because there was nowhere near the national concern, of course, over the threat posed by Tim McVeigh
Timothy McVeigh was not part of a large, organized network that received state support and funding.
I *do* have a problem with allowing terrorists to succeed, in their goal, of shutting down 4th amendment and 1st amendment protections.
That's so amazingly naive.. you think terrorists care about your 4th amendment rights one way or the other? Whether you're racist or not? They have real goals, sometimes personal, religious, or political. I'm curious what you think was the "real" purpose of the IRA. Presumably not to fight the British occupation, that's far too obvious. Maybe they just hated democracy too?
but then, apparently, we get into the voting booth, and we've forgotten all about that, and we're wetting our pants in fear over what our President's business-partner's rogue son is doing in 'stan, "Oh Please, big brother! please take our rights away!
In the past, America has gone pretty extreme in that direction. It always turns around. We didn't have an anti-Japanese genocide after WWII -- despite the scary start of putting them in concentration camps. We didn't end up banning all political parties and going back to a monarchy back when simple membership in the KKK was criminalized.
In the past, America has shown that it can take practical, temporary political actions. Whether those actions achieve concrete security goals is debatable (I think the KKK thing worked, for instance), but the whole slippery slope argument that people like to trot out about freedoms is tired.
So there's a very real question... You've got $10 million to spend to help make government more accessible... Do you spend it on a smartphone app that will only reach folks who already have plenty of ways of accessing government? Or do you spend it on something that'll reach all the folks who have a hard time accessing government right now?
I honestly don't think you can judge it based on the preconditions of the experiment, but on the outcome.
A smartphone app that somehow let a million curious middle class people keep better tabs on the government would be extremely valuable and beneficial to our entire society in my opinion. Spending the same amount of money doing something to help the poor would be noble but not inherently more valuable to society overall.
I guess this is the same sort of question as in No Child Left Behind. Is it better to spend $10 million to help kids who can't read, or $10 million on gifted programs for kids who are way past the basics? Both needs exist and both are valuable.
Fallacy spotted. Please contribute to the debate with real arguments, thank you.
The proposed definition is very strict. Pointing out an example where it doesn't make sense is a fallacy?
I'd be delighted if you could actually show me those loopholes in european countries. We have our fair share of corrupt politician over here, but they don't use any loopholes. They falsify, and when they get caught, they (hopefully) go to jail. There is no intended loophole.
Could you clarify this? You're saying there are no legal ways for politicians in Europe to profit from their positions?
Yet more evidence that PR people are evil and have no good purpose. Tell me, if what you are doing is really good and true, why are the facts of the matter not enough?
There are almost no facts when it comes to complex human behavior.
Why do you need highly paid professionals to use skilled salesmanship and slick presentations to impress people in order to promote something with inherent merit?
We make a great deal of fuss about the RIAA's attempts to brand copyright infringement as piracy
Well I've seen people make jokes about the piracy thing, but the serious issue is when they call it theft. Not only do they misuse the word, they base whole analogies on the misuse of the word. "Would you also... STEAL A CAR????" etc
The religious female slave/chattel thing doesn't even have to enter into it. Burkas should be banned for the same reason as any face hiding clothing is banned - public safety.
I agree it doesn't have to enter into it, but why shouldn't it?
There's just one instance of the everybody draw mohammed day helping promote exactly what you were talking about -- people actually going out and confronting muslims about free speech (though without your strange suggestion of vandalism).
I'm not affiliated with that group but it's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping would happen around where I live!
Oh, right. So you mean all the increased security at airports and millions of extra pounds/dollars/Euros spent on homeland security hasn't already woken up the general populace that we're under constant terrorist threat from radical extremists?
Ah, see, you're talking about radical extremists. I was referring to Muslims who self-identify as moderate but still have very strong reactions to blasphemous speech, even going so far as to ban websites, boycott countries, or even just protest loudly about how offended they are.
I'll tell you what will impress me and make me believe you're fighting for Free Speech and not just creating a channel to justify your own racism - go sit outside a mosque and hand out your cartoons, or even better, go spraypaint a cartoon on its walls. Then I'll actually start believing your conviction in Free Speech.
I wouldn't want to vandalize their property, but I would love to be part of a group that did the other stuff. I did in fact look for a group that was publicly engaging in Draw Mohammed Day around where I live. I could have gone out by myself, sure, but I didn't. I don't think it was necessary.
Why? Like I said, people are waking up. As this stuff continues, there will be groups doing that in public, and then I will join them.
I don't think it's a false premise though. It may be if you take your assumption of a perfect world, but I don't really. I don't see anything wrong with getting consumers to find out more about drugs and be the ones to bring them up with their doctors. In fact doctors were bitching for years that consumers are too shy.
Yes but is that really a justification? That's the same argument a child uses - "Well he did so and so". I'm guilty of this myself so I'm not above it. But it's not a sound argument.
Have you ever tried arguing like an adult with a two year old?
You can't. All you can do is BE an adult and ignore him. But guess what -- we can't do that with grown ups who are organized enough to sponsor terrorist organizations, armies, nuclear bombs, etc.
But all that said, is insulting for the sake of freedom worth the results? If the results are a culture rift then I say no. If the results are a better world, then yeah go for it.
That part is debatable, but at the same time, does it matter? Since we can't know in advance what the results are, you have to pick a principle and stand by it. Are you going to err on the side of promoting free speech and anti-religion, or err on the side of restricted speech and kowtowing to religion? For me the choice is simple. If the end result has a chance at becoming slaves to religion, let the rift commence.
Come on. Do you know that the non-overly religious Pakistani still tends to be be rabidly anti-India, which leads them to fanatically support the army and also to support state-sponsored terrorism in places like Kashmir?
What we should care about are people within Pakistan who are not crazy nationalists. They have political parties that favor peace with India and other stuff like that. They are religious, some of them are very religious even... but I think it's much less dangerous than the political parties who support the army, which in turn supports terrorism. The party that has a tenuous government right now, the PPP or Pakistan People's Party, is one such party. But you know what's really funny.. the non-religious "good guys" in Pakistan tend to call the PPP corrupt, Western stooges, a feudal party (because many of the politicians are indeed backwards, religious, landowning, etc), and openly advocate for army rule. Because, you know, the army wouldn't kowtow to the West, and would put India in its place, and their electricity problems would disappear because the army is so cool and noble... etc. They're the problem. Sorry for the ranty tone heh, I'm just in a hurry.
The ban in Pakistan was put forward a lawyer's lobby in Lahore, one of their big cities. This is not about a bunch of illiterate poor people getting offended at the internet and demanding it be banned. It IS a tiny fraction of the people who want it banned, part of the elite society of Pakistan actually, and a tiny fraction of the people who want it unbanned.
The problem is most of the people who want it unbanned are complete hypocrites. They want Facebook to delete the group so that Facebook can be unbanned. They don't understand freedom of speech, just that their western liberal buddies think their country looks completely retarded. They don't even care that blasphemy laws remain in effect in their country (which affects all the poor people you're talking about), as long as their country looks cool to their buddies they'll be happy.
For the sake of argument, let's say the industry spent 10 times more on advertising than research. If we're taking gp's numbers as true, industry spent $70 billion on research, NIH spent $30 billion. Industry also spent $700 billion on advertising, per our argument assumption.
Without that $700 billion being spent on advertising, the $70 billion wouldn't have been spent on research (you can't make money if you don't sell your product).
That would also be $700 billion gone from the economy, which would have gone to ad channels (magazines, google), ad meetups (hotels, conference centers), doctors (kickbacks, fancy dinners), the government (taxes), etc.
What would you gain if the pharma industry stopped advertising and stopped selling any products? Bottom line is you'd be left with less than 1/2 of the current national research budget. Do you just hope the government would triple their research budget or something?
The primary cause of price swings in cotton is the health and abundance of the cotton crop. When the cotton crop is harmed by lack of rain, too much heat, flooding, or whatever, then the price goes up. When every farm works hard to increase the amount of cotton they grow because they price is high, the price falls.
I don't think you really know what you're talking about.
Options volatility is a self-fulfilling prophecy: because volatility happens people use more options, speculators see businesses using options and speculate around them, etc.
Okay I'm just going to say that you're confusing options volatility with volatility in the underlying asset, which is what we were talking about. The rest of your post makes the same mistake.
The first instance is a covered short--the producer is selling something that they already know they will produce next year (cotton).
Since the cotton does not exist, any contracts written against it are not covered.
As for the yarn industry, it really has no bearing on the question of derivatives. I know of no derivative that offers protection against government regulation, but presumably you can see why there are all sorts of problems with allowing that type of contract, right?
You asked for an example of a derivative that was useful to society.
Let me summarize it again: the options contracts for the yarn industry were helpful (they were profitable this year even with wildly fluctuating input prices) whereas the lack of options in the higher level textile industry have harmed society (there's going to be massive unemployment in the yarn sector).
Any business that deals with commodities benefits from the availability of derivatives like options and futures because it helps them plan for future costs and protect against sharp volatility.
I have a great example for you. There's a big problem in Pakistan right now because of fluctuations in the price of cotton. Two related industries depend on cotton -- the yarn industry and the higher level textile industry (t-shirts and towels and such) -- but handle the business risk of cotton prices differently.
The yarn industry is smaller and more competitive. Since domestic cotton hedge trading has been banned in Pakistan for decades, the yarn industry actually imports a lot of cotton (which they can secure with futures and options). Because of hedge trading they engaged in last year when prices were lower, they are able to fulfill their international contractual obligations and still remain profitable despite rising input prices.
The textile industry has massive government support. They don't worry so much about business risk because the government bails them out whenever necessary. For instance, the government just enacted a 15% export duty on yarn so that the yarn producers will have to sell their product domestically below the international market price.
Now the yarn industry got royally screwed because of the 15% surprise cost in fulfilling their international orders. This is directly attributable to the lack of risk management in the textile industry, or rather the manner in which the textile industry manages risk (heavy-handed government intervention rather than open market methods). The yarn industry is appealing the decision in court and says they will have to shut down about 70% of their industry (basically all the producers with a large component of export sales) if the decision is not reversed.
I'm not an expert on Pakistan so I may not have the full background correct, but in general most industries that deal with raw commodities benefit from being able to reduce price volatility.
Just as one recent example, did you honestly miss the news that the Taliban tried to poison a girls' school? How are you going to spin that as not showing a policy of attacking civilians?
well neither is it the policy of the Taliban to kill civilians when they carry out attacks!
That's blatantly incorrect. The Taliban and other Islamic militant groups frequently attack purely civilian targets, their compatriots actually. Sometimes they do it and then try to say the US did it through an agent like Blackwater. Sometimes they say they were punishing people who aided the US. But it is most definitely the policy of the Taliban to kill civilians.
They are called evil because they do all the other things I mentioned, not because they attack military targets in guerrilla fashion and occasionally kill civilians by accident.
Yes, I know about the Hazara, thanks. I *did not* say they should be excluded.
You certainly implied it, seemingly for the sake of stability and trust building.
Further, you've completely ignored the central point, that the army looks somewhat like the old Northern Alliance and they're being sent down into Pashtun country to help fight with western forces.
What's the problem with that? How does it support your (false) equivalence of the US and the Taliban killing civilians?
Well, nor do the pro-gov forces have to fight either.
Regardless, I'm not the one who brought it up as a point of defense.
Note however that the western forces are in Afghanistan by choice, while the anti-gov forces have little choice but to stay there.
That doesn't explain why they attack non-military targets, even if I accept that they "have to" fight.
No offence, but the phrase "Afghan citizens" of itself makes me wonder if you know how fragmented Afghanistan is.
Huh? Sorry I didn't pull the pointless knowledge card and list off a dozen minor ethnic groups rather than lumping them all in as Afghan citizens. How would that change the argument though?
Yes, there are recent polls showing Afghans are surprisingly happy (the ABC/BBC/ARD sponsored ACSOR poll). However: [...] I guess you'd say I don't want to have faith in it.
No I would actually say, you're getting diverted on this poll issue and it does nothing for your argument. I brought up the polls just to show that most Afghans don't seem that concerned about their furniture getting knocked over compared to how they're being attacked by the Taliban. My next point was that none of that has anything to do with why the Taliban would attack non-military targets, so I was wondering why you brought it up anyway... but now you're ignoring that and focusing on problems with the polls themselves.
Except that group are killing civilians because you are fighting them.
But they don't have to do that, so how is this any justification?
Further, even when you're not fighting them you're conducting patrols that regularly:
- go into Afghani homes uninvited
- turn everything over
- on the odd occasion shoot a member of the compound cause they happen to do something that makes a twitchy soldier nervous
No offense but every poll I've seen has a majority of Afghan citizens supporting the US presence. So all your bullet points make no sense at all. The militants aren't the ones having their furniture overturned, and that's not why they're fighting.
Further, you're working to create a police force and army which are:
- largely composed of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara
- in the case of the police force particularly, extremely corrupt
You're then sending these forces down into Pashtun country, to help keep "order" over people who don't trust them.
Let's call that what it is -- empowering minorities who were being oppressed before.
I mean I'm honestly pretty disgusted that you bring this up. The Hazaras for instance are a sad group of people who have had a lot of bad crap happen to them. It is morally right to include them in a police and army force so that they do not end up being (again) victimized by the police and army force. What's wrong with you, seriously? You know they were being ethnically cleansed by the Taliban?
Here's the alternative: Get the fuck out of the place. At a minimum, stop trying to run the country and withdraw to bases.
Or maybe the alternative is to stay the course, build capacity, NOT reconcile with the Taliban, put pressure on Pakistan, etc.
Our focus definitely needs to be on AI weapons because it's the only thing that can react fast enough in those situations. Someone pops up on a rooftop like you say and fires a shot. Have a few microphones lying around that allow a computer to triangulate the source of the noise and within 1/10 second return fire. Seems like it would be pretty accurate since a person can't move too far in 1/10 second.
Slashdot Mirror
because there was nowhere near the national concern, of course, over the threat posed by Tim McVeigh
Timothy McVeigh was not part of a large, organized network that received state support and funding.
I *do* have a problem with allowing terrorists to succeed, in their goal, of shutting down 4th amendment and 1st amendment protections.
That's so amazingly naive.. you think terrorists care about your 4th amendment rights one way or the other? Whether you're racist or not? They have real goals, sometimes personal, religious, or political. I'm curious what you think was the "real" purpose of the IRA. Presumably not to fight the British occupation, that's far too obvious. Maybe they just hated democracy too?
but then, apparently, we get into the voting booth, and we've forgotten all about that, and we're wetting our pants in fear over what our President's business-partner's rogue son is doing in 'stan, "Oh Please, big brother! please take our rights away!
In the past, America has gone pretty extreme in that direction. It always turns around. We didn't have an anti-Japanese genocide after WWII -- despite the scary start of putting them in concentration camps. We didn't end up banning all political parties and going back to a monarchy back when simple membership in the KKK was criminalized.
In the past, America has shown that it can take practical, temporary political actions. Whether those actions achieve concrete security goals is debatable (I think the KKK thing worked, for instance), but the whole slippery slope argument that people like to trot out about freedoms is tired.
So there's a very real question... You've got $10 million to spend to help make government more accessible... Do you spend it on a smartphone app that will only reach folks who already have plenty of ways of accessing government? Or do you spend it on something that'll reach all the folks who have a hard time accessing government right now?
I honestly don't think you can judge it based on the preconditions of the experiment, but on the outcome.
A smartphone app that somehow let a million curious middle class people keep better tabs on the government would be extremely valuable and beneficial to our entire society in my opinion. Spending the same amount of money doing something to help the poor would be noble but not inherently more valuable to society overall.
I guess this is the same sort of question as in No Child Left Behind. Is it better to spend $10 million to help kids who can't read, or $10 million on gifted programs for kids who are way past the basics? Both needs exist and both are valuable.
Make it easier for the middle class is just as valuable as making it easier for the very poorest.
Fallacy spotted. Please contribute to the debate with real arguments, thank you.
The proposed definition is very strict. Pointing out an example where it doesn't make sense is a fallacy?
I'd be delighted if you could actually show me those loopholes in european countries. We have our fair share of corrupt politician over here, but they don't use any loopholes. They falsify, and when they get caught, they (hopefully) go to jail. There is no intended loophole.
Could you clarify this? You're saying there are no legal ways for politicians in Europe to profit from their positions?
Yet more evidence that PR people are evil and have no good purpose. Tell me, if what you are doing is really good and true, why are the facts of the matter not enough?
There are almost no facts when it comes to complex human behavior.
Why do you need highly paid professionals to use skilled salesmanship and slick presentations to impress people in order to promote something with inherent merit?
Think of them as teachers.
We make a great deal of fuss about the RIAA's attempts to brand copyright infringement as piracy
Well I've seen people make jokes about the piracy thing, but the serious issue is when they call it theft. Not only do they misuse the word, they base whole analogies on the misuse of the word. "Would you also... STEAL A CAR????" etc
That goes beyond simple misuse.
The religious female slave/chattel thing doesn't even have to enter into it. Burkas should be banned for the same reason as any face hiding clothing is banned - public safety.
I agree it doesn't have to enter into it, but why shouldn't it?
Hey check this out. http://wiscatheists.blogspot.com/
There's just one instance of the everybody draw mohammed day helping promote exactly what you were talking about -- people actually going out and confronting muslims about free speech (though without your strange suggestion of vandalism).
I'm not affiliated with that group but it's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping would happen around where I live!
Oh, right. So you mean all the increased security at airports and millions of extra pounds/dollars/Euros spent on homeland security hasn't already woken up the general populace that we're under constant terrorist threat from radical extremists?
Ah, see, you're talking about radical extremists. I was referring to Muslims who self-identify as moderate but still have very strong reactions to blasphemous speech, even going so far as to ban websites, boycott countries, or even just protest loudly about how offended they are.
I'll tell you what will impress me and make me believe you're fighting for Free Speech and not just creating a channel to justify your own racism - go sit outside a mosque and hand out your cartoons, or even better, go spraypaint a cartoon on its walls. Then I'll actually start believing your conviction in Free Speech.
I wouldn't want to vandalize their property, but I would love to be part of a group that did the other stuff. I did in fact look for a group that was publicly engaging in Draw Mohammed Day around where I live. I could have gone out by myself, sure, but I didn't. I don't think it was necessary.
Why? Like I said, people are waking up. As this stuff continues, there will be groups doing that in public, and then I will join them.
I don't think it's a false premise though. It may be if you take your assumption of a perfect world, but I don't really. I don't see anything wrong with getting consumers to find out more about drugs and be the ones to bring them up with their doctors. In fact doctors were bitching for years that consumers are too shy.
These causes also serve to wake up the general population that isn't normally exposed to these kinds of religious reactions. That alone is worth it.
Yes but is that really a justification? That's the same argument a child uses - "Well he did so and so". I'm guilty of this myself so I'm not above it. But it's not a sound argument.
Have you ever tried arguing like an adult with a two year old?
You can't. All you can do is BE an adult and ignore him. But guess what -- we can't do that with grown ups who are organized enough to sponsor terrorist organizations, armies, nuclear bombs, etc.
But all that said, is insulting for the sake of freedom worth the results? If the results are a culture rift then I say no. If the results are a better world, then yeah go for it.
That part is debatable, but at the same time, does it matter? Since we can't know in advance what the results are, you have to pick a principle and stand by it. Are you going to err on the side of promoting free speech and anti-religion, or err on the side of restricted speech and kowtowing to religion? For me the choice is simple. If the end result has a chance at becoming slaves to religion, let the rift commence.
Come on. Do you know that the non-overly religious Pakistani still tends to be be rabidly anti-India, which leads them to fanatically support the army and also to support state-sponsored terrorism in places like Kashmir?
What we should care about are people within Pakistan who are not crazy nationalists. They have political parties that favor peace with India and other stuff like that. They are religious, some of them are very religious even... but I think it's much less dangerous than the political parties who support the army, which in turn supports terrorism. The party that has a tenuous government right now, the PPP or Pakistan People's Party, is one such party. But you know what's really funny.. the non-religious "good guys" in Pakistan tend to call the PPP corrupt, Western stooges, a feudal party (because many of the politicians are indeed backwards, religious, landowning, etc), and openly advocate for army rule. Because, you know, the army wouldn't kowtow to the West, and would put India in its place, and their electricity problems would disappear because the army is so cool and noble... etc. They're the problem. Sorry for the ranty tone heh, I'm just in a hurry.
The ban in Pakistan was put forward a lawyer's lobby in Lahore, one of their big cities. This is not about a bunch of illiterate poor people getting offended at the internet and demanding it be banned. It IS a tiny fraction of the people who want it banned, part of the elite society of Pakistan actually, and a tiny fraction of the people who want it unbanned.
The problem is most of the people who want it unbanned are complete hypocrites. They want Facebook to delete the group so that Facebook can be unbanned. They don't understand freedom of speech, just that their western liberal buddies think their country looks completely retarded. They don't even care that blasphemy laws remain in effect in their country (which affects all the poor people you're talking about), as long as their country looks cool to their buddies they'll be happy.
For the sake of argument, let's say the industry spent 10 times more on advertising than research. If we're taking gp's numbers as true, industry spent $70 billion on research, NIH spent $30 billion. Industry also spent $700 billion on advertising, per our argument assumption.
Without that $700 billion being spent on advertising, the $70 billion wouldn't have been spent on research (you can't make money if you don't sell your product).
That would also be $700 billion gone from the economy, which would have gone to ad channels (magazines, google), ad meetups (hotels, conference centers), doctors (kickbacks, fancy dinners), the government (taxes), etc.
What would you gain if the pharma industry stopped advertising and stopped selling any products? Bottom line is you'd be left with less than 1/2 of the current national research budget. Do you just hope the government would triple their research budget or something?
The primary cause of price swings in cotton is the health and abundance of the cotton crop. When the cotton crop is harmed by lack of rain, too much heat, flooding, or whatever, then the price goes up. When every farm works hard to increase the amount of cotton they grow because they price is high, the price falls.
I don't think you really know what you're talking about.
Options volatility is a self-fulfilling prophecy: because volatility happens people use more options, speculators see businesses using options and speculate around them, etc.
Okay I'm just going to say that you're confusing options volatility with volatility in the underlying asset, which is what we were talking about. The rest of your post makes the same mistake.
The first instance is a covered short--the producer is selling something that they already know they will produce next year (cotton).
Since the cotton does not exist, any contracts written against it are not covered.
As for the yarn industry, it really has no bearing on the question of derivatives. I know of no derivative that offers protection against government regulation, but presumably you can see why there are all sorts of problems with allowing that type of contract, right?
You asked for an example of a derivative that was useful to society.
Let me summarize it again: the options contracts for the yarn industry were helpful (they were profitable this year even with wildly fluctuating input prices) whereas the lack of options in the higher level textile industry have harmed society (there's going to be massive unemployment in the yarn sector).
Any business that deals with commodities benefits from the availability of derivatives like options and futures because it helps them plan for future costs and protect against sharp volatility.
I have a great example for you. There's a big problem in Pakistan right now because of fluctuations in the price of cotton. Two related industries depend on cotton -- the yarn industry and the higher level textile industry (t-shirts and towels and such) -- but handle the business risk of cotton prices differently.
The yarn industry is smaller and more competitive. Since domestic cotton hedge trading has been banned in Pakistan for decades, the yarn industry actually imports a lot of cotton (which they can secure with futures and options). Because of hedge trading they engaged in last year when prices were lower, they are able to fulfill their international contractual obligations and still remain profitable despite rising input prices.
The textile industry has massive government support. They don't worry so much about business risk because the government bails them out whenever necessary. For instance, the government just enacted a 15% export duty on yarn so that the yarn producers will have to sell their product domestically below the international market price.
Now the yarn industry got royally screwed because of the 15% surprise cost in fulfilling their international orders. This is directly attributable to the lack of risk management in the textile industry, or rather the manner in which the textile industry manages risk (heavy-handed government intervention rather than open market methods). The yarn industry is appealing the decision in court and says they will have to shut down about 70% of their industry (basically all the producers with a large component of export sales) if the decision is not reversed.
I'm not an expert on Pakistan so I may not have the full background correct, but in general most industries that deal with raw commodities benefit from being able to reduce price volatility.
Just as one recent example, did you honestly miss the news that the Taliban tried to poison a girls' school? How are you going to spin that as not showing a policy of attacking civilians?
well neither is it the policy of the Taliban to kill civilians when they carry out attacks!
That's blatantly incorrect. The Taliban and other Islamic militant groups frequently attack purely civilian targets, their compatriots actually. Sometimes they do it and then try to say the US did it through an agent like Blackwater. Sometimes they say they were punishing people who aided the US. But it is most definitely the policy of the Taliban to kill civilians.
They are called evil because they do all the other things I mentioned, not because they attack military targets in guerrilla fashion and occasionally kill civilians by accident.
Yes, I know about the Hazara, thanks. I *did not* say they should be excluded.
You certainly implied it, seemingly for the sake of stability and trust building.
Further, you've completely ignored the central point, that the army looks somewhat like the old Northern Alliance and they're being sent down into Pashtun country to help fight with western forces.
What's the problem with that? How does it support your (false) equivalence of the US and the Taliban killing civilians?
Well, nor do the pro-gov forces have to fight either.
Regardless, I'm not the one who brought it up as a point of defense.
Note however that the western forces are in Afghanistan by choice, while the anti-gov forces have little choice but to stay there.
That doesn't explain why they attack non-military targets, even if I accept that they "have to" fight.
No offence, but the phrase "Afghan citizens" of itself makes me wonder if you know how fragmented Afghanistan is.
Huh? Sorry I didn't pull the pointless knowledge card and list off a dozen minor ethnic groups rather than lumping them all in as Afghan citizens. How would that change the argument though?
Yes, there are recent polls showing Afghans are surprisingly happy (the ABC/BBC/ARD sponsored ACSOR poll). However: [...] I guess you'd say I don't want to have faith in it.
No I would actually say, you're getting diverted on this poll issue and it does nothing for your argument. I brought up the polls just to show that most Afghans don't seem that concerned about their furniture getting knocked over compared to how they're being attacked by the Taliban. My next point was that none of that has anything to do with why the Taliban would attack non-military targets, so I was wondering why you brought it up anyway... but now you're ignoring that and focusing on problems with the polls themselves.
Except that group are killing civilians because you are fighting them.
But they don't have to do that, so how is this any justification?
Further, even when you're not fighting them you're conducting patrols that regularly:
- go into Afghani homes uninvited
- turn everything over
- on the odd occasion shoot a member of the compound cause they happen to do something that makes a twitchy soldier nervous
No offense but every poll I've seen has a majority of Afghan citizens supporting the US presence. So all your bullet points make no sense at all. The militants aren't the ones having their furniture overturned, and that's not why they're fighting.
Further, you're working to create a police force and army which are:
- largely composed of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara
- in the case of the police force particularly, extremely corrupt
You're then sending these forces down into Pashtun country, to help keep "order" over people who don't trust them.
Let's call that what it is -- empowering minorities who were being oppressed before.
I mean I'm honestly pretty disgusted that you bring this up. The Hazaras for instance are a sad group of people who have had a lot of bad crap happen to them. It is morally right to include them in a police and army force so that they do not end up being (again) victimized by the police and army force. What's wrong with you, seriously? You know they were being ethnically cleansed by the Taliban?
Here's the alternative: Get the fuck out of the place. At a minimum, stop trying to run the country and withdraw to bases.
Or maybe the alternative is to stay the course, build capacity, NOT reconcile with the Taliban, put pressure on Pakistan, etc.
Our focus definitely needs to be on AI weapons because it's the only thing that can react fast enough in those situations. Someone pops up on a rooftop like you say and fires a shot. Have a few microphones lying around that allow a computer to triangulate the source of the noise and within 1/10 second return fire. Seems like it would be pretty accurate since a person can't move too far in 1/10 second.