Apparently they evacuated on the 3rd, so gladly there were no casualties.

http://en.ca-news.org/news/464981

The regions of which you speak belong to another era. Villages out there take days to walk to along mountain trails in some of the highest mountain ranges in the world. Is similiar to a lot of terrain in Afghanistan. Natural forts.

They've never really been conquered or been part of established empire. People are still organized along tribal lines, with the tribes engaged in continuous inter-tribe warfare. Every kid is handed a gun as soon as he's old enough to shoot and raised to abide by the honour code (pashtunwali, yes they even have a name for it). When the tribe is under attack, you don't question right or wrong, you defend the tribe. They're no electricity, television, newspapers, literacy, or any other medium that counters this message. I know it sounds racist but those boys are like klingons, the Pakistani government has never really dared to take them on.

Couple that with the decades of training provided in the arts of guerilla warfare; including drug running, weapons manufacture, crude bomb manufacture, etc. by the CIA and ISI during the cold war and the Soviet invasion, means they are a force to be reckoned with as the US is finding out in Afghanistan.

Despite all of that they've never really bothered us until the "war on terror". They've always bbeen kind of our crazy cousins. We don't wanna be around them but they're family. Most of the country is similarly undeveloped (as in people still live like 3000 years ago undeveloped) and backwards. Bringing them into the modern era is a long term project but there's a 150 million more people on that waiting list.

Since the war on terror Pakistan has taken a serious beating. This was supposed to be our decade of growth instead the economy is in shambles. We've been through yet another round of Western supported, foreign policy obsessed, military dictator leaving our civil institutions in shambles. We've lost around 4 thousand soldiers another 8.5 wounded. 40 thousand civilians killed and 3.5 million internal refugees (dirt poor and starving variety).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_North-West_Pakistan

Those are big numbers, people are angry. The Americans are unlikely to win in Afghanistan. They're putting tribe against tribe. All this talk of democracy vs. extremism/terrorism is not something the average Afghan understands. The average Afghan is illiterate and does not understand complex ideas. He understands this: foreigners, christian army, my tribe has chosen this side because we always hated those other fuckers anyways. Americans will leave, leaving Pakistan with a mess. They did it before and we've been screwed since. There's a huuuuge (as in a small city big) Afghan refugee camp near where I live that's some thirty years old, from the last time American boys were in the region playing their geopolitical monopoly game. It's horrible.

From the Pakistani perspective the War on Terror has been a disaster. It's solved nothing and created tenfold the problem it aimed to solve. The Afghans are a primitive bunch (made more so by warfare) and need to establish a government, after which they will slowly over time, maybe a century, join the civilized world. Pakistan wholeheartedly supported the Taliban (as did the US) when they took control of the country and brought peace to it. Warfare is the real bitch not how "extreme" they are. Saudi's are equally nuts and there's not a single American president who doesn't go pay a visit right away upon taking office. Best friends.

Now the government/military of Pakistan is in a tricky situation, we have to play both sides, thus the lack of trust. Either side has the ability to seriously take Pakistan on and bring it to it's knees. The government the American's have propped up in Kabul wouldn't last a month without them, is corrupt, and allied to the Indians, with whom we see ourselves as being in a state of justified war. What to do!? What to do!? (in a indian accent).

I guess my point being, we're actually not a bad bunch. Just in a shitty situation. Come sometime and I can show you around. Most of the country is safe. Safer than mexico anyways.

Sorry that was a long post





>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^FermitTheKrog:
Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:
-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.
-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.
-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.
-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.
Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.
Thanks for listening. Open to discussion


>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.


Thank you for adding so much to the discussion, very much appreciated.
Yes, I do understand the sovereignty issue looms huge in the opinion of American actions within Pakistan's borders. I can really understand how that would enrage anyone with any manner of national pride. America is in a tough spot though too. The mountainous tribal regions along the Pak-Afghan border are not under the control of the Pakistani central government. On paper the border may run there, but in practice militants can relatively safely travel back and forth between the two. What's more, there still remain places within Pakistan's proper borders that are controlled by the local tribal leaders, and NOT the central Pakistani government. Those local tribal leaders are allying themselves to the Pakistani Taliban and providing them safe haven within Pakistan to launch attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan part does make it America's business. The Pakistani part in my humble opinion, should be a source of greater public outrage than it is.
I guess I find it worrying that extremists can be in de-facto control of large swathes of land within Pakistan's proper borders. So much so that it is still unsafe for the Pakistani police and even military to patrol there. To me, that seems like it is already an enormous sovereignty issue. America's attacks against militants in that region I can understand being a source of outrage. I don't understand why there isn't equal or greater outrage that those regions on the ground are no longer under the control of the Pakistani government at all and being used as a base of operations for launching attacks on the rest of Pakistan.
I think America's problem is knowing whom they can trust within Pakistan's power structure to work against rather than with extremists like the Taliban. Hamid Gul, former leader of Pakistan's ISI, scares the crap out of me. How many of his friends are still in the ISI that think like him? The JUI-F party declared Osama a muslim hero in Pakistan's National Assemblies. How much support has that party been able to hold onto within Pakistan still after taking that stance? Political parties like the PPP seem to share alot of moderate values, but have historically been ridden out of office by the military every few years.
Do you have good reasons that those fears are unfounded? From what I see and read(largely from "The News International") the moderates like yourself have always been in an uphill struggle against extremists and the opportunists willing to work with them.

>> ^FermitTheKrog:

Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:
-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.
-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.
-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.
-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.
Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.
Thanks for listening. Open to discussion


>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.



Thank you for adding so much to the discussion, very much appreciated.

Yes, I do understand the sovereignty issue looms huge in the opinion of American actions within Pakistan's borders. I can really understand how that would enrage anyone with any manner of national pride. America is in a tough spot though too. The mountainous tribal regions along the Pak-Afghan border are not under the control of the Pakistani central government. On paper the border may run there, but in practice militants can relatively safely travel back and forth between the two. What's more, there still remain places within Pakistan's proper borders that are controlled by the local tribal leaders, and NOT the central Pakistani government. Those local tribal leaders are allying themselves to the Pakistani Taliban and providing them safe haven within Pakistan to launch attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan part does make it America's business. The Pakistani part in my humble opinion, should be a source of greater public outrage than it is.

I guess I find it worrying that extremists can be in de-facto control of large swathes of land within Pakistan's proper borders. So much so that it is still unsafe for the Pakistani police and even military to patrol there. To me, that seems like it is already an enormous sovereignty issue. America's attacks against militants in that region I can understand being a source of outrage. I don't understand why there isn't equal or greater outrage that those regions on the ground are no longer under the control of the Pakistani government at all and being used as a base of operations for launching attacks on the rest of Pakistan.

I think America's problem is knowing whom they can trust within Pakistan's power structure to work against rather than with extremists like the Taliban. Hamid Gul, former leader of Pakistan's ISI, scares the crap out of me. How many of his friends are still in the ISI that think like him? The JUI-F party declared Osama a muslim hero in Pakistan's National Assemblies. How much support has that party been able to hold onto within Pakistan still after taking that stance? Political parties like the PPP seem to share alot of moderate values, but have historically been ridden out of office by the military every few years.

Do you have good reasons that those fears are unfounded? From what I see and read(largely from "The News International") the moderates like yourself have always been in an uphill struggle against extremists and the opportunists willing to work with them.

Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:

-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population

-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.

-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.

-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.

-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.

Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.

Thanks for listening. Open to discussion




>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.

@ghark

Paragraph 1:

1. The difference between collateral damage and terrorism is easy to assess. Intentions, methods, and actions of the bombers of 9/11 and the allied forces are different. Does that make civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan less tragic? No. Do we have to understand the ripple effect of those lost innocent lives? Yes. If an allied soldier killed my family I probably would not care why they did it - accident or not - and I would probably want to seek revenge. Thus the viscious cycle that armed conflict perpetuates.


However, to call allied soldiers terrorist is completely out of line.

2. I'm not defining terrorist as a muslim with a beard.

As George Carlin said, "You have to be realistic about terrorism. Certain groups of people, certain groups, Muslim fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, and just plain guys from Montana, are going to continue to make life in this country very interesting for a long, long time."

What George is pointing out, and I believe Sam to agree with, is that people with bad ideas are bad no matter where they are from.


Or from wikipedia: "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion."

Paragraph 2 - Harris Fear Mongering, Generalizing:

1. How is Harris fear mongering? He is stating simple facts about the reality of a nuclear attack on US soil. He did not inflate those numbers or misrepresent them.

2.You can say things like "blatant generalizations" but you are not giving any real concrete examples.

Paragraph 3 - Hedges:

1. Aside from some debates I have seen Hedges in I have very little knowledge of his work. I can't comment on it because I have not read it.

Paragraph 4 - Self Gratification?


1. I fail to see how Harris mention of a possible nuclear attack on the United States, or anywhere, is an example of self gratification. I do not think this statistic brings Sam any pleasure at all.

Nuclear Attack a Ticking Time Bomb

Now for the Rip.


You admit you didn't listen to the video in its entirety which means you didn't give Sam a chance to fully develop his ideas. I don't know exactly what you expect from him or any other speaker, but they can only get so many words out of their mouth at one time and they cannot cover every objection. From what I have read and heard from Sam in the past I know him to be a fairly reasonable person - so I give him some leeway.

It reminds me of a fellow student in one of my literature classes in college. He opened his mouth and said," Well, I did not have a chance to read the story, but from what I'm hearing in the discussion I think..."


The Professor stopped him right there. He had no right to spend my time giving me his opinion of something he did not take the time to understand - and frankly neither do you.

>> ^kevingrr:

@ghark
1 - I'm not sure which swipe of Chris Hedges you are referring to. If it is in regard to the Moral Landscape I can only comment that Hedges takes every opportunity to inject himself into the spotlight. Having read the Moral Landscape I can say that the ideas Harris presents CAN be challenged by legitimate thinkers, of which Hedges is not.
Hedges game has been to misrepresent Harris' point of view as written in End of Faith. I would go so far as to call Hedges an all out liar. See my post in this thread:

2 - Where here is Sam blindly racist? He states that acts of terror are more likely to be carried out by young Muslim men than by 5 year old girls or grandmothers.
If I said that black athletes are more likely to be basketball players and white athletes are more likely to be baseball players would that make me racist? Because in terms of professional sports that simply IS the case. Note I am not saying WHY that is the case - I am simply saying it is and the statistics prove it.
As I have said before Sam is not racist, but he is honest about who is most likely to have some bad ideas and he does not like bad ideas.
3. Sam is not a pacifist but he is not a warmonger either. As I listened to the entirety of the interview I noted he had a very nuanced idea of when war, or physical violence of any kind, is justified.
One last link regarding Hedges:
Here


Shouldn't the definition of terrorism (of which there are many) be carefully examined before making that statement? I assume you are using the 'American mainstream media' version, which of course means, an act in which a colored person with a beard tries to inflict injury or death on other (usually white) people. If the definition is not looked at with mainstream-media-tinted spectacles then it would not be a stretch to say that the 105,000+ documented Iraqi civilian casualties since 2003 were caused by American (and allied troops) terrorism. Political and resource motivated civilian slaughter on a massive scale (and on foreign soil) sounds very terrorist-like to me. Using this line of logic, would it not make more statistical sense to worry about young to middle aged white males having access to military training than scanning middle aged Muslim men at airports.

My point is not to blame the US troops, Australian troops were also involved, my point is simply that someone of Harris' intellect should be above the simple fear mongering and use of blatant misleading generalizations that he's demonstrating in this video. He was one of my hero's for a while there, and seeing him for what he truly seems to be leaves me a bit hollow inside.

As far as Hedges goes, he seems to be on the mark most of the time, and is an excellent speaker, however I thought his shots at Harris were pretty poor form (during his book launch) because it just seemed to be a blatant publicity stunt, so I agree with you on that to a degree.

Please take in mind My BS meter couldn't handle more than about 25-30 mins of the video, and as @LukinStone mentions, Harris explains some of his comments in more detail later in the video, I just couldn't make it that far unfortunately. Most of what I was hearing was self-gratification, "a large American city has about a 50% chance of having a nuclear bomb set off in it within the next decade or so", racist comments and some war mongering, there's only so much I can take

@enoch

Whoa there partner, you might want to re-read what I posted above. Let me restate myself in more specific terms to avoid confusion.

My exact criticism is that if you're going to criticize anyone for being dishonest about history, you should do it in a very earnest way so as not to create a self defeating argument.

@quantumushroom makes a valid point. Saying that, specifically, the American military killed 4 million Southeast Asians IS an over-generalization. According to The National Archives, roughly 58,000 American military personnel died in the Vietnam War. It wouldn't be fair to say "Look through the eyes of truth. 1960-1975, South Vietnamese military kills 58,000 Americans."

On another note, here's another source that confirms the 58,000~ I quoted above. I've spent 20 minutes now trying to find any credible record of the 4 million dead (the closest I came was 3.9 million total dead but that also included the deaths of French, Australian, New Zealand, South Vietnam, Korean, and American Forces which account for roughly 410,000 of the original figure).

So the problem is tri-fold here. The American military is not solely responsible for the 3.9 million deaths that happened during the occupation of Vietnam from 1960-1975. Furthermore, 3.9 can be assumed to be an inflated figure since it's likely safe to say that American forces were not assassinating allies and their own squad members en mass. Finally, again, if you're going to attack someone (or some group) for being dishonest, you yourself had better get your facts straight and not just gloss over the unpleasant details.

p.s. Learn how to use a fucking paragraph enoch.

I do not agree with this, I wish I could smuck your ass.

In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
>> ^MonkeySpank:

I have no sympathy for these people when they get gored and stomped on - they deserve it!


I'll go a step farther...there aren't -nearly- enough casualties at these events. We could improve the species -so- much just by removing all those balconies and wall hangings.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

I have no sympathy for these people when they get gored and stomped on - they deserve it!


I'll go a step farther...there aren't -nearly- enough casualties at these events. We could improve the species -so- much just by removing all those balconies and wall hangings.

He's conflating a lot of stuff by the end of this.

Knowing "where the pickle barrel is" has not "always been the harder problem". In the fleet battles of the 18th century, they often had a very good idea where there opponents were for weeks or months. They knew where enemy shipyards were, just like the Allies in WWII knew where that chemical plant was - they just couldn't strike them effectively. Modern weaponry would have insta-won lots of historic conflicts as there would have been no problem finding stuff to blow up. It's not like Norden was trying to solve the wrong problem, he just didn't have the right solution.

Sometimes stuff doesn't work in the field - sometimes it does. There's interesting lessons there, but they're unrelated to the next thing he talks about, which is:

Sometimes you can't use your great tech effectively. They can hide the SCUDs. The Taliban is not going to all get together like a Napoleonic army or try to make a big Hannibal pincer. They make themselves harder to be found.

But that doesn't mean the weapon is ineffective - it's very effective, it limits your opponents possible tactics. And those limited tactics are one reason why direct American casualties are so low in modern wars - the enemy can't ever really show in force, and thus only has a limited set of tactics available.

Sometimes your equipment or strategy is going to directly work, sometimes it's going to work less directly. Every action you take could provide a reaction, and sometimes those could be very bad. Hunting with drones might create a terror attack across the world. There's interesting ideas there, but again you can't just conflate it all together as "technology and war... something something... Norden bombsight".

And it certainly doesn't reason into: War is often a bad idea. Obviously that's true, but it doesn't follow from the story. Sure, sometimes having good tech can make war seem more attractive than it would if we had less tech. You get the illusion of clean war.

Interesting. But the fact that the above is true - that Americans can kill thousands of dirty foreigners while suffering few casualties - is kind of the opposite lesson from the Norden bombsight. If the Americans had a bunch of "Norden bombsight" style ineffective weapons, they wouldn't have nearly the success they do in slaughtering people who were born in the wrong place and maybe the US would end up in less wars.

So maybe that's the lesson? It's better to have complex, works-in-the-lab-only tech, because otherwise it'll be too easy to kill people? Or something?

Anyways, the base story is interesting - his attempts to supply the moral at the end are much less so.

The interaction between tech and war goes lots of different ways, and I'd say sometimes the "Norden"s of the world are right and their war technology does reduce aggregate suffering. For example, I think it's at least arguable that the tech race prevented the Cold War from ending in a total war scenario that would have killed millions. (Note: if you plan on telling me that I'm crazy and the Cold War was all some kind of fraud or illusion or power consolidation for the elite or that Russia was never a threat or whatever, don't feel bad if I don't bother to answer - it's probably because I'm intimidated by the great arguments you made.)

Any crash without casualties is a "fucking good crash"!

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^packo:
>> ^NetRunner:
There are two key questions that I think we should try to keep distinct here.
First, was this legal? Well, yes. This isn't a criminal matter, this is war. You don't put enemy forces on trial before you shoot them, you just shoot them. There are still limits on what you're allowed to do in war, but simply killing people is generally considered legal. Even targeting specific people providing aid and comfort to the enemy is not forbidden under the rules of war.
The other question is...should this be legal?
Well, I think the fact that declaring war on non-state organizations gives government latitude so wide that it becomes legal to engage in targeted killing of one of its own citizens is a pretty powerful reason to believe that it shouldn't be legal. An easy way to change the law to make it illegal would be to pass a resolution delcaring that AUMF against Al Qaeda null and void. Then this whole thing would revert to a matter of law enforcement, and not "national security".
The thing is, to prevent future Congresses from being able to declare war on non-state entities would require an amendment to the Constitution -- right now it just says Congress has the power to declare war, full stop. It doesn't say that they can't declare war on whatever entity they choose.
But I think people out there wanting to claim that it already is illegal simply haven't been paying attention.
politics

technically it isn't war because terrorists are not afforded the same rights as active participants in war... via the Geneva Convention for example
the burden of proof, and right to trial... are paramount in these times... when things are at their darkest, that's when upholding these value is MOST important (to point the finger at your opponent and say they aren't playing by the rules is quite CHILDISH, especially when you've went through such lengths to formalize the opinion in your citizens that the reason the enemy attacks is because they hate your freedoms/way of life
the problem with classifying people as terrorists and then assassinating them without any due process is that the "arguement" is made in the court of public opinion... usually by the media networks who are biased and lacking of journalistic integrity... if that's all you need to justify killing people, the arguement can QUICKLY/EASILY be made about ANYONE
the ONLY real, understandable reason I can contemplate would be putting these individuals to trial and making the proceedings available to the public would reveal many skeletons the US has in it's closet... but the validity and morality of this are another debate
as a religious text I don't believe in says (paraphrased)... how you treat the lowest of me, is how you treat all of me... this doesn't just equate to the poor/downtrodden... but to the most vile and unrepentant
holding your morality/standards to be so high compared to someone else means very little when you sacrifice them (irrespective of whether or not it is convenient or easy to do so)

You misunderstand.
It isn't war because America, or NATO or the west has declared war against the terrorists. That's not where this started. Your naive belief in that is what's tainting your understanding of this.
The Islamic Jihadists have openly declared and been waging war on us since long before the events of 9/11. The 'us' I refer to in this is not merely America, or the west, but anyone and everyone who is not themselves an Islamic fundamentalist as well.
You can fumble around all you want over reasons and 'proofs' that America is not really at war with the jihadists, but the reality is that THEY are at war with America. It is the very identity they have taken for themselves for pity sake. We've only been able to ignore it for so long because 90% of the casualties in this war have been middle eastern moderate muslims. Your ilk seem to want to claim sympathy for religious differences by allowing the status quo to continue were muslims get to continue to bear the full brunt of the jihadist war against us both. It's twisted and I detest it.


I never mentioned anything to the beginnings of hostilities.. you are making assumptions there. And with the government (multiple administrations) labelling these actions as the "WAR ON TERROR", by definition, they declared it war (even if they choose to not adhere to the rules of war)... the fact that they then went through the trouble (primarily for interrogation purposes) declared terrorists not covered by the Geneva Convention, and thus having no rights as war participants is what I was pointing out.

It's nitpicking, and childish to resort to a "who declared war on who" because if you want to get down to it, you are plainly ignoring western powers foreign diplomacy/intervention over the last 50+ years. There is many reasons why these fundamentalists are hostile... if "your way of life" actually makes the list, its not your love of fast food, miniskirts and women's rights... its how your way of life is subsidized through intervention in terms of their leadership, whether it be through installation of puppet/friendly regimes (no matter how oppressive/brutal) or through regime change or through economic hardships placed on nations who's leaders don't fall in line... let alone other issues such as Israel.

It's this police state mentality which garnered the West such a lovely reputation in the middle east... and as much as you'd love to point out it's for stability in the region, or so democracy can make inroads, or whatever other propaganda you happen to believe in... the truth is it has ALWAYS been about oil and oil money... not even in the interests of the western power's citizenry as much as for the oil lobbies.

Democracy and freedom are only ok as long as they fall in line with Western (particularly American) interest. If they were being honest it would be outfront there, plain as day the MAJOR issue there is ENERGY (and the money to be made from it).

So as much as you believe it is WESTERN nation's responsibility to solve problems (forcebly and usually without consent of those involved) in this manner, its EXACTLY this type of thinking that got us here. And if you honestly think we've only started meddling in the Middle East, you are naive (perhaps blind is a better word).

Extremism will only be defeated by the environment in the Middle East being such that it can't take root and grow. This will never be accomplished by force or political buggery.

You should stop playing cowboy's and indians, come back to reality, and start detesting the real issues at play here... not FOX TV political rhetoric.

All of the above doesn't even touch on the original point I made that if you are a US Citizen, you should be viewing the assasination of a US Citizen, at your government's sayso, without their providing ample reason (or any really) as to why he could not have been captured, with some foreboding... let alone the US government's denile of his family trying to get him legal representation etc...

If you want to hold yourself up as a shining beacon for the world to follow... when the going gets tough, better not falter or backup and do a complete 180, or all the preening and puffing you did early... it shines in a different light

What do they call that when 1 person (or entity) gets to decide what the laws are, at any given point in time, irrelevant as to what they may have been just a few moments earlier?

>> ^packo:

>> ^NetRunner:
There are two key questions that I think we should try to keep distinct here.
First, was this legal? Well, yes. This isn't a criminal matter, this is war. You don't put enemy forces on trial before you shoot them, you just shoot them. There are still limits on what you're allowed to do in war, but simply killing people is generally considered legal. Even targeting specific people providing aid and comfort to the enemy is not forbidden under the rules of war.
The other question is...should this be legal?
Well, I think the fact that declaring war on non-state organizations gives government latitude so wide that it becomes legal to engage in targeted killing of one of its own citizens is a pretty powerful reason to believe that it shouldn't be legal. An easy way to change the law to make it illegal would be to pass a resolution delcaring that AUMF against Al Qaeda null and void. Then this whole thing would revert to a matter of law enforcement, and not "national security".
The thing is, to prevent future Congresses from being able to declare war on non-state entities would require an amendment to the Constitution -- right now it just says Congress has the power to declare war, full stop. It doesn't say that they can't declare war on whatever entity they choose.
But I think people out there wanting to claim that it already is illegal simply haven't been paying attention.
politics

technically it isn't war because terrorists are not afforded the same rights as active participants in war... via the Geneva Convention for example
the burden of proof, and right to trial... are paramount in these times... when things are at their darkest, that's when upholding these value is MOST important (to point the finger at your opponent and say they aren't playing by the rules is quite CHILDISH, especially when you've went through such lengths to formalize the opinion in your citizens that the reason the enemy attacks is because they hate your freedoms/way of life
the problem with classifying people as terrorists and then assassinating them without any due process is that the "arguement" is made in the court of public opinion... usually by the media networks who are biased and lacking of journalistic integrity... if that's all you need to justify killing people, the arguement can QUICKLY/EASILY be made about ANYONE
the ONLY real, understandable reason I can contemplate would be putting these individuals to trial and making the proceedings available to the public would reveal many skeletons the US has in it's closet... but the validity and morality of this are another debate
as a religious text I don't believe in says (paraphrased)... how you treat the lowest of me, is how you treat all of me... this doesn't just equate to the poor/downtrodden... but to the most vile and unrepentant
holding your morality/standards to be so high compared to someone else means very little when you sacrifice them (irrespective of whether or not it is convenient or easy to do so)


You misunderstand.

It isn't war because America, or NATO or the west has declared war against the terrorists. That's not where this started. Your naive belief in that is what's tainting your understanding of this.

The Islamic Jihadists have openly declared and been waging war on us since long before the events of 9/11. The 'us' I refer to in this is not merely America, or the west, but anyone and everyone who is not themselves an Islamic fundamentalist as well.

You can fumble around all you want over reasons and 'proofs' that America is not really at war with the jihadists, but the reality is that THEY are at war with America. It is the very identity they have taken for themselves for pity sake. We've only been able to ignore it for so long because 90% of the casualties in this war have been middle eastern moderate muslims. Your ilk seem to want to claim sympathy for religious differences by allowing the status quo to continue were muslims get to continue to bear the full brunt of the jihadist war against us both. It's twisted and I detest it.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Occam asks: Why would the demolitioninjas collapse the building in an orderly manner that would arouse the suspicions of conspiracy theorists (and 1500 construction experts)? Why didn't they wire the building so it would fall over?

>> ^marinara:
Let's say WT7 had 20 columns holding up 47 floors (that's big). So these big ass columns get pushed around by by the "flooring under heat expansion" and then the other 20 ginormous columns fail instantly, and the whole thing goes down.
If one column can bring down WT7, it wasn't a skyscraper, it was a deathtrap.



You're mis-wielding the Razor. 1) The construction of T1/T2, and I assume 7-- steel-structured buildings in the old WTC site were such that they *would* impolode in the face of structural failure, not fall over. this limits casualties from outside the buildings. 2) The assumption that there are demoninjas necessitates the sub-assumption of the fact that demonninjas do not care what conspirators think, because conspirators will not be able to prove anything, because the ninjas are ninjas. 3) Because, in theory, the demoninjas are making so much money off of this that risking the ire of 1500+ construction experts, demo experts, engineers, and internet users isn't nearly reason enough to stop them taking the risk.

Can I just say... (I lived a few short blocks away in NYC at the time of the collapse. And I am a truther of sorts.) ...I'd like to stop the idea that conspiracy "nuts" are akin to religious zealots, suffer from some kind of mania, think that Illuminati lizards control the world, etc. The government's official story is BOTH a conspiracy (religious nuts in a cave in Afghanistan conspired to crash two planes into two of the largest structures in the financial capital of the west) and a theory (there has been no trial, there is very little hard evidence, there was no comprehensive official investigation, and both the Commission and NIST reports were produced by government institutions or congressionally appointed committee, and neither were conclusive- both were, in the end, speculative.

Susan Lindauer:
...
I got indicted for protesting the War in Iraq. My crime was delivering a warm-hearted letter to my second cousin White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, which correctly outlined the consequences of War. Suspiciously, I had been one of the very few Assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations for seven years. Thus, I was personally acquainted with the truth about Pre-War Intelligence, which differs remarkably from the story invented by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.

More dangerously still, my team gave advance warnings about the 9/11 attack and solicited Iraq’s cooperation after 9/11. In August 2001, at the urging of my CIA handler, I phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism to ask for an “emergency broadcast alert” across all federal agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings. My warning cited the World Trade Center as the identified target. Highly credible independent sources have confirmed that in August, 2001 I described the strike on the World Trade Center as “imminent,” with the potential for “mass casualties, possibly using a miniature thermonuclear device.”

Thanks to the Patriot Act, Americans have zero knowledge of those truths, though the 9/11 Community has zoomed close for years. Republican leaders invoked the Patriot Act to take me down 30 days after I approached the offices of Senator John McCain and Trent Lott, requesting to testify about Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation and a comprehensive peace framework that would have achieved every U.S. and British objective without firing a shot. Ironically, because of the Patriot Act, my conversations with Senator Trent Lott’s staff got captured on wire taps, proving my story.

You see, contrary to rhetoric on Capitol Hill, the Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose.

The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”
...
I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.

I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.”

I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.
...