The New Transparency of War and Lethality of Hatred 591
Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Wright says that if you had asked him a few days ago — before news broke that American soldiers had urinated on Taliban corpses — if such a thing were possible, he would have said 'probably.' After all if you send 'young people into combat, people whose job is to kill the enemy and who watch as their friends are killed and maimed by the enemy, ... the chances are that signs of disrespect for the enemy will surface — and that every once in a while those signs will assume grotesque form.' War, presumably, has always been like this, but something has changed that amounts to a powerful new argument against starting wars in the first place. First, there's the new transparency of war as battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details, so 'it's just a matter of time before some outrageous image goes viral — pictures from Abu Ghraib, video from Afghanistan,' that will make you and your soldiers more hated by the enemy than ever. The second big change is that hatred is now a more dangerous thing. 'New information technologies make it easier for people who share a hatred to organize around it,' writes Wright. 'And once hateful groups are organized, they stand a better chance than a few decades ago of getting their hands on massively lethal technologies.' It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you. 'I think we should reflect on that before we start another war.'"
This is nothing new... (Score:3, Interesting)
...when I was studying history in college, I read some WW2 memiors about the fighting on the island of Peleliu, and some parts very disturbing. The only difference between then and now is that then, they didn't film it and post it to YouTube.
'Humans who learn history learn that humans learn nothing from history'
Honor and War (Score:3, Insightful)
I fully believe if soldiers were fighting against a foreign invasion they would not have the same mindset as Xi/Blackwater.
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Did this guy miss WWII? (Score:5, Informative)
US Marines routinely sent home Japanese skulls (they were photographed in LIFE). Someone sent Roosevelt a cigarette holder made from a Japanese femur. The Russians did crazy, unspeakable things to civilians on a large scale in Prussia and the Nazis were more than happy (desperate) to tell the world through even representatives of the Allied press.
And, oh yeah, the Nazis... no real need to go there.
And why stop with WWII? Vlad Dracul (yeah, that guy) made damn sure everyone knew why he was called "Vlad the Impaler" and he didn't even have a Facebook account.
So, in short, no, nothing new here.
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How about something more contemporary? This is how Afghans treat fellow Afghans corpses that are Taliban. Warning, EXTREMELY graphic.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4cd_1326415154 [liveleak.com]
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The only thing really new is the expectation that our soldiers are something other than human. Something, I guess, angelic.
I don't believe anyone who understands the military or has ever been a soldier would seriously such beliefs, it's only the most naive of civilians (who seem often to be journalists and politicians) that would make such assertions.
Let's remember that the enemy they're fighting is deliberately (due to the asymmetry of power involved) NOT fighting a 'stand up' fight. They are using weapo
What is interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Icing on the cake (Score:2, Interesting)
As a pacifist i am confused. (Score:2)
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Simple enough; the guy pointing a gun at you is a threat to your life. The dead body is not a threat to anyone. I realize that as a pacifist you don't believe that a threat to your life is worth killing over, but you still ought to be able to intellectually recognize the distinct
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How can you tell a kid it is ok to kill the guy pointing a gun at you. But you need to respect the body of the guy who wanted you dead? While it is disgusting, i find the killing far more disgusting then the pissing on the body.
In order for you to be able to shoot that guy, your weapon (it's generally a ship or tank pointing a gun at you :-) has to fire.
So you have to maintain that weapon. You can thus be punished for not taking care of that weapon, even though neglecting to clean a rifle is a far lesser act than taking a human life.
That is the basis for the idea of discipline and good order: A military can't conduct its primary mission to make war if it doesn't have it. Ergo, pissing on an enemy corpse, while individually a minor
"Clean" coverage of casualties is relatively new (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Vietnam war our press corps actually showed the atrocities of war, including burned children, dying soldiers and the execution of civilians. The squeaky-clean "live from the White House" war coverage began to happen after that. If only our major news sources engaged in transparency these days - instead we either get social-oriented pro-government cheerleaders (e.g., MSNBC) or military-oriented pro-government cheerleaders (e.g., FOX), but really nothing that provides insight into the plight of folks outside the power structure.
there's the new transparency of war as battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details
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longterm planning (Score:3)
> now it requires that as few people as possible hate you. 'I think we should reflect on that before we start another war.'
lots of luck with that, it seems now that we are "pulling out" of Iraq, we're looking to start another war with Iran (OK, so we've been "at war" with them since 1979) but it seems they're (high level govt officials and many Americans) itching for a shooting war with them.
Burial At Sea (Score:4, Funny)
I hope this is what they meant by Osama Bin Laden's "burial at sea" and that is why there are no pictures ;-)
Oh no, someone got peed on. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's so much worse than living in an area where explosive amputations aren't a strange occurrence, or where having the front of your head blown through the back of your head is a potential outcome of both supporting the local warlord and not supporting him.
Come the fuck on people. Its war. This is just like that Abu Ghraib bullshit. People die horribly all the time in these areas, and yet for some reason the thing that always outrages the moral cowards at home is when someone is humiliated. Its like the civilized mind cannot comprehend the atrocities of war, so they focus in on the level of wrong that they can identify with.
R Kelly never used a orphan as a human bomb, blew the legs off of another rapper, then had to watch him drag his intestines behind him while he bled out. But that fucker did pee on someone. Peeing on someone we can be outraged about. Peeing on someone we can understand.
You know what those guys who got peed on would really be upset about? Getting killed.
Re:Oh no, someone got peed on. (Score:5, Insightful)
A better explanation is that our taxes and representatives sent people abroad, on our behalf, to do things for us that re far far more heinous than urinating on a corpse. So heinous, in fact, that the psyche of our soldiers becomes a casualty, and their perspective and humanity dying with every horrid moment. Killing other human beings, and in the ways we do, has serious detrimental effects that can be directly blamed for pissing on bodies. Essentially, and as you stated prior, this is war. If we're going to pay close attention, expect far worse.
Transparency for the good (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I get this right? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if an American soldier does something bad, gets recorded, the thing goes viral and cause an outrage it's transparency's fault for "sharing hatred" ? Holding soldiers to a standard is a bad thing?
A bit of historical context (Score:5, Interesting)
In the first century BC, Mithradates and his allies killed every single Roman citizen in Anatolia within a month's time. Historical estimates offer that somewhere between 80,000 and 150,000 Romans were killed across the Aegaen islands and Anatolia. This happened in a world without the Internet, without mass media, without high tech weapons, without gunpowder.
Mithradates and his lieutenants were able to spread hatred of Rome entirely through word of mouth. They were able to coordinate their slaughter without the Internet. They were able to kills tens, if not hundreds of thousands, in practically the blink of an eye.
It doesn't seem to me that much has changed with regards human capacity to spread hatred.
The trouble is what we ask of our troops (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing most people have to do to cope with killing as a matter of business, even for a just cause is to stop thinking of the enemy as people. War is just that its business. We are not talking about defending some property, yourself, or someone you have a personal attachment to; its killing in support of some abstract set of principles and because someone from the government told you to it.
That is simply not the sort of motivation most decent people need to take a life. I do think war is often necessary and all of us back at home need to keep in mind what the military is really for and that is to kill people and break things.
Its no surprise to me so many of our boys and girls are coming home with major damage to their mental state. We keep telling them to think of the people shooting at them as well 'people', who probably are in many ways like them with families back home, hobbies, hopes and dreams. We think we are being humane doing that but what we are doing is fatal to the humanity of our own troops. You can't kill 'people' like you and feel okay about it at the end of the day. Well I don't know personally but I don't think I could. What I think I could do is kill 'they enemy'.
I think I could do that in a dispassionate professional way and not feel like I had to get revenge. I could view them like a dangerous animal or a hazardous machine to work around and just get the job done. Once the threat was removed I could be okay with it. Now if you make them 'people', and tell me I am there trying to help them, I expect I'd find it really allot harder not to take their shooting at me personally.
Really we need to recognize that nation building does not work. We can't just go into a place with a completely different culture and liberate them. We need to choose our missions better. 'Take out Saddam and his government who we think are building weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us or our allies' is (if supported by real evidence) an example of a legitmate mission for America's army. 'Turn IRAQ and Afghanistan into democratic republics' is not.
Differing Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
hypocritical... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's war. We tell our soldiers they are fighting for the survival of our country, or way of life. Go put a bullet through your enemies, head, the stomach, their back. Empty your clip. If they engage at close range, put a knife through their eye. Disembowel them. Waterboard the if you need information. Throw a grenade between them and blow them to bits. Push their bodies into a ravine so they won't be see along the trail. Piss on them, wait, no, definitely don't do that. This is morally wrong!! Once you kill them, leave them there to rot. This is the right thing to do.
BULLSHIT.
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Please be sarcasm...
This is a growing global problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you."
A lot of people, like presumable the non-sarcastic GP, don't get that.
I write about this in my essay here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Within twenty years (if not sooner), I'd expect any disgruntled alienated teenager will be able to download plagues off the internet, tinker with them, and produce them at home. We need to build a society that works a lot better for everyone before then. One only needs to think about teens making computer viruses (which have had real costs to so many people) over the last twenty years and imagine the same happening in the biological realm. Why should it not?
Consider this slashdot article from earlier today as just one example of dropping biotech costs:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/01/13/2353220/a-dna-sequencer-cheap-enough-for-some-doctors-offices [slashdot.org]
Nanotech, robotics, computer software, and other advanced technologies pose similar problems in their own way.
A "basic income" (Social Security and Medicare for all from birth) is part of building a world of advanced technology more likely to flourish in the 21st century, as would be improving the gift economy, as is better planning, and making improved subsistence technologies widely accessible (a double-edged sword, true).
Our technologies have become too powerful to allow a global society to have so much inequality, suffering, disease, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and cruelty. We need to move to a new socioeconomic paradigm ASAP. We will still have problems, but they will be more manageable.
There is a lot more on my website about this.
It is ridiculous, for example, to worry about Iran developing a nuclear bomb when they could easily develop plagues. The USA was very lucky that blowback from invading Iraq did not include tens of millions of US Americans dying from ethnically-targeted plagues (whatever the costs to the country being invaded). The USA may not be so lucky next time. And the same goes for attacking smaller and smaller organizations as time goes by. We need to completely rethink our security posture to emphasize intrinsic security and mutual security.
The Foresight Institute also has some good thinking on this in the past, in terms of empowering everyone to deal with emerging threats. It's like the playing fields has totally changed, but the USA still is still preparing to win at Major League baseball when everyone else is now playing pickup games of soccer everywhere.
A big problem is that the USA has so much military equipment (especially nukes and probably other stuff), that if it falls apart politically and economically (which is how it has been heading), it may well take the rest of the world with it. And it is completely ironic, because so much of our energy goes into competition and guarding, that we could
Re:This is a growing global problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A big problem is that the USA has so much military equipment (especially nukes and probably other stuff), that if it falls apart politically and economically
and yet your solution is to provide this for everyone on the earth:
A "basic income" (Social Security and Medicare for all from birth)
No offense intended, but your analysis isn't based in reality. I like helping people out, especially when they need it, but start by looking here [wikipedia.org]. We could save a lot by getting rid of military spending, but it wouldn't solve the US budget problem.
You have some interesting ideas, but they would be a lot more powerful if you worked through more hard data.
You realise it's already too late? (Score:3)
US national debt is over 100% of GDP. It's banana republic time from this point on. Well into PIIGS territory.
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Given that they don't even have the same dimensions, I fail to see why some arbitrary and suspiciously round (in decimal) value of their ratio has such magical significance.
You're right to be sceptical about this. All these debt limit numbers, whether it's the GP's 100%, or the Maastricht treaty 60% for the Eurozone are really just pulled out of thin air. There is no solid research to substantiate them. For a bit of perspective, consider that Japan has been running with a debt level of way more than 100% of GDP for over a decade, and they haven't fared worse than most Western countries.
The key thing that people need to understand in this debate is how currencies even work. Thi
Re:This is a growing global problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I also mention three other aspects that are important too besides a basic income (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning). More on all that by me:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY [youtube.com]
If you look at the hard data yourself, you will see that US governments (federal, state, local) together spend about US$600 per month per capita on welfare, unemployment, and schooling. If that money was given directly to every citizen, a family of four would be getting US$2400 per month (tax free) which for many would be enough to live on and homeschool in an area of the country with a low cost of housing (especially as both parents could still do additional work or subsistence gardening activities and would have time to be frugal and would have less stress leading to recreational shopping therapy).
http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/jobfree.html [whywork.org]
With more involved parenting, and more neighbors with free time for being involved in their communities, most neighborhoods will be much better place to grow up in, and there will be less juvenile delinquency and fewer kids wanting to act out by hurting others. See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html [pdfernhout.net]
The graph you point to, indicating rising government over the next few decades up to about one-half the GDP, is pretty meaningless in the sense that it must depend on a lot of unstated assumptions all subject to political action. Also, some things like health spending may drop greatly as people understand health better; see the links I assembled here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823 [changemakers.com]
Besides, what is wrong with redistributing one half the GDP as a basic income (and health insurance)? That would amount to about US$2000 per month as a right of citizenship right now (more if the economy grew more), and to make up for the effective enclosure of the land and of the copyright commons and for pollution suffered from industry and so on. I think that could make a lot of sense, and so do many others:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php [usbig.net]
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html [basicincome.org]
The remaining half of the GDP would be about as big as the total US GDP around 1995, which seemed big enough to motivate anyone who needed motivating by money back then. :-)
Alaska has something called a Permanent Fund that is somewhat like that (Sarah Palin helped grow it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund [wikipedia.org]
Also, right now the US governments spend more per capita for medical care than other countries require to give all their citizens generally better health care outcomes than in the USA.
So, the numbers easily work out. It is the ideology that is the problem. See: ..."
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402 [conceptualguerilla.com]
"Justifications for elites and social hierarchy goes all the way back to the pharaohs.
The fact is, our current socioeconomic system is falling apart (see other links I've posted in this thread) -- and one consequence of that is increased domestic violence and increased warfare. I have collected more details here:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery [google.com]
So, the status quo is failing, and increasingly at risk from WMDs from alienated people. We ne
Re:This is a growing global problem (Score:5, Insightful)
What hard data is there that justifies spending money on WMDs and military equipment instead of food for starving people?
OK, this is the kind of mental softness that lets idiot politicians get elected. What you have here is a false dilemma, your entire premise is wrong. The US spends money on both WMDs AND food for starving people.
Now, your overall point is a good idea, that we should find some way to use the money to help the world instead of hurt the world, but your supporting evidence is so bad that it completely undermines your point. If you want to change the world, you need to find a way to make it happen, not sit around spouting stupidity.
Re:This is a growing global problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh Enlightened One:
Do you really feel that creating a utopian society that consists of "Social Security and Medicare for all" is what will stop angry teenagers from pulling Columbine on a biological warfare scale? I don't think that 17 year olds give a flip about entitlement programs, per se, and care much more about bullying and social issues that face teenagers, so this is just static.
For those who are geopolitically motivated, this theory of "if everyone had the same basic stuff nobody would be pissed off anymore" is a failed experiment called Communism. You can look to Europe where everyone has free healthcare and basic rights and see how well that's working out. It's a wonderful thought, that probably won't create the desired utopia and probably has very little to do with why people might be inclined to violence around the world.
As for the notion that simmers below the surface of many liberal elitist postings that if somehow the USA just stopped meddling in world affairs the rest of the world would stop menacing and grow more peaceful and harmonious... That is so naive it's hard to even want to debate the point. I firmly believe that most people are generally well intentioned and good natured. It's the ones that are evil that we need to worry about, and there are plenty of them all around the world. They will and they do rise to positions of power where they can and will spread tyrrany, bloodshed, and misery with our without our intervention. We can debate the merits of individual conflicts or our nature as Superpower where we feel we need to confront these ills directly, but it does not change the fact that there are a large number of very bad folks running governments that left unchecked will grow far more powerful and do far worse things worldwide.
The notion that we can contain those problems to a region by leaving the Middle East for example is just naive. Iran has tentacles into South America, and those forces can freely flow right up into the States through the nonexistant southern border we are so afraid to police. I think very well intentioned people like yourself(I do believe you mean well) have ideas which have very bad consequences. I love this part of your thinking:
"The Foresight Institute also has some good thinking on this in the past, in terms of empowering everyone to deal with emerging threats. It's like the playing fields has totally changed, but the USA still is still preparing to win at Major League baseball when everyone else is now playing pickup games of soccer everywhere."
Right - empowering everyone. Like who, exactly? China and Russia? They directly oppose any effort to reel in other dictators or bad actors on the world stage, especially if they think the USA might have to go it alone at our expense. China and Russia have never met another dictator they didn't like. Europe? Europe comes through here and there with half-hearted sanctions and nasty letters, but doesn't really ever back a verbal threat with the credible threat of action. The bad guys of the world today really feel little risk in terms of repercussions for acting out, and this is why so many are acting out. Empowering everyone is more or less what the UN tried to do, and that organization doesn't fix anything they get their corrupt hands into. Maybe I'm missing your point and there is something of a different approach here, but I think when much of the world would rather let us take the damage for them, we're on our own whether we like it or not.
It definitely seems from reading a lot of comments from otherwise clearly bright people that the naivety is running strong. I prefer to see the world as it is and work with that than dream of the world that isn't and pretend it will be that way if we all hold hands and sing.
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Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on. There may be Star Trek like utopia in our future but we don't actually have the tech today. So you end up taking from to give to others. Lenin tried it a century ago and it did not work; it won't work now, but I will cautiously grant you it might work in another 100
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"Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on."
"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/ [cleantechnica.com]
Also, maybe:
"NASA seriously believes in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)"
http://mnispel.net/neengineer/?p=320 [mnispel.net]
http://freerepu [freerepublic.com]
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I dunno. History is full of examples. Rome comes to mind. For that matter, consider more recent history. How much terrorism did the old Soviet Union suffer? Close enough to zero as to be zero. Because everyone KNEW what sort of reaction would result. (The fact they financed the majority of terror organizations probably didn't hurt either, of course that fact is still in the memory hole....) After the breakup they get a lot of it. There was a time when few would have tried such things against the US. Now they do not fear us.
When your enemies neither respect or fear you is when you get the foolishness we currently endure. We wouldn't have to crucify ten thousand of em anytime they disrespect us or anything, just create the sure knowledge that any attack against us would ensure such a totally disproportionate response that it would be a losing game.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes people fight for what is right. And speaking as a US citizen, if we even thought about embarking on what you propose, you would find that some of us would fight for what is right.
We are the US. It's tough, but we are better than that. No one ever said that doing the right thing was easier or cheaper.
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Interesting premise you have. Your 'superior' morality gets people killed. I propose creating peace through clarity. If they know attacking us is a dumb idea they don't attack us so none of our people die, we don't have to kill them so none of them die. Nobody dies. On the other hand, we are following your theory now and fighting a politically correct limited war and there are thousands of dead and wounded on both sides. But I'm evil in your worldview. And you are both stupid AND evil in mine.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
The US doesn't fight very often for morality. Usually, it's for oil, control over nearby or foreign resources, or rattle sabres in the back yards of its enemies.
We once ascribed to "ethical" war, via various conventions we signed, but we don't do that anymore. That's because we found a trump card, called the War on Terrorism, which justifies about anything, including draconian domestic surveilence, travel restrictions, no-fly lists, and a wealth of boot heels on civil liberties. Morality only happens once in a while, almost by accident-- as in gosh, look at all of those Muslim Serbs in those mass graves!
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There are 2 wars fought by the United States that could reasonably considered to be moral wars:
1. The American Civil War, if you were on the Union side, assuming you believe freeing slaves is a morally good act.
2. World War II. Even if the US didn't know about the Holocaust, they definitely knew about Japanese atrocities in China.
Even then, there were definitely evil acts committed by the US side.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
When did that happen? As I recall, after ther first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the emperor of Japan brought together his cabinet to decide whether to continue fighting or surrender. The result was a 3 to 3 split. And this was AFTER the first atomic bomb. Once the emperor of Japan decided to surrender, several members of his cabinet seriously considered a coup so that they could continue fighting. At least if you're going to attack the US, get your facts straight. It's awfully hard not to be the bad guy when you are operating on fictional versions of history.
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That also explains why there was no French or Polish resistance.
fool. (Score:3, Funny)
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No. HELL NO!
Those who say that there was no terrorism in the USSR are blind to the lengths that Stalin & co went to to suppress dissent. He killed millions to starve the Ukraine into submission. Be born a member of an ethnic group Uncle Joe doesn't trust? The German speaking population in Byelorussia was deported thousands of miles to the east & build rudimentary cabins before winter or die in the cold. Protest a little against the government and get sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a Gulag. T
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Interesting)
History is full of examples. Rome comes to mind.
Bad example. Rome was actually VERY tolerant. All a conquered country had to do was pay taxes and accept some god equivalency: Jupiter=Zeus=Taranis=... Only two fought the religious equivalency principle: the Jews, which got splattered all over Europe for their efforts, and the Christians which managed to undermine the Roman State enough to finally conquer it from within. And then eliminate all the others. Politics at its finest. Yeah, it always make me laugh (kinda) when I hear that Christianity is 'tolerant'.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
just create the sure knowledge that any attack against us would ensure such a totally disproportionate response that it would be a losing game
Our strategy after 9/11 was a totally disproportionate response and it essentially was a losing game... for us.
For each of the "enemies" you're thinking of, you should go back to history and take a look at they reasons they have to hate us. I'll give you a hint: they have better reasons than just religious, economic and cultural differences.
History is full of examples. Rome comes to mind. For that matter, consider more recent history. How much terrorism did the old Soviet Union suffer?
We should of course point out that the Soviet Union lasted less than a century. Not only did Rome overextend itself militarily and eventually fall, but there's no one left that even speaks their language as a mother tongue. These are not exactly shining examples of thriving cultures and effective governmental policies.
For my part, war is simply a more violent period of a larger geopolitical conflict - be it struggle for resources, religion, misunderstandings, oppression (the attempt to impose or be free from), or simply bruised egos. Going forward we should be thinking about these underlying conflicts and better ways to address them. I think we will find that violence of all sorts is the decreasingly pragmatic choice much as it is already a poor humanitarian choice.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Interesting)
It works if they do not hate you. If they hate you, it doesn't actually work. No matter how feared a dictator is, as soon as a significant percentage of people know that they find him intolerable, and know that a significant number of others share their belief, that dictator has huge problems. All the fear in the world will just make them more determined.
Machiavelli wrote in an environment where there were many competing factions of approximately equal power, none of whom were significantly different from any of the others.
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Total bullshit. Pick up a history book some day.
I would have agreed with you. Hey, just look at the seventy years of soviet dictatorship. And Arabs have never had a democratic government, ever. Brutal dictatorship, much as I hated to say it, just seemed to work. Then Prague Spring, Solidarity, the Berlin Wall's destruction, the end of Ceaucescu, the Tunisian Revolution, the Egyptian Revolution, and the panic among the other Arab powers stunned me. Contrary cases, disproving your point. Eventually, popular hatred of a government proved to be bad for the g
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Informative)
Machiavelli said a lot of stuff about what an autocratic ruler should do to keep power. But he intended it at least in part as an argument against autocratic rulers. He favored a Roman-style republic with power shared between the social classes (still pretty damn oppressive judging by our standards, but better than "The Prince").
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem is our enemies do not fear us.
So we're supposed to terrorize our enemies... Who are we? Al Qaeda?
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Preferably they shouldn't fear us, but should fear fucking with us.
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Your premise is equally as bogus. You're assuming that all our enemies could be made to fear us. If your living conditions suck enough it becomes hard to fear anything. What do you have to be afraid of? You likely have nothing of material value and little to no family to be held over you. Death / torture is the only thing they could be afraid of and so what? They are likely in a position where death is always a possibility anyways. How do you make someone with little or nothing to lose fear you?
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Interesting)
What? (Score:3)
You might want to look at how long those countries lasted (specifically, compared to countries that did NOT follow that "logic").
No. The "little tyrants" are VERY specific in their killings. One informer dies and other people are reluctant to become informers.
Re:yes. idiot. hitler knew that. stalin knew that (Score:5, Interesting)
The family of my best friend as a teenager came from Germany in the immediate post-war years. I remember one time, quite out of the blue, his grandfather (who had been a young man during the war) came up to and told us "If you ever hear a German tell you that we did not know what the Nazis were doing, he is lying." (these were his exact words). He went on to tell us how families would disappear, many Jewish but also others as well, and that while no one could be quite sure where they were taken, everyone knew that it was to their dooms.
It still stands as one of the most profoundly disturbing experiences of my life, to have this old man so brutally and honestly reveal a truth to me in such a fashion, to brush away all the standard excuses that German's of the wartime generation invoked to get out of any sense of responsibility for what had happened. To this day I actually have no idea why the old man came up to my friend and I, but he permanently altered my view of humanity, and how easy it is to rationalize any action, and even in many cases inaction. Europeans from Paris to Danzig stood by and let their countrymen be marched off to their deaths, and while there were heroes here and there (just as there were collaborators), all in all they just stood there.
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The 19 men who committed the attacks on 9/11/2001 were college-educated individuals who came from professional two-parent middle-class homes. They had plenty of options, if they weren't so filled with hate.
I am rather sick and tired of this ignorant and completely invalid idea you see in so many people's thinking in the West that what motivates something like Al Qaeda is just simple poverty, or broken homes, or whatever empty tropes that a lot of people clumsily use in their minds to try to make sense of th
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear and hatred are not mutually exclusive. I'm sure that the Taliban rank and file have jolts of pure fear when they see an American patrol (and vice versa). They can well hate us for various reasons, including instilling the fear in the first place.
War is a horrible mix of the best and worst in human kind. Be nice if we could figure out how to get around it, but I rather doubt that's going to happen short of some uber powerful alien race coming down and telling us to grow up.
But the big flap over urinating over the Taliban corpses is just that - a flap. I think it just reflects on the total inanity of the general media these days. You don't want to talk about big, complex issues so you make little stupid things go nuclear.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Re: (Score:3)
But the big flap over urinating over the Taliban corpses is just that - a flap. I think it just reflects on the total inanity of the general media these days. You don't want to talk about big, complex issues so you make little stupid things go nuclear.
Nothing to see here, move along.
But it wasn't the media that flipped out over it, it was our incompetent Secretary of State. She was put there so that she wouldn't run against the Pres in the coming election. We have a President that puts people in cabinet positions based on little more than political calculations, and we're surprised that they act like amateurs?
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Some cannot be made to fear.
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately it does work. Pick up Unbroken [amazon.com], a story about a downed WWII flyer who, amongst other fairly horrid episodes, got interred in a Japanese POW camp. He remained there till the end of the war and describes leaving the camp. The area had been carpet bombed previously (and hit with the atomic bomb). The civilian population - which previously had been ready to sacrifice themselves when the Allies invaded were basically shocked into submission.
Don't make the mistake of conflating how we persecute 'war' these days with all out and out military aggression which has not been seen on a large scale since WWII. We would have won in Vietnam, would win in Iraq and Afghanistan if we did that (and likely be set up for war crimes). War is really ugly business. We're just playing at low level conflicts for now. (Not that it makes it morally or politically correct). Hopefully we won't get there again, but with humans being the ugly little monsters we are, I wouldn't bet on it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The other side of your example is that the population of British cities were not shocked into submission despite almost constant bombing (the London blitz) and entire cities levelled (Coventry)...
Germany fought to the bitter end despite acts such as the fire bombings of Dresden and other examples of wholesale destruction.
The Soviet Union fought to victory despite the complete destruction of Leningrad and Moscow.
Different aspects. (Score:3)
London and the Soviet Union fought against foreign invaders (the Germans). Even in the countries that Germany conquered, there were active resistance groups. Even in Germany there were people who helped save/hide Jews.
Not to mention a few attempts by the German military to assassinate Hitler on their own so they could end the war.
Finally, during the ground invasion of Germany, Hitler killed himself and the German people surrendered to the Allies. And there was not any active anti-Allied resistance movement.
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
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My kingdom for a mod point.
The problem is that you have enemies.
And the problem with the Afghanistan and Iraq situations is that the people of these countries are not supposed to be enemies! That's why you don't behave like an animal in their country, because you're allegedly there simply because you love them so damned much.
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Furthermore (Score:2)
We have always known of disrespect for the enemy; it is part and parcel of the mindset that allows most people to kill other people in the face of the knowledge that they are otherwise people just like them, with families, etc. History is rife with reports of disrespect on the battlefield. Spitting, pissing, dismemberment, burial of Muslims in pigskin, burial of Christians with no marker or no blessing, rape of surviving family members, etc., etc., etc.
The fact that these things happen with mind-numbing reg
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No, but we can hope that as these things become more public we will realise that, this being part of war, war is a dreadful thing. War should not be entered gladly.
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Doing that gives an advantage to savages. If it was Taliban folks pissing on American corpses, do you think for a moment that other members of the Taliban would say they're being inhumane and demand shutting down the war? No, they'd cheer. The more these things become public, the more of an advantage they have, because the fact that they don't have scruples lets them use scruples as weapons against us.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Dehumanization of the enemy explains a lot of the behavior. Normally it would have just happened and few people would know about it. They would know it happens, but not the details of every case. Technology changed that of course.
When one side fights with morals and the other doesn't, that's the problem. Urinating on someone who is dead and won't care is a big outrage, but only due to respect for the dead, even if it's your enemy. Beheading and dragging corpses through the street behind cars seems to be the way things work on the other side.
Technology allows us to share both sides with equality. Having a higher standard puts that side at a big disadvantage. If the US said it would drag corpses thrugh the street in victory and do all kinds of legal but humiliating things to you if you are caught or killed, the enemy would individually fear, not collectively. And individual fear is a lot harder to overcome. I don't want my body desecrated, I'm not joining your war unless I have to, and even then I'll do a half-hearted job.
Either play nice, or play dirty, but don't expect your enemy to do the same. And when you make a promise like 'no torture', either stick by it or throw it out the window. The worst propaganda you can have is a country that says one thing and does another (collectively). At least the jihadis are consistent. They have completely dehumanized the enemy, and do not seem concerned with the same things.
Re: (Score:3)
So how do you explain dehumanizing your own? Because the last time I looked the taliban lops off fingers, and hands, and throws acid in the face of women to stop them from trying to claw their way out of the 7th century islamic thinking that they believe in. That they're chattel. Our enemy has never played nice, the jihadi's, yeah they are consistent. They dehumanize everyone, the same goes anywhere that type of thinking becomes prevalent. See egypt recently.
To be frank, we should never have played nic
Re:Bogus premise (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the problem is our enemies do not fear us.
No, they hate what you stand for. Isn't it quite obvious? Whom would volunteer for a suicide mission if they were not desperate?
The problem is people like you and your thinking about "enemies". All people want to live in their own way. If any group is trying to curtail that freedom, then that makes people unhappy.
Who supports Middle East tyrants with their military? Just look at Saudi Arabia. Or the apartheid in Israel and occupied territories.
Let's put this in another way, maybe in words you can understand,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots [wikipedia.org]
Why did the riots happen?? Because "the blacks" didn't fear the rest of the society enough?? Did it happen because 1 person was beaten up?? Surely, the answer is NO to both questions! They occurred due to PREEXISTING GRIEVANCES AND INJUSTICES. The same thing applies to the original statements. And if your solution is to terrorize people into submission, like Israel tries to do in Gaza and West Bank, all you are doing is passing the buck down the road when few years from now they will have to deal with a much worse mess than there already is.
Bomb their cities, kill their leaders and convert them to christianity.
I think some of the extremists on BOTH sides are hoping this this scenario. Some don't learn anything from history, and hence will end up writing it once more.
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Who?
1) People who have been heavily propagandized with religious fanaticism. To them, things like the Mohammed cartoons really are killing offenses. They have a concept of tribal honor that is alien to us; don't make the mistake of thinking "I would never blow myself up for that, so they must not really be blowing themselves up for that either". We have met the enemy and they are not us.
2) People who have no choice but to obey the loca
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In the 80's Middle East, did anyone ever notice that the Russians didn't have the legions of kidnap victims like the U.S. did?
Here's why (and don't ask for a cite. It was before all the internet tubes and shit)
A Russian diplomat was kidnapped by some radical Islamic group (there were/are many) and held hostage. The Russians kidnapped one of that group's higher ups and then started sending him back, one piece at a time. The Russian diplomat was release before they got to any important pieces.
The fact is that
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The kicker is that the main people who care about middle eastern oil are the europeans. By trying to ensure a supply of oil from that region, we're basically helping out european governments.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you insinuate yourself into a fledgling cable news operation and start spinning all the news to hint that all the problems are caused by a certain political party. You do it subtly, so that each story, taken on its own, can be judged as mostly fair, and then you maybe balance that out by having some news stories that call out members of your favored political party. But you don't criticize them based on their stupid ideas or behavior, but on their lack of allegiance to your values. That subtle bias is hard enough to pierce through, but then you let that stew for a couple-10 years, when your end-game really starts to happen. You've trained significant portions of the population to view "the other" as "the enemy", and even better, from them comes a class of new sources, experts and analysts who share your view without ever being told anything.
The slower you work the plan, the less likely it is to backfire.
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Al Qaeda attacked us because we stood in the way of resurrecting the caliphate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate#Views_of_al-Qaeda [wikipedia.org]
The error is with people who see something like Al Qaeda and only see a reflection of what the West does. This is an incredibly blind and egocentric way to think about the world and what motivates people outside the West. Hate does not need a valid premise to exist. Hate is its own creation, and not anyone else's fault except the person filled with hate.
If all of the USA and Europe disappeared into the ocean tomorrow, Al Qaeda would not celebrate and become pastoral goat herders, content their work was done. Because their work has just started. They would go right on with their murderous rampage, killing innocents, as they already have. Until they get their caliphate back.
Incidentally, the greatest number of victims of Al Qaeda are Muslims, not Westerners, by orders if magnitude. We in the West only see glimmers of a much greater struggle going on in the Middle East. And yet, in the blind egocentrism of so many in the West, such as you see in some comments here, and in the story summary, you think the struggle is all about the West! Why this colossal egocentric blindness?
This obnoxious ignorant egocentrism that can only understand and think about Al Qaeda in terms of motivations and interests that only center upon what the West does is a failure of analysis. As if Al Qaeda were born of Western actions and only exists as a reflection of Western actions. If you believe that, if you cannot think about Al Qaeda as its own entity, devoid of anything having to do with the West, you lack the cognitive abilities to comment intelligently on the subject.
You cannot stop the creation and continued existence of something like Al Qaeda by modifying your own actions or correcting past mistakes. Because its not about you. Because something like Al Qaeda will always exist, hate requires any premise, real or imagined, to justify what it does in transgression of simple human decency. And so you must fight something like Al Qaeda, not placate it. That is a fool's errand that does understand how hate works psychologically.
Al Qaeda is its own creation, inspired by its own beliefs, that would still exist no matter what the USA or the West ever did. If you don't understand that, stop talking about Al Qaeda, you don't understand it.
The social dynamics powering violent groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the only reason that people in Al Qaeda were not considered overly dangerous nutcases and turned in by their neighbors (or otherwise were pressed to reform by their wives and cousins etc.) is that there is a lot of anti-Western sympathy based on the USA having supporting various oppressors in the region.
You don't get a storm without the heat dynamics behind it... Seeds of evil may exist in the hearts of all people, along with good (see Thich Nhat Hahn's writings), but what emerges has a lot to do with circumstances (as well as culture and individual upbringing). That is part of what is meant by winning "hearts and minds" overseas, a battle the USA has been losing (to the extent it is even trying).
The USA also has had a lot of anti-whatever hate groups, as has Europe. The difference is that those societies in the past have generally been functional enough in various ways that people don't let them grow that much, and also in decades in the past it was a lot harder to project power internationally (like with the KKK). But sometimes the social forces have been there to let hate groups rise (like the Nazis). It is better to prevent fires than to have to fight them. And when you do fight fire, it is generally best to fight it with water (not more fire).
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everyone's actions interplay into everything, into all rationalizations, valid and contrived, of course
and the usa can behave a lot better than it does, of course
but my point is that it is a form of egocentrism to imagine that ANYTHING the usa does, good or bad, is the deciding influence here in what people really think in the middle east. the middle east is on a path of its own making, and nothing the west or the usa does holds decisive sway. this includes invading iraq and afghanistan. the arab spring las
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begin with the thoughts and ideas of middle eastern peoples, and imagine the usa is a mild pesky mosquito, and then you can begin to have a better starting point for saying valid things about the motivations al qaeda, or where middle eastern societies go from here (after the arab spring)
That analogy would surely work if you were talking about e.g. Denmark. That would be a gnat. But it's the US we're talking here, and it's more akin to an 800 lbs gorilla...
Sure, if all you're saying is that the forest is full of animals and we would better be looking at all of them, there's no arguing that. But the gorilla is still the gorilla. It ain't no gnat. ;-)
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Re:Bogus premise (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what you believe about any religion. What matters is what you are willing to do to achieve a theocratic or ideological goal. And if you are happy to murder innocents, including hundreds of thousands of Muslim innocents, then this is enough to label you as someone filled with hate.
But you change the subject. You start with this bullshit notion that this is an argument between Christianity and Islam. Facts for you to consider, idiot: Al Qaeda kills vast numbers of Muslims, orders of magnitude more than Westerners, in pursuit of their hate filled goal. And Al Qaeda does not speak for what the vast majority of what Muslims believe. So you simply do not understand the topic you are commenting on.
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Al Qaeda didn't attack us because we brought middle eastern oil. Al Qaeda didn't attack us because they hated our freedom and democracy.
They attacked us because we stationed troops in their holy land. They attacked us because we supported despotic regimes in the middle east. They attacked us because we are Israel's biggest ally.
If they were concerned about our troops stationed, they could have attacked those troops, which they had previously done when they attacked the USS Cole.
Saying they attacked us because we're Israel's ally directly contradicts your claim that they didn't act out of hate for our freedom and democracy. You've got three secular countries, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel. They see the secularism of Turkey and Lebanon as part of an infectious influence that originated in Israel; a very similar view to the one many Wes
Re:Bogus premise (Score:5, Informative)
There's also some interesting emails that leaked years ago where Bin Laden is complaining about the UN. He hated the list of human rights because it treated all religions as equal - this was insulting because he 'knew' that Islam was the one true religion and it required a status superior to all other religions.
April 11, 2001
From: Osama bin Laden
To: Mullah Omar
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You do realize that the Middle East has been a hot bed of religious intolerance, hate, warfare and genocide since, oh, about 6500 BCE? While the British and US (and France and Germany) have helped stir the fire in the Middle East, the embers have been glowing for quite some time.
Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
In the long run, you can't win that fight with guns. You can kill as many militants as you want, but if they can convert people faster than you can kill them, they will eventually win. What are you going to do if they convert a million people- kill them all? Ten million? A hundred million? There's no way you could prevail. Look at what happened to Rome. They crucified Jesus and fed a lot of Christians to lions, and eventually the Roman emperor ended up converting to Christianity. Look at the Soviet empire. As soon as people had a choice between the West and the Communist system, they chose the West. It was a war the West won without firing a shot. That's the power of ideas.
The West won a huge battle with the Arab spring, which will ultimately reshape the geopolitical balance far more than the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan ever could. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria could have risen up and chosen the vision of al Qaeda, they could have chosen to follow Osama bin Laden's dream. They didn't. They decided they want what we have- freedom, equality, justice, opportunity- and not the barbaric vision that Osama bin Laden has provided. And you sure as hell won't hear any of those Arab revolutionaries demanding that their government be more like China, or Russia. In the interviews with people struggling in Syria against Assad's dictatorship, they say, "we want what you have". That's the power of ideas. Sure, they despise us for our foreign policy, but they like the idea of how Americans live, even though the vast majority have never seen America except through TV, movies, internet.
People want to be like the West because we aspire to something better. And every time we let down those values, people question whether we really do have anything better to offer, and whether the values America stands for really means anything. God knows, it's been hard to be an American the past ten years. We've invaded countries without cause, locked people up without trial and tortured them, supported dictators, killed civilians... pissing on a corpse seems pretty minor after all of that, if you ask me. After the invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, it's sort of like "is that all?" So what's my point... well, I think that in the long run, America will win the war by offering something better than our enemies. But I think that perhaps more important, we owe it to ourselves to be better than that. I'm a Democrat and I know we're supposed to all hate America, but I really do believe in a lot of the stuff America stands for. And part of what we stand for is that everyone is entitled to dignity and respect. Even the guys we're killing.
Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
and Muslims are supposed to be better than dragging burned mutilated corpses through streets. Just pointing out that your point B is irrelevant since America is as much represented by these soldiers as the Muslim population is represented by that mob in Fallujah.
Are you seriously suggesting that the US Marine Corps doesn't represent the US? Maybe you think they just happen to be over there on vacation, but I'm pretty sure they were sent, armed, paid by the the US government. They are acting on the authority of the United States of America, and as such everything they do, good or bad, reflects on the integrity and honor of the United States, and the Corps as well. If this was some group of jackoff civilians in Detroit you might have some kind of point, but when it comes to soldiers, you don't.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:4, Interesting)
theoretically, you want to be able to say that the cause you are fighting for is morally superior to the cause the enemy is fighting for
i said "theoretically"
but pissing on enemy troops tends to put a dent in the concept of moral superiority, no matter how absurd that concept is in the arena of war in the first place
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Where was the outrage when they did far worse to our fallen troops?
Yeah, that's a valid question, and if I were head of propaganda in Afghanistan, I would make sure people were remembering that. But....
I don't see a problem with it.
Really? You don't see a problem with it?
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Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So they pissed on the enemy (Score:5, Informative)
The same "they"
The Al Qaeda operatives you're talking about came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and UAE. The taliban and Iraqi insurgency GP was talking about came from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Different people, different organizations, different nationalities, different motives; they are hardly the "same".
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This was the doctrine that led to the bombing of Germany and Japan in the last WW. It failed miserably. It turns out that when people have nothing to lose, they will fight you to the bitter end.
Because if my city got carpet-bombed, even if I were living in a dictatorship, I might decide that the odds of other guys being worse are significant. This is why there are two ways of winning a civil war:
- be a nice guy. Accept high losses, but be beyond reproach. In the end, and the end might be long to com