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CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#130176: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:21:40 AM

The issue is that helping the people in the middle east, the Balkans, and what have you isn't the objective being pursued; humanitarian intervention is little more than a repackaging of the "white man's burden" to make imperialism palatable to a modern audience. Much like the relationship between the general public and private enterprise, any benefits of military intervention in regions targeted are purely incidental to the primary motivation of profit and power.

That's not to say militaries (and corporations) are inherently evil, just amoral. The "evils" of these organizations are what arise when they are not adequately held accountable for their actions. What I disagree with isn't necessarily military intervention, but rather the sentiment that we should ever give the military the benefit of the doubt and assume it's actions serve a greater good. We should (as a society) be much more skeptical of military intervention and much less willing to use it.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:31:44 AM by CaptainCapsase

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130177: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:22:56 AM

You would have preferred a full scale invasion of Serbia? Because that would have killed a whole lot more people.

Would it, though? What I would have preferred that they use more discriminate bombing, to start with.

I've met far too many people on the anti-interventionist left who seem to think I should mourn the deaths of Serbian soldiers and militiamen the same way that I should mourn Milosevic's actual victims.

I'd like you to judge my arguments on their own merits, rather than assume stupidity on my part. By "innocents" I mean civilians, and children first and foremost.

EDIT:

[up]Thank you.

[up][up]What, are you going to tell me that the civilians deserve to die for the run-of-the-mill evil that normal people do throughout their lives? And what did the children do, steal from the cookie jar, bully a schoolmate?

[down]Ah, well, okay then.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:34:29 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#130178: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:24:10 AM

That's much better.

Civilians and children are being harmed. That's way more horrific than the vague generalization of "innocents" - which just sends my mind to Venom and the Punisher snarling over their latest victims and swearing to cut down more criminals. I can now be appropriately horrified.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:25:13 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#130179: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:29:11 AM

@Handle: Allow me to rephrase: The Drone Strikes reduce the amount of people ISIS can kill. If my hypothesis is correct, the number of people saved is greater than the number of people killed by collateral damage. Therefore, they're at least ethically permissible. They'd be even more justified without collateral damage (minimizing collateral is morally necessary), but that's not always possible.

Leviticus 19:34
TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130180: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:32:17 AM

The Punisher has a very narrow definition of "innocent", but, for a One-Man Army, he does surprisingly little collateral damage. Contrast with characters like Constantine or The Doctor, who, though non-violent and guile-based, cause monumental collateral damage in their wake, the better to angst about it.

This discussion is fun, but offtopic [lol]

If my hypothesis is correct, the number of people saved is greater than the number of people killed by collateral damage.

If.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:33:28 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#130181: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:34:00 AM

The issue is that helping the people in the middle east, the Balkans, and what have you isn't the objective being pursued; humanitarian intervention is little more than a repackaging of the "white man's burden" to make imperialism palatable to a modern audience.

That argument might carry weight in the Middle East but it doesn't work in the context of the Balkans. There's nothing in Serbia that the USA wants. Not to mention that if the only goal was imperialism, they'd have a) actually invaded Serbia and b) done it the moment they had an excuse. Instead they sat out the Slovenian war, sat out the Croatian war, sat out the Bosnian war (to my eternal disgust) and only intervened when it became clear that nothing else would stop him.

Would it, though? What I would have preferred that they use more discriminate bombing, to start with.

Would a firefight between American and Serbian troops in the streets of Belgrade have caused more civilian casualties? Almost certainly. It also would have united Serbs behind Milosevic and against the "foreign invader" which isn't what anybody wanted. So instead the Americans did the sensible thing and bombed Serbia until his own people realised he was the problem.

And discriminate bombing is a myth.

I'd like you to judge my arguments on their own merits, rather than assume stupidity on my part. By "innocents" I mean civilians, and children first and foremost.

I'm not assuming stupidity. I'm contemplating the possibility of you holding a fairly common ultra-left position that would be entirely in keeping with your "Clinton is a corporatist warmonger" stance (since the overlap between people holding the two positions is very high) and accordingly asking you to clarify. Now that you have, I can respond appropriately.

And with that cleared up—the Serbs committed genocide in Bosnia. They set up rape camps in Bosnia. They shelled breadlines in Bosnia. They paid their snipers a bonus for shooting pregnant Bosnian women since it "counts as two". They were bringing the same mindset to the Kosovan war. You want to save children? You want to save civilians? Be glad the US and NATO stepped in.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:36:44 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#130182: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:39:34 AM

[up] You say that, and yet it's really not hard to see what the real goal was if you look at the bigger geopolitical picture; demonstrating NATO's capacity to project power as an intimidation tactic against Russia, and installing a US friendly regime where there was previously a nonaligned regime, along with the usual redistribution of public wealth to the military industry that any armed conflict results in.

I'm not claiming that the intervention in the Balkans did more harm than good to the people there; Indon't have the necessary expertise to do that kind of cost benefit analysis to any degree of accuracy (and the same Is true of all of us here AFAIK), just that it's not the mythical example of humanitarian intervention people claim it to be.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:42:31 AM by CaptainCapsase

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130183: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:39:43 AM

So instead the Americans did the sensible thing and bombed Serbia until his own people realised he was the problem.

I don't think that's how the psychology of bombing works.

And discriminate bombing is a myth.

Sure, and the Bombing of Guernica was not a war crime. I'm talking "don't bomb defenceless civilian targets". Milosevic didn't have his bases and barracks melded into the civilian population, now, did he?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#130184: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:43:16 AM

Would a firefight between American and Serbian troops in the streets of Belgrade have caused more civilian casualties? Almost certainly. It also would have united Serbs behind Milosevic and against the "foreign invader" which isn't what anybody wanted. So instead the Americans did the sensible thing and bombed Serbia until his own people realised he was the problem.

Wait, I'm confused. I don't actually know much about the conflict in Serbia, I'm just trying to follow the conversation at this point.

We dropped bombs on a civilian population in order to persuade the civilians of that population to take our ideological side under threat of further destruction and turn against their leadership? Is that what I'm hearing? Because that's not just Insane Troll Logic, that is actually terrorism.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:44:58 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#130185: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:45:04 AM

[up] Yep. Technically speaking the US, along with the other WWII belligerents (both allies and axis) are guilty of the "worst" (by body count) acts of terror in history, if we define terrorism as violence against civilians for the purposes of achieving a political end.

That the US and its allies no longer carry out terror bombings on that scale is a testament to anti-war movement making the military much more accountable than in the past.

edited 14th Jul '16 12:04:32 PM by CaptainCapsase

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130186: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:45:43 AM

[up][up]In fact, it's Israel's alleged rationale when dealing with Gaza. That worked out well.

[up]I especially love how folks point to the atrocities "their" side did to "our" side as a reason why "our" side should show "their" side no mercy. In the meantime, atrocities of "our" side upon "our" side are necessary sacrifices.

But the very best is when "us"-on-"them" atrocities are justified with the rationale "if we hurt and scare them hard enough, they'll give up early, and so, by doing this atrocity, we are saving them". You must make a friend of horror, don't you?

edited 14th Jul '16 10:51:58 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Ogodei Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers from The front lines Since: Jan, 2011
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
#130187: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:49:51 AM

It was more that Milosevic was fighting for something that wasn't especially near and dear to their hearts (despite what Serb nationalists will tell you, average Serbians didn't really care about retaining Kosovo and Milosevic's hold on political power was not monolithic).

There's a certain gamble in trying to force popular revolt through military action, of course, that it will backfire and you end up with rally-around-the-flag and an unpopular halfwit becomes a champion of the nation overnight, but sometimes it works. It's the scary dark truth behind terror campaigns, if you successfully make the causal link between administrative actions and your terror attacks, you can convince the people to get the administration to stop doing that thing, but only so long as that thing isn't a priority for the people of the country.

It's a very shrewd game to play, and dangerous because the field gets infected by Blood Knights and the Axe-Crazy who just want to destroy stuff for its own sake instead of fielding war and terror as very calculated drives towards a policy goal, and there are a lot of variables compared to other methods.

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#130188: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:50:15 AM

How Sanders spent his money.

I don't think that's how the psychology of bombing works.

That's exactly how the psychology of strategic bombing works. You make the lives of the civilians living under the opposing regime miserable enough that they turn on their government in an effort to end the war. It worked. During the presidential elections of that year, the Serbian public, who had had no problem backing Milosevic when he was massacring other people, voted him out for getting them bombed. He tried to cling to power, the public and the army turned on him, and voila, mission accomplished.

Sure, and the Bombing of Guernica was not a war crime. I'm talking "don't bomb defenceless civilian targets".

The bombing of Guernica was considered a war crime because nobody had done strategic bombing in any major way before. By WWII, strategic bombing had become something done by all sides and accepted by all sides. That's why none of the German bomber pilots were arrested for participating in the Blitz—it would have been pointless in light of the fact that the Brits and Americans bombed Germany just as thoroughly.

Milosevic didn't have his bases and barracks melded into the civilian population, now, did he?

No, he had them in Kosovo, rounding up the civilian populace for extermination. Bomb too many of those and you kill the people you're trying to save.

You say that, and yet it's really not hard to see what the real goal was if you look at the bigger geopolitical picture; demonstrating NATO's capacity to project power as an intimidation tactic against Russia, and installing a US friendly regime where there was previously a nonaligned regime, along with the usual redistribution of public wealth to the military industry that any armed conflict results in.

Except that, once again, if that were the objective, the US would logically have intervened during the Croatian or Bosnian wars. Particularly since both the Croatian and Bosnian governments wanted to have a relationship with the West that Milosevic did not. Instead NATO and the USA stayed out of both those conflicts—and in the case of the Bosnian conflict did everything they could to pretend that nothing bad was happening (though this in a large part comes down to the actions of Lewis Mackenzie, Canadian general, UN peacekeeper, and candidate for "worst person to ever come out of my country").

We dropped bombs on a civilian population in order to persuade the civilians of that population to take our ideological side under threat of further destruction and turn against their leadership?

Yes. That's how strategic bombing works. That's how it's always worked. That's why nobody has ever been put on trial for war crimes for doing strategic bombing. You kill enemy civilians, hopefully force them to turn on their governments, and at the least cripple their industry and economy.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:55:01 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#130189: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:51:24 AM

That the US and its allies no longer carry out terror bombings on that scale is a testament to true anti-war movement making them much more accountable than before.

I wouldn't say that — advancing technology played a role. Indeed, one of the reasons for Area Bombing being used in World War II was that the technology for large-scale precision bombing did not exist (at the start of the War it was lucky if bombs fell within a few miles of their target).

Keep Rolling On
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#130190: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:53:33 AM

[up] Russia is more than capable of producing precision ordinances, but merrily carries out terror bombing that wouldn't look out of place in the Vietnam War.

As far as the world war goes, it wasn't the lack of precision that resulted in mass civilian casualties, it was the doctrine of total war; civilian populations were considered part of the enemy war machine, much as factories and infrastructure was.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:57:20 AM by CaptainCapsase

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#130191: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:53:42 AM

[up][up]That was still true at the end of the war. If you weren't using dive bombing (which just gets your pilots killed) you were still lucky to hit the right county.

@Tobias

The Allied air forces in WWII leveled most of Germany and Japan. The firestorms at Dresden and Hamburg killed more people than the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. That's the idea behind strategic bombing—that and crippling enemy industry.

[up]Russian tech is kind of a joke honestly.

edited 14th Jul '16 10:54:30 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130192: Jul 14th 2016 at 10:59:08 AM

@Ambar So "strategic bombing" is a euphemism for "bombing civilians". Now I know. And knowing is half the

[up]If it's such a joke, why is the US powerless to stop them from annexing shit or propping up genocidal monsters?

edited 14th Jul '16 11:00:41 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#130193: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:00:09 AM

[up][up]

The Russians do have good tech, some of it better than the west. Problem is that, quantity wise, there's not enough of it to really matter

New Survey coming this weekend!
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#130194: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:02:04 AM

[up][up]Yes. Blowing up enemy soldiers would be "tactical bombing". Blowing up enemy industries and hitting civilian targets is "strategic bombing". Same way that nuclear weapons intended for use on the battlefield are "tactical nuclear weapons" while city-busters in the Hiroshima vein are "strategic nuclear weapons".

Crippling enemy industry and shutting down their economy, as well as stirring up resentment against the government, is a time-honoured way to hurt your opponents while limiting casualties on your own side.

If it's such a joke, why is the US powerless to stop them from annexing shit or propping up genocidal monsters?

Because nobody in the USA wants to go to war with Russia over countries they could not possibly care less about. That's all there is to it. If the Americans wanted to deploy troops to the Ukraine and drive out Putin they could have done it. But the House would never have voted for it and the populace would never have supported it.

Russian equipment is, for the most part, designed for sale to and use by conscript armies with a minimum of training. They do make some better quality equipment for their own use, but there's never enough of it to go around and the Russian military has so many internal problems as to render it meaningless.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:04:21 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130195: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:03:43 AM

Except factories tend to be in easy-to-spot, separate neighborhoods with very low habitation density, if any.

They care enough to bomb and arm one of them and try to draw the other into their sphere, so they could care less.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:05:51 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#130196: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:05:35 AM

Except factories tend to be in easy-to-spot, separate neighborhoods with very low habitation density, if any.

Except the idea is to cripple the economy as a whole, not just shutdown factories, and the whole point of strategic bombing is to upset the civilian populace (that's without getting into if it's even technologically possible to just hit the factories). That was the whole concept behind the Blitz, and the British and Americans returned it in kind when they burned down most of Germany.

They care enough to bomb and arm one of them and try to draw the other into their sphere, so they could care less.

I'm not sure who the "them" and "the other" is in this sentence. Again, nobody would vote for a war with Russia.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:07:04 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130197: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:07:31 AM

the whole point of strategic bombing is to upset the civilian populace

And you condone that? More importantly, is there any evidence that these "upset" Germans and Japanese turned against their leaders?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#130198: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:07:55 AM

Except factories tend to be in easy-to-spot, separate neighborhoods with very low habitation density, if any.

No...most Victorian-era factories were built with high-density housing built around (and for) the factory or factories.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:08:05 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#130199: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:08:08 AM

Except factories tend to be in easy-to-spot, separate neighborhoods with very low habitation density, if any.

Only new, modern ones. Old factories that have been in business for decades have towns built around them.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#130200: Jul 14th 2016 at 11:10:11 AM

[up][up]I doubt Victorian conditions were relevant in WWII, I'm almost certain they aren't in my lifetime.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

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