Slashdot Mirror
What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan
theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"
Wouldn't it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?
Tell that to the person who is starving. Tell that to the man who comes home after another day waiting for a job at the work center, who comes home empty-handed. You think wars are just fought by people who want money? Not all of them. Some are fought because people are hungry. Some are fought because people are desperate -- they're afraid their culture will disappear, their natural resources will be used up... And it's hard to be civil when your neighbor next door has giant refineries and everyone has a car, and an education, and wears clean clothes.
Those people aren't assholes. They're human beings. And a lot of wars are started because despite that, a lot of us sure as hell don't act like it when it counts. We turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, and the result is violence. Whether it's in a desert, or in our streets, the blood is the same color and it's shed for the same reason: Because we can't admit that it's our smug moral superiority, our inability to share, that led us to it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Then what's this?
I'm not looking forward to technology giving us 'safer wars'. Safer for the technologically superior one, that is (as it's already 'safer' for the one nation that isn't fighting on their own soil).
What we need from technology, existing technology, is complete and total audio-visual coverage of every war, ever battle, every death, every innocent family left in ruins. We need to get closer to the reality of war, not further away.
We are all God's parents.
You're confusing real danger with imagined danger. Real danger is infinitely more worthy of respect than imagined danger. That's why the military takes actual combat experience into account for promotions.
"Kill a few raghead babies"
You've underestimated that. The U.S. government has bombed or invaded 24 countries since the 2nd world war. The U.S. government has killed or caused the deaths of more than 11,000,000 people since then. In some ways, the U.S. government is the most violent government that has ever existed.
The killing was done for profit. See the article, Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA.
When you talk about the U.S. government, don't say we. They would kill you, too, if there was money in it.
Or soldiers largely untouched, but treating their experience like it was a video they watched on digg or a video game, completely detached from the inhumanity of it all - heck, during their lunch break, they may go to Walmart to get a game that will be more exciting to play after work. Even a current fighter pilot faces death, if somewhat distanced to what his weapons do on the ground.
They know it wasn't a video game. They just wasted some mother's son or daughter. They might have blown up a place they thought was insurgents but it was really a school. Or some innocent's home that was comandeered. And even if we had perfect intelligence, and never made a mistake, we would still know at the end of the day we had taken a human life. Not some digital avatar that respawns 45 seconds later as an exact copy of the original. A person. Someone who had a family, friends, and a life. A life you just ended.
Sure, you can justify it. Sure, maybe it was you or him (or one of your buddies), but you still killed that person. And you gotta live with that.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
To get the right to eat a type of animal you must at least once a year kill an animal of that type only with caveman weapons. And then take the skin off and take it apart yourself.
Let’s see how many pussies will then still eat meat.
For automated killing of humans the same rule is true, just that it’s hand-to-hand-combat. (And that it’s not recommended to eat him. ;)
Let’s see how many pussies then still will have the balls to do it.
I’ve got no problem with killing an animal in a fair fight while respecting the animal. It’s natural carnivore behavior.
And I would never kill a human, except maybe if he murdered my children or wife.
So this works out fine for me.
What about you?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
but I really don't like this idea that they are somehow as bad as the Taliban in their regard for human life.
Actually, the US government's worse. The Taliban are just fighting the troops that invaded their country. The US government, OTOH, are a corporatocracy whose foreign policy is dictated entirely by the interests of powerful corporations, especially the oil companies and the arms manufacturers. War is a profitable business for arms manufacturers, which is why new ruses for war are constantly being invented. Have a look at this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
You're forgetting (or never knew) the many times that Westerners have been slaughtered by Muslim extremists in the last century. Hint: it didn't start with 9/11 and has been going on for a very, very long time (with Islamic adherents as the antagonists).
The US has been fighting Muslim barbarians since shortly after its founding. Hell, the very first action by the USMC was against Muslim pirate-lords who were doing much the same thing as current Muslim extremists are doing today. (Look up the Barbary Wars, in the event you haven't heard of them. I doubt you'll find reference to American Imperialism like you're surely hoping for, as there wasn't any. I should note: if we were to handle things now the way we did then, there would be no further issues with these cultural primitives.)
The bulk of Islam may be peaceful, but the people in their lands who control the power are not, and never have been. They have been a nuisance for the West for at least 200 years. It is only recently, since Western technologies such as air planes, telecommunications, modern weaponry, and cheap commercial transit have made it possible for them to strike us at home, have they become a threat.
If you want to blame someone for it, British Imperialism would be the most logical target. After that, Mohammed himself or the very nature of Arab tribal culture and politics which has become so infused with Islam as to be inseparable.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers