policies governing usage of these drones is no longer restricted to "war zones" ?
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To be a rigger?
...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem.
I'm permabanned from Fark. :)
hmm...I wonder why.
After reading this I realize the not-so-obvious benefit of real planes flying around patrolling and bombing the enemy... The fear factor. As stated in the summary " Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones", which makes sense, a little spec in the sky orbiting quietly does not put the fear of God, oh sorry Allah, into the enemy. Get a couple of F35s, A10s or Apaches cruising about voila, fear is back. Intimidation is back factor in warfare. Never really thought about that aspect of an all-drone airforce...
Thank Goodness, no one wanted you there.
Was getting tired of seeing your posts.
... where having spent countless of hours fragging others in Descent will get you hired. Scary.
USA is still the only country that has used nuclear weapons against other nation,
Fighting a war is bad. Very bad.
Losing a war is worse.
and while on that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Compared to the *millions* killed by the other participants in that war.
What people refuse to understand is that our lives are no more important to our benevolent government than the lives of the ragheads in the mountains of Waziristan. Do you really think Obama cares about YOU? he doesn't care about human life in Pakistan or Iraq, why should he care about human life in Detriot or San Diego? The moment it becomes more profitable to have you dead than alive from the view of the US gov't, they will find a justification to be rid of you. At Waco they used army equipment against people who had committed NO CRIMES. If we do not speak out about the lives of civilians in these far-flung nations these drones will be used against us next.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
...Chief of Staff's reading list. Short on fighter pilot stuff, long on strategy and counterinsurgency. They see the way things are going, no doubt about it.
The Army reading list
They're bad because one of the reasons people, soldiers included, don't like war is due to the risk of being killed. If you remove that you also remove the only motivation to stop a war or just not start it. The geek in me loves the tech involved in drones development (minus the weaponry) but my human half is scaried as hell because they represent one more step towards an endless war scenario.
Air power never wins wars, and that is what drones are. It is important to have boots on the ground, especially in a counterinsurgency campaign. For most insurgencies, the recruitment pool is the citizenry within the country who are unsatisfied and discontented. If a counterinsurgent force is relying primarily on impersonal methods such as drones or air power, the local populace will never see or interact with the foot soldiers of the counterinsurgency. The only way you can beat an insurgency is by interacting with the populace within the country, to galvanize support for the counterinsurgency campaign. If all you do is bomb people from the air you are going to get eh exact opposite effect. Without boots on the ground, you will not get proper intel. As such, there is a higher likelihood of collateral damage. When surprise attacks indiscriminately kill both combatants and civilians, you lose what little support you may have had. You have to go out there into the bush at the squad or platoon level and interact with local leaders, repair damage from both insurgent and counterinsurgent attacks, give little kids food/medical attention. You build up a rapport with people, and they will work with you. Otherwise, they are more likely to see you as the enemy instead of the insurgents. It may not be the newest, sexiest piece of technology, but it works. And you cant be afraid to have people out in harm's way. You have to have men getting in firefights, so the locals see you actually taking an interest in protecting their towns, their fields, their families. If this doesn't happen, you will lose.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
From page 4:
Indeed, they see many things meant to be secret, like men having sex with sheep and goats in the deep of night. I first heard this from infantry soldiers and took it as rumor, but at Bagram I met a civilian contractor who works in UAV operations. "All the time," he said. "They just don't think we can see them."
Better known as 318230.
The war was nowhere on the way to be lost. Japan was desperate and the Russians were in Korea already, it took them two weeks to bring the borders of Japan back to 1910.
The American people were the goose who laid the golden egg. We created so much technological innovation and such fine products at such low prices that the parasite of government couldn't resist. They bled us slowly, little by little. Income tax, social security (which my generation won't see a dime of,) state income tax, sales tax, property tax, emissions tax, tax and fees on everything. They drained the productivity of the American worker for decades, but we were so strong that we could feed the parasite and ourselves. But now we are drained dry and dying, the government is throttling the golden goose screaming for more money. There is no more money. I fear that soon the government will openly attack and beat the golden goose, using violence to try to coerce us into producing even more for their use when we are tapped out. The use of LRAD on protestors and tasers on lippy grandmothers will become even more widespread, mark my words.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
"...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem"
This bares similarity to another war where they tried to fight it from the safely of helicopters, and similar to this one they will also lose it. But then again it isn't really about fighting some tribesmen in Afghanistan, but about extending the boundaries of the US empire and spending lots of money on the military budget. Especially since there is no longer some Soviet bogeyman around to save us all from. What's wrong with these Islamo-fascists that they don't want the sex-&-drugs-&-rock-&-roll and porn American life style.
davecb5620@gmail.com
On the other hand, if wars are made up of robots fighting robots, there'd be drastically lowered casualties on both sides... then, maybe, we could reduce wars to episodes of BatteBots and generate a large potential for advertising profit as the world tunes in to see the latest "war." In this way, it would be possible to turn the human craving for cyclical violence into a family friendly TV show. The advertising revenue would feed back into the "wars" much in the same manner as the current military-industrial complex uses profits from one war to develop the weapons for the next.
You're mistaken. The American people don't object to the killing or abuse of their OWN people either. It is well known that American prisons are full of non-violent druggies subjected to rape, torture, and all forms of sexual violence. Instead of a national outcry against this, it is treated as a subject for late-night humor. When blacks in Oakland protest against a black boy having been murdered, shot point blank in the back while restrained on the BART - most Americans were angry at the PROTESTORS and cheered when the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them. Americans will only become angry when it is a friend, neighbor, or family member who is abused. Anyone else and it becomes ENTERTAINMENT. The show "Cops" exists as a voyeuristic corruption of the justice system which is obviously based on the court room in Idiocracy.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
it disturbs me.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I would not agree. However in this day and age where we handicap our side in every war you point is true.
bombing a population into submission works, it broke the back of the Germans and Japanese. It is far cheaper in manpower expenditure on our side to demoralize an enemy than befriend them. Yet we choose the later and put more people into direct risk.
I really think we would get seriously hurt in any real conflict as it would take a large population center being affected before we could fight like we had to. Perhaps that is the problem, in many cases today we don't really need to be in the fight in the first place. We had it right after 9/11 but lost it after countless "what ifs" and such by press and pundit. We lost it because don't have the patience for the long run nor did we feel the risk after so many years. Bush lost the effectiveness of 9/11 with the "mission accomplished" crap and really for many that removed the "pressing need".
Drones are great tools of assassins. I guess if the new face of war needs an association that is negative I would give it that. Now we will just hunt and peck at the enemy while he does the same to us and prolong things for dozens of years. The public now wants wars akin to Star Trek episodes, done in an hour with the nitty gritty done in the last ten minutes and everyone patting themselves on the back about how good they were.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I would say that is a very common mindset and not just american. The whole "There's us.. and then there's them" thing is international. Many counties own citizens kill each other over religious disagreements (no provoking physical harm or damages). I'm not excusing the US for killing anyone, just saying it's a world mindset, not an american one.
Yes, you are right about the nukes. The US is still the only country to use nuclear weapons against another country during total war. I have no doubt that will change during the next round of total war (whenever that may be)
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Spell-checker gone bad.
True, but the bombs were aimed at averting the need to invade the japanese home islands. So several hundred thousand japanese civilians were killed by two bombs rather than the millions that would likely die in an invasion. That's not including the military casualties that were predicted. The Armed forces are still giving out medals that were originally produced in anticipation of that invasion. As ugly as using those bombs was the outcome isn't as bad as it could have been without them.
Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?
At $10.9m, I'd rather see them going cheaper, and deploying more. Having seen the advances in home-built drones at Maker Faire and on RCGroups and having done a little myself, that price is absolutely ludicrous. You need $10.9m aircraft to reduce the risk that the components (or humans, if manned) will be lost in combat or fall into enemy hands. But if you use cheap commodity components, you don't need it to survive.
I do think there is a role for Reapers -- send them in for advanced missions and when you need to shoot. But for getting a look at the bad guys without putting anyone in harm's way? A $2k tricked out R/C airplane will get you there.
Nice side bonus: If you have a lot more planes, you can give more soldiers stick time. Not that war is fun, but if you're going to be in a war, it's nice to have a productive diversion.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
"The real wave of the future" is complete and utter humiliation of the aggressors in this world and the Hereafter. Don't you forget that, all people with morality based on computer games.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Tell me, what are the intentions of the people who those drones are targetting? How many innocents have those men killed this year? How many weddings, funerals, markets, and religious services have they bombed in service to their god of hate and blood? The patriotism of Americans is small potatoes compared to the fervor of these extremists. It's even smaller potatoes compared to =any= country's imperialism over 70 years ago.
The modern state of the US is easy for cowards to criticize. They don't realize that staying in Afghanistan and Iraq keeps the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and SURPRISE, Americans would prefer Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Afghanistanis to die to these insane fiends than American civilians -- but we're also risking American soldiers to die in the place of these people. If any other country, 150 years ago, had the power that America has now, the entire middle east would be a glass parking lot. It isn't, because America has far more compassion in its short history than those bloodthirsty, "progressive" European states ever had until their militaries were completely destroyed in the first half of the last century. So we have soldiers on the ground with rifles, and remote-controlled drones, because we can guide their missiles more accurately than just dropping a few million bombs on the unstable regions.
You probably can't figure that out, though, because you got some "America Sucks, GRRR! Every other country in the world has good intentions until America comes along and try to kill their leaders!" in your eye. You're ignoring 6,000 years of history and human nature to make your blind-eyed claims against one of the gentlest giants to ever sit on the Earth.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Compared to the *millions* killed by the other participants in that war.
Dropping the a-bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima is akin to dropping nerve gas on Frankfurt and Hamburg. We could have done it, but it would not made a great difference in the military effort of the German war machine.
One could argue that that Japanese military leaders could have written off the civilian loss in those two cities (after all they lost more due to the firebombing of Tokyo) but were more inclined to surrender after hearing the news of the loss of 2 million Japanese troops due to the Soviet invasion in Manchuria.
At that point there was no longer any standing Japanese army worth mentioning nor a Navy to ship them back to Japan for a last ditch defense. So in order to save face they most likely used the pre-tense of the bombs to surrender to the Americans rather than the Soviets.
To be fair... Truman had ordered the bomb dropped without coming to understand what it was or could do (radiological wise). The people who advised him on the matter had no understanding either other than suggesting it as to bring about a quick end to the war for political reasons (namely the Stalin's response leading up to the Postdam conference to how he was going to treat Eastern Europe and the overtones that the Allies might be next on the agenda)
Admiral Nimitz and General Eisenhower were actually critical of its use because they believed the war had already been one in Japan as Japan had no navy as the suicidal attack of the Yamato and that 6 months into 1946 Japan would be critical of food supplies and would simply surrender due to the naval embargo.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Am I the only one reminded of H. G. Wells' "The Land Ironclads?"
"Their rifles... had the most remarkable sights imaginable, sights which threw a bright little camera-obscura picture into the light-tight box in which the rifleman sat below. This camera-obscura picture was marked with two crossed lines, and whatever wascovered by the intersection of these two lines, that the rifle hit... Changes in the clearness of the atmosphere, due to changes of moisture, were met by an ingenious use of that meteorologically sensitive substance, catgut, and when the land ironclad moved forward the sights got a compensatory deflection in the direction of its motion. The rifleman stood up in his pitch-dark chamber and watched the little picture before him. One hand held the dividers for judging distance, and the other grasped a big knob like a door-handle... When he saw a man he wanted to shoot he brought him up to the cross-lines, and then pressed a finger upon a little push like an electric bell-push, conveniently placed in the centre of the knob. Then the man was shot. If by any chance the rifleman missed his target he moved the knob a trifle, or readjusted his dividers, pressed the push, and got him the second time."
There is no law of physics guaranteeing the U. S. a monopoly on these things. Yet so much of the discussion implicitly assumes this is something "we" can do to "them."
The U. S. was certain that the Russians didn't have the technology capability to produce nuclear weapons, yet the U. S. had the monopoly on nuclear weapons for less than four years. (And the Russians then scared us by being the first to produce a fusion device that was capable of being a deliverable weapon--the U. S. had the first fusion explosion but it was a ground-based, building-sized device.
How difficult are these things to build? Are we sure you can't cobble a crude but effective one out of a video cell phone, an R/C model aircraft, and a couple of iPods? How long before we see these things over U. S. skies?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The number of millions was cooked up in the 50s, after Operation August Storm, everyone knew the Japanese surrendered, too, when thoroughly defeated.
I'd just virtualize the controls, make it a MMO game, then offer cash prizes for the top "scores." I guarantee you, you'll have some 14 yr old with a D average who'll figure out how to bounce Hellfire missiles off walls to kill terrorists behind corners.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Their militaries still exist and 20 countries have the bomb, a dozen known so puublicly. They just don't strut their stuff in a new war for each head of state.
How many weddings, funerals, markets, and religious services have the drones bombed? Many, many, many. Look at it this way. There ARE terrorists in Afghanistan which do cruel things, without a doubt. But why is bombing their neighborhood considered and appropriate response? Should the US Government drop 2-ton bombs on Mafia don's surburban homes? Why not? It would protect American police WARGARBL. You would be insane with anger if the government decided to solve its problems with gun running by blasting the house and half the block from 40,000 feet. But you don't mind when they do it to Afghanis, because ---- ? As to your claims that the United States is morally sound because it doesn't commit open genocide (anymore,) I find that point of view to be the sole providence of the fucking insane.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
The war begins each day on the long drive into the desert, just past the Super Buffet and the Home Depot and the Petco, and the swath of look-alike houses that cling to the city's edge, along the forty miles of the strangest daily commute in America. Air Force Staff Sergeant Charles Anderson plucks his wristwatch from the cupholder and crosses into the war zone. He wears the watch only at work, and the ritual shifts his thoughts away from the everyday, which lately has been occupied by wedding plans and house hunting. He drives in silence, no music or news, past rocky scrubland that mirrors the Afghan mountains, valleys, and plains he'll spend his workday patrolling. First Lieutenant John Hamilton crosses over as he passes the High Desert State Prison, thirty miles outside Las Vegas, northwest on route 95. His cell-phone calls always drop off here, and over time he has come to think of the prison as the demarcation line between homelife and battlefield. A few more miles and Creech Air Force Base rises from the desert, a cluster of buildings at the foot of barren hills, cast gold by the early-morning sun. Captain Sam Nelson is the last to cross over. He steps into a plain brick building, home to the 42nd Attack Squadron, pulls his cell phone from his green flight suit, and leaves it on a counter with a pile of others. He passes through a doorway, from unclassified to secret, and the door shuts and locks behind him.
On this July morning, the three will crew a Reaper -- big brother to the Predator -- an unmanned aerial vehicle scanning the landscape from about twenty thousand feet, seventy-five hundred miles away. Nelson flies it, and Anderson runs the array of cameras and sensors that hang under the plane's nose and can see the hot barrel of a freshly fired weapon from miles off in the dark of night. Hamilton, the mission intelligence coordinator, feeds them reports from the battlefield and talks to the "customers," their name for the ground troops they'll be supporting in Afghanistan. He's twenty-four, still soft in the face, and studied public policy at Stanford; now in the morning paper he reads about policy he helps implement. He digs that. Never mind that his neighbors don't know how close to the war he really is every day. In the Reaper Operations Center, crowded with computers and flat-screen TVs, he settles in at his workstation, which has a bank of six computer screens, a laptop, two secure phone lines, and a radio headset. On the bottom center screen, he'll soon have nine message windows open, chatting with his bosses at Creech, commanders in Afghanistan, and troops on the battlefield.
The top middle screen shows the view from the Reaper -- in this case Afghanistan at rest. The sun has already set, but the infrared lens illuminates a darkened world in a palette of black and white. Down the hall, Nelson and Anderson step into the Ground Control Station, a windowless room ten feet wide and twenty feet deep, with beige walls and a drop-tile ceiling. At the far end, two men in flight suits and radio headsets sit in bulky tan faux-leather chairs before a cubicle cockpit of joysticks, throttles, and ten monitors. They stare at Afghanistan's roads and schools and markets and homes, as they have for the past several hours. Nelson and Anderson, their relief, slip into the seats as the Reaper flies on. Nelson checks his cargo, shown as neon-green silhouettes at the bottom of his center screen: four Hellfire missiles and two five-hundred-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. Another shift of remote-control combat has begun.
At this very moment, at any given moment, three dozen armed, unmanned American airplanes are flying lazy loops over Afghanistan and Iraq. They linger there, all day and all night. When one lands to refuel or rearm, another replaces it. They guard soldiers on patrol, spy on Al Qaeda leaders, and send missiles shrieking down on insurgents massing in the night. Add to those the hundreds of smaller, unarmed Unmanned Aer
www.joshferguson.org
Regardless of your air or naval power.....you'll always need a guy with a rifle and bayonet physically occupying a piece of real estate.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
i guess you forget the allies raids over Germany.
Just a note, the civilian bombing of German cities did little in the way of affecting German industrial output. German industrial out actually was at it wartime peak 1944 and was still increasing until 1945 during the most intense bombing raids of the war.
The industrial output actually only decreased when the factories were over run by ground troops.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Simple answer: no one has any idea. The people targeted by the drones for extra-judicial assassinations are always and without exception "suspected" "militants" - i.e. people who might militantly oppose US interests, or interests of US sponsored warlords in some way or another. Some might be mass murderers, some merely opposed to their US-appointed "government" or simply enemies of some US informants. Or random bystanders. There is no way to tell.
But one thing can be known for certain, the hordes of children killed by the drones were definitely not "targeting" anyone.
So the bottom line is this: when you choose to descend to the levels of the atrocities that you accuse your "evil" opponents of ... you yourself have become the very evil you claim to fight. Which is clearly the case with the US of A, and which all rational observer have pointed out a long time ago.
Truth hurts and US-ians want *absolutely nothing* to do with it.
It's funny that someone who says the truth hurts can't bring himself to use the accepted and proper noun for a citizen of the United States: American.
In fact, very much like Ancient Rome where the citizens were a different breed from the conquered and the "ungrateful" slaves outnumbered them 3:1
We are nothing like Ancient Rome. If we behaved like the Romans we would have killed every single male of military age in Afghanistan a long time ago. Say what you will about the Romans but they knew how to keep the enemies of civilization in line. We've long since forgotten how to do that. More's the pity.
everyone outside of the US should by now know quite well how they are used: to assassinate, remotely (with no regard for bystanders, due process or any of that "coddling" stuff)
I wasn't aware that enemies on the battlefield were entitled to due process before being killed. Could you point out this nugget of international law for me?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Armed forces are still giving out medals that were originally produced in anticipation of that invasion.
For example, 500,000 Purple Hearts were made in preparation for the anticipated invasion of Japan. As it turned out, they were not needed then. This stockpile has been reduced by the Korean and Vietnam wars and all of the lesser actions (Iraq 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, and various "peacekeeping" missions), but about 100,000 still remain unused.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Actually, we'd been bombing the mainland for a long time. McNamara did some of his best work doing statistical analysis to optimize bombing runs on the Japanese mainland to maximize casualties. Well, for a unusual definition of "best."
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Tell me, what are the intentions of the people who those drones are targetting? How many innocents have those men killed this year? How many weddings, funerals, markets, and religious services have they bombed in service to their god of hate and blood? The patriotism of Americans is small potatoes compared to the fervor of these extremists. It's even smaller potatoes compared to =any= country's imperialism over 70 years ago.
We were the ones writing them checks in the 1980's simply because we didn't want a secular yet communist Afghanistan.
Oh... And we overthrew a legally elected socialist government in Iran in the 1950's only to have who we wanted in power replaced with a fanatical religious government and then we paid money and gave weapons to their enemy in Iraq who turned on us with those own weapons we sold them...
And we still prop up a non-democratic kingdom with money and weapons down there who represses any political dissent with prison and whippings! No wonder they hate us!
AND YOU SAY WE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MIDDLE EAST! We've been mucking around down there for over 50 years!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If we are at war with Afghanistan, and there is no due process on the battlefield, then I would consider it perfectly justifiable for the Afghanis to steal a Pakistani nuke and detonate it in an American city. All the people who think it was morally sound to use nukes on Japan DURING WAR shouldn't cry if the Taliban nukes San Diego, a clear military target. You don't carry your reasoning all the way through. YOU are the special ones whose lives matter, and THEY are just them - targets.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Wikipedia lists the total death count from BOTH bombings by the end of 1945 at 220,000.
The Department of War estimated at the time that an invasion of Japan would result in 400,000 to 800,000 American and five to ten million Japanese fatalities.
There weren't really any good options.
At Waco they used army equipment against people who had committed NO CRIMES.
Not even close. At Waco, the ATF attempted to execute a search warrant on the Branh Dividian compound. The Branch Dividians opened fire from a huge stockpile of automatic weapons killing 4 ATF agents.
After these murders, the FBI came in and *then* you started seeing millitary-like hardware.
To readily identify the next generation of 'Nintendo warriors' for the draft?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This is ABSOLUTELY not true in countries that do not have democracy; China, Iran (quasi-democracy), North Korea, Myanmar, etc.. The reason is that these countries have ZERO issues with losing their citizens lives if things are coached in the right way. With a democracy, then each life lost will slowly degrade support for war, esp. if we started it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of course the Taliban using a nuke against a US city would be upsetting, as it would be if they nuked any other city or country. Using a nuke would likely lose them any support they currently enjoy from other countries. The US hasn't resorted to using WMD's and likely won't, even if you think the casualties have been unacceptably high so far they could be far worse. And of course it's an Us vs Them mentality, just as it is in the reverse. The lives of people you know will always be valued more than the lives of people you don't, that's just part of how societies function.
I read the article and was amazed at the great use of technology, that we could beam video and aircraft commands across the world to do surveillance and attacks. But then I saw a special on PBS last night where our ground troops can't even talk with the Afghans. The interpreter didn't speak good english, and his face was blurred out -- no doubt due to fear for his life and his family's safety. So, I wondered, why can't we use the same UAV technology to facilitate better translation?
Simply, give ground troops a video camera, mic, and speaker. Video and audio would be relayed to a translator sitting anywhere in the world. The translator could translate from Afghan to english, speaking into the troops' earpiece. English to Afghan would be broadcast over the speaker the troop carries. It's not nearly as personal, but I'd bet we'd get better and more translators. They can work anywhere and don't have to fear being shot or their family being threatened.
Accepted how? It is true that in common usage "American" came to become a short-hand for "the citizen of USA". But "Americans" are, by definition, denizens of America, the continent. That includes the whole of North America and South America. It only underlines my point, as to the self-centred, narcissistic attitudes of the citizens of the USA that they would claim a continent-wide description for themselves exclusively and not bat an eye at this.
I hope you are also choosing to apply that "self-centered narcissistic attitude" insult on the millions of non-Americans who also use the phrase "American" to refer to a citizen of the United States. It's only a vocal minority looking to stir up trouble that insists on using the term "US'ian".
You know nothing of Ancient Rome.
You know nothing of me, so stop making assumptions.
It did not kill all males, it subjugated the conquered cultures and slowly injected Roman values and culture into them until they became wholly subservient to Rome
Good. If injecting our values and culture onto the Middle East is what's required to get them to behave by the rules of the civilized world then I'm all for it.
Your imbecilic assumption that Rome = Civilization only goes to show ho warped your mind is.
Rome was civilization. Rome had running water, central heating, higher education, etc, etc. If our enemies want to be considered part of civilization then they should start playing by the rules.
Precisely the ass-hat attitude I was describing. The USian mind yearning for more gore and blood of all those "dirty", "uncivilized" "outsiders" who dare to resist the "liberation" and "civilization"
I don't want more gore and blood. I want an end to the wars that we are currently fighting. The best way to win a war is to kill enough of the enemy so that the remainder realizes that the fight isn't worth carrying on. If we aren't willing to do this then it probably isn't worth fighting in the first place.
That is a handy excuse: do not like due process? Simple: invade some place, declare it a "battlefield" and all those inconvenient to you as "enemies", or better yet "unlawful combatants" and presto! No more pesky international law ... or any law for that matter.
We wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan if the Government of that country wasn't harboring a group that murdered thousands of our citizens. Funny how you seem to gloss over that fact.
In short, you are a perfect example of what I was talking about, narcissistic, vile, arrogant, callous, sociopathic, self-appointed "bringer of civilization" to the "barbarians".
So just how many insults do you get to toss around before someone rightfully mods you down as the troll that you are? I've refrained from responding in kind because it seems that those with mod points are usually inclined to agree with people like you. I should hope that in this case cooler heads will prevail but I wouldn't be surprised at all if my measured and calm response is the one that gets the troll mod.
The likes of you litter history books, usually somewhere under the heading of "supremacist warmongers".
Yes, the likes of a 28 year old non-military/political citizen always make the history books. I can't wait until they create my Wikipedia page :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Look; We dropped them on a nation that had attacked us. Simple as that. We had no knowledge of the long term consequences. If you really want to blame somebody, then blame the japanese emperior. Heck, even after we dropped the first one, they should have said enough was enough. But they did not.
Finally, for all your carping about, you seem to ignore the fact that USSR, Germany, AND japan were all working on it as well. Germany transferred all their nuke knowledge to Japan via subs right before their fall. Either one of those 2 could have dropped them first (and the world would be a RADICALLY different place; all one nation). What would you be saying today had either of them dropped it? Praising that all the worlds jews were gone? That we were one happy nation?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The attack was directly controlled from afghanistan. Even AQ and Taliban do not deny that. And OBL has multiple videos in which he states that he, AQ and Taliban were behind 9-11 and numerous other attempts on the west. In addition, they have now threatened Russia as well as China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Fair point, but how many Japanese would have starved to death while waiting for their leadership to swallow its pride and surrender? Obviously nobody can say for sure, but if a reasonable informed estimate brings it in at a higher number than died from the a-bomb attacks, then the bomb was still the right way to go.
You don't carry your reasoning all the way through
No, you are the one who isn't carrying it all the way through. The only reason that we are currently losing in Afghanistan is because we play by the rules and our enemies do not. When they start fighting under a flag and stop hiding behind civilians then we'll talk.
All the people who think it was morally sound to use nukes on Japan DURING WAR shouldn't cry if the Taliban nukes San Diego, a clear military target.
I love how people like yourself spend all your time whining about the nuclear attacks but rarely mention the conventional bombing that killed more people. In any case, the difference between the two (not that you are interested) was that Japan was engaged in a total war where every resource of the nation-state was poured into the war-effort. The United States is engaged in nothing of the sort. If we were we'd draft a few million men and put them on the ground in Afghanistan -- I don't see that happening, do you?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The human being can be defective in many ways. Some people are born with genetic defects like Down's Syndrome. Others have physical deformities, or brain damage. I think there is ANOTHER problem that can strike the human being, another form of retardation. I think you are ETHICALLY RETARDED. No matter how intelligent, no matter how well-studied, you can still be a defective person if you have defective ethics. I don't see any point in trying to reason with a human being who considers anyone who opposes the will of the leaders of his tribe to be terrorists or enemy combatants or whatever the designation of the week is. I don't see any point in trying to reason with you because there is NOTHING, no crime, no horror, that the ethically retarded human is not capable of rationalizing.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Not many military operations show such lopsided results: big impact at low cost, with results disproportional to the sacrifice, which fuels the insatiable hunger for UAVs and makes waging war even more abstract for everyone at home. People care less about what their government does when they are not asked to contribute. In World War II, one in ten Americans served in the military, and the war dead totaled nearly half a million. Today, fewer than one in a hundred serve in the military, and as the machines take over and that flesh-and-blood burden shrinks even more, the citizenry will disengage more and more.
This is why technology will never result in utopia. There is too much incentive for those in power to use it to increase their power, and too little cost to the populace to incite them to resist.
Your brain is not a computer.
I don't see any point in trying to reason with a human being who considers anyone who opposes the will of the leaders of his tribe to be terrorists or enemy combatants or whatever the designation of the week is
Pray tell, what did I say that lead you to this conclusion? All I said was that we play by the rules and our enemies do not. That's why our enemies are unlawful combatants. Not because they are our enemies. It's because they refuse to obey the laws of war.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It is vital to certain parties that war become intractable, perpetual and expanding.
"War brings business to Feinstein spouse: Blum's firms win multimillion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan"
Afghanistan - the proxy war
"Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power, for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq - is to preserve the status quo. . . .
If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of change at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths - costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.
As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That "keeping Americans safe" obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Lots of things which are "well known" and "common knowledge" also happen to be false...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Newsweek also had an article last week on the higher level and political implications of the change in the US Air Force's mission.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
By this definition, then the US Air Force of WWII was cowardly, especially the firebombing campaigns towards the end of the war in Germany and the nuclear bombs in Japan. When the crossbow was first widely introduced, the Pope tried to ban them because they were unchivalrous and cowardly. The people who attacked the Marines barracks in Beirut during the 80s and the American warship in Yemen were still branded as terrorists, despite attacking military targets. The attack on the Pentagon during 9/11 was also branded as a terrorist act. In Australia, a group of people were arrested as terrorists for planning to attack a military camp, also a valid military target. The truth is that, it is convenient for governments to label anyone they don't like as terrorists. I am not condoning attacks on civilians, whether by irregulars or by regular military. Regarding these drones, as they become more prevalent, countermeasures will be devised, you can bet on it. There already exist jammers that can interfere with the drones guidance systems. I predict that ECM measures will be devised to block/mislead the telecommunication linkage of the drones with its controllers. I also predict that "interceptor" drones will be invented that will loiter over the defended target and intercept incoming attack drones. Barrage balloons that interfere with sensors and radar might also make a comeback.
In all fairness the US military ahs done some pretty sketchy if not all out unlawful stuff in recent history. Not that this some how justifies the wholesale abandonment of those laws by our opponents.
Yes, we have. However it was historically the case that powers that abide by the laws of war aren't entitled to the protections afforded by those laws. It was recognized that it isn't fair to expect one power to obey the laws of war while another power does whatever the hell it wants. As recently as WW2 it was permissible to subject unlawful combatants to summary execution upon their capture. Ever read about what happened to the Germans fighting behind the line in Allied uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge? Ever read about how "surrendering" Japanese troops were shot on sight because they had previously used white flags as a ruse to get close enough to do something nasty?
If the Taliban wants it's people to be accorded POW status then perhaps it should stop hiding among civilians and fight in uniform? There's no reason that we should tie the hands of our military and obey the laws of war when our enemies refuse to do the same. The sad truth is that this war won't be won unless we kill enough of the Taliban (and their civilian supporters) to convince the survivors that the fight isn't worth carrying on. Unfortunately it seems that the West has lost the stomach for real warfare but also lacks the political will to withdraw from the World and stop getting involved in these conflicts in the first place. Hence the current stalemate.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Wikipedia lists the total death count from BOTH bombings by the end of 1945 at 220,000.
The Department of War estimated at the time that an invasion of Japan would result in 400,000 to 800,000 American and five to ten million Japanese fatalities.
I once read a transcript of one of Truman's cabinet meetings shortly before the end of the war, when they were deliberating on what to do. It was actually a pretty fascinating read.
While they were obviously considering every option, and the Department of War had drawn up detailed plans for a possible invasion (which is where the estimate above comes from) it's clear that Truman and his advisers were not seriously considering it at that point. They knew Japan was on the ropes and surrender was inevitable without needing to set foot on the island. With the Japanese navy serving as fish condos, there was nothing they could do to fight back or even feed themselves.
The main options under discussion were:
1 - Drop the bomb on multiple Japanese cities, multiple being important so as to suggest that we could continue doing so ad-infinitum rather than it being a one-off, forcing an unconditional surrender.
2 - Drop the bombs in the ocean as a demonstration. The biggest concern here was that they would not be suitably impressed or think it was somehow a trick, and then we wouldn't have enough to implement option 1.
3 - Wait for the Russians to get involved. Truman and his advisers were convinced that once Russia declared war, Japan would quickly surrender. The big problem here was that we wanted them to surrender just to us, not to the Russians. Cold War politics had already started to enter the picture, and we were "Allies" in name only.
4 - Accept conditional surrender. The Japanese had already made an offer to surrender, but due to communication problems the actual terms of this surrender were unknown. Certainly anything that allowed the Japanese to wage war again was completely unacceptable. It turns out all they really wanted was to retain a ceremonial role for the Emperor to save face, something which General MacArthur wisely gave them anyway. But at the time of the discussion, they didn't know. In any case, it was decided that no matter what the terms, nothing less than complete unconditional surrender would do for the enemy who had initiated the war.
There weren't really any good options.
Such is war.
By the way, my point isn't to second guess Truman. It was a difficult decision with no good options as you say, and as another poster mentioned he wasn't really aware of the impact the bomb would have in terms of radiation sickness etc. I don't think anyone really understood. Neither is my point to say with the benefit of hindsight that it was the wrong decision. I can't speak for the Japanese, but I have to imagine they were better off surrendering to us than ending up with a North Japan/South Japan situation.
My point is that the situation was much more complicated than the simple moral calculus implied by "drop the bombs and kill 200,000, or invade and kill millions". The real decision was not that clear-cut, and I think it dose a disservice both to the people who made it, and to ourselves in our efforts to learn from history, to pretend that it was.
The enemies of Democracy are
LOL. The law as it is written in the Geneva Convention? Because the US is happy to scream that display of photos of US POWs by Iraqi and Afghani insurgents is "a violation of the Geneva Convention". Wait, I'm confused. Are we saying these insurgent groups are bound by the Geneva Convention because their country is a signatory to it? And then we say that we're not bound to it because they're not "fighting under a flag and are therefore unlawful combatants"?
The typical phrasing for such a situation is "having your cake and eating it too". Whine when the "other side" violates a Convention. Whine that you're not required to adhere to that Convention because the other side isn't bound by it. Whine when you are censured by the UNHCR for violating the Convention, because one of its core precepts is "the adherence to the Convention, regardless of whether or not the opponent is a signatory".
Please. We piss and moan when they show pictures of US POWs and say that this is a violation. We show their POWs in US military prisons, Guantanamo, etc, and say that this isn't a violation because they're not a party to the Convention. We conveniently forget that if they're a party to the Convention, and bound by it, they're not unlawful combatants. And so on and so forth.
Here's another example, tied to Afghanistan: when the US decided bin Laden was there, they went to the government and said "give him to us". The Afghanis, a sovereign nation, asked what you'd think to be a reasonable question: "We'd like to see the evidence by which you wish him extradited." The US: "No. You can't see him. Give him to us, or that carrier battle group headed towards you will get a little less friendly." Can you imagine that happening TO the US? Chinese government demanding extradition of someone from the US based on evidence they would not allow the US to see? Do you think the US would accept, or refuse? What do you think the response of the American government, and citizens, if the Chinese decided they were going to stage a forceful incursion as a result. Do you think they might take up arms, like the Afghanis have? Do you think they might be entitled to?
LMAO. Just LMAO. "Civilized world" as defined by who? People who think nothing of executing people after refusing appeals based on new evidence exonerating them? Or executing mentally defective people, and juveniles?
Or perhaps a civilized world where a country that has the largest percentage of its populace in the world incarcerated, and 1/4 to 1/3 of those incarcerated for crimes 65% of the population don't even believe should be a crime?
Or a civilized world where Supreme Court justices appointed by the administration of a political party rule that in the elections to determine the leader of that nation, that to recount votes to ensure accuracy would be to "undermine" the system?
Or a civilized world where following lobbying by unrelated interest groups, the President signs into law legislation to keep a person alive, despite their wishes, and that of the guardian they made an informed and aware decision to put in place to honor their wishes?
Or a civilized world where it is considered de jure for a medical insurance company to collect up to and over a thousand dollars a month for "health insurance", and then deny coverage for abdominal cancer in a patients 40s, on the grounds that they had failed to disclose they had their tonsils removed at age 9?
That civilized world, you mean?
Leaving aside Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has precisely nothing to do with "fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here", and everything to do with the people of a country taking up arms against a foreign invader who attacked their country because the country refused to give up someone who the US demanded, without seeing evidence, which the US refused to allow.
Anything beyond that is a Republican talking point. There's a reason many of these insurgents live a day job of herding sheep or cattle, and so on. It's because they ARE sheep herders, or such. They took arms when they had foreign military on their land, in their homes, and a foreign government that thinks nothing of congratulating itself for bombing a gathering of such people and telling the world it is stopping 'terror', when the reality is that if they packed up and went home, so too would the sheep herders.
Of course, I am not so naive to believe that some have not taken advantage of this situation to further their own nefarious ends.
But neither am I naive enough to believe that the US invasion of Afghanistan was as much a liberation as it was throwing gasoline on a fire.
Now come on... This is just plain plagiarism.
Dropping the a-bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima is akin to dropping nerve gas on Frankfurt and Hamburg.
not so. Never gas doesn't do any infrastructure damage. Even if the buildings have no relevance to the war, the view of total obliteration is enough to really change your perception of the current situation. However, I'm willing to bet that they dropped those bombs in strategic locations so as to best slow down the military industry in Japan.
Not even close. At Waco, the ATF attempted to execute a search warrant on the Branh Dividian compound. The Branch Dividians opened fire from a huge stockpile of automatic weapons killing 4 ATF agents.
After these murders, the FBI came in and *then* you started seeing millitary-like hardware.
Seeing as you don't seem to remember the incident very well, I'll remind you. The ATF attempted to stage a massive raid on the "compound". They lost the element of surprise because the ATF invited in the media to get lots of footage of their brave storming of this menacing redoubt. No action occurred that could be remotely called "an attempt to serve a warrant". What occurred was an unprovoked attack by a large force of ATF agents armed with automatic weapons, which was repelled and driven into ignominious flight by legally armed citizens firing in self defense from their dwelling.
Subsequent to this, the scene was taken over by a paramilitary FBI force which did its best over a period of weeks to work the situation up into a fever pitch that culminated in the mass murder of citizens guilty of no crime—including dozens of children.
In the future, such things will be taken care of quickly and quietly by drone jockeys in Nevada.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Accepted how? It is true that in common usage "American" came to become a short-hand for "the citizen of USA". But "Americans" are, by definition, denizens of America, the continent.
Most words have multiple definitions, and those definitions are for the most part determined by common usage. In the lack of a specific context, when someone uses a word, listeners assume he means the most common definition. The word used to denote a citizen of the United States is "American" both because that's the word people usually use for that purpose and because that's the purpose for which people usually use that word. I have co-workers who come from Bangalore in the Republic of India. Should I start referring to them as "RoIians" so as not to offend citizens of Pakistan and Bangladesh, both of which are located on the Indian subcontinent?
It only underlines my point, as to the self-centred, narcissistic attitudes of the citizens of the USA that they would claim a continent-wide description for themselves exclusively and not bat an eye at this. I used "USian" here as a shortcut, because it is more precise.
The word you're looking for is "asinine", not "precise." It makes you sound like someone arguing vehemently that you must refer to a tomato as a fruit rather than vegetable, as if the botanical definition automatically trumps the culinary one.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
All I said was that we play by the rules and our enemies do not. That's why our enemies are unlawful combatants. Not because they are our enemies. It's because they refuse to obey the laws of war.
This is a downright silly view; the fact that many seem to share it does not diminish its idiocy. Haven't you read any history?
The "laws of war" evolved among warring European states between the mid-seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries. This was a time when state armies clashed in relatively limited wars that had as their objective not the annihilation of the enemy, but the gaining of some relatively minor advantage, or perhaps a "regime change" among the ruling aristocracy that would make no difference to their subjects. These rules held up pretty well even during the Napoleonic wars, but became strained during the First World War, and partially failed during the Second World War, where both sides practiced indiscriminate killing of civilians. (Yet, prisoners were still taken more often than not, at least on the Western Front in Europe, and many of those prisoners lived to be repatriated.)
But what has any of this to do with the people on which we now make war? They do not share our cultural heritage, and they certainly never signed any agreements in Geneva or the Hague. By what standard of judgment are they "unlawful combatants"? Because they don't have the proper European-style uniforms? Because they're not part of a state army? What twaddle!
The people we're fighting are civilians because there's no army for them to join (except those we set up and pay to fight for us, of course). But that doesn't make them unlawful. Nor does using I.E.D.s and other "unfair" tactics make them so; if they could afford stealth bombers, I'm sure they'd be happy to use them instead of those junky explosive-stuffed cars. And may I remind you where we are fighting? Are the Afghans on our turf, or theirs? Is it "lawful" to go pick fights with countries 10,000 miles away for no sensible reason?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
More supremacist bullshit. "White Man's Burden" and all that crap. Do you really think you are the first bigot to come up with this idea that his, and only his, view of the world is "civilized"?
They also had mass slavery and based their entire "civilization" on pillage of others. They were a culture of thieves. When their ability to redirect the wealth of their conquests to themselves became compromised, Rome folded. Rome did not play by any fucking "rules", unless by "rules" you mean "he who is the most vile and vicious gets to steal from the corpse of his victim".
Seeing your whining about "civilization" and your praise of the jackals that were the Roman Empire, reminds me of people who used to praise the Nazis in the 1930s as "civilized" because they've brought "order" to Germany and "Herr Adolf" got the trains to run on time. Another great "civilization" for you to emulate ...
Everything you had said contradicts this statement.
So you are advocating genocide. Some "enemies" are thus because you gave them very little other options. Their fight is to the last man, woman and child standing because you offer them subjugation or death. But then again such is the wake of empires.
Except, of course, you managed to gloss over the fact that the "government" of Afghanistan was directly the result if CIA's meddling during 1980s, that Al-Queda itself is a CIA creation (in collaboration with Pakistani Intelligence) and finally that the "government" was simply a band of quarrelling tribal warlords and clerics that was recognized abroad by only 2 countries. So you've came, murdered thousands of both Taliban and bystanders, put your own imported puppets in charge, played favourites amongst the warlords and now are dewy-eyed, hurt and oh-so-surprised that things are going to shit 6 years later. In goes another 60,000 Imperial Centurions ....
The whole shtick of destabilizing other nations, causing mayhem and carnage, and then using it as an excuse to "come to the rescue" is getting rather old. Incidentally, this was also a strategy of the Roman Empire, evil fucks that they were.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
There is no way to do so. Consequences of the actions by US will arrive in one form or another. That is the basic problems with Empires, they are like Ponzi schemes, they appear to function only as the scheme grows. When it stagnates, or has to contract, massive and catastrophic repercussions abound.
The only thing you can do is to get out of the Imperial racket sooner, rather then later. It hurts less and the economic and societal collapse in the Empire is not as severe. You are already getting a preview of what is going to happen to the US economy when the US-centred economic Empire starts to sputter. Imagine what it will be like when it folds.
Easy. Stop trying to be an Empire. Focus on your own defence and internal affairs. Cut your Imperial Military budget so that it is in line with the rest of the world - which is becoming harder and harder as military spending is one of the pillars of make-believe Imperial "economies" and at this point US is nearly wholly dependant on it.
In short: If you stop meddling violently in affairs of others, a vast majority of them will stop meddling in yours (there are always kooks out there, but it is far easier to garner the sympathy and co-operation of the population of the planet to oppose them if you are genuinely a victim).
Note that this does not mean that the US cannot help deter international conflicts, as a part of a broader team of developed nations, but it means that you no longer get to play a self-appointed, swaggering Sheriff of the planet.
Do you notice the level of brainwashing you were subjected to in your own statement? The unquestioned assumption that the US is somehow "needed" as a thug-in-chief and that someone else would have to "take over" its role? That is the very lie at the core of the Imperial ideology. The "manifest destiny" that "forces you", "unwillingly", "hesitantly" to "do your duty" to .... preemptively assault others who, purely by accident, no doubt, just so happen to threaten the interests of US-based elites.
Hypocrisy, dual-standards coupled with ruthlessness, but also combined with realization of how much better you could have been should you actually do as you preach, is what really makes you such a despised nation. Other nations are guilty of many of the same transgressions as the US is, but the US is by far the most obnoxious in this area, never ceasing to blow its own horn about its supposed global "leadership" and great many ways in which all should bow before its "obvious" superiority (while at the same time trying to play a hapless victim when it suits).
This proves nothing, is a Canada not part of America? What about Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Columbia, Panama are the people of these nation's not Americans?
No, the grand parent was correct in using the term USian, the actual proper noun for a citizen of the United States of America is "Citizen of the United States of America" and "American" in this context is just a colloquialism. Granted USian is a colloquialism too but this does not make the parent wrong any more then it makes right (Cluebat: it doesn't).
The GP wanted to differentiate clearly between a Citizen of the United States of America and a Citizen of the commonwealth of Canada and in your hasty attack of his colloquialism with another colloquialism only served to prove his point about US arrogance.
The fall of the US mirrors the fall of Rome, due to internal bickering and corruption. Also you have many points in common with Rome, in particular how you insert or force your language on other peoples. Concentrating on rare and unreliable events to disprove a trend does not help.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"Yeah... no. Suicide bombers aren't cowards, whatever else you want to call them."
But of course they are.
Look, there are no consequences to themselves personally for being suicide bombers. One, they physically die. That means no possibility of being captured, tried, imprisoned, etc.
Two, they think they're going to paradise for what they're doing.
In their own minds, there are zero consequences for what they're doing, only reward. And so while there's some cowardice involved on the part of the bombers themselves, the greater cowardice is actually on the part of those that send them.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Smooth.
Anyone who denounces you and your state is a coward. Nice, but I guess good Germans^W Americans dont question the acts of their government for such things are considered against the greater good.
Allow me to quote Winston Churchill:
"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."
This is wrong as it ignores all the other factors involved in the equation.
There is absolutely no evidence that this is true. I could just as well say that I have a rock (here in Australia) that keeps the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, not in the US. You would have a hard time proving or disproving either point.
But hey, dont let the facts or reality get in the way of your jingoism, go team.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This proves nothing, is a Canada not part of America? What about Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Columbia, Panama are the people of these nation's not Americans?
No, they are not "Americans" in the sense the word is understood across the entire globe. They are "Americans" in the sense that they live on one of the American continents, but do you really think any Canadian, Mexican, or Brasilian, when asked "So, where you from?" will answer "America"? Do any of them identify themselves as "American" at all?
You call it a colloqualism, but it's one that is almost universally understood by every human on the planet regardless of nationality, race, religion, or native language. Even if not strictly accurate by the most pedantic, technical standards, "American" is understood to mean "A citizen of the United States". There is absolutely zero confusion in anyone's mind, whatsoever, what the word "American" means. Across the globe.
Are you seriously suggesting that there are people who are somehow aware of the continents of North and South America, and who just won't understand the phrase "I am American" because they won't be able to pinpoint the speaker's nationality?
I guarantee that I can travel to Greece, France, Germany, China, Thailand, Canada, Scotland, or pretty much any other location you care to mention, point at myself, and say "American," and they'll instantly know from what nation I hail. If, however, I point at myself and say "Yewzian", or however the fuck you think "US-ian" is pronounced, they'll have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, and will likely consider me to be an idiot.
Okay, they'd probably consider me to be an idiot for being American in the first place, but the point stands. Though, that raises another point: Most people who are not from the United States would consider it insulting to be identified as American. Go to Brasil and refer to everyone you meet as "my new American friend", and see how long they stay friends with you.
Ergo, in conclusion, and to summarise: Shut up. Really.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Mexicans and Canadians US citizens are refereed to as "Americans".
Citation needed. Go to Canada and meet people and refer to them as "my new American friends". See how well they react to that.
Try it in Panama, Cuba, Brasil, Chile, Mexico, or Guam.
You clearly do not understand the languages of any other culture.
And two lines later you accuse me of arrogance? Sir, madam, or other, you know nothing of me or of my travels nor of the langauges I speak.
I can Guarantee that if you go to any non American nation they will refer to Mexican, Peruvians or Cubans as Americans as well.
Funny, they don't refer to themselves as American. In English I call a certain country "Germany" but that really has nothing to do with the actual designation of the country, now does it?
I posited a really simple question before: Are you, or are you not, seriously suggesting that there are people in this world who would be confused as to my nationality if I were to point at myself and say "American"?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Let's hope we outgrow this childish behavior soon.
So, let millions starve (and many to death - they were pretty close to that already) instead of bombing them? The humanitarian thing would be to bomb them, honestly.
Also consider that Japanese culture was very indoctrinated and not-quite post-Imperialist at that time. The Japanese subjects were lied to about US intentions (raping babies and the like) and were basically armed and instructed to fight to the last man and woman. It would have been brutal. It's unlikely they'd have been willing to accept US aide, or surrender to anything short of overwhelming force that could be seen for hundreds of miles. (Consider what Japanese culture has been like since then - pride, honor, accomplishment, and the like still strong. It was much stronger before WWII.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"Civilized" is not an absolute. A civilized culture is one which fights natural behavior inclinations for the betterment of all. It's not a fucking utopia, because there are people involved.
Do you care to mention a more "civilized" world than the West, per chance? We're not trying to push our taboos (and lack thereof) on them. We're trying to get them to treat each other like people - in essence "the golden rule". That's fucking it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Simple answer: no one has any idea. The people targeted by the drones for extra-judicial assassinations are always and without exception "suspected" "militants" - i.e. people who might militantly oppose US interests, or interests of US sponsored warlords in some way or another. Some might be mass murderers, some merely opposed to their US-appointed "government" or simply enemies of some US informants. Or random bystanders. There is no way to tell.
I guess you're either an idiot, or didn't RTFA (oh wait).
A frequent occurrence is for UAV operators to watch a group of men dig a hole in the road, put something in it, and start to fill it back in. And then the operators shoot the device and them with a missile. Or for them to watch a guy fire some mortar rounds, chuck the mortar in the back of a pickup and cover it in a tarp, and drive off. And then the operators shoot the car and him with a missile.
Just because the intelligence that leads to the strikes is secret (no doubt to protect the details of the humint sources and also of the drones' capabilities) doesn't mean that it isn't there. The drones and their weapons are a limited resource, and even the USAF aren't stupid enough to waste millions of pounds blowing someone up because of mere suspicion.
But one thing can be known for certain, the hordes of children killed by the drones were definitely not "targeting" anyone.
So the bottom line is this: when you choose to descend to the levels of the atrocities that you accuse your "evil" opponents of ... you yourself have become the very evil you claim to fight. Which is clearly the case with the US of A, and which all rational observer have pointed out a long time ago.
I totally agree! How fortunate it is, then, that the USA hasn't. Their enemies deliberately target civilians; the USAF only kills civilians by accident, often due to bad intelligence or weapon malfunction.
It's clear you have an agenda from your emotive choice of vocabulary. However, trying to paint the US armed forces as the same as a bunch of terrorists is disingenuous at best.
Pirate Party UK
Eh, that arguement might work for Iraq but not Afghanistan. We had plenty of reason to invade them and make a regime change. The Taliban was actively supporting and training terrorists who were attacking our nation directly. Iraq isn't as clear a case but Afghanistan is pretty solid.
I think you are over stating the chivalry of national armies in the past. Civilians have very often fled in the face of an invasion by a foreign army, and for good reason. Looting and sacking conquered territory is a long standing tradition that commanders have often tried to prevent but so far as I know never succeded in stopping completely. And even when the invaders don't fall to looting themselves you can sure bet your fellow citizens will take advantage of the situation.
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear fission bombs. Thermonuclear bombs are fusion bombs. The first fusion bomb wasn't exploded until several years after WWII had ended.
That being said, you'll find Max Hastings book, Retribution, to provide an interesting and well researched take on the factors that led to Japan's surrender. Hastings' position is that the fire raids, mining operations and submarine blockade of Japan were the major factors that led to the surrender. He notes that, at that time and for some time after the war, the Japanese did not consider there to be any significant difference between the atomic raids and the conventional fire raids that were destroying their cities on a regular basis. Finally, he discounts the influence of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion on Manchuria except to the extent that a few, non-military Japanese in the power structure still hoped that the Soviets would help them achieve a negotiated settlement.
Bottom line is that air power and sea power were able to force the Japanese to surrender without "boots on the ground".
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Terrorism is NOT the same as guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare targets militarily significant targets in an attempt to make it difficult for an enemy to mobilize force. Assuming a "just cause" targeting enemy combatants, generals, leaders, and support staff are all potentially legitimate ways to impact an adversaries ability to fight. Because of this, I wouldn't call the attack on the Pentagon a "terrorist" attack. It was a military strike which killed some civilians as collateral damage. The attacks on US forces around the world are similarly not "terrorist" in nature. They may be for an illegitimate cause (which I firmly believe), but they are not terrorist.
The attacks on civilians in hotels are terrorist attacks. Intentionally bombing schools, public transit, and marketplaces is terrorist. The intent of a terrorist attack is NOT to reduce the enemies ability to fight, but to reduce their will to fight by attacking those who are not directly involved in the conflict. The attack on the trade center was a terrorist attack. Arguably the atom bombs dropped on Japan were terrorist, the main question being whether the "primary" target was military complexes or civilian populations. We can discuss further whether "terrorism" is a valid approach, but it is definitely a significantly different act than the kind of guerrilla warfare practiced during the US war for independence.
Atanamis
I see this comparison all the time when talking about the effects of the bomb. It almost seems like the bomb saved lives. It did not. The effect was 200K dead (+-). The alternative to that was not invading Japan (and millions of casualties) but not invading Japan and negotiating peace - that was the rational way out. The dead were caused by America's lack of willingness to accept anything less then unconditional surrender.
That's the kind of logic that gives me nightmares.
Care to provide any evidence that this is true? Because I can provide several instances that show that staying in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't do much of anything to contain terrorism. In fact, it seems a lot more likely that remaining in those places is at best, a waste of our troops lives and a lot of money, and at worst, is actually encouraging world-wide terrorism.
Oh, and here's another hint for you: "people who don't agree with you" != "cowards".
Not a very good argument. The war was essentially over by this point anyway - we could very likely have just stood by for a month or two and waited for the Japanese government to collapse. But this:
Right on, brother. If we ever figure out why we're there, we might make some progress in A-stan. Until then, we're just spinning our wheels. This was the same thing that made Iraq drag on for so long - the objectives kept changing. In fact, I think that much like it was in Iraq, the solution is to simply declare victory and go home.
Here are two videos showing a US Customs Predator B UAV landing at the big Air Show in Oshkosh Wisconsin this past summer. The first video shows the aircraft landing and close-up. The second video shows the inside of the portable control trailer and the view from the UAV cameras during the approach and landing. http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid626910413?bclid=9230910001&bctid=30185778001 http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid626910413?bclid=9230910001&bctid=30711327001 Enjoy!
Eh, that arguement might work for Iraq but not Afghanistan. We had plenty of reason to invade them and make a regime change.
I absolutely agree that there was a casus belli against Afghanistan. Given that the Taliban-run government of Afghanistan was sheltering perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks, and had refused to give them up, then we had every right under the norms of "civilized" warfare to launch a war against Afghanistan. Moreover, the European nations would have seen it that way also. Do you remember the outpouring of sympathy from Europe immediately after the attack? One of the most astonishing anti-achievements of all time is how George Bush managed to turn this sympathy into antipathy in a matter of months by launching a war against a country that had not attacked us (Iraq).
Immediately after the attack, I wanted military action against Afghanistan. I wanted the U.S. government to lay out its proof of Afghan involvement in the 9-11 crime for all the world to see, and then take action. I was—and am—disgusted that this action took so long to prepare and was so ineffectual and unfocused. The primary goal should have been to capture Bin Laden & co, as well as Sheikh Omar and his top henchpersons (for being accessories after the fact, if nothing else), and bring them to the U.S. for trial. We should have done this with American troops—not Afghan hirelings with U.S. air support and a few special forces; we should have pursued this goal with as much military force as was necessary. And most importantly, we should have been quick about it. If 2 or 3 months wasn't enough time to do the job, then it just wasn't going to get done.
A secondary goal would have been to teach a clear lesson: any government that shelters mass murderers does not survive. This is not some sort of endorsement for carpet-bombing Kabul, but for direct action to arrest if possible and kill if necessary all high level officials of such a government, and to drive that government out of power. This should serve as a deterrent to future incidents of this kind.
That would have made sense to me. What did we get instead? We got a slowly festering sore that will cost far more lives—American and Afghan—than a short sharp strike would have done, and that will, in the end, leave us weaker than before. We are waging a pointless war for illusory goals. That is a tragedy, and it is morally wrong.
To establish some kind of relevance to the original topic of this thread, I think that the "Predator Porn" attitude is emblematic of how our military thinks about war. They want excuses to buy new gadgets; they want to wage wars that are "safe"—for them—and the best way to do that is to turn it into a video game. What they don't want is to create an Army that can actually meet today's threats. That's because such solutions would center on acquiring and training the right people, and people just aren't that important to the generals who make their careers on shepherding some "sophisticated weapons system" through the purchasing process.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
staying in Afghanistan and Iraq keeps the war in Afghanistan and Iraq
This is wrong as it ignores all the other factors involved in the equation
People that aren't me tend to disagree with you I hope this doesn't fly over your head but: The war against Iraq is over. It was victorious. The war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan ARE against the same types of people as the ones who caused 9/11. The vaccuum has been filled with crazy extremists who have perverted their faiths enough to say it can satiate their own lust for blood and power. The battles are not against state militaries and governments, but against people who intentionally kill civilians to get their way. If these men were non-aggressive, there would be no US soldiers in Iraq. There wouldn't have to be. However, they are still flooding into Iraq from other nations, blowing up civilians, and keeping things messed up and bloody. Maybe we should just let them slaughter enough Iraqis until they get their way? I'm sure it's better than what America has planned, right?
But hey, don't let reality get in the way of your pride. Keep hating!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I find it quite telling how easily you believe, wholly uncorroborated and entirely self-serving explanations of USAF, the same USAF who has been repeatedly known to hide and obfuscate facts in the many cases of blown-up weddings and mass carnage amongst villagers.
Unfortunately empirical evidence points to the contrary. The frequency and extent of civilian deaths is up to this point far greater on the part of the US (that including indiscriminate airborne bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, people killed at checkpoints for "looking suspicious" or "driving to close", use of corporate trigger-happy mercenaries and on and on and on). The tally is horribly unbalanced, with the US "ahead" by a few orders of magnitude in this sick farce.
So you can whine and moan about how supposedly lofty and pure the US goals are, but it is the actions of the US forces and associated mercenaries that tell a quite different story. This arrangement is actually one of the hallmarks of US foreign policy: its called Hypocrisy. It also comes with a handy set of double-standards whereby (amongst many other things) a drone firing a missile into a wedding is an act of "courage", while some maniac blowing himself up under the tracks of a US APC is a "coward".
Only to a hard-core tribalist USian. To a majority of the population of the planet its a simple fact of life: US is an Empire and "terrorism" is a tool of warfare eagerly employed by both sides, the rag-tag insurgents and the Imperial Centurions alike.
From TFA:
On his third combat mission after the training, he dropped a Hellfire at the feet of a man who had just planted an IED in Iraq.
Oh, good going, dude... now this slimy terrorist gets to laze around all day in Paradise with his 72 virgins, and I'm stuck down here with my hand wrapped around my, uh, "joy" stick...
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I live in New Zealand, you insensitive clod!
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
However, trying to paint the US armed forces as the same as a bunch of terrorists is disingenuous at best.
Only to a hard-core tribalist USian. To a majority of the population of the planet its a simple fact of life: US is an Empire and "terrorism" is a tool of warfare eagerly employed by both sides, the rag-tag insurgents and the Imperial Centurions alike.
Actually, I'm European. Nice rant though.
Pirate Party UK
There are some in Europe and other places who admire the Empire for its ruthless power and wealth, and so they wish to be a part of it (particularly those who fear the "brown and yellow hordes" of the world or have a financial stake in the Empire) and would take their nations to war alongside the Empire with total disregard of the wishes of most of their countrymen, just like there are some within in who despair at what has happened to their once revolutionary nation and how far from the ideals of their Constitution they ended up, but who have no power to stop the descent into the abyss.
You might want to take a look at this. According to Salon, it was a local cop who tipped off the media. In any case, the fact remains that law enforcement informed the media, and some reporter inadvertently compromised the secrecy of the operation. The ATF proceeded even though they knew this, having been informed by one of their own agents inside the Davidians.
As for shooting at government law enforcement officers, you have the right to defend yourself against such officers if they are acting illegally. The Davidians were under the impression that they were about to be attacked. The ATF action of rushing the "compound" confirmed this impression.
Viewed dispassionately, we can say that both sides screwed up, of course. From a comfortable distance, we can see that the smart thing for the Davidians to do would have been to surrender and fight in court...but they didn't think they were going to be given the chance to do that. The blame rests far more heavily on the ATF. Like all of our law enforcement agencies, the ATF have become militarized; they see themselves as Rambos, not as peace officers. Both at the local and Federal levels, police agencies are no longer taught that they have a duty to use minimum force, or to de-escalate tense situations. Their training and their equipment is military, and their first impulse is to apply firepower.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
some reporter inadvertently compromised the secrecy of the operation. The ATF proceeded even though they knew this, having been informed by one of their own agents inside the Davidians.
Which was rather my point to the earlier poster. It seems rather counter-intuitive that the ATF would choose to open fire on otherwise cooperating people with the news camera behind them.
As for shooting at government law enforcement officers, you have the right to defend yourself against such officers if they are acting illegally. The Davidians were under the impression that they were about to be attacked. The ATF action of rushing the "compound" confirmed this impression.
Actually you have no such right. If the police come rushing into your house you are required to comply.
If you are in reasonable fear of your life, you may have justification for acting in self-defense: but such a fear doesn't play out with the behavior of the Branch Dividians; who at no point took the opportunity to surrender, even much later in front of the world news.
The blame rests far more heavily on the ATF. Like all of our law enforcement agencies, the ATF have become militarized; they see themselves as Rambos, not as peace officers. Both at the local and Federal levels, police agencies are no longer taught that they have a duty to use minimum force, or to de-escalate tense situations. Their training and their equipment is military, and their first impulse is to apply firepower.
There are a number of different points there.
If you look at the history of increasing armament of police: it was in response to being out-armed repeatedly. Even the "overwhelming force" doctrine is about minimizing danger to all.
It's also not true to paint all police agencies with the same brush: and if you truely believe that police 50 or 100 or 150 years ago were more gentle, you've not been paying attention.
All that said: I have great issue with the behavior of many police agencies and their misuse of force. The DEA (and many local DE divisions within the police), and the over use of force at the INS come to mind redily.
I think everyone agrees ATF screwed the pooch here, as did the FBI. That was no reason for an eaarlier poster to exaggerate into hyperbole the error, nor falsely paint the BDs as legal or well behaved.
Oh, and if I ever find out I'm about to be raided: I'll likely drive myself to the nearest police agency and turn myself in. Well, first to my lawyer, then with him to the police.