Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Friday, June 06, 2014
In a Better US
This is the way the police should treat drunk belligerent assholes--even ones that get a bit violent. Not taze them, slam them into the ground, kneel on them making breathing difficult. Just stay calm, laugh rather than getting angry. (And yes, there's at least one racist asshole in the comments claiming cops in the US can't do this because of black people and desegregation.)
Friday, August 30, 2013
Syria
I think the most accurate representation of the problem is The Onion's. I've no confidence that us going in (not matter how far) will do anything but make matters worse. The world is a very complex place, and sometimes we just can't fix things. Still, not trying seems just as bad. In a better alternate universe we could get a coalition together to go in, arrest Bashar, have an actual trial with evidence and find out "what really happened".
In our existing world the options seem to be: kill people and blow things up or let Bashar (and/or his loyalists) kill other people and blow other things up...in either case rebel forces will kill people and blow things up, though I suppose we could help them do that more effectively as well.
In our existing world the options seem to be: kill people and blow things up or let Bashar (and/or his loyalists) kill other people and blow other things up...in either case rebel forces will kill people and blow things up, though I suppose we could help them do that more effectively as well.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Robotic Warfare
They were talking about drones on NPR today. I was once again struck by a problem that sounds at first blush to be insensitive and harsh and that you will seldom hear voiced:
Soldiers dying in combat is a good thing.
One of the reasons that war is so universally held to be bad and evil is because of the human cost of life. The key component to a war is people dying...on both sides. When one side can remove the human life element, when one side has sufficient might and muscle that it no longer needs to sacrifice its own citizenry to engage in armed conflict, then it loses the necessary and appropriate specter of that conflict: its dead citizens.
While we do have soldiers fighting and dying for us, more and more we are relying on combat techniques designed to minimize casualties while inflicting maximum loss on an enemy. This is perceived and trumpeted as the good of saving lives. It is in fact bad. It distances us from the effects of warfare. For the cost of a handful of American lives, we can kill hundreds of thousands. The disgust of that statement, both in terms of the death represented and the casual dismissal of the loss of some Americans as trivial is palpable.
War is bad. If we get to the point that we risk nothing in a war, will we perceive it as good?
Soldiers dying in combat is a good thing.
One of the reasons that war is so universally held to be bad and evil is because of the human cost of life. The key component to a war is people dying...on both sides. When one side can remove the human life element, when one side has sufficient might and muscle that it no longer needs to sacrifice its own citizenry to engage in armed conflict, then it loses the necessary and appropriate specter of that conflict: its dead citizens.
While we do have soldiers fighting and dying for us, more and more we are relying on combat techniques designed to minimize casualties while inflicting maximum loss on an enemy. This is perceived and trumpeted as the good of saving lives. It is in fact bad. It distances us from the effects of warfare. For the cost of a handful of American lives, we can kill hundreds of thousands. The disgust of that statement, both in terms of the death represented and the casual dismissal of the loss of some Americans as trivial is palpable.
War is bad. If we get to the point that we risk nothing in a war, will we perceive it as good?
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