Terthna
Professional Lurker
Seven. Dead. Children.
There is no justifications for that; although the fact that you're trying your damnedest to find one quite frankly sickens me.
The War in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
There is no justifications for that; although the fact that you're trying your damnedest to find one quite frankly sickens me.
My point:
Where was proportionally greater outrage when the Taliban bombed a school few months ago?
What consequences did they suffer for it? Seems like in hindsight they took the country with little resistance just fine, contrary to the mainstream theory.
Its not collateral damage that is the unique problem here, its western cultural and media sensitivity about it.
Okay.
So we should never fire on any target if they have kids around?
Well, hey terrorists. We won't risk the death of children like you will. So now all you need is keep kids around you 24/7 so we send a team, deep behind lines, who may not make it back, just to kill you, AND STILL POSSIBKY kill children.
Just harder now.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
If I had an easy answer, I'd give you one. But doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Our current strategy isn't working; in fact, using it works against us, in that it provides our enemies with all the justification they need for fighting us. We murder innocent children, after all; we deserve to be hated.
We don't have to add to it though.
That's because we insist on fighting terrorists on their home turf. We could just as easily stay out of the Middle East, and punish those who come to our turf to mess with us.
So because they're a primitive and barbaric culture, that means we have to sink to their level?
Not with explosive ordnance, no. But you do know that sniper rifles are a thing, right?
Doing the right thing is never easy, and always comes at a cost; but we're supposed to be better than them. If we're not; why are we even fighting them in the first place?
Ah yes. The sniper rifle that can shoot miles behind enemy lines, with full knowledge if where the enemy is at that exact moment.
Man, if only snipers and teams are only as good as the defense of the target, and how accessible it is, and If the risk if sending a team thag deep is worth it ir not....
This shit happens in war. If we were to avoid civilian casualties comepeltly, we would get rid of grenades, rockets, missles, bombs...etc etc etc. Hell, even bullets, because gun fights have stray bullets.
The enemy learns from every thing we do. If we got super picky and tried to take out every target woth a sniper, we would still have teams out there, because we would be hundreds of less people and high ranking people killed. Sulimmani would be alive for instance...
Everyone who won one of the recent civil wars did. How hated are they? How much do they care?
Your whole premise of what makes a working strategy or not seems to be missing something, as it laser focuses on US perspective and mainstream theories of its actions, while similar actions taken by other countries in other conflicts very obviously don't fit the theory.
The problems with strategy are in other areas not related much at all to collateral damage.
Many of them sharing the same issue though - strategy driven by media narrative and PR rather than effectiveness and utility.
If you want to fight at all, it will happen. Its that or not fighting.
Those who won against the terrorists also did it on their home turf. With lots of collateral damage.
Obviously the problem is that those who do come to mess with you are usually not expecting to survive the act, so how the hell do you plan on punishing those.
So in WW2 everyone was a primitive and barbaric culture? After all civilian collateral damage was in tens of thousands for bombing of major cities, per city.
What seems to be happening here is a zooming inflation of standards for how "clean" warfare, though only on the west's side, is supposed to be, and this ideological-cultural expectation has managed to even outpace the technological tools that made it somewhat cleaner than it used to be.
But this fresh problem is purely in the collective minds of western societies, rather than being some new artifact in military organization, strategy or weapons.
@Zachowon and @Marduk If we are going to prosecute A-stan as a war and consider it as such GET A DECLARATION OF WAR FROM CONGRESS.
OH WAIT, WE NEVER DID!
It wasn't a war.
It started as a punitive expedition/manhunt that then morphed into nation building over resource deposits and Bagram's position to threaten the Chinese and Russian interiors. Oh, and padding a lot of pockets and establishing control over the poppie fields/opium supply channels. And that's ignoring how it was used to justify the shit in Iraq.
Also, weapon from a drone, particularly a cheap semi-dumb bomb with a slap on GPS package from a high orbiting drone, has time in flight to consider once it leaves the rail. If innocents stumble into the blast radius after launch, but before impact, it's also not always possible to abort or even redirect the payload to do less damage elsewhere.
A soldier with a gun at infantry ranges can always hold fire on his target if a human shield is in the way or their are unexpected innocents that appear in the target's area.
It was the US soldiers willingness to put themselves in danger, even to help 'enemy' civies out of danger during the fighting, that was part of what let us nation-build successfully in Germany and Japan. That is not a function drones can fulfill, and infact they often fulfill just the opposite.
People need to be held accountable for intel failures and for authorizing bad strikes that kill not just the wrong people, but also kill children who bear absolutely no responsibility at all. Letting this go as is only justifies many people's hatred of the US, and will create a thousand or more people who have no reason to love the US, but plenty of reason to hate us.
It will also disincentive people joining the military, because fewer and fewer people are ok with being a part of shit like this.
OH WAIT, WE NEVER DID!
It wasn't a war.
It started as a punitive expedition/manhunt that then morphed into nation building over resource deposits and Bagram's position to threaten the Chinese and Russian interiors. Oh, and padding a lot of pockets and establishing control over the poppie fields/opium supply channels. And that's ignoring how it was used to justify the shit in Iraq.
Also, weapon from a drone, particularly a cheap semi-dumb bomb with a slap on GPS package from a high orbiting drone, has time in flight to consider once it leaves the rail. If innocents stumble into the blast radius after launch, but before impact, it's also not always possible to abort or even redirect the payload to do less damage elsewhere.
A soldier with a gun at infantry ranges can always hold fire on his target if a human shield is in the way or their are unexpected innocents that appear in the target's area.
It was the US soldiers willingness to put themselves in danger, even to help 'enemy' civies out of danger during the fighting, that was part of what let us nation-build successfully in Germany and Japan. That is not a function drones can fulfill, and infact they often fulfill just the opposite.
People need to be held accountable for intel failures and for authorizing bad strikes that kill not just the wrong people, but also kill children who bear absolutely no responsibility at all. Letting this go as is only justifies many people's hatred of the US, and will create a thousand or more people who have no reason to love the US, but plenty of reason to hate us.
It will also disincentive people joining the military, because fewer and fewer people are ok with being a part of shit like this.
Apparently that's something all the cool US political parties do these days.
And it should have stayed that.
Which are a strategic nightmare to hold. How does one plan to run a front against a major power from such a logistically vulnerable position? They didn't even succeed in the whole resources thing.
Dunno about that, the obvious supply channel bullshit was over supplying US and Afghan logistics.
If he's being shot at, he probably won't think much about such matters and will blast everything in the general direction of where he thinks the incoming fire is coming from. Unlike a drone. That's one of drone's major advantages.
That's rich considering how much more widespread collateral damage was in WW2. But instead of a media scandal such events are now, back then it was tuesday.
No, the biggest part of nation building in Japan and Germany was that they already were well functioning countries and obviously had everything necessary to be one, as indicated by the very fact that they were major powers during the war. What a surprise that they are major powers again. Meanwhile Afghanistan was a Taliban run shithole when US forces came, and again was a Taliban run shithole when US forces left.
Yet still no one can explain to me why this theory apparently doesn't apply to non-western countries. Why aren't Russia, Syria or Taliban themselves as viciously opposed because of their war record as you imply? Do they get to play by different rules than western world? Can we change the set of rules that third parties will apply to us to the easier one?
Ok, that's a more real problem aspect, as i said, most of the problem involved lies in the civilian culture of western countries really.
Bassoe
Well-known member
There's no inherent moral difference between blowing someone up with a bunch of household chemicals mixed according to directions from the dodgy sections of the internet, a WW2-style manned bomber plane or a flying robot, they're gonna be equally dead in any case. The morality of the action would come into play from if they deserved to be blown up and if anyone who didn't deserve to be was within the blast radius.
That said, I am highly against weaponized robots for an only somewhat-related reason, they concentrate the monopoly of force in the hands of their controllers. If society's leadership has to convince massive numbers of society's plebeians to volunteer to join the military as a prerequisite for having a war, they're going to be limited to only fighting wars which said plebeians approve of. Essentially what Bacle said.
That said, I am highly against weaponized robots for an only somewhat-related reason, they concentrate the monopoly of force in the hands of their controllers. If society's leadership has to convince massive numbers of society's plebeians to volunteer to join the military as a prerequisite for having a war, they're going to be limited to only fighting wars which said plebeians approve of. Essentially what Bacle said.
The existence of military robots is dangerous since they're guaranteed entirely loyal. We've all seen the stats from polling human soldiers on if they'd shoot their countrymen if ordered, mindlessly loyal machines wouldn't share those refusals.
Reminder that it takes only one country to decide that there's going to be a war, and it doesn't necessarily have to be your country.
Some degree of parallel to nukes happens here - just because you don't have it, doesn't mean the enemy won't have it, and in fact makes it more encouraging to the enemy to decide on a war if you don't have it while they do.
But that's a moot point with current dominant robot type, as they usually need a human operator to control them through radio, if not a whole team of them. The drones are basically glorified, high budget RC planes.
Robots still need operators or programmers and maintenance staff, lots of it. We're a very long way from autonomous and self sufficient ones, and when we get close to that, you will probably own a few civilian models first.
Bassoe
Well-known member
In the same sense as I 'own' my phone and computer, which is to say, the corps that manufactured them and/or the alphabet agencies could brick them on a whim and lots of the software is only available for rent? And that's with me being paranoid and whenever possible attempting to airgap, disable software updates and use obsolete and/or open-source software from before the Age Of DRM, a normie's digital equipment would be even less secure? Or how Boston Dynamics only rents their 'bots rather than actually selling them? The Free Market can't even fix this now, let alone when the stakes are as high as they'll become.
Last edited:
See, if they had actually killed someone who was actually a bad guy, and in the course of it managed to kill others, it still looks pretty bad, but if we can show that they were using said innocents as human shields, you could maybe make your arguments hold water. But they killed an aid worker who had nothing to do with those bombing attacks, and in the course of doing it, they killed a bunch of children, too. There is no excusing that, and it is really, really stupid for you guys to keep making excuses for it.
"So we let the bad guys get away?"
Yes. And never forget that part of the reason for that is because we seem to have a lot of trouble making sure the people we're targeting are even the bad guys.
You keep bringing up the costs in terms of manpower and equipment, and again, yes, the use of drones has made it a lot cheaper for us to make these mistakes. If it cost us more, maybe we'd be less willing to make them.
"So we let the bad guys get away?"
Yes. And never forget that part of the reason for that is because we seem to have a lot of trouble making sure the people we're targeting are even the bad guys.
You keep bringing up the costs in terms of manpower and equipment, and again, yes, the use of drones has made it a lot cheaper for us to make these mistakes. If it cost us more, maybe we'd be less willing to make them.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
I'd love to see them try launch these rockets, it should should provide good material for the video funnies.
Possibly, but still, it would indicate that this kind of thing exist and is a cheap, spammable technology.
The point is that there is no military in the history of the world who doesn't make this kind of mistakes. Except for militaries that don't fight anyone, and militaries who don't even consider that kind of thing a mistake.
So might aswell abolish the military, declare yourself a pacifist nation, and let China run the world. They don't have this kind of PR/moralizing driven paralysis.
So back to using a jet. Simply means the military just pays a higher bill for trying, mistake or not, and the taxpayer get to pay a slightly higher bill.
And?
I thought you were better than being so intellectually dishonest.If it cost us more, maybe we'd be less willing to make mistakes like this and just write them off when it happens.
So letting a people who have killed American lives get away is a valid strategy?
Guess Cops should not bother shooting at suspects if they are shot at because crossfire with civilians then...
Letting people go is how we end up with more and more dead, because they learn what we can and won't do. So they will use that so we will never be able to attack them without sending forces into ambushes 24/7.
So yeah...
Jets don't make things any diffrent. Still fire and forget.And?
If it cost us more, maybe we'd be less willing to make mistakes like this and just write them off when it happens.
We were use F-16s a lot in the early days for a reason.
So what's your endgame here? You want the military to deliberately make itself more inefficient in order to be more reluctant to do things because doing things involves the risk of mistakes, that's what i'm getting from you.And?
If it cost us more, maybe we'd be less willing to make mistakes like this and just write them off when it happens.
If avoidance of mistakes is such an overwhelming priority, the ultimate conclusion is to not even have a military - after all, the military can never do anything then, no mistakes possible, ever. If it was to ever do anything, mistakes might happen, can you accept that?
And if it can never do anything, welp, what's the point.
Hint: that's about exactly what the competition does. How is that working out for them?
Last edited:
Not only did the people who killed Americans get away, but we killed people who had nothing to do with it.
Are you unaware of the fact police departments have rules concerning that very thing?
So we kill children?
Casualties happen.
Also, the French got the guy that killed Americans. He didn't get away