This stuff isn't even ancient history. During the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 the military blew up a random vehicle from a drone in the middle of Kabul, killing 10 civilians (including 7 children), and then immediately branded them terrorists.
I worked for a defense contractor when the mistargeted drone strike on Ahmadi occurred killing him and 9 family members (including 7 children). Based on internal information available at the time, there's a very good chance that the drone strike was mistargeted due to software bugs.
In particular, a "track this car" feature that worked against satellite and aerial surveillance was available in software used by those in the military's operations teams. I've poked around in that software to determine that it was definitely buggy, but this did not prevent the feature from being offered to users. I've been assured that users were essentially told "don't click this button that automates watching vehicles and instead do it yourself", but laziness and crisis crunch time of the American exit from Afghanistan makes it very realistic that users were overwhelmed and trying anything to stay on top of things.
I lay those deaths at least partially on software and the cavalier way that life-or-death circumstances are systematically ignored by the defense contractor software industry.
The withdrawal also once again established that the nation doesn't care about its responsibility and the consequences of its actions (Iraq -> Daesh, AF->Taliban and all achieved progress and hope ruined), only its own costs and troops (go-to excuse for AF: how long do you expect us to stay?)
What "progress" and "hope" exactly? If you mean the attempt of the US to brainwash the local population with western secular ideologies and hope to eat McDonald's and BK "cuisine", thanks to God it didn't work out. Also, Taliban and Da'esh are not the same, let's not mix things up and water things down.
The masks have fallen and exposed the monsters behind them. This whole tragedy for the people of those occupied countries was in western eyes nothing more than continued occupation, resource stealing, weapons testing, and meddling in middle eastern affairs post WWI under the false guise of "freedom" and "democracy". And now they end up defeated and retreating in humiliation.
And they're "enslaved" how? Because the western backed media told their viewers that those women should be free to be naked and follow their western peers, otherwise they're "oppressed" and miserable?
They are denied education, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscious.
It is not slavery, as you are correct to point out - it is a regressive reading of Islam and its insistence on removing the sexual from the public space (which is fine - it is in principle a modality of civilization — that takes that stance which is not inherently oppressive of a given sex, it places restrictions on both sexes’ behavior in public space).
A sign of your backwardness is considering women —- decent, moral, upright but lacking a covering tent — as “naked”. But imo, it is not that the woman showing hair is “naked”, rather the eyes that behold are soaked in lust. It is this lust that you can not control, so “let’s control women”.
That's what the media tells you. What we should do is give them the benefit of the doubt until they clear the brainwashing attempts the west tried to put in their curricula. They already said they have no issues with women getting education, let's give them time to clear up the mess that the west made, after 20 years of bombardment and brainwashing and occupation.
A sign of your bigotry to straw man the argument and then describe the veil that our women wear as "tents". It's a sad spectacle that the "white man's burden" exists to this day.
”Free to be naked”.
The women of Afghanistan are not allowed to leave their houses without being completely covered and without a male member of the family.
The women of Afghanistan are the biggest losers of the western worlds withdrawal.
Now wait 50+ years of oppression and you want to sweep it under the rug???
No they're not losers, the opposite in fact. Contrary to what the media tells you, many women are happy. Comments here are proving my points further. We don't need western "liberation" thank you very much.
I read about some of the torturing that has been done to those prisoners... I don't think there are words that can capture the sheer insanity of it all. I .. can't imagine how anyone could do something like that to a living being.
What Guantanamo is horrible but in a historical context it is pretty tame. How can you know about slavery, the holocaust, etc. and be unable to imagine force feeding prisoners who are hunger striking.
> Mr. Nashiri claimed that in 2013, he was subjected to 'rectal feeding' and sodomized with a broom handle by prison staff.
> In 2014, the Obama administration released a 500-page document that detailed some of the CIA’s ‘black site’ program. The document confirms that rectal feeding is a method of torture used by prison staff.
I don’t consider rape, anal feeding, and everything else to be “force feeding prisoners who are hunger striking”.
Just saying "well, the Holocaust was worse" isn't exactly the best defense of foreign policy, is it?
When you claim to be "the land of the free" and a "bringer of democracy" you can't be doing a Guantanamo without coming across like a massive hypocrite. Morals and ethics can't be thrown away the second they become mildly inconvenient.
I never was defending it, they said they were shocked that humans were capable of doing what was done at Guantanamo. I was just saying that there are some other historical events that will really surprise them.
Well, had you read about anal feeding, and the rapes, and everything else, you'd be equally appalled. I am not saying that these have not happened in the holocaust or other such events, but I am appalled that this was done recently, and that there exist people willing to commit those acts.
> I am appalled that this was done recently, and that there exist people willing to commit those acts.
You should be appalled but not surprised. The world is full of monstrous, terrible people, and not just dictators and high up masterminds, but terrible average joes. If you posted a job opportunity that openly said "Job duties: Inflicting torture, rape, and suffering on people we will convince you are bad" you would not have to look far to find job candidates lined up to do it.
Obama issued an executive order to close it on his second full day in office. Congress blocked it. He continued trying to close it throughout both of his terms, and Congress continued to prevent that.
Not any hospital but one run and staffed by doctors without borders. A hospital which was specifically on a non-target list and was known by the US military. The supposed mistake is akin to accidentally dropping a bomb on one of your own bases. Accidents do happen but something like this is a huge failure in US military procedures.
I don't mean to be rude, but you should get over it because this is the world we live in and pearl clutching isn't going to stop them. Don't be sad, get mad!
> Pearl-clutching is a deliberate bad-faith reaction to a comment and a form of civil POV-pushing. It is done in order to exaggerate the effects and impacts said comment had.
I merely spoke about the atrocities I read about, and expressed my disbelief in how a person could even commit something like that.
I completely understand your sentiment but sadly for many Americans the lives of other people just don’t matter. We frequently don’t even care about our own citizens here (too many examples to list).
It’s a point raised and emphasized because it’s the only chance we have to try to get people to care about the atrocious things we’re doing. Even something as simple and clear as this line has been very ineffective in bringing about any change.
Just think about the opportunity cost of that much money. I am fairly certain that $8T would do any one several of the following things:
1. Covert our Economy to post carbon. Completely. All Nuclear, Hydro, Solar, and Wind.
2. Pull enough CO2 out of the Atmosphere to get it back to carbon neutral.
3. Put a colony on the Moon, and on Mars, along with a new Space Station. (just for kicks)
4. Give every man, woman, and child in the United States a $26,000 check.
So it goes.
If you threw it into nuclear, yes, we could have at least removed 90% of fossil fuels from our energy grid while making our energy grid far more resilient in the process and making the electric car revolution easier (energy too cheap to meter and all that jazz).
I don't think investing in more Hydro is a good option personally. Too much environmental consequence from flooding the massive areas required.
8T 20 years ago would not have accelerated the pace of solar/wind much and it's dubious if it would even be useful today, there are better solutions (nuclear).
Similar with moon/mars colony. We don't lack the money for a mars shot, we could do it pretty cheaply, we just lack the will to do it. At this point Musk will assuredly get there first and cheaper.
The use of "we" feels so unfair when a very large majority of the people were against it the entire time. "We" couldn't do anything about it, as usual.
> very large majority of the people were against it the entire time
I don't think this claim holds up to the evidence. Looking at opinion polls between 9/11 and 2003's invasion of Iraq makes it unclear that a "very large majority" was against the invasion. Here's a quickly-found Gallup poll[0] from October 2002 wherein 53% of polled Americans supported a ground invasion of Iraq.
The American people were misled by government claims about WMDs and handwavy connections between Iraq and 9/11. But that doesn't permit us to retroactively declare that "well, if only the people knew in 2002 what we know now then they would have been against it."
>The American people were misled by government claims about WMDs and handwavy connections between Iraq and 9/11. But that doesn't permit us to retroactively declare that "well, if only the people knew in 2002 what we know now then they would have been against it."
Can you explain more? If the American people knew they were being lied to in order to create support for a war, why would they support the war? The argument at the time, repeated all over the media, was that the war was necessary because of WMDs.
53% is a narrow majority supporting invasion, you don't think knowing they were being tricked would have caused at least a 5% swing?
People tolerate being lied to by politicians because they see it as politicians having to convince others to go along with a plan they believe and agree with. They don't see it as politicians lying to them, it's politicians who they approve of and agree with lying to others to convince them to go along with an agenda they approve of.
In other words, it's okay for politicians to lie because the supporters of those politicians believe they are in on the lie.
Sorry, I was trying to make an almost pedantic point. I agree with you that deceiving the public is important to understanding what/why. However, the claim that "very large majority of the people were against it the entire time" is false, and trivially testable. 53% in favor of war means at most 47% against. 47% is not "very large majority".
Would people have been against it _conditioned on having knowledge from today that was unavailable then_? Possibly, but this hypothetical doesn't move discussion in a useful direction.
That’s simply not true. A very large majority were in favor.
Some were opposed, yes.
Using “we” is a proper generalization. Everybody is offended by generalizations today. (See what I did there?) but you can’t talk coherently without them.
Sure, but also as much as it may make you feel old, those polls were of people over 18 in 2003, and about half of the current US population does not fit that bill.
The effect is even more dramatic when you presume polls always skew older.
I know many of the unpolled 1 year olds who are now 24 probably never thought the war was a good idea.
My point is that America in 2003 feels the same to people who were alive then, but blaming Americans alive today for Iraq is like blaming Americans alive in 2003 for being pro-Grenada.
You wouldn’t have changed a thing. The wars were in the making for over a decade by the time 9/11 happened. That was just the opportunity for them to fully put those plans in motion.
If anyone or group actually did “more” they would have been branded a traitor and thrown in prison — or worse.
If "we" is misinformative, it seems like the opposite of coherent.
It is possible to use some sort of set theory terminology to avoid misleading people, but then that wouldn't really be "proper" (culturally acceptable).
While it feels unfair to say "we", what have you done to stop this?
Have you protested? Written to your representatives? Contributed to a NGO fighting these things? Etc.
Or did you let your tax money fund this destruction with little opposition?
I'm being harsh, and probably a hypocrite. But it's easy to be against something in words, but do little to change it sitting comfortably and safe at a distance.
I did. I even almost got arrested on multiple occasions for it.
> Written to your representatives?
Hell, I went to Washington DC and their local offices on multiple occasions and told them to their faces what I thought of them for doing what they were doing.
Didn't do a damn thing, could have done more. Should have done more.
This is important to remember. One reason it might feel unfair now though is some combination of a) to many people, it is clear the war was a mistake and they remember always being against it now and b) some 35% of the current adult US population, including myself, wasn’t old enough to be polled then, but was legitimately against the war always.
I'm not sure anything would have changed if we knew we were lied to. 2001-2002 was a strange time. A lot of people just wanted war--with anyone. It didn't really matter who we invaded. The Cold War ending meant the USA was out of overt enemies, and this was a real bummer to people who loved war and belligerence, so the sooner we could make enemies and start fighting, the better.
I have always opposed these wars, and I use "we" to position myself in them. History has shown that we were right to oppose them, and in fact were justified in using much more radical resistance than we did. My "we" is contrition and repentance for not doing so.
I didn’t live in the US during that time, and I even know this isn’t true. Heck, just talk to any Muslim American who was working or growing up during that time period.
It's a government "for the people and by the people" and clearly the people either approve or doesn't care enough. So yes, "we" the people applies here.
This "for the people and by the people" thing does not appear to be empirically true. Here's a study out of Harvard:
> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Hundreds of thousands of lives and unimaginably vast fortunes were both thrown away. In exchange, a few thousand people captured a small amount of that spending and got somewhat wealthier.
But even then, most of that was captured by only a few families.
Well they said they were sorry, what else do you want from them? The TV says dubya is a good guy now because he dislikes trump, you'd have to be some kind of fascist to disagree with that logic.
> We drone-killed a minor US citizen in a foreign country without a trial.
And his US citizen father[1]! There's a good article somewhere about Obama toiling with these decisions (he reportedly gave the go ahead for both dronings).
You used the word accident and called out an example of the US citizen killed.
In fact, we had military and private contractors commit war crimes, and even the ethical folks did things that contributed to millions getting displaced.
We redefined how we classify male civilians. If you’re a male and end up being in the wrong place, you’re just another casualty and classified as a militant.
Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush clan did some truly horrific things. Kidnapping people with any kind of trial. Dropping bombs in Western Pakistan on weddings because there’s some suspected leader of an organization we don’t like, even if they simply aren’t terrorists but don’t want America in the region.
We lied about WMDs to cajole and entice other countries to join us in invading Iraq.
We tortured prisoners.
We killed reporters (accidentally) and lied about it (intentionally).
We drone-killed a minor US citizen in a foreign country without a trial.
I watched 9/11 happen with my own eyes and it was incalculably tragic but we've done some very shitty things in return.