The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread

[LoathedVermin72]

Duh

[E.H. Ruddock]

I bought a pretty questionable grilled cheese sandwich from a shady hippie in the parking lot of the Dead & Company show last night.

[Norah]

have you come down yet?

[Birds in Hell]

I don't wish to unnecessarily draw attention from further inquiry into Ruddo's questionable sandwich or Strat's supposed hippiedom, but this is a fascinating piece:

[E.H. Ruddock]

have you come down yet?

I took this picture not long after eating the sandwich:

Spoiler: show

[stip]

Just to provide a slightly less glib response.

I am not a pacifist. Sometimes violence and war is necessary to secure the safety and protection of innocent people. But we should never loose sight of the fact that W Saying that this was an unintended consequence while knowing full well it is a probable consequence hardly seems to me to be sufficient to absolve us of moral responsibility. The response to the deaths of 150 innocent people is likely to kill 10 times that number of innocent people. That we didn't start it (though that's debatable) does not level the moral scale.

I am very much against any reasoning that enables us to diminish to ourselves the full horrific impact of what we authorize. If we were forced to confront the consequences of our actions, and bear responsibility for them, we would (I believe) be less likely to use violence in the first place--to the point that it really becomes an object of super last resort, rather than convenience, politics, power, and business.

I am a tree hugging hippie. So, Im with you to an extent. As this shit continues to go on and on (and the world wasn't exactly like this 20 years ago) Im wondering if a full out military assault isn't what needs to happen.

Your point here "organized state sanctioned violence leads to the murder of innocent people no less (and frequently much much more) than terrorism. " ....

What if we didnt go after hitler? How many innocent lives were saved in the long run by such military operations?

its fucked up to approach war as a balance sheet on the cost of human lives but....

Johnny got his gun is probably the most powerful anti-war novel ever written, and even dalton trumbo supported war against hitler. And since then that analogy has been used to justify every war ever since, despite these wars having few meaningful parallels to WWII

[Kaius]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

[stip]

If we were forced to confront the consequences of our actions, and bear responsibility for them, we would (I believe) be less likely to use violence in the first place--

This has worked really well for criminal justice systems around the world.

Most CJ systems focus on revenge and punishment, so of course there are high rates of recidivism. They have little to do with what I mentioned above

[stip]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

I agree

[Kaius]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

I agree

I know you do, and at the risk of destroying my "board reputation", I have agreed with just about everything you've said the last couple of days.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

It doesn't make you want to go to to war again or kill more, this I can tell you. It tends to have more of a numbing effect on everything including your views on such issues

[Kaius]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

It doesn't make you want to go to to war again or kill more, this I can tell you. It tends to have more of a numbing effect on everything including your views on such issues

That makes a lot of sense.

And I forgot to tell you, thank you for your service.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

It doesn't make you want to go to to war again or kill more, this I can tell you. It tends to have more of a numbing effect on everything including your views on such issues

That makes a lot of sense.

And I forgot to tell you, thank you for your service.

I'm thanking Tom Brady for his FFL service today

[Kaius]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

It doesn't make you want to go to to war again or kill more, this I can tell you. It tends to have more of a numbing effect on everything including your views on such issues

That makes a lot of sense.

And I forgot to tell you, thank you for your service.

I'm thanking Tom Brady for his FFL service today

Russel Wilson needs to step it the f*ck up.

[McParadigm]

The problem with strat's question is that Hitler is both the extremized variation of this story and actually fairly ordinary in the scheme of human history.

The reality is, people drop Hitler's name all the time within the scope of lesser discussions exactly because it is hard for the human mind to differentiate between purest and most horrifying evil and lesser and more grayed moral disagreement....and because history is full of Hitlers.

Sadly, many of those Hitlers felt they were reasonably responding to the deeply demonized foe at their front steps. And some of those Hitlers are still seen as something less terrible, because they endured long enough to affect the story, or because their slaughter created economic opportunity.

Society is a game in which we pretend we are not all monsters. Meanwhile, we chew people up for cheap goods and poison the places we don't want to live in anyway. Part of the reason there's no good solution is because neither society is particularly lovable.

[Strat]

The problem with strat's question is that Hitler is both the extremized variation of this story and actually fairly ordinary in the scheme of human history.

The reality is, people drop Hitler's name all the time within the scope of lesser discussions exactly because it is hard for the human mind to differentiate between purest and most horrifying evil and lesser and more grayed moral disagreement....and because history is full of Hitlers.

Sadly, many of those Hitlers felt they were reasonably responding to the deeply demonized foe at their front steps. And some of those Hitlers are still seen as something less terrible, because they endured long enough to affect the story, or because their slaughter created economic opportunity.

Society is a game in which we pretend we are not all monsters. Meanwhile, we chew people up for cheap goods and poison the places we don't want to live in anyway. Part of the reason there's no good solution is because neither society is particularly lovable.

Cool. But what are you actually saying here?

[BurtReynolds]

The problem with strat's question is that Hitler is both the extremized variation of this story and actually fairly ordinary in the scheme of human history.

The reality is, people drop Hitler's name all the time within the scope of lesser discussions exactly because it is hard for the human mind to differentiate between purest and most horrifying evil and lesser and more grayed moral disagreement....and because history is full of Hitlers.

Sadly, many of those Hitlers felt they were reasonably responding to the deeply demonized foe at their front steps. And some of those Hitlers are still seen as something less terrible, because they endured long enough to affect the story, or because their slaughter created economic opportunity.

Society is a game in which we pretend we are not all monsters. Meanwhile, we chew people up for cheap goods and poison the places we don't want to live in anyway. Part of the reason there's no good solution is because neither society is particularly lovable.

Cool. But what are you actually saying here?

Han shot first.

[dimejinky99]

But you knew he was gonna say this anyways

Donald J. Trump on the Paris attacks: Victims should've had guns http://cnn.it/1OKJnE4

[stip]

Well, stip, most of us don't know a damn thing about what it means to go to war or kill someone. I think that's very important to understand.

I agree

I know you do, and at the risk of destroying my "board reputation", I have agreed with just about everything you've said the last couple of days.

Want to go listen to Backspacer?

[Kaius]

The problem with strat's question is that Hitler is both the extremized variation of this story and actually fairly ordinary in the scheme of human history.

The reality is, people drop Hitler's name all the time within the scope of lesser discussions exactly because it is hard for the human mind to differentiate between purest and most horrifying evil and lesser and more grayed moral disagreement....and because history is full of Hitlers.

Sadly, many of those Hitlers felt they were reasonably responding to the deeply demonized foe at their front steps. And some of those Hitlers are still seen as something less terrible, because they endured long enough to affect the story, or because their slaughter created economic opportunity.

Society is a game in which we pretend we are not all monsters. Meanwhile, we chew people up for cheap goods and poison the places we don't want to live in anyway. Part of the reason there's no good solution is because neither society is particularly lovable.

Cool. But what are you actually saying here?

There are always going to be people on the other side of the line that, contrary to your beliefs, think what you are contributing to the human race is more evil than their response to it.