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VitalSigns posted:No see if you think the US government should reform its prosecution of the War on Terror and prefer to vote for politicians who agree, that is just the same as refusing to obey federal law, pointing guns at federal agents, and threatening to murder anyone with a BLM sticker on their truck. Shouldn't you be claiming that Obama pulling thousands of troops out of occupying countries is ramping up the war? That was your hobby horse in the cartoon thread before xylo stepped in.
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May 19, 2014 21:32
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Im sorry that you think intent is even worth a poo poo when examining foreign policy. E: reminder that the Tokyo fire bombings targeted legitament military targets. Miltank fucked around with this message at 21:41 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 21:39
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Jarmak posted:Seriously the man straight up didn't, kid got killed when the terrorist leader he was next to got blown up. The man straight up said "If you're irresponsible enough to become a terrorist and associate your kid with terrorists its not loving shocking when he becomes collateral when we decide to splash a terrorist leader". Neither the US Government nor anybody else has confirmed who else was killed in the strike or why they were targeted or by whom. Abdulrachman and his cousin have been confirmed as killed in the strike by independent sources, which the US does not deny. Holder has said that Abdulrachman was not targeted by the US. The initial report about al-Banna has never been confirmed and there are other reports he is still alive. Everything else is speculation. I'm pretty certain that if a real terrorist leader had been caught in that attack the Administration would have leaked/confirmed it by now though. I suspect that this was a "signature strike" gone wrong, which is why nobody wants to talk about it.
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May 19, 2014 21:39
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Install Windows posted:You think every "Wehrmacht emplacement" we hit in WWII actually was one? Just saying. Bad example because missing in WWII would be "Oops, we firebombed Leipzig instead of Dresden. Guess we'll have to rearrange our schedule!"
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May 19, 2014 21:40
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hobbesmaster posted:Bad example because missing in WWII would be "Oops, we firebombed Leipzig instead of Dresden. Guess we'll have to rearrange our schedule!" Also the fact that bombing the wrong Nazi city still hinders their industrial output whereas missing in 'the war on terror' tends to create more terrorists down the road.
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May 19, 2014 21:44
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Incidentally hitting the wrong city happened all the time in WWII.
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May 19, 2014 21:45
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CharlestheHammer posted:I am not sure that is really possible. We could try not bombing people. Air drop supplies instead. Books, etc.
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May 19, 2014 21:45
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Miltank posted:Im sorry that you think intent is even worth a poo poo when examining foreign policy. Funny, the whole point of contention here is that y'all started claiming the use of drones was all about intent, specifically intent to be a terror campaign and comparing it to the Romans
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May 19, 2014 21:45
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amanasleep posted:
If this is the case it wouldn't really change my point, and it would itself disprove the whole "we're executing people's families to punish/terrorize people (who are already dead)" freep-quality conspiracy bullshit.
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May 19, 2014 21:45
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Also the fact that bombing the wrong Nazi city still hinders their industrial output whereas missing in 'the war on terror' tends to create more terrorists down the road. Uh, a lot of our strategic bombing in WWII did not actually hinder industrial output.
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May 19, 2014 21:46
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Install Windows posted:Uh, a lot of our strategic bombing in WWII did not actually hinder industrial output. A lot of it did though. More to the point though, everyone's strategy in WWII was that of total war, so we bombed the gently caress out of everything.
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May 19, 2014 21:48
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Fried Chicken posted:Funny, the whole point of contention here is that y'all started claiming the use of drones was all about intent, specifically intent to be a terror campaign and comparing it to the Romans The message that is ultimately being sent does not prove intent. The drone campaign is a terror campaign whether the US intends it to be or not.
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May 19, 2014 21:49
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Install Windows posted:Uh, a lot of our strategic bombing in WWII did not actually hinder industrial output. Hinder by destroying factories, no. But hindering by removing workers through absentee-ism or death, yes. Granted the destruction of a factory is slightly more effective and morally palatable.
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May 19, 2014 21:50
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Install Windows posted:Uh, a lot of our strategic bombing in WWII did not actually hinder industrial output. really, I guess American bombers destroying over 80% of cities like Dessau to hit the Junkers facilities there didn't put a dent into their airplane production
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May 19, 2014 21:52
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Teron D Amun posted:really, I guess American bombers destroying over 80% of cities like Dessau to hit the Junckers facilities there didn't put a dent into their airplane production Sure did a lot less than bombing the factory right the first time would have, rather than taking 2 years to destroy the majority of the city dude. Most of our strategic bombing missions went to waste as anything other than increasing misery.
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May 19, 2014 21:54
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Miltank posted:The message that is ultimately Wouldn't that mean that any intended negative consequences of terror activities that could ever have any collateral damage would be an "unintentional terror campaign"? If I do as another person said earlier, if I drop boxes of books, and one of them accidentally hits a dude on the head and kills him, and now there's exactly one other person - say the dead dude's cousin - terrified of being outside while I'm droppin' knowledge, does that make it a "terror campaign"? I feel like you're taking a very loaded term and applying it in a vague way because people are scared.
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May 19, 2014 21:58
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I miss when this thread about pointing and laughing at the GOP / despairing that they might actually win. It's just a giant clusterfuck of derails at this point with re-hashing year old discussions tossed in every page or two. TPM does a decent teardown on the origins of Diamond Joe http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/exploring-the-origins-of-the-joe-biden-legend Worth a read, and it will get you out of this thread for a bit for some fresh air. Heck Yes! Loam! fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 22:00
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Miltank posted:Im sorry that you think intent is even worth a poo poo when examining foreign policy. If this is your standard for legit targets, then every person killed by drone strikes so far was a legit target too. hobbesmaster posted:A lot of it did though. "The efficiency of the bombing was lacking. Working from German records for certain sites, the USSBS determined that on average 87% of Allied bombs fell outside the factory perimeter and that only a few percent struck plant or equipment inside the boundary." 
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May 19, 2014 22:01
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Sword of Chomsky posted:I miss when this thread about pointing and laughing at the GOP / despairing that they might actually win. It's just a giant clusterfuck of derails at this point with re-hashing year old discussions tossed in every page or two. May is shaping up to be a bad month for the US Politics Thread.
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May 19, 2014 22:02
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Amergin posted:Wouldn't that mean that any intended negative consequences of terror activities that could ever have any collateral damage would be an "unintentional terror campaign"? You're confused, what you actually did there is the equivalent of mass cruxifiction I hope you're happy
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May 19, 2014 22:02
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Jarmak posted:You're confused, what you actually did there is the equivalent of mass cruxifiction Well it worked for Khaleesi so.
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May 19, 2014 22:04
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Sword of Chomsky posted:I miss when this thread about pointing and laughing at the GOP / despairing that they might actually win. It's just a giant clusterfuck of derails at this point with re-hashing year old discussions tossed in every page or two. Yeah. But it has been slow news of late, and we have 3 big primaries tomorrow so it will get better And I don't think anyone who subscribes with the structural realism theory of foreign policy would agree with the blanket statement that intent doesn't matter in foreign policy. You need to know intent and capabilities to estimate what a rational actor will do. It is definitely muted compared to actions and capability for further action though.
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May 19, 2014 22:04
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The biggest US politics news right now is that a 17 year old asked Biden to be her prom date and he sent her a corsage and a nice note. It's a slow news cycle.
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May 19, 2014 22:10
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So I guess the takeaway here is that if the US just loads a bunch of bombers up with napalm or something and blows a village to kingdom come that creates less terror than blowing up a car or house with a thousandth of the firepower.
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May 19, 2014 22:10
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1337JiveTurkey posted:So I guess the takeaway here is that if the US just loads a bunch of bombers up with napalm or something and blows a village to kingdom come that creates less terror than blowing up a car or house with a thousandth of the firepower. It's an inverse squared relationship. Look at how little gunpowder you need to freak out the whole East coast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks I don't dispute that the drone strikes are inspiring some terror, but I don't know how you conduct a military operation that doesn't, so I'm not sure how it's a useful label unless you're just going for loaded language
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May 19, 2014 22:21
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Jarmak posted:If this is the case it wouldn't really change my point, and it would itself disprove the whole "we're executing people's families to punish/terrorize people (who are already dead)" freep-quality conspiracy bullshit. Yeah I don't think that the strategy is terrorize the locals, although that is clearly the effect of the campaign, which is why it's such a misguided policy. OTOH the nature of signature strikes could well mean that Abdulrachman was targeted after all because family affiliation is one of the criteria used. You can say that killing the families of terror suspects is not the explicit policy, but it is likely the implicit outcome of the signature definitions. And that's one of the reasons that Gibbs' comments come across to me as such BS, because they sound like the same justifications you hear for racial profiling, which never results in "accidentally on purpose" deaths because amanasleep fucked around with this message at 22:26 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 22:23
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hobbesmaster posted:Incidentally hitting the wrong city happened all the time in WWII. They didn't always hit the right country. Germany bombed neutral Ireland, USSR bombed neutral Sweden etc. Even as lately as the Kosovo war in 1999, a stray US air to ground missile hit an apartment building in Sofia, Bulgaria. Amazingly there were no casualties.
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May 19, 2014 22:25
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Fried Chicken posted:The biggest US politics news right now is that a 17 year old asked Biden to be her prom date and he sent her a corsage and a nice note. It's a slow news cycle. That'd be the biggest news of the day most days. Biden owns.
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May 19, 2014 22:26
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Tigntink posted:I... I don't get it. She literally probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the assistance her family received growing up and republicans want to cut that. US Politics Thread for June: I Need a Drink
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May 19, 2014 22:33
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Fried Chicken posted:The biggest US politics news right now is that a 17 year old asked Biden to be her prom date and he sent her a corsage and a nice note. It's a slow news cycle. The story that emerges from this will probably be that Joe Biden is clearly a pedophile preying on our impressionable American youth, because it's a slow talk-radio cycle too.
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May 19, 2014 22:34
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Teron D Amun posted:really, I guess American bombers destroying over 80% of cities like Dessau to hit the Junkers facilities there didn't put a dent into their airplane production Yeah pretty much this, the height of ball bearing production was during the heaviest of bombing campaigns, in '42, '43. After the war the USSAF found out how little impact strategic bombing had and may have increased the people's will to fight. But add the transition into the Air Force were obsessed with it which led to a lot of the dumb decisions made in Vietnam. As for done strikes they are a defacto terror campaign on those who (while being their own form of awful, since militant Islam isn't a great thing itself) oppose Western and especially American hegemony. The drone strikes and the strategic bombing campaigns of the past are cut from the same cloth especially when they're used to hit a crowded café, or a wedding. The military does need some secrets for operational security, but the US intelligence apparatus is mired in some stinking poo poo that needs to be brought before the cleansing light of day. Declaring all males of military age, which could mean everyone from 13-40 is a target is what led to Fallujah being one of the worst war crimes ever committed by the US. Added to the mix is the US's long history of sucking at human intelligence and relying on signals intelligence and other sources which may be dubious should lead to some heavy skepticism. Christ the whole war on terror had been a terror campaign, from the second Bush pretty much said we're coming for you! I just don't see how people can think that the done campaign on some level, with the whole don't join a terrorist group or the US will come down upon you like a finger from God.
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May 19, 2014 22:42
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Fried Chicken posted:The biggest US politics news right now is that a 17 year old asked Biden to be her prom date and he sent her a corsage and a nice note. It's a slow news cycle. The guy who called the president an n-word resigned like a baby today 
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May 19, 2014 22:51
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zoux posted:The guy who called the president an n-word resigned like a baby today Mmmm can't wait for the freep response. Their reaction to the initial story was pretty much "Well so what? He is!"
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May 19, 2014 22:57
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KomradeX posted:Christ the whole war on terror had been a terror campaign, from the second Bush pretty much said we're coming for you! I just don't see how people can think that the done campaign on some level, with the whole don't join a terrorist group or the US will come down upon you like a finger from God. OK, but how do you eliminate enemy combatants without scaring their neighbors? Assuming that's something that's going to be done because it's at least politically infeasible not to and assuming there's no operationally feasible mechanism to give them a fair public trial (because sources would be revealed by evidence or whatever excuse they make up), I can't think of anything the military can do that's not scary to be around on some level. You can call bullshit on the 'war on terror' all you want and I'm behind that, but, if you have to have the military kill someone, it's going to inspire some terror, so then every military campaign must also be a 'terror campaign' so the terror label is meaningless and not really worth bringing up unless you're trying to make an argument by emotive language.
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May 19, 2014 23:08
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Munkeymon posted:You can call bullshit on the 'war on terror' all you want and I'm behind that, but, if you have to have the military kill someone, it's going to inspire some terror, so then every military campaign must also be a 'terror campaign' so the terror label is meaningless and not really worth bringing up unless you're trying to make an argument by emotive language. But the US military being pretty goddamn explicit about their terror campaign, which was the centerpiece of Petraeus's "psy-ops" campaign in Afghanistan, which the drone strikes were a product of. e: Also another good read on the implications of COINisms and their failings. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 23:20 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 23:15
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Install Windows posted:Sure did a lot less than bombing the factory right the first time would have, rather than taking 2 years to destroy the majority of the city dude. The hell? How do you propose we should have done that? Long ranged GPS guided munitions?
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May 19, 2014 23:22
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Job Truniht posted:But the US military being pretty goddamn explicit about their terror campaign, which was the centerpiece of Petraeus's "psy-ops" campaign in Afghanistan, which the drone strikes were a product of. Did you even read that slide show? I don't think you can get any more explicit than slides 6 & 7 that the point was to promote reconciliation and that generating terror was what they wanted to minimize and avoid. And in case that wasn't clear, slides 37-45 are explicit that the point is engagement and support, not terror. Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 23:28 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 23:25
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I think the Pacific front is a better example if we're going to start talking about indiscriminate bombing, which MacNamara/LeMay were definitely part of. They wanted to destroy an entire economy- not just military industrial output. Those are not necessarily synonymous. There are also the hilarious blunders of mixing precision guided weapon late Vietnam War and throughout the Bosnian War, which are both great examples. Fried Chicken posted:Did you even read that slide show? I don't think you can get any more explicit than slides 6 & 7 that the point was to promote reconciliation and that generating terror was what they wanted to minimize and avoid. And in case that wasn't clear, slides 37-45 are explicit that the point is engagement and support, not terror. Slide 7 also promotes healthy cooperation with detainment camps and detainee facilities along with unmanned aerial vehicles in order to "surround insurgents and any of their potential supporters". Slide 21 goes into detail on how to pressure Yemen, which work outed splendidly in the long run. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 23:35 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 23:29
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Boon posted:The hell? How do you propose we should have done that? Long ranged GPS guided munitions? Not making it a policy to just drop wherever, which is what their policy was.
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May 19, 2014 23:29
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Boon posted:The hell? How do you propose we should have done that? Long ranged GPS guided munitions? Yeh, that's why "Smart bombs" were a thing...what, 30 years ago? Until we strapped computer guided rockets onto our bombs, they literally fell. At relatively safe bombing altitudes, the bombs could drift miles off course. Being a bomber before Vietnam was largely a game of mathematical guesswork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_bombing#World_War_II anonumos fucked around with this message at 00:10 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 23:30
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