World Craziness - Kenya, Pakistan, Syria, etc

DDL on 24/9/2013 at 15:03

Well they're not, technically, going to be any less dead or differently dead if they were hit by a car. If my wife got killed by a car, bomb, missile strike, random heart defect or plummeting freak meteorite, I'm gonna be utterly distraught because she's dead, not quibbling over the finer nuances of why.

I kinda felt like the wider, less-intimate (but possible media manipulated) perspective was the issue we were debating here, rather than the "traumatised man on the ground" perspective. If I'm wrong on that front, well..I guess I'll get back to work. :-/

Yakoob on 24/9/2013 at 15:59

Faetal, I must agree with Nu and DDL, I think you are combining two different (but related) things here - the ideological difference between "collateral damage" and "terrorism" and the actual "final outcome" of innocent deaths.

Yes, the latter can be for all intents and purposes the same in both cases, and treating each life equally it does really make both equally bad. But if you actually want to understand, analyze and diminish either, you can't equate "ignoring civilians" with "deliberately targeting civilians" as reasons for both are different.

Case in point: if the US air strike aims for an area without civilians, it will still happen. If terrorist air straike aims for an area without civillians... they will change the area so that it does have them.

Note: I'm not defending the US or its policy of indifference/dehumanization of collateral damage, but just explaining it really is different from pure terrorism, albeit not without many parallels.

Quote Posted by DDL

Faetal, that still doesn't make it wholly indistinguishable from terrorism, though. Plus I'm not sure "MOAR TROOPS ON TEH GROUND" is a guarantee of less indiscriminate killing, either (been quite a few high-profile cases in that vein). Is a bunch of squaddies shooting their way through a town to get to the one dude they want to kill actually better than just going straight for the leadership and bombing the house containing that dude?

am I a terrible person if throughout reading of this paragagraph, all I could think of was "xcom, xcom..." I blame your use of the word squaddies :p

Thirith on 24/9/2013 at 16:38

Quote Posted by DDL

I kinda felt like the wider, less-intimate (but possible media manipulated) perspective was the issue we were debating here, rather than the "traumatised man on the ground" perspective. If I'm wrong on that front, well..I guess I'll get back to work. :-/

The thing is, I think it's pointless to argue that terrorism is more evil than, because from there it's easy to dismiss that terror comes from somewhere. It's easy to dismiss the people who might cheer for the terrorists, and it's easy to slip into the helplessness of "we're not as evil as them, so we must be the good guys" bullshit. If winning hearts and minds is indeed important, wouldn't it have to consider the perspective of the "man on the ground" and why he might be really, really angry - angry enough to wish indiscriminate death on those seen to be on the other side?

I remember a discussion here, years ago, about Chechen terrorism, and I found that too many people were happy to utterly dismiss whatever grievance the Chechens might have because terrorists=evil, and at that point you no longer have to think about root causes. You just know that those guys are bad guys and deserve to die. Problem solved. Except it never is.

Gryzemuis on 24/9/2013 at 18:21

I agree with Faetal.

Collateral damage ? How about this question: WTF was the US doing in Iraq ? 1 Million iraqi people dead (rough estimate, but the low estimate of 125k dead Iraqis isn't nothing either). And why ? Because oil. And because the Saudis wanted to get rid of Saddam. And the Bush family is personal friends with the Saudis. That's why.

Not everybody has forgotten what Kissinger and Nixon did in Cambodia, during the Vietnam war. Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize ffs. While he should be in jail as a war criminal.

We know exactly what collateral damage means for American politicians.
The germans called it Untermenschen. But those were Germans, so that's a bad word. Collateral damage is much better.

faetal on 24/9/2013 at 18:45

My head is swimming from a nasty cold I have brewing, so I can't reply fully, but to say one thing: I don't think that collateral damage and terrorist attacks are THE SAME. But I do think that the outcome for civilians is indistinguishable. Also, the US etc... go in with super heavy explosives and use phrases like SHOCK AND AWE, knowing full well that many innocent people will die. So no, I don't blame the terrorists hiding in civilian areas at all. Tell me what the alternative is - are you seriously, with an adult brain saying that the only way battle should be done is for fractious groups of militants to find somewhere out in the open to go and wait for the US to bomb them to oblivion? Everyone needs to stop killing each other, but I honestly believe that thinking our side is "better" because we only kill innocent people by accident (and remember that we kill far, far more "by accident" then they ever could on purpose) is a coping mechanism aided by the media and that the act of continually killing civilians to make it easier to bring more troops back alive is horrifically cynical and sociopathic. And I think that people in those countries realise this, because they aren't all mindless, fanatical Mos Eisley cantina extras just looking for an excuse to kill whitey - but I do imagine that decades of seeing their people killed "by accident" simply because The World Police force , aka US army has better weaponry, is probably going to drive people to some pretty brutal shit. Perhaps you think the answer might be to kill more?

So perhaps if we actually didn't stand behind our governments and their subtle use of language to sanitise the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and continue like it's all very unfortunate and unavoidable, maybe there wouldn't be quite so many people who want to do the same back. The only way we can rationalise this is if we pretend that they started it, that all of our collateral damage flavoured war is justified and moral and that these people are all just mental, animal-like people who would be trying to kill us for our decadent ways whether we were routinely murdering them or not. We did not riot and unseat our governments when lied to everyone about pretexts and marched into Iraq, no we carried on business as usual, because we're too comfortable because we don't have to face the reality of "collateral damage" on a regular basis.

No idea if any of that makes sense, I'm burning up.

DDL on 24/9/2013 at 21:38

Quote Posted by faetal

and remember that we kill far, far more "by accident" then they ever could on purpose

Is this actually true? I've done a brief googling but it's incredibly difficult (at least in my current sleepy state) to find any real breakdown of, say, iraqi/afghan casualties by cause of death. I find it unlikely that US collateral damage would MASSIVELY outweigh constant low-level (barely newsworthy) suicide bombing/car bombing/general dickishness bombing casualties. Genuine question here, not hyperbole or anything.

As for shock and awe or whatever, it's....well, a question of intent vs capability. It's pretty fucking obvious that if the US wanted to turn all of the middle east into glass...well, they could. They don't want to, though. Mass destruction for the sole purpose of terror is not really what they're going for. Not least because it's incredibly difficult to stabilise a region over the long term based on a platform of "do X or we convert you to shadows on a wall, and hell: we might just do that anyway". Whether the US approach to installing democracy actually works or not is beside the point: the message is that they're trying to install a democracy. They have an actual plan. Shit plan, possibly, but a plan. And they're using what they deem to be an appropriate, moderate, amount of force.

Terrorist bombing is, conversely, more reactionary and kneejerky: it's blowing shit up because that's all you've got left and you NEED TO SHOW HOW ANGRY YOU ARE. There's very little evidence of restraint, measured approaches, or long term gameplan. GOT NUKES? LOL USE NUKES LOL would be about the sum of a terrorist nuclear policy.

And all of this is entirely separate and separable from the issue of how it might be perceived on the ground. Nobody with a brain is saying all citizens of middle eastern countries are mad effigy-burning crazies who want the west to be wiped off the map, and policy is based around the this: let's be honest, if there was any credibility to the idea that "all muslim countries want the west to die in fire, without exception", the US would take a very, very different tack. Arguing with committed fanatics is essentially pointless, so it'd be "GLASS IT ALL" rather than "attempt to instill western-style democracy".

I think you're posting based on too much general non-specific angry rather than measured, non-feverish faetal reasoning. It's a given that killing innocents is a bad thing, yes. It's not necessarily a given that "unavoidable deaths of innocents as a consequence of something else" are equivalent to "deliberately killing innocents for the sake of killing innocents".

EDIT: or to put it concisely: would you rather put your faith in someone who views the deaths of twenty innocents as tragic and regrettable, or someone who view those deaths as an EPIC RESULT?

SubJeff on 24/9/2013 at 22:25

Quote Posted by LittleFlower

I agree with Faetal.

Collateral damage ? How about this question: WTF was the US doing in Iraq ?

It's not a question of what the US was doing in Iraq though. We could debate that for a month.

It's a question of the type of killings that went on there vs the type where you purposely target large gatherings of civilians.

DDL - you are wrong. Thousands of civilians were killed in Iraq. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. Nowhere near that number is killed in terrorism each year.

Gryzemuis on 24/9/2013 at 22:35

Quote Posted by NuEffect

It's a question of the type of killings that went on there vs the type where you purposely target large gatherings of civilians.

For me the type of killing is: pointless.

The situation in Afghanistan has not improved one bit. Nothing. Nada.
In Iraq at least a dictator was removed. But what did the Iraqi common man get in return ? A civil war.

I don't think the common man (or woman, or child) is very happy about their "liberation". They just see lots of violence and death. They can't even think: "at least it was worth it". The deaths were pointless. Just as pointless as the deaths because of terrorism. You can't say "this type of pointless killing is better than that type of pointless killing".

SubJeff on 24/9/2013 at 22:58

Let's take the cause of the war out of the equation.

Let's say it was a just war, that Saddam had a massive cock of a rocket with 1.21gigamegatons of nuke baboomboom in it and it was going to take him 6 months to get it ready before blowing up somewhere the size of Tanganyika.

Phew.

Now then, we've got to go in and stop him but that pesky military is stopping us. I'm sure you'd agree that unplanned collateral damage in this case is a lesser evil than planned collateral damage of setting a couple of car bombs off in a busy market.

DDL on 24/9/2013 at 23:01

Quote Posted by NuEffect

DDL - you are wrong. Thousands of civilians were killed in Iraq. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. Nowhere near that number is killed in terrorism each year.

Yeah but how many of those were killed by insurgent terrorist attacks, and how many are STILL being killed by insurgent attacks?

If you look at this site:
(http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/incidents/page1)

and particularly these pages:
(http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/lancet-2011/)
(http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/plos-2011/)

it kinda looks like it started off with a lot of US collateral S&A stuff but rapidly descended into "suicide bombs, car bombs and random mortar strikes by insurgents". The coalition comes off as particularly bad purely because they're actually accountable: a large portion of the deaths are simply from "unknown" sources, which is basically "not the coalition". Can't confirm it's insurgents or angry individuals or whatever, obviously, but unless the US is running a really, really comprehensive dirty tricks campaign, that's the most likely interpretation.

Don't get me wrong, we're really good at "bombing brown people in sandy countries". It's just that...well, so are brown people in sandy countries.