Why is the article focusing on the goon pulling the trigger, as opposed to these actual killed-dead casualties?
In fact, the whole point of the article is that there's a population of people who got lied to and manipulated in order to kill people whose culpability was questionable at best. This is a completely valid journalistic subject, separate from the people who were killed.
In other words, the painted picture is much broader and deeper than the man itself seemingly put into the focus. In reality, he's just used as an anchor point to tie the big picture, and might be also used as a so-called decoy (or bait) in a narrowly starting, but deeply expanding story. This doesn't make his tragedy lighter, however.
To be honest, I feel sad and disturbed for everyone involved in this.
Who isn't manipulated in situations like this?
Remember Iraqi soldiers killing babies? And Iraq having weapons of mass destruction? The first to get manipulated are always the general public.
After that it just matters who does the killing... if it's "our guys", then every bombed wedding and reuters reporter is foreing militant or a terrorist, and if it's "them", then it's a poor civilian. If you bomb a hospital, a civilian train, bus, building, bridge or whatever... again, if it's "our guys" it was "bad intel" or "a mistake", but if it's "them", it's "war crimes for intentionall killing civilians".
I'm pretty sure that's basically standard operating procedure in the military though?
Harder to get soldiers to kill people if they think of them as people and not as the enemy.
Hannah Arendt
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
If a drone strike kills five men, who knows whether they were enemy combatants? Your example is murky and vague, through no fault of the dead men. If it kills three kids under the age of 10 and two mothers, it's more obvious the casualties weren't combatants. If you're a journalist and you're looking for examples of clearly horrific drone strikes, you point to the one that killed people who were most obviously non-combatants.
I think you know this and you're asking a rhetorical question about the value of human life, but it's a question with a real answer. "Innocent adults" is a phrase less self-evident than "innocent women and children" because of the way militaries and insurgent groups recruit.
Why is the article focusing on [an uncomfortable but lesser-known side aspect of war], as opposed to [the more obvious bad aspects of war we already know about]?
Because war is what you call "complicated". It is this complexity that the article was attempting to address.
A similar spin was with the Abu Ghraib: torturers were humanized and their victims dehumanized.
Conversely, what is described in this article is the worst of both worlds. After spending days looking at their lives you are most definitely killing a human/father/grandfather.
"" An immanent problem with enabling technologies, is that they enable all connected parties and carry their values. Stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back at you. When picking up a technological tool you had better know what it is for. What is connected to the other side of it? And you should do so with the intent of mastering it, and using it kindly. As Andre Loesekrug-Pietri, a founder of European JEDI ('The European DARPA') project put it, unless the people of Liberal democracies take control of technology "other people or other political systems will impose their values on us". ""
The rationale for remote weapons is risk reduction. Despite the apparent diffusion of responsibility and decoupling of action and consequences, the operator remains connected to the target. Blurry pixels turning red on a screen are still lives being extinguished. Unless you have a generally low IQ and very poor emotional intelligence that fact is still inescapably bound to your actions and will haunt you as if you had seen the whites of their eyes and body parts. Indeed the trauma may be worse, because you now have to fill in the gaps with your imagination, somewhere between dispassionate official EKIA reports and gruesome media accounts. You'll never know, and so you'll never get closure. Each technological action has an equal and opposite reaction.
“It’s a holistic team approach: mind, body and spirit,” said Capt. James Taylor, a chaplain at Creech. “I try to address the soul fatigue, the existential questions many people have to wrestle with in this work.”
Just amazing to read this, I mean after hearing all about the innocent lives taken, and then to be presented with their attempts to optimize the teams involved with it.
If only that were true, they wouldn't wage all of the senseless wars that the US has fought since WW2.
Also, thinking that a remote pilot has different level of empathy vs a pilot that's inside the aircraft is a little deranged from the reality of military operations. A weapon is a weapon, it is meant to eliminate/kill targets.
This informational advantage can and does influence decision making, go / no go scenarios.
However, when supplanted by electronic warfare and decent intel, we've seen how Azerbaijan's TB2s destroyed a lot of Armenian SAM sites, without blinking. Even they took out a S300 site by marking it with a TB2 and destroying it with missiles.
So, it's not as clear cut as it seems.
I just meant to say that something like "we fly this drone, alone, here, make a quick kill and come back" only works against very under-armed military groups. Ukraine, as an example, is well above that level of defense.
Also, I am eagerly awaiting reliable information on how did it happen that TB2s were such a force against Russian tanks. I suspect extreme levels of Russian bardak while covering their own forces with air defense layers.
Should we cancel ourselves, as we have done to Russia?
I think most American's won't really care about what our government is doing to others thousands of miles away so long as we can buy our iPhones, watch our movies, and browse our TikTok.
I think the only practical thing that can be done is to encourage competition from America's equally-sized rivals (pretty much just China at the moment). That being said, these other countries are often not saints themselves (looking at you China), but competition is really the only thing that can check the abuse from any single party. While there are smaller "better" countries they are still within America's sphere of influence and even if you move there and avoid contributing to US taxes, you still end up contributing to that ecosystem that essentially powers the American system (most US allies participated in the war in the middle east).
All nice and dandy. And the world looks the other way.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/uw-grads-story-rev...
Looks like it was more the drug policy of the U.S. Air Force that lead this man to fall apart more than the droning of people far away.
Anyone can be made to commit atrocities in an environment shaped the right way. If I grew up like these people, I'm sure I would pull the trigger in exactly the same situations.
But it still would take my cooperation. I can only pull the trigger if I'm somehow made to want it, at some level. Or at least if I'm made to think I have no choice.
By emphasising our individual ethical responsibilities -- the simple fact that it takes some amount of cooperation for a person to do anything at all, we are creating a small obstacle in the way of creating a dangerous environment that can turn me into an assassin.
The 'detached black and white' view of the world us how we got here in the first place.
Clinging to moral absolutes and trying to frame real life in that rigid framework is a lazy/irresponsible way to be efficient. If you don't have to worry about the details (truth), decisions seem easier.
I'd rather clean toilets my whole life than build a career on the death of innocents.
It's more than half.
It's "hilarious" when anyone in the US says about anyone else they are war criminals, since they don't recognise ICC. (Also, hello India and China)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
Himmler speaks of the challenge of remaining a decent person despite witnessing and committing atrocities (the section around “Dies durchgehalten zu haben, und dabei – abgesehen von menschlichen Ausnahmeschwächen – anständig geblieben zu sein”), showing the kind of reversal at work that Arendt describes.
Himmler was horrified and mentally affected after mass shooting he seen. So, he started to figure out how to kill Jews differently, out of worry for mental health of German soldiers.
So, the above is at best him figuring out how to kill more effectively. Definitely not some kind of guilt or regret.
> … All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no relevant differences between men and women and also that a phrase like "women and children" is useful. You have to pick one.
I would not be more outraged if the Taliban killed an armed American servicewoman than a serviceman. If you would, then that's your opinion, but you should stand by it instead of attributing it to me.
Take your low effort trope and shove it somewhere unpleasant.
Of course the war machine is gonna war. That's what they do. You don't see Newport making their cigs kill their customers faster unless there's something in it for them. The air force is the same way. They might be in the death business but they're not gonna go around wasting bombs on people who are no threat to anyone unless they think that's how they're gonna accomplish their goal, which you can pretty much guarantee they don't after 'nam.
Are you really so blinded by ideology that you can't see that no military wants to spend resources in a manner that does not help them achieve their goal? Spending the fewest resources to get the most done while forcing your enemy to waste his is one of the most basic concepts in military strategy.
Not in modern asymmetric warfare. US could and did spend several magnitudes more resources than the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suppose the idea was to 'convince' the opponents to surrender by using overwhelming force. This mostly worked fine against conventional forces but not against less rational opponents who don't seem to value their lives that much (due to various reasons). Similar thing happened in Vietnam (of course there was a geopolitical component which dettered US from directly invading the north) US spent way more and did disportionately much more damage but still managed to lose the war in the end.
> not gonna go around wasting bombs on people who are no threat to anyone unless they think that's how they're gonna accomplish their goal
Well they might not had intentionally went after civilians, but a case might still be made that they weren't really as concerned about collataerel damage as they should have been.
Indiscriminately bombarding cities feels somehow worse than this targeted killing, and somehow better, because it’s nothing personal.
Even Obama had several instances of drone killings inadvertently killing large groups of civilians -- for example: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral...
I can easily imagine that we achieve world peace within 50 years through two very simple economic reforms but I can't imagine that it will actually happen.
That’s not a world that I, as a Westerner, would want to live in.
That’s definitely not a world I’d want to live in.
Tracing the cirlce of violence back you can only state, that it has always been this way but that is also just a weak excuse of affective apes.
I think hell would freeze over before those three teamed up.
Even if they volunteered totally aware of what they would be doing and what would happen, it's one thing to Know and another thing to Have Experienced.
With the amount of information that's been released in the last few years, it's bonkers that anyone going into this and having done a limited amount of study won't be aware that shooting civilians is part of the job. It's quite unrealisitic to have such an expectation really.
> Even if they volunteered totally aware of what they would be doing and what would happen, it's one thing to Know and another thing to Have Experienced.
True. But if they volunteer aware that they'll be killing innocents. It seems kind of insane that they deserve any level of sympathy regardless of what they experienced.
> But if they volunteer aware that they'll be killing innocents.
We’re talking about 18 year old kids who are absolutely not well-informed and their knowledge about the military will be what the recruiter tells them.
Most seniors exiting high school have approximately no critical thinking ability. They just parrot ideas ingrained into them via their social circles. So unless they came from an anti-military household or anti-military material was popular in their social media, they are absolutely not “aware they’ll be killing innocents”.m
Referring to working a job as "volunteering" is incredibly naive.
That is incredibly arrogant look at the world.
Depends on who you are, isn't it?
Ask the Chinese. I am sure they love their government (I believe surveys have shown that there is high level of approval)
Ask the Afghans. The Chinese aren't bombing weddings and schools.
Ask the Yemenis. The Chinese aren't funding the Saudis which are causing a man-made famine in their nation.
Ask the Americans. Ooooh. China is terrible. I mean, there's a bias, no? They're the ones at risk of losing their spot at the head of the table. Makes sense they wouldn't like them.
I think China is big enough that it operates in much the same way as any large organization... that is to say it will be doing so many things that there will be plenty to disapprove of. Whether they do more or less harm than Americans is up in the air, but my point is really that both China and America both do some pretty disagreeable things. And yes, if you ask the Americans they will say they do less evil things, as if you ask a Chinese citizen they will most likely say America is more evil or in the best case (from my experience at least) they will say America is just as evil.
I think one of the primary anecdotal experiences I've had is that I've asked my Chinese relatives and they acknowledge China's horribly corrupt and evil, but they think America is equally as bad... whereas most Americans are ignorant of our own problems.
Unfortunately since there's really only two major world powers and spheres of influences right now, there isn't a whole lot of competition and wherever you go you'll step on some unsavory things.
Takes more than a small serving of cognitive dissonance to say that here. We can't talk about anything but the most narrowly scoped niche technical subject without a bunch of people having a circle jerk about how America is doing it wrong/evil/should be more like (rich western) Europe/etc.
I think that this is an interesting discussion by itself. Is nationalism rational by itself ?
I don't have many interesting arguments to make about it, but if I would argue that it's not so evident that it is rational behavior, but rather an irrational behavior that stems from the way our society is structured.
The Chinese government are funding/supporting all kinds of unsavoury things all around the world (yes, the same way as the US does), in addition to the political abuse that is doled out domestically (Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Shanghai, and depending on your definition of "domestic", the constant threats of invasion aimed at Taiwan).
I am curious. What conflicts or wars is the Chinese governemnt funding around the world or is involved in? Who are the Afghans or Yemenis of the Chinese government?
And that exact whitewashing of China, Russia is what weakens your point.
It’s pointless to argue who is more corrupt/evil. It doesn’t matter if one side is even a lot more rotten than the other. Any rotting system will continue to rot until they resemble each other.
My whole point revolves around the ignorance of Americans to their own atrocities, because, believe it or not, that Chinese citizen has the same line of thinking on their own country’s atrocities.
You might argue that Chinese citizens are also subject to propaganda on the atrocities. But actually many are well aware of that. The difference in America is that we think we don’t have propaganda. Propaganda is really just a prevailing spin in information. Just because there is free speech doesn’t mean some prevailing biased take cannot exist.
That is a bleak outlook. It would mean that any kind of revolution, or internal change, is effectively impossible, and that the only way to limit the powers of nation-states and corporations is through adversarial confrontation with similarly sized competitors, which can come at huge cost (wars, sanctions, etc).
Internal changes are still possible, but we need to fight for it. While that may come at a huge cost, I believe that it would end up less costly than endless confrontation with similar powers.
I can’t imagine the thought process that says “humans have had a visceral reaction to the killing of women and children specifically in war, across millennia and across cultures, but surely such thinking is obsolete in our generation.”
Some nations just won’t tolerate their men fleeing a crisis leaving women and kids behind, state or no state. Western Anglo/EU culture skews towards this, but not as hard.
Hence the broad support for them.
This sounds pretty much right at least as far as men vs women, though. If you truly want equal rights then that should come with equal privileges. Historically or evolutionarily, women were valued more in such a situation because they make babies - now, so what, we're clearly not running out of babies if you look at population trends. Either everyone fit to serve should have to stay or nobody should have to stay, not based on the circumstances of their birth.
All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no relevant differences between men and women and also that a phrase like "women and children" is useful. You have to pick one.
I think most people even in America embrace a pragmatic egalitarianism where they think it's okay for women or men to be lawyers or politicians, but men continue to have a unique role when it comes to fighting wars or fixing power lines in the middle of a storm, while women continue to have a unique role when it comes to reproducing the species.
I think it's a small minority who think the difference between 1930 and today is solely due to us being more enlightened about gender roles, and nothing to do with the fact that the primary achievements of that age had to do with things like building thousands of miles of highways, while the primary achievements of this age are quite different.
Doing things for a long time is never justification for thinking about them uncritically.
In the same vein, something being old does not mean you can dismiss it out of hand. There is wisdom in thousands of years of human existence, and plenty of people have the hubris to dismiss it all.
I mean there weren't front-page news stories about the US bombing weddings and schools in the past few years? I am not sure we should be underestimating 18yos that much.
They don't need critical thinking skills to know that America has bombed kids and schools and weddings and stuff in the past willy-nilly. Also, 18yo won't be going onto a drone the day after. This happens after years of training and remaining in the military, is it really fair to plead ignorance after all that?
I was educated in America from K to 12 and some college, across 3 different states and even 3 years in Canada (where they actually shat on America a lot). Most of what we are taught about freedom or democracy is bullshit. When it comes down to our foreign policy at least it’s really just us or them. The cognitive dissonance is in holding that belief that we are actually helping the countries we invade or topple via the CIA.
> So is Russia. They are just fighting Nazis in Ukraine.
I know this is tangential, but that is not actually all that Putin is saying tho. His rationale is way more far reaching and involves a lot about where he see Ukrainien future as such.
As in,even going by Russia propaganda, this statement is not true.
In terms of active conflicts happening right now in 2022, none I could name off the top of my head. That's not say there isn't any, of course, but they're not as big/well known as the American ones.
My comment was more about them propping up foreign dictatorships when it's in their national interest (again, similar to what the US does), such as what they've been doing for decades in Kazakhstan, Cambodia and North Korea and are starting to do now in Africa.
Looked it up. The only current active conflict that China is involved in is "Northern Mali" where they contribute UN Peacekeeper troops. I can't seem to find anything else so maybe something is happening in secret but who knows about that.
> My comment was more about them propping up foreign dictatorships when it's in their national interest (again, similar to what the US does), such as what they've been doing for decades in Kazakhstan, Cambodia and North Korea and are starting to do now in Africa.
That's probably fair. However, I wasn't ever talking about that. I specifically stated Yemen and Afghanistan as the examples because that's actual conflict. Propping a friendly regime to you is bad, yes, and is terrible [1] but I don't think it can be compared with actually dropping bombs on people, which is what the US is doing.
China is clearly, as far as public evidence goes, not funding/involved in any sort of wars. The US is involved in multiple wars and is actively funding one, while supporting the other heavily. This is ignoring that the past two decades, the US has virtually been at war constantly. I really don't think the US and China are remotely comparable today. So, I don't see why it's hard to believe that the rest of the world, the people who are the ones getting bombed, wouldn't prefer China over US. It only makes sense.
1. although not hypocritical in the case of China to support a dictatorship but is very hypocritical for the US
