Slashdot Mirror
The Price of Military Tech Assistance In Movies
derekmead writes "Last week at Camp David, President Obama met up with fellow NATO leaders to discuss the road ahead in Afghanistan. Although no one there used the language of defeat, the implicit message was clear: the war has gone nowhere in the past few years and it's time to start packing up. Meanwhile, what raked in $25.5 million at the box office? Battleship. And who provided director Peter Berg with the war technology that beats the aliens? The U.S. military. He's not the only one: the past few years have seen an explosion of high-profile cooperation between the armed forces and the movie industry. If the most powerful armed force in history isn't winning in reality, it certainly is on the big screen. And like so many problematic aspects of late capitalism, the military-Hollywood complex has a grimly understandable logic."
Matthew Alford, film researcher and author of Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy, is even harsher in his critique. âoeThe Pentagon has a manual. Basically, it will only provide full cooperation to propaganda pieces,â he said in an interview.
Is this against the law?
Against the law? If anything it should be the law. Why should the military spend its time and money on projects which aren't relevant to recruitment or combat/training?
Do editors here do any proofreading at all, whatsoever? Irrelevant statements, useless commentary, and almost no coherant point of the headline.
No wonder people are leaving this site in droves. Slashdot = the myspace of tech sites.
Skipping over the editorializing in the summary, I would like to point out that the Military using Hollywood for promotion is not a recent occurence.
It should be noted that Abbot and Costello's "Buck Privates" was used to help spur enlistment.
As was "The Green Berets".
As was "Top Gun".
As was a number of other films (these three jump out at me as being some of the best examples).
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The poster is trolling on a lot of levels. Late capitalism?
Anyway, as usual, the war itself went great - it was the peace that was the problem.
The idea is that it (anything generating enthusiasm, sympathy, etc., for the US military) IS relevant to recruitment. The movie is a feature-length recruiting ad, afterall...
what does this have to do with capitalism? I hate it when people don't have the discipline to leave their own biases out of objective writing formats like summaries.
The USA spends close to a million dollars per soldier per year. The enemy has to spend maybe 5% of that per "enemy combatant" at most. Probably a lot less. To field a force that would be numerically equal to our forces would cost them maybe $50 million. They'd need a lot more than that to defeat us in battles, because our side is better armed. But this is not about battles. There have been very few battles. In this kind of war, the resistance avoids direct confrontations and chooses to strike where and when its forces can do the most damage to the stronger side -- or just make them look ineffective. Most of the American forces are busy trying to protect every place where the enemy might strike. It's extremely inefficient. So the Taliban only needs a small fraction of our forces to keep the Americans busy -- and going broke.
Basically, this kind of war is not winnable in a traditional sense. The resistance can carry on with a small number of soldiers and on a shoestring budget almost indefinitely.
That's not to say that guerilla forces can't be defeated. They can be, if the populace cooperates with the central government to deny them aid, deny them new soldiers and help ferret them out -- and if the resistance doesn't have cooperative govenrments across the border.
That's not the situation in Afghanistan, so it's highly questionable whether we can win at any cost.
The author doesn't delve further into this assertion after that intro sentence, I wonder what that's all about? The rest of the article basically "reveals" the shocking truth that the military views media as a way to invest in its image (like every government, company, individual on the planet). It seems like he's grasping for dark villainy, but pulling back fistfuls of grey self-interest.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
To be fair, Clue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clue_(film) was pretty good.
It IS relevant to recruitment. It basically started with Top Gun in the 80's years ago when they realised the idealised portrayal of going to war led to a sharp increase in recruitment.
It was so successful that recruiters even had booths set up outside the cinema to catch these people.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/ca-20403_1_top-gun
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I'm typing this right now, and sending to a web server on the Internet, a computer network which only exists because the US taxpayer financed the Pentagon, who in turn gave the money to military contractors like BBN, SRI and so forth.
That's what it is, and that's how it had to be. It's how Magnitogorsk was built in the USSR, how Volkswagen and the Autobahn were created in Germany, and how things like this happen here in the US and how they had to happen. There's some kind of emperor's new clothes things where people can't say the decades long creation of Internet was financed by the taxpayer via the government. I have heard so many US politicians talk about how the Internet was created by the "free market" (whatever that means), capitalism, private enterprise and so forth and how it shows the innovation that can come from that. Of course, we all know better, or at least those of us old enough to have owned 300 baud modems back in the early 1980s know that.
While we hear from the news commissars and politicians of how broke the US is, with a huge deficit, and how we have to cut back, notice how a massive military bill just sailed through Congress. Americans have to tighten their belt, and go with less garbage pickups, or shorter library hours, and that sort of thing, but there's plenty of money for military bases in Djibouti and Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan. The US is spending a ton of money to ramp up the US military presence in the Pacific (shades of the late 1930s), on a new class of aircraft carriers and so forth. Meanwhile, all of this heavy duty equipment is completely useless against small cells of anti-imperial Arab nationalists that are willing to go on suicide missions.
Few of the geek persuasion have any qualms about movies and TV that hype science fiction and inspire kids to go into engineering, or better yet: Big Science, which has a 10-11 figure budget in the US, even though a sizeable portion of that research spending is either pie-in-the-sky, impractical, or an employment plan for academic or government scientists. I make a good living that way, and I certainly don't have a problem with it.
How, then, do you rationally have a problem with the military industrial complex having a light propaganda apparatus? Don't give me any crap about air raiding villages and killing civilians. Iraq and Afghanistan are brush fires compared to Vietnam, Korea, and WW2 in terms of casualties on both sides. More people die on the highways in the US each year than have died or been injured in combat in both wars, and the "collateral damage" isn't too far beyond that number either.
It's worth noting that homosexual agenda recruiters also set up booths outside the cinema to catch men who had questions about their sexuality after that shirtless Tom Cruise volleyball scene.
Yes, I don't see any problem with their script requirements. Why should the American military help someone portray them in a light that they don't want to be portrayed? I would think that goes for any person or entity.
To me it's silly to stray anywhere away from the very basic fact - any organization will be happy to contribute resources to efforts that make it look good.
Call it propaganda if you like, but it's really not that - it's common sense. True propaganda comes if the organization builds its own media (which the military does to some extent but they did not make Batlleship).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, anything that doesn't kill 30,000 people is OK? That's an interesting metric.
Some other bits:
- We get have an opinion on how our tax dollars are spent. That's called being a citizen.
- Civilian deaths in Iraq are likely greater than 100K, so something is off with your math.
It is two big American industries scratching each others backs. The average American young kid wont realise this until he gets back from his stint in Iraq, minus a limb.
Clearly, the DoD criteria for military movies don't include the movie making any sense. The U.S. Navy supported "Battleship".
A Navy vs. aliens movie might make sense. "Battleship" isn't it. (It does beat "The Navy vs. the Night Monsters" (1966), but it cost about 100x as much to make.) One based on a board game is an indication that Hollywood really is out of ideas. They've already done all the fairy tales (there are two Snow White movies this year), all the top-tier comic book characters, many of the second-tier comic book characters, and have made sequels to almost everything that ever turned a profit. ("Police Academy 8" is in development.)
Anyway, as usual, the war itself went great - it was the peace that was the problem.
I'm really curious as to how you define the situation in Afghanistan as "peace."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is bullshit. In real drone strikes, there is no guarantee that only "terrorists" are the victims. All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
It's a real war, and there are always non-combatants who are killed and injured. Pretending this never happens may be good to keep support up at home, but it is a damned lie. Honesty is a better policy in the long run.
One of the reasons that Pakistan is not letting NATO resupply convoys go through it's territory is because of the toll taken by drone strikes. It is a huge issue with the Pakistan population. By not admitting to any civilian casualties in the US press, there can be no meaningful debate about how our policy is effecting US standing in the Middle East.
Personally, I think that the Pakistan government is not worth spit as an ally, and they are directly supporting our enemies. We would be better off if we cut most military aid because of their backstabbing behavior. Even so, the practical, ethical and political effects of our use of drones should be much more publicly debated, rather then being swept under the rub by what is effectively military propaganda.
Why is Snark Required?
More people die on the highways in the US each year than have died or been injured in combat in both wars, and the "collateral damage" isn't too far beyond that number either.
So the more people die in accidents in a country the more murders that country is allowed to commit? In other words what you're saying is that if the roads in Nazi Germany were more dangerous that'd make the Holocaust ok. That is not how it works. If I kicked you in the balls and explained it's fine because that happens to people everyday would you accept the excuse or try to beat me up for kicking you in the balls?
(Accidental) Road deaths in the US: ~30k/year
Civilians murdered in Iraq: >100k (total)
So you're wrong. More people died in the Iraq war (which, by the way, would be very easy to prevent by not invading it) than die per year in road accidents in the US (road accidents are only preventable to a degree (unless you don't use roads, obviously)).
Anyway, as usual, the war itself went great - it was the peace that was the problem.
I'm really curious as to how you define the situation in Afghanistan as "peace."
It isn't obvious to you?
The way I saw it, he was talking about the reason why the situation in Afghanistan is so violent. If peace is the "problem" the violence is the "solution". That's the problem. In other words, the addictive part of war is that it is so good for the economy and the people who most influence the economy do not personally fight wars
The military-industrial complex needs enemies. If it does not have them, it will demand that they be found. If they cannot be found, they must be manufactured. Above all else it wants to perpetuate its existencen as a system, just as even the lowly virus tries to propagate itself. Indeed, the viruses that failed to propagate are unknown to us today, while the power structures that failed to propagate are unknown as well.
The truly shitty thing is that no one wins. It's a system that long ago assumed a life of its own, like a cancer. The masters and power-brokers who seem to have so much control are much greater slaves to it than those who can see what's wrong with it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Spending money to intimidate everyone else against trying to kill you, so you can do interesting and useful things, however, is an entirely reasonable and proper thing to do. And I don't mean going on fishing expeditions to Iraq and bloodying noses in other places. I mean having a military industrial complex big enough and sufficiently effective (note I did not say efficient) to make any serious attack on us sound very much like a losing proposition.
You may be right. However, the more important issues are how the larger audience interprets it and how it affects their perceptions of reality. Satire is a dangerous tool when used on the uncritical.
In other words what you're saying is that if the roads in Nazi Germany were more dangerous that'd make the Holocaust ok.
Wait... did you just invoke Godwin's Law AND make a car analogy in the same post? Is this a definition of a perfect /. post???
There are two countries you don't invade:
The Germans, the French, the British, etc. But did the USA learn ANYTHING from this? No. Stupid USA.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The song "Yvan Eht Nioj" had a similar problem I heard.
Why should the military only act in its own interest? It should act in the interest of the people it serves and who pay for it.
The irony is that it doesn't take an idealized portrayal to increase recruitment. Full Metal Jacket may or may not be considered an "anti-war" film, but it's certainly not idealized. Yet, I've seen Marines cite it as an influence on their decision to join the Corps.
As François Truffaut said, "there is no such thing as an anti-war movie because it will invariably look exciting up on screen."
Just a suggestion, but stop fucking up peoples shit around the world and people wont have a grudge against you and you wont have to intimidate people.
Contrary to popular opinion in the US, the reason for extremists from the middle east and areas of asia isn't because "they hate freedom", its because US foreign policy over the past 70 years has been screwing over whole populations of people in order to have 'friendly governments' available to them. If these governments were not willing to do anything the US wanted, a new government was installed by any means necessary. Generally speaking, if you surpress a population for that length of time, you'll have a backlash. I don't know if your politicians are either grossly ignorant of these basic facts or they are simply misleading the population, but the US isn't known around the world for freedom and democracy, they are known for oppression and tyranny. So tell me, if you knew a country known for oppression and tyranny, what would you do? Oh yeah, we've already seen that, you'd bomb the fuck out of them, be damned how many civilians you kill until "democrats" crawl out of the rubble and promise to be good little boys and girls. I swear, how people don't see the cause and effect in all this is beyond me...
There is no -1 disagree
In the first Iron Man film, Tony Stark is in a village in the Middle East and he kills a bunch of "bad guys" who are mixed in with a bunch of innocent civilians. He trivially distinguishes between his targets and the rest of the population.
This is bullshit. In real drone strikes, there is no guarantee that only "terrorists" are the victims. All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
It's a real war, and there are always non-combatants who are killed and injured. Pretending this never happens may be good to keep support up at home, but it is a damned lie. Honesty is a better policy in the long run.
One of the reasons that Pakistan is not letting NATO resupply convoys go through it's territory is because of the toll taken by drone strikes. It is a huge issue with the Pakistan population. By not admitting to any civilian casualties in the US press, there can be no meaningful debate about how our policy is effecting US standing in the Middle East.
Personally, I think that the Pakistan government is not worth spit as an ally, and they are directly supporting our enemies. We would be better off if we cut most military aid because of their backstabbing behavior. Even so, the practical, ethical and political effects of our use of drones should be much more publicly debated, rather then being swept under the rub by what is effectively military propaganda.
In a real war soldiers of both sides are wearing uniforms.
Your facts are not in order.
Pakistan is blockading NATO due to an air strike that kill two dozen Pakistani soldiers at a border outpost. The Pakistanis reportedly made the unfortunate "mistake" of firing at US and Afghan commandos which they sometimes do when they forget which side they are supporting. Pakistan is demanding an apology for the incident, and is also using it as an excuse to try to jack up the transit fee from $200 to $5,000 per truck.
The overwhelming majority of non-combatants being killed in Afghanistan are being killed by road-side bombs placed by . . . guess who. . . the Taliban. The Taliban also visit murder and massacre on the various tribes and villages. Unlike NATO, the Taliban deliberately targets innocent non-combatants.
As to drone strikes . . .
Pakistan Says Drone Strikes Have Been Effective
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It is illegal to spend US public money on propaganda aimed at domestic consumption. It would be legal if the cost for the military is covered entirely by the studio, with no hidden subsidies, or if the film is intended entirely for the export market.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
- Civilian deaths in Iraq are likely greater than 100K, so something is off with your math.
The vast majority of which were killed by terrorists and insurgents who did things like explode car bombs in busy markets, and use truck bombs to level entire villages.
If Saddam had stayed in power and killed at his long term average, there would probably have been 50-100% more dead than there were. Saddam is out of power now, and the terrorist and insurgent violence is down by something like 90%. US combat forces are out of Iraq. Iraq is a functioning, if troubled, democracy. And now the Iraqis are rebuilding, putting up schools and libraries instead of another batch of enormous palaces for Saddam.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Just a suggestion, but stop fucking up peoples shit around the world and people wont have a grudge against you and you wont have to intimidate people. . . . Contrary to popular opinion in the US, the reason for extremists from the middle east and areas of asia isn't because "they hate freedom", . . . . I swear, how people don't see the cause and effect in all this is beyond me...
The reason it's beyond you is that you really don't understand what is going on. Here is some starter material. Yes, they do hate our freedoms - including the freedom of religion, and self governance under the Constitution. Their ultimate goal is to restore the Caliphate, which existed up until ~ 1924, and conquer the world for Islam.
bin Laden's 'letter to America'
Goal - coerced religious conversion, replacement of Constitution with Sharia law, with an end to drinking, gambling, fornication, etc., etc.. Noncompliance means they will keep attacking.
What al-Qaida Really Wants
Given your handle, you might find this interesting.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I remember the Military withdrew its support on the making of Independence Day because they wouldn't remove reference to Area 51. If they gave the movie their support despite it including Area 51, it would look like they were confirming its existence.
. More people died in the Iraq war (which, by the way, would be very easy to prevent by not invading it)
Actually, not invading would probably have killed more people. Saddam's long term average for killing Iraqis was higher than what occurred in Iraq after his fall. Now Saddam is gone and terrorism is way down, so objectively the Iraqis are much better off with Saddam falling.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Against the law? If anything it should be the law. Why should the military spend its time and money on projects which aren't relevant to recruitment or combat/training?
Because it's not "military money". It's "tax payer's money".
From a purely military perspective, you want severe propaganda, and censorship. You want information to be restricted. To the people at home, you give positive information about the military. And to those abroad (potential enemies), you show some muscle. Some Shock and Awe. That will give the best results from a purely military perspective.
However, the military still listens to the government (doesn't it?). And the government is interested in an open and free society (isn't it?). So, from that perspective, it would be necessary to have some opposition (right?). So, why not give that opposition some financial backing too?
As it was, the US defeated Japan but made a half-baked attempt to invade Europe, resulting in the Russian takeover and the Cold War. Nothing else was politically possible because, with Japan beaten, Eisenhower (and Montgomery) were not allowed high-casualty operations. This, as Max Hastings observes, is entirely correct because, if they had been, we wouldn't have been Western democracies any more.
Too many Slashdot readers don't understand that war is simply the sharp end of politics, and politics has many dimensions. Japan was a credible threat to the US West Coast and had to be stopped. People didn't see why a lot of people had to die to defeat a Germany that was losing anyway. In the same way, they can't see why (and nor can I) high casualties should be wasted on Afghanistan. The domino effect turned out to be a myth in Indo-China. Is it actually worth having you or your neighbour die in defence of your right to own SUVs versus small economical cars?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries.
(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.
(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?
(xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.
(a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!!
(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.
(c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.
(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.
(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.
What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassm
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
I don't believe that to be true, I've head of many admissions from the pentagon that they have caused collateral damage. Sure they sometimes seem to hem and haw a little, but claiming what you do is just another form of propaganda.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I think that scene in Iron Man was demonstrating his optical tracking system, letting him rapidly designate as targets the people who were pointing guns at other people's heads. With a human in the driver's seat, the indicators would be pretty obvious.
One thing to consider is that in the last 20 years, warfare has changed dramatically. The enemy doesn't even have an army so to speak, there's a rather blurry line between what counts as a civilian and an enemy combatant.
Take for example, what do you do with e.g. a mother of three who actively sends a warning to somebody waiting around the corner with an RPG ready to fire at an incoming HMMWV? Yeah technically she had no weapons, but she was obviously taking part in the battle.
But that's not the only problem. A huge number of these so called "enemy combatants" (because again, they don't even wear a uniform) use their children or wives as shields because they know they are less likely to be fired upon or have a grenade lobbed at them.
Worse is that even though they break every geneva convention rule in the book, we still have to treat them as if they were a legitimate enemy army (despite popular leftist opinion, guantanamo IS legal under geneva.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
All the press reporting in the US takes the military at their word, and casualties are never identified as "collateral damage", i.e. innocent bystanders.
That's becuase in the real world, people like you don't understand the definition of "collateral damage" nor do they seem to understand that war is hell; and certainly not fair.
If you are within a certain proximity of someone you are legally considered a sympathiser and therefore, a legitimate kill. A massive number of legitimate kills are later claimed to be "innocent civilians." In all of these conflicts, where possible, they leave the bodies by take all the weapons. They then claim "innocent civilians" were murdered and small minded idiots everywhere believe them. Now then, that is not say to innocent people don't die. A lot of innocent people have died and will continue to die in any and all future conflicts. They have died in every war known to mankind. But this is also why the military's numbers never match everyone else's numbers. The truth is, the truth is somewhere in between.
I can't tell you how many documentaries I've watched or how many armed forces I've spoken too who all tell the same stories. Someone starts shooting at them. They take out the enemy - frequently with optics; thusly confirming it was a combatant. When they arrive their weapons are gone and all the locals insist they were "innocent civilians" who never harmed anyone. The military's count is correct. Then bleeding heart idiots come in and interview people and find the bodies had no weapons. They declare the military murdered people. Their count is incorrect and woefully over-inflated; even if they have good intentions.
Bigger problems come from the use of bombs. All too frequently, there actually are "innocent civilians", who were forced under threat of murder to stay with the bad guys. They are there in case they are attacked, such that THEY can murder them and claim the military is murdering "innocent civilians". Of course, should a bomb be dropped, or if they are attacked, "innocent civilians" are killed. The problem is, the military dropped the bomb, but they didn't kill them. Also, when attacked, frequently the "innocent civilians" are actually killed by scum - or they are forced to pick up weapons and are killed by the military.
The deal is, its never anywhere as cut and dry as so many ignorant, bleeding heart suckers like to depict. The fact is, the "innocent civilians" counts are factually, way, way, way over blown. Secondly, that number does not clearly indicate who actually killed them or what the situation was. The fact is, once they pick up a weapon or become part of their entourage, they are no longer "innocent" - legally. And all this ignores the fact that in many cases, the "innocent civilian" deaths are frequently lower than before the top fell. Which means, according to a lot of these agencies, "innocent civilians" deaths are okay so long as the US military is not involved.
Long story short, while we know the military's count is too low, its far, far, far more accurate than most accounts of "innocent civilian"" deaths - by far. The truth is, the actual numbers are somewhere in between - and likely closer to the military's than you think.
The reason it's beyond you is that you really don't understand what is going on.
And you in turn have failed to dig deeper into this.
Sure, bin Laden was an extremist, but the reason he has an audience at all in the Middle East, is that generally the US Policy towards regular people has been "fuck all of you, we need oil, therefore we're going to support viciously repressive regimes for market access". Like Saudi Arabia, Iran (shah days), etc. That generally doesn't win hearts and minds, especially when coupled with an immediate followup into "democracy, rights, voting, freedom, blah blah". Noble causes of course, but the typical family in substantial chunks of the world sees the US blathering about concepts that are immediately thrown under the bus with it comes time to acquire resources.
Superheroes inherently do things which if performed in the real world would get a lot of innocent people caught in the crossfire as well. That scene may not have been an example but even if it had been, it has nothing to do with the involvement of the military--just consider that superheroes tend to do warrantless searches, use gratuitous violence against suspects (and maybe even threaten them with physical harm to get information), gratuitously destroy property, etc. which would be really disastrous if performed by real-life law enforcement officials (and sometimes are when they are).
You're making the fallacy of applying Western Christian morality to a foreign culture. The "Pakistan population" protesting the drone strikes cares more about the accurate hits on intended targets than about the innocent victims. The diplomatic breakdowns between Washington and Islamobad occurred when big shots with ISI connections were hit. The Pakistani response has not been to call for more accuracy in US airstrikes but to call for an end to the collection of intelligence that identifies al-Qaeda positions.
The airstrikes were occurring in al-Qaeda territory, in the so-called "Islamic Emirate", not in Pakistan proper. Pakistan's previous government had tried to reclaim the land but its army was routed by al-Qaeda every time. This stopped when the Pakistani people elected a new government that supports al-Qaeda and is ignoring al-Qaeda's attacks on politically independent Pakistani forces such as the Frontier Corps.
The protesters are the same people who rallied in support of the assassination of Benazhir Bhutto, a woman politician who did not cover her face, and of Governor Salman Tasseer, who had called for a revision to a blasphemy law that is commonly misused to oppress minorities by bringing them to Shari'a court (where the word of a minority is legally given less weight than that of their Muslim accuser) and making false accusations of blasphemy (which carries the death penalty) which can be dropped if the minority surrenders their property and daughters to the accuser. Their concept of morality is different from yours.
The teachable moment came after CIA agents in Pakistan killed two al-Qaeda agents who attempted to assassinate them and a third guy who was in the way of their car. The "Pakistan population" held large rallies condemning the United States for the loss of the two al-Qaeda agents, who were hailed as heroes. Nobody cared about the innocent guy that the Americans ran over. This should tell you what these protesters stand for.
As a veteran myself, this needs modded up.
Our military does not just indiscriminately fire weapons into crowds (though Taliban has and does). So much planning and intel goes into every mission. Triggers are not pulled without visual confirmation and usually also require permission frm higher command first, sometimes even when ambushed on patrol.
But this is /., so the posts from people who've actually been there will be ignored and modded down, while armchair QB's instead "tell it like it 'REALLY' is"....
In the first Iron Man film, Tony Stark is in a village in the Middle East and he kills a bunch of "bad guys" who are mixed in with a bunch of innocent civilians. He trivially distinguishes between his targets and the rest of the population.
This is bullshit.
Really? You're calling out a Superhero movie, because the guy in the impervious flying suit of armor equipped with future tech repulsor blasts and powered by a cold fusion reactor the size of a paperweight, didn't hit any civilians with his inch sized AI guided missiles? But the fact that he didn't slaughter civilians is the great lie that the movie is perpetrating?
You do know that often the 'civilians' buried in drone strikes are the associates of terrorists in the compounds, or just terrorists who aren't carrying guns at the time, yeah? There have also been cases where donkeys got killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan and the villagers buried it and claimed the compensation for a 'civilian' killed. The US drones don't just fire willy nilly on villages for the fsck of it. They actually have Special Forces to observe and target terrorists. These guys do hold back on strikes to try prevent civilian casualties but sometimes the target is so time-sensitive (hard to find you have to take the shot) or surround themselves with civilians that civilian casualties result. The Rules of Engagement of the US and NATO prevent deliberately targeting civilians.For a balanced view you need to contrast this with the policy of both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to not only kill civilians (so called 'involuntary martyrdom') but to surround themselves with civilians to exploit the NATO Rules of Engagement (that stipulate civilian casualties are to be avoided). Who is the bad guy?
Yes, war is hell - particularly if you are an innocent in the region. However if you are going to start a war you better fscking well finish it with victory. Fortunately the US has actually achieved its aims in Afghanistan. Terrorist camps destroyed: check; Al Qaeda crippled: check; Western friendly (although corrupt) government installed: check; Bin Laden got: check; poppy fields destroyed in Afghan government controlled areas: check. What the West now relies on is the Afghan government to manage their own country (and everyone whinges how the locals should have sovereignty rather than NATO, so a tick here too), but everyone also knows that this is a shaky proposition since the Taliban (funded by the drug lords in Helmand who need instability to continue their trade, and the Pakistani ISI) is a jobs program for those who could not get work any other way.
Pakistan is a great source of trouble you are right. It is better to have some influence over them than none. Cutting off military aid is daft. Just because Pakistan is not perfect doesn't mean they are not sometimes useful (at least as much as they are sometimes troublesome). Fortunately the US government understands this better than its poorly informed populace (poorly informed by choice, they care more about the Kardasians than what is going on elsewhere in the World - even if it could bite them in the ass).