World Craziness - Kenya, Pakistan, Syria, etc

Chimpy Chompy on 26/9/2013 at 08:49

Quote Posted by faetal

This is precisely it. Now imagine that 9/11 was sanctioned by a government who called the civilian deaths "collateral damage" and happened on a regular basis and that the civilians of the country undertaking the attacks were getting on with their lives, paying their taxes to keep funding the attacks and generally not acting en masse as if there was anything wrong with this. In fact, they are even parroting the "collateral damage" line. This, in a nutshell, is probably how much of the Middle East views the "Coalition of the Willing" and its citizens.

Ok wait, american air strikes are causing 9/11 level death counts on a regular basis?

Also I'm still not sold on your claim that air-strikes lead to higher civillian casualties than sending a batallion of tanks and soldiers shooting their way through.

DDL on 26/9/2013 at 09:14

Bit confused as to how faetal got replaced by a troubled afghan peasant farmer, in all honesty. YOU DON'T KNOW, MAN!! YOU WEREN'T THEEERE

Propaganda cuts both ways. Who's to say one side's is more valid than anothers? Plus in all honesty, I don't ever see papers reporting drone strikes as WOO YAY CHECKITOUT, they're usually vaguely negative or carefully neutral. Plus of course they don't report everything, and tend to overrepresent strikes with a high civilian casualty number because "remote drone kills badguy" is barely news.

And it's not like warfare has EVER been light on civilian casualties. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II) Dresden would like to point out that killing fucktons of civilians as a side effect of severely hampering the enemy is not a new thing. Using remote drones is arguably vastly more accurate and specific than just carpet bombing the area or saturating the entire country with gropos.

So we have questions of need: do we need to be doing drone strikes at all? If not, then discussion of their relevant lethality/horrorfactor vs squaddies or carpet bombs or whatever is pointless. If none of it is in any way justified, then saying it's worse (or better) than an alternative that would also be wholly unjustified serves no purpose.

So there's that.

If we take it that drone strikes are justified, or at the very least serve a deliberate purpose, then we can compare relative merits of methodoloy, and this is where I'd still argue that using aerial methods are better than flooding the area with troops. And not because OMG PROTECT TEH TROOPS OMG OMG, but because humans are unpredictable. A team of drone pilots who can be supervised and assessed 24:7 is going to be much less prone to going off the reservation than a thousand young angry men. It's also a lot more difficult to piss on corpses while filming it, when you're in a warehouse in a different country.

Finally, while I'm not (and never ever did, which I another reason I find "YOU'RE ALL INSULATED SHEEPLE" angry-faetal to be quite surprising) arguing that being constantly worried that you might be accidentally asploded by a drone strike isn't a thing, you also have to remember that these selfsame people are also constantly under threat of being killed by a suicide bomb when they go shopping, or being shot by random fucktards with beards because they exposed too much ankle or called a teddy bear mohammed or were just the wrong kind of muslim. Homegrown atrocities are a constant factor. These are shitty places to live.

ANYWAY. That was all rather by-the-by. My original point was simply that a drone-strikes cannot be compared to terrorist attacks.

If you're going down the "yeah but terrorists totally target the military and stuff" route, then I'd argue this:

If a remote drone strike aiming to kill a bomb-maker totally fails to do so, and kills a school full of kids instead, this is NOT viewed as a successful outcome. Investigations into how this could have happened are often instigated, efforts are made to minimise the chances of this happening again.

If a suicide bomb aiming to kill a police-recruitment centre totally fails to do so, and instead blows up a school full of kids instead, this is usually claimed as a success (coz those schoolkids were shia muslims anyway, plus some of them were girls, and they shouldn't be learning stuff, damnit).

And I'd say this is a pretty fundamental difference. Ok, you could argue that both sides are viewing it as "blowing up enemies", and I'm simply siding with the perspective that has a definition of "enemies" that I prefer, and that would be a fair point...but hell, if your definition of enemies ever includes "schoolkids", then quite frankly: fuck your viewpoint.

Killing kids is horrible either way, yes. I'm still not going to agree that killing kids accidentally is wholly identical to killing them deliberately, though.

And finally....can we stop with the silly false 9/11 analogies? You don't make dramatic strikes against a country's financial infrastructure by blowing up large financial buildings full of people using civilian aircraft also full of people, so saying WHAT IF THE US DID IT TO BROWN PEOPLE is stupid, because they wouldn't. There are vastly more effective ways of crippling a country.

faetal on 26/9/2013 at 09:21

It has nothing to do with the amount of people killed. Nothing as cold and detached as calculating "how many 9/11s just happened?" every time someone kills civilians in your country occurs. It's about the frequency and the fact that civilians are almost always killed.

As for your latter point:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio)

So the Iraq war has killed around 1 civilian per combatant, which is pretty fucking awful, and that doesn't even cover the initial "shock and awe" attack, which involved probably the most intensive use of artillery and airstrikes throughout the whole thing. 50% is only a little lower than WWII (that war which we have romanticised moves and TV shows about), where don't forget, the UK was purposefully bombing cities in Germany, since it equated them with the enemy. But that's ok - they were doing the same to us, so their civilians were automatically our enemies and deserved to die - this is the mentality of warfare. I'm not even for one side or the other, I just marvel at how the intentions of government so fluently translate to a desire to kill each other by citizens. We're all the same fucking species, but we have the media to polarise us into thinking we're the good humans while others are bad and this allows our government to do pretty much what it likes while we sit back and comfort ourselves with phrases like "collateral damage", convinced that the mothers weeping over destroyed children are the responsibility of terrorists hiding amongst civilians (rather than using their terrorist army bases or waiting out in the open to fight against laser-guided missiles or however people seem to think it should work).

Tank commanders tend to use lower yield rounds than aircraft and tend to be closer to the targets they are expected to destroy - also, they move more slowly, which gives civilians time to relocate. Either way, are we still saying that both of the assumptions I mentioned above are adequate? Do we really need to carry out these wars so much that the loss of a few hundred thousand civilian lives is worth it? Must those people die? Is this apparent to the people who live in those countries? If not, can't you see how the killing of all of these civilians and seeing that citizens of the US and the UK are ok with the "collateral damage" line might see us as being directly dismissive of their right to live in peace? Because if the coin was reversed, I can't say that I'd be super calm about it, just because I'm not a crazy muslim with dreams of 72 virgins (another ridiculous assumption about what could drive someone to suicide).

faetal on 26/9/2013 at 09:26

Quote Posted by DDL

Bit confused as to how faetal got replaced by a troubled afghan peasant farmer, in all honesty. YOU DON'T KNOW, MAN!! YOU WEREN'T THEEERE

I am engaged to someone who spent a lot of her childhood hiding underground while Israel carpet-bombed her home city, but don't let that distract you.

DDL on 26/9/2013 at 09:33

Wait, so now we're apparently making direct comparisons between US military drone strikes and the israel/palestine conflict?

MY COMPARATORATOR AM BROKE

I'm all up for a debate, but one based on a sensible platform would be nice.

(also: congrats! Though perhaps this isn't the best time)

faetal on 26/9/2013 at 09:46

Quote Posted by DDL

Propaganda cuts both ways. Who's to say one side's is more valid than anothers? Plus in all honesty, I don't ever see papers reporting drone strikes as WOO YAY CHECKITOUT, they're usually vaguely negative or carefully neutral. Plus of course they don't report everything, and tend to overrepresent strikes with a high civilian casualty number because "remote drone kills badguy" is barely news.

Yes, it is barely news, because it doesn't do to talk too much about the horrific things we do to other people.

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And it's not like warfare has EVER been light on civilian casualties. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II) Dresden would like to point out that killing fucktons of civilians as a side effect of severely hampering the enemy is not a new thing. Using remote drones is arguably vastly more accurate and specific than just carpet bombing the area or saturating the entire country with gropos.

So you think that the war in Iraq carries the same necessity as repelling the Third Reich's invasion of half of Europe? The whole "hey guys, we're killing a lot fewer people this way, doesn't really answer why it is being done in the first place.

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So we have questions of need: do we need to be doing drone strikes at all? If not, then discussion of their relevant lethality/horrorfactor vs squaddies or carpet bombs or whatever is pointless. If none of it is in any way justified, then saying it's worse (or better) than an alternative that would also be wholly unjustified serves no purpose.

So there's that.

If we take it that drone strikes are justified, or at the very least serve a deliberate purpose, then we can compare relative merits of methodoloy, and this is where I'd still argue that using aerial methods are better than flooding the area with troops. And not because OMG PROTECT TEH TROOPS OMG OMG, but because humans are unpredictable. A team of drone pilots who can be supervised and assessed 24:7 is going to be much less prone to going off the reservation than a thousand young angry men. It's also a lot more difficult to piss on corpses while filming it, when you're in a warehouse in a different country.

Yes, drone pilots are assessed - when they kill children, the assessor tells them (http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/we-just-kill-kid-no-dog-two-legs) it's a dog.

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Finally, while I'm not (and never ever did, which I another reason I find "YOU'RE ALL INSULATED SHEEPLE" angry-faetal to be quite surprising) arguing that being constantly worried that you might be accidentally asploded by a drone strike isn't a thing, you also have to remember that these selfsame people are also constantly under threat of being killed by a suicide bomb when they go shopping, or being shot by random fucktards with beards because they exposed too much ankle or called a teddy bear mohammed or were just the wrong kind of muslim. Homegrown atrocities are a constant factor. These are shitty places to live.

I never mentioned the word "sheeple" - I'm personally surprised you've chosen to go ad hominem with this. Yes, suicide bombing is stupid. I don't think anyone says it isn't - what's your point?

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ANYWAY. That was all rather by-the-by. My original point was simply that a drone-strikes cannot be compared to terrorist attacks.

Depends who you ask.

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If you're going down the "yeah but terrorists totally target the military and stuff" route, then I'd argue this:

If a remote drone strike aiming to kill a bomb-maker totally fails to do so, and kills a school full of kids instead, this is NOT viewed as a successful outcome. Investigations into how this could have happened are often instigated, efforts are made to minimise the chances of this happening again.

I'm sure that's a comfort to the people affected, so we should definitely not factor such incidents in to why people might loathe the US / UK / etc...

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If a suicide bomb aiming to kill a police-recruitment centre totally fails to do so, and instead blows up a school full of kids instead, this is usually claimed as a success (coz those schoolkids were shia muslims anyway, plus some of them were girls, and they shouldn't be learning stuff, damnit).

Ok, citation fucking needed - show me proof of a terror group claiming success after killing a school full of kids.

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And I'd say this is a pretty fundamental difference. Ok, you could argue that both sides are viewing it as "blowing up enemies", and I'm simply siding with the perspective that has a definition of "enemies" that I prefer, and that would be a fair point...but hell, if your definition of enemies ever includes "schoolkids", then quite frankly: fuck your viewpoint.

Nice straw man there.

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Killing kids is horrible either way, yes. I'm still not going to agree that killing kids accidentally is wholly identical to killing them deliberately, though.

Doesn't matter. Unless we figure that the outcome is more important to people analysing the events that people affected by them. "It's ok maam, your grief won't be affected by this, but we've written a report which says this just a mistake, so you see - it's better somehow".

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And finally....can we stop with the silly false 9/11 analogies? You don't make dramatic strikes against a country's financial infrastructure by blowing up large financial buildings full of people using civilian aircraft also full of people, so saying WHAT IF THE US DID IT TO BROWN PEOPLE is stupid, because they wouldn't. There are vastly more effective ways of crippling a country.

The US routinely kills people as a side-effect of hitting its intended targets. If the key to 9/11 was civilian casualties and not targeting international trade (don't forget that huge amounts of wealth in the middle east is extracted by foreign investment), then I'm pretty sure that there are better targets than the WTC. Not that I'm condoning the attack (I feel ridiculous even saying that, but you seem to confuse my sympathy with people who live far away as some kind of ethnic white-knighting), but I think it's safe to assume that the target was the WTC and international trade, not the people inside (though I doubt they were shedding any tears for those people regardless). So I agree that wanting to kill civilians is horrible, but so is deciding to take action which you know will get civilians killed and relying on rephrasing of the words "Sorry, our mistake" afterwards to sanitise this decision. I don't think that courtroom-style re-imagining of what those deaths mean on account of the stated intent of the perpetrators makes any difference to how it is felt when they happen and it is that, not the stated intent which leads to militant groups loathing the countries and its citizens, which routinely kills their people, and then apologises like they just ran over someone's cat.

So feel free to keep trying to find various creative ways to say that the US / UK are better because we didn't mean to kill way more innocent people than 9/11 ever did, during military action which no one is sure was necessary - it won't make the people affected any less upset at being treated like meat which got in the way of whatever it is we're supposed to be doing. When you render people worthless, they tend to act as if they have nothing to lose.

Chimpy Chompy on 26/9/2013 at 09:50

Quote Posted by faetal

So the Iraq war has killed around 1 civilian per combatant,

Yeah but how many were a direct result of american strikes, as opposed to insurgents and inter-faction violence? (which, arguable, the US and UK still have on their conscience as consequences of the invasion, but that's still not the same as the USAF callously blowing people away with showers of bombs)

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Tank commanders tend to use lower yield rounds than aircraft and tend to be closer to the targets they are expected to destroy - also, they move more slowly, which gives civilians time to relocate.

maybe we need Ctoad to weigh in with his extensive military knowledge. Seems to me that boots on the ground have their own problem - confusion, crossfires, panicking and shooting the wrong guy. Not to mention fighting their way past defenses.

And this is an argument specifically about the methods of war, that you brought up. I'm keeping that separate from whether or not the war should happen in the first place.

Anyway, yeh, I can totally see how people might get resentful and angry when some f-15 shoots overhead and blows up a block of flats. I don't think we should be surprised that terrorist tactics ensue. That doesn't mean terrorist tactics are not an evil act.

[edit]I don't deny the important symbolic value of the WTC towers but also flying a plane into any skyscraper seems a rather excellent way to kill shitloads of people. I mean if you just wanted to say a fuck you to america you could blow up some shiny monument in DC and probably have a signficantly lower body count.

faetal on 26/9/2013 at 09:53

Quote Posted by DDL

No. When deciding what we are comparing, please refer to my original statement, which began with "you don't know how isolated you are...".

I am saying that when Israel was bombing Lebanon back to the stone age (approx. 85% civilian deaths), my girlfriend was trying to live in the place that they were bombing. Having had long conversations with her, I can appreciate the difference between Western generalised paranoia about terrorist attacks (what if there is another 9/11 or London Bombings) versus the feeling that it might not be safe to go outside today, because there is a chance of being accidentally killed. You can also read various interviews from families who live in areas affected by drones - it's pretty chilling stuff and essentially robs them of having a normal life. It's not like it's a (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8695679/168-children-killed-in-drone-strikes-in-Pakistan-since-start-of-campaign.html) small amount either. This is probably why the media doesn't trumpet its success over drone strikes, because by all accounts, they are terribly clumsy things and having to make quick and deadly decisions via fuzzy camera footage, might not be the best way to make sure no civilians die unintentionally. If a factory owner doesn't give a fuck about safety and workers die, we hold that factory manager responsible. Not doing the same for the US killing innocent people using remote-controlled planes with indistinct visuals? Nah, that's fine - say "unfortunate civilian casualties with a sad face and we'll chalk it up to errors". But we simply must keep carrying out these attacks, yes more civilians MUST die, but when they do, it'll be by accident.

DDL on 26/9/2013 at 10:00

This debate is getting a bit silly. I'd prefer less HIGHLY CHAERGED IMMMOTIONAL INVOLVEMENT and a bit more...rational distance, so I might step back until things calm a tad, but hey.

As for school bombing, well, I can't be fucked to trawl through news sites all day for "terror group claims success after accidentally bombing a school" because that's stupid, but (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp39ch.html) this seems to provide a fairly extensive list of terror attacks that hit schools, many of which were deliberately targeted AT THE SCHOOL, and many of which hit schools as well as/instead of the intended target, and which were nevertheless claimed by terror groups. Whether claiming an attack is the same as endorsing it is..semantics, I guess. I don't think terror attacks use a conventional scoring system.

faetal on 26/9/2013 at 10:01

Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy

Car-bombings etc.. not factored in - check the reference.

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How deadly is a stray bullet versus a stray daisy cutter (which were used, against international conventions)?

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And this is an argument specifically about the methods of war, that you brought up. I'm keeping that separate from whether or not the war should happen in the first place.

I think all options are on the table for discussion - it's difficult to discuss these things in a vacuum.

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Anyway, yeh, I can totally see how people might get resentful and angry when some f-15 shoots overhead and blows up a block of flats. I don't think we should be surprised that terrorist tactics ensue. That doesn't mean terrorist tactics are not an evil act.

The use of the word "evil" is pointlessly polar. I prefer "unnecessary". Is there such a thing as "good" killing? It's plain horrific that any problem exists which requires death to solve it. The only way i think we soothe our consciences over this is to call anyone fighting on the other side evil, maniacal, fanatical, militant etc... The word "terrorist" is designed to put people into a special category so that killing them appear to be a good act. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter - I prefer to call the whole thing "pointless killing" and our killing is just driving more of theirs. If the aim is to stop the killing, then more war isn't helping. It is a great way to give public money to private business though - since someone is selling the drones, bombs, bullets etc.. War does tend to make some people very rich.