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Morning Links
Thursday, April 8th, 2010- My former colleague Dave Weigel is now blogging for the Washington Post. Add him to your RSS readers.
- Gene Healy: Terrorism isn’t an existential threat. Always good to repeat that it’s our reaction to terrorist attacks that determines if they’re successful at spreading terror.
- No thanks. I don’t even particularly like tea.
- Product placement.
- Chicago overtakes New York as the most surveilled city in America.
- That Wikileaks video was horrifying. But let’s not forget that the day-to-day, more mundane atrocities of war are just as unconscionable. A damned good reason to avoid avoidable wars in the first place.
- Obamacare supporters then: Talk of rationing talk is just paranoia from “death panel” types. Obamacare supporters now: “Saying no” to medical care will be most important task of those who implement the new health care system.
“Obamacare supporters then”
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia
That Wikileaks video was horrifying.
I thought / hoped we would get more out of you on this. It has gotten a pathetic amount of coverage in the mainstream media. Let me add my two cents.
WHY the video was horrifying:
1. After the first massacre was over, they shot the unarmed man or men and kids trying to help the shot guy who was trying to crawl away. This has got to be criminal. It is also getting glossed over.
2. It shows that the standard for inflicting collateral damage is that a group of civilians we will be fired upon if there is any chance that there are any insurgents in the group. That is the standard. If there is a 1% chance that a group has 1% insurgents (and 99% innocents), then they will be fired upon with gleeful abandon. You can tell this by watching how casually all of the determinations to fire are made.
3. The hypocrisy of the troops is on full display. They are telling each other how brave they are while doing something that does not carry much actuarial risk and is essentially cowardly because of the casual collateral damage. Wanna bet they are policemen now?
4. Palming off the shot kids on the Iraqis.
FOOD for thought:
There is some mystery about how Wikileaks decrypted this video. Questions:
1. Did the US military actually WANT Wikileaks to digitally distribute this video and enable them to do it?
2. Is Wikileaks actually set up and run by US intelligence?
@Buddy: You were doing OK until you started asking about Wikileaks being run by the government. People decrypt files when they aren’t intended to. Otherwise there would be no encryption.
But let’s not forget that the day-to-day, more mundane atrocities of war are just as unconscionable. A damned good reason to avoid avoidable wars in the first place.
Hell yeah. And that goes for our war at home as much as our wars abroad.
Wikileaks being run by the government
I don’t know that it is, but if WikiLeaks is going to exist, I can defo see the US government wanting to be the ones in charge of it. They would have to run it in a way that made people strongly believe they were not running it.
Then again, maybe WikiLeaks is 4 real-real.
We train our military to kill and destroy, it’s what they do. I don’t understand why people are surprised they relish the kill. If you had trained to do this and dedicated a large part of your life (as an Apache pilot certainly has) to being ready to kill for your country, then you damn well are going to be psyched when they turn you loose to do just that. It’s about time the American public got an idea what happens to the people on the business end of an Apache gunship. This is a perfect example of when you are going to kill from a mile away, you don’t know with certainty that your targets are bad guys.
I remember the day the Iraq war started with the bombing. The footage from Baghdad was playing live on TV on the trading floor. All my colleagues were cheering. It was one of the most disgusting displays I can remember. It was like they were watching a fireworks display instead of people, guilty and innocent alike, being killed. Why is it that most people cannot seem to ever put themselves in someone else’s shoes?
The video is the best summary of America’s pathetic foreign policy I’ve ever seen.
It’s easy to say you are against war (or the multiple wars we’re carrying on now). But, you set yourself up for some real shit if you say anything about not supporting the troops. There isn’t even a legit discussion possible on the matter. Well played, Fist of the State, well played.
Well, the same guys you hear on the video are coming home soon and will be given badges and guns when they join the police department. Hope you taught your kids to be obedient when they get pulled over.
Now am I to understand the rules of engagement are “it is a legitimate engagement if you get approval…and we always approve”?
None of this is new news, as there are dozens and dozens of these incidents across multiple countries since 2001. As an apathetic America refuses to ask any question of the military, you have to wonder about the new crop of chickens that will once again come home to roost. Does not bode well and I cannot imagine any atrocity or any event that will bring about any positive change.
Dead on about terrorism by Gene Healy. Every time we shit our pants over terrorism we show what a bunch of cowards and puppets we are. People like Glen Beck are too stupid to realize that they are a tool for our enemies.
Well put, MassHole. Not much is made of that and I remember asking co-workers the same thing. The “shock and awe” got a lot of defense contracts approved and killed a lot of people on the TeeVee.
Sometimes I think people forget that war is not a precise razor blade that cuts out the bad guys. That video is nothing compared to what has happened in previous wars, Dresden,the nuking of Japan, firebombing tokoyo,etc.
If you are in a war zone, you might get killed.
It is sad for the people who live there. But if you choose to go to a war zone (like journalists do), I don’t have much sympathy.
It ain’t a “death panel” because we don’t call it a “death panel”. At least we’ll get to enjoy the irony as a member of Congress is denied health care by a “panel of medical budget experts”. Right? We will won’t we?
That’s what you got out of the video, arglebargle? What was your review of Titanic? “Boat sinks”?
That video is nothing compared to what has happened in previous wars, Dresden,the nuking of Japan, firebombing tokoyo,etc.
You are getting close to a very important concept here — and a very important concept that few seem to understand or want to talk about. the concept is this:
Morally acceptable levels of collateral damage should be measured against how many soldiers are being killed. More specifically, morally acceptable levels of collateral damage should be measured against how many soldiers are being killed on the side inflicting the collateral damage.
In other words, if both sides are losing lots and lots of soldiers, then they should both be allowed to do lots of collateral damage, just so long as far more soldiers are dying than civilians. The risks of a war should stay mainly with the soldiers. In WWII, the Allies had a lot of soldiers killed (most especially Russians). That gave the Allies a unique license to do more collateral damage than should otherwise be done.
OTOH, the losses of US troops to enemy fire in Iraq is miniscule. Which means that the collateral damage the US troops do is morally repugnant.
Think about these ratios:
US soldiers killed in Pacific theatre / Japanese civilian casualties
and
US soldiers killed in Iraq / Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers in Iraq
These two numbers are why we were good then and bad now.
Here’s the source NY Times article, for those of you who don’t feel like clicking through to the crazy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/business/economy/07leonhardt.html
Obviously, doing research into which treatments actually work and which ones don’t so as to not spend money on needless medicine is just another way to slip in death panels past an unsuspecting public.
Obamacare supporters then: Talk of rationing talk is just paranoia from “death panel” types. Obamacare supporters now: “Saying no” to medical care will be most important task of those who implement the new health care system.
Rationing will happen one way or another through ability to pay, insurance companies, or the government. What we needed was to level to taxes for individual and corporate insurance and get people to have more skin in the game so that rationing would happen at a more individual level.
RE: healthcare. I am glad we passed the bill in to law so we can FINALLY find out what is in it.
Anyone have a link for David Weigel’s entire RSS feed?
It just gives a preview, not the entire article in the feed they publish.
The wikileak video doesn’t show the killing of civillians. It shows the killing of armed terrorists and while there were some newsmen mixed with them. I really don’t have much sympathy for them. They were embedded and standing right next to armed combatants in a combat zone. It’s called assumption of risk. If you stand five feet away from a group of guys carrying AK’s and RPG’s, you kind of have to expect you could get killed when the people they are trying to kill return fire. They also had to know the US uses airpower and the like to return fire. Weapons that have an area of effect.
I really don’t have much sympathy for them.
Really? NO sympathy? You can make the argument that they assumed the risk when they went over there. You can argue they were foolish to head out at night. You can argue that their deaths are justified in the grand scheme of things. But you don’t feel at least a little bad that they were killed? Shit, I know lots of stupid people but I don’t think they deserve to die.
Buddy #12, I think there’s a bit more to the moral calculus than simple division. For instance, there are questions of how closely related “collateral damage” victims are to the actual, fighting enemy( in terms of allegiance and support as well as simple geography), the question of how avoidable the collateral damage is, the question of how effective the action that involves the collateral damage is in ending current or future hostilities, and how likely it is that the threat will end regardless of whether or not the action is taken (in your example, would the Japanese have surrendered regardless of whether or not we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?).
In your specific example of World War II, it might also be worth wondering if it was easier to nuke the “yellow” people of Japan than the white people of Germany.
The problem is that people carrying AK-47s is and was common in Iraq even before we headed over there. You can’t walk down the street without doing it. Iraq is a lawless place, and people should have the right to carry a weapon to protect themselves from the thieves and brigands running around the country that are preying on the populace due to the lawlessness that now exists there.
Waste93 I hope isn’t living near any drughouses, deadbeat dads, small time pot users, etc. because I won’t feel any sympathy for him when a SWAT team kicks in his door and kills him. He shouldn’t have been in a drug zone.
Fucking disgusting.
Oh, come on Radley, you’re smarter than that. The WikiLeaks video is only horrifying if you have no idea what happens in war zones. When you have some clue what happens when large groups of humans decide to kill other large groups of humans, it’s actually pretty fantastically mundane.
Now, if we had video of the First Somme? That would be horrifying.
This was nothing. Hell, this makes perfect sense, if you can put aside your perspective of sitting in your quiet neighbourhood, at your computer, for just a minute, and think about what it would be like to have been sent thousands of miles from home, to have your job be to fly through hostile airspace day after day after day. The video looks relatively clear cut, sitting here at home or the office, with convenient arrows pointing out the children in the van, or pointing out people we now know to be journalists. But when you’re living in hostile territory, and you see a guy carrying something on a sling, your first thought isn’t “oh, that’s probably a video camera”, your first thought is “that’s probably a weapon”.
Shit, I’m sitting here at home and I know these guys are unarmed, and I still picked out that long thin object that looks like an RPG-7, before the chopper pilot called it.
People are complaining that they shot the van. Well, if you think these guys are insurgents, then the people picking them up are probably insurgents too. Because when you’re the resistance in a massively asymmetric warfare scenario, that’s the sort of thing you have to do, is go pick up your wounded and whatever weapons you can salvage, because you’re short on people and materiel.
Nothing that happens in this video is anywhere near being off the scale in terms of reasonable behaviour in a war zone. If you want shit like this to not happen, work to make sure our guys aren’t in foreign countries. But don’t expect them to be there and not have these sorts of things happen. Yes, that sucks, but it’s war, and war fucking sucks. We’ve been remarkably restrained for an invading force, if you have any sense of military history whatsoever.
I think there’s a bit more to the moral calculus than simple division. For instance, there are questions of how closely related “collateral damage” victims are to the actual, fighting enemy( in terms of allegiance and support as well as simple geography), the question of how avoidable the collateral damage is, the question of how effective the action that involves the collateral damage is in ending current or future hostilities, and how likely it is that the threat will end regardless of whether or not the action is taken (in your example, would the Japanese have surrendered regardless of whether or not we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?).
I don’t think those things should matter. here is why:
If the “enemy civilians” are intermeshed with the enemy combatants, then the invading military can still avoid killing enemy civilians. All they have to do is get right up in close so that they can separate the enemy civilians from the enemy combatants.
At this point, one may object, saying that getting in this close means that a lot more of the members of the invading army will be killed by getting in that close. However, this a feature, not a bug. Here is why:
As the invading army members are killed, they get license to do somewhat more collateral damage. So, while things get worse for the invading army, they cannot get too much worse because when they make sacrifices to save enemy civilians, they will get, in that proportion, license to do collateral damage. Or, if the army being invaded had been killing lots and lots of soldiers in the invading army for a few years, then that would be another form of moral license to inflict a substantial measure of collateral damage when the tables turned. This is basically what happened at the end of WWII
now at this point, one may object and point out that if the US had to be more mindful of the value of the lives of enemy civilians in Iraq, on an ongoing basis, such that the US had to sustain more US soldier casualties than there were Iraqi civilian casualties, then the US wouldn’t be in Iraq at all. the military would not stand for it and the American people would not stand for it.
But, of course, once again, this is a feature, not a bug. If a nation is not willing to expend its own soldiers at a rate outstripping the expenditure of enemy civilians, then that just means that the war is not just and should be ended immediately. It is only by turning our backs on sound ethics and morality that the Iraq War was allowed to happen in the first place. It is only because people continue to ignore the moral aspects that the war is continued to go on and on and on and on.
Now, if we had video of the First Somme? That would be horrifying.
It would have been better if he had said –evil– instead of “horrifying.”
First Somme: horrifying carnage
WikiLeaks Video: horrifying evil (complete with cackling villains)
They’re not unarmed. At 6:53 in the video, you can *clearly* see an AK-47 laying on the ground. The military also claims to have found an RPG there, also, when cleaning up. The camera from the Reuter’s guy was found inside the van, so it’s not the case that they mistook a tripod for an RPG.
The Apaches were called in by ground forces who were a block away from this party and being shot at. The ground forces are the ones who identified the weapons, and they likely had binoculars to see what was going on. A city block isn’t that far away.
I don’t know why the military didn’t want this video released. Honestly, it shows some armed guys getting killed from the air. This is pretty common in a war zone. I’m sorry their friends brought the kids and Reuters along when they went in for a rescue, and I don’t think the Apache should have shot at the van without knowing more, but I don’t see this as some incredible atrocity.
The worst thing is that this video is going to be perfect for the Rush Limbaugh types to trot out anytime someone mentions an atrocity. I know after watching it my only thought was “is this all you got?”
Think about these ratios:
US soldiers killed in Pacific theatre / Japanese civilian casualties
and
US soldiers killed in Iraq / Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers in Iraq
So we are basing our moral call of bad vs good on our ability to better protect soldiers in the field, and better save them once wounded?
How about, “The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated,” and
“the overall destruction expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved,”
i.e. Proportionality. It is a stickier measure than a simple ratio, but simple is often misleading.
They weren’t unarmed, the guy with the RPG is not wearing the same clothing as the two idiots picked out as cameramen. Not to mention the multiple AKs. Of course, when you realize that there were not one, but two choppers in the area along with a ground element, and that we don’t have access to the second chopper’s video, things become a bit more clear. As for the van with children, do you really think any parent not part of the insurgency is going to drive their kids into the middle of a battle and attempt to pick up wounded? Any parent who actually cared about the fate of their kid would have let the kids out at the corner to wait until AFTER they picked up the wounded and got them out of there.
The military also claims to have found an RPG there, also, when cleaning up.
Of course, they did. I bet they “found” a couple, along with a phone book with Osama’s direct line and Nick Berg’s noggin
They weren’t unarmed, the guy with the RPG is not wearing the same clothing as the two idiots picked out as cameramen.
The issue of whether an RPG is shown in the vid is complicated:
(i) the thing the US soldiers thought was an RPG was a camera.
(ii) specifically, the thing the US soldiers thought was an RPG being pointed at the helicopter was a camera being pointed down the street — it was this perceived act of pointing the RPG that triggered the clearance to massacre
(iii) there was an object that the soldiers did not seem to notice that may have been an RPG — this object was not actually operative in the decision to fire, but it appears to be there in 20-20 hindsight
(iv) however, the thing that may have been an actual RPG might also have been a tripod or walking stick — impossible to tell from the leaked version of the vid
(v) there is probably a higher res version of the video that could tell us whether the putative RPG was a tripod or an actual RPG, but the US military is sending mixed signals regarding whether they are willing to “locate” the hi res version of the video (suggesting perhaps that it was a tripod).
Buddy (#22),
I appreciate the thoughtful analysis. I don’ t know that I agree fully with it, but it certainly clarifies your original post. I think you’re dead-on about the increased casualties on the U.S. side making the war less palatable, were we to take greater care reducing casualties among the civilian population.
While the video is pretty damning, I think the Monday morning analysis is a bit overdone. I sure couldn’t recognize those dots as kids. And despite the gunner’s eagerness to kill the wounded man, he didn’t just shoot him.
But compare this to local (USA) events: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/04/judge_sickened_by_raw_brutalit.html
“Terrorism isn’t an existential threat. Always good to repeat that it’s our reaction to terrorist attacks that determines if they’re successful at spreading terror.”
No, terrorism is not an existential threat. Food is.
1,000,000 US deaths or more in the last decade due to
obesity-related disease. 0 deaths due to terrorism, post 9-11.
You be the Judge. Jihad or Jello. Which is it. Bombs or biscuits.
“In your specific example of World War II, it might also be worth wondering if it was easier to nuke the “yellow” people of Japan than the white people of Germany.”
I’m not sure if skin color made it an easier decision, but dehumanizing your enemy is an essential part of war.
Edmund,
People carrying AK’s may be common in Iraq. But what about RPG’s? Also consider you don’t see any other civilians around. Also the gunship was in the area because US troops had come under fire. The gunship was in the area looking for armed men because that is who was shooting at the troops.
There is a difference between living next to a drug dealer, etc and actually hanging around with them. The reporters conciously decided to hang out with people who get off and cutting the heads off of people, throwing acid on school girls, and bury people up to their neck so that they can throw rocks at them and kill them. This isn’t a case of a SWAT team raiding the wrong house and killing someone. In which case the SWAT people should be prosecuted. This is a case of people hanging out with mass murders, who are armed, and likely on their way to attempt to commit more murders. These terrorists make videos and post them to glorify their creed. These reporters were assisting them in doing so. They could have stayed a couple blocks away and filmed. But they decided to walk right next to them.
So yea. No real sympathy from me. Just because you may have a press pass doesn’t mean you’re bullet proof. Nor is this the first time ‘news’ crews have been killed while embedded with terrorists. Or do you think that a newscrew that is told that the person they are with is going to go kill a couple dozen people should just go along to film it? Or should they report it to the authorities? If you believe the newscrews are blameless then you must also assume those that accompany SWAT teams on some of their bone headed raids are blameless? And they are just fine when they refuse to release the video to the victims of the SWAT raid? How many times have we seen the officers hamming it up because of the camera being present? Why the double standard?
I have a lot of sympathy. It’s those journalists who voluntarily go into war zones that are the only hope we have of getting anything resembling the truth about what’s going on. In a country where the government serves at the convenience of the citizens, I would say that access to unadulterated information is vital. Government “by the people” only works when people have the information to make effective decisions, which is precisely why government works tirelessly to prevent us from getting it. And, yes, that includes our new President as well as all past
Presidents. Government, democratic or otherwise, is, and always will be, the enemy of the free flow of information (at least among its own people).
So when you imply that a journalist is asking for it when he gets injured or killed in a war zone, I cringe. If the U.S. government had a tiny fraction of the integrity it claims to have, it would be doing everything in its power to facilitate the copious flow of uncensored documentary information out of war zones and would certainly not be treating the death of a reporter so cavalierly.
When it comes to war, one journalist is more important than ten generals.
#33,
It also helps that the Germans had surrendered by the time the bombs were ready.
But yes, had the Soviets been a bit slower and the U.S. Army gotten to Berlin in, say, July 1945, it would be an interesting question whether and why we dropped the bomb there. In our history, something like 100,000 soldiers on both sides died in that battle.
that teahouse probably doesn’t even have sugar- THAT’S why I’m not going!
Yizmo,
I assume you meant no US deaths due to terrorism. There have been plenty of worldwide deaths. Beslan, London subway, Spain, India, Indoneisa, etc.
But there have also been US deaths. Jewish culture center on the west coast, and Ft Hood are two examples. Granted not to the level you are talking about. But there have been some.
Dave,
Some good points. However it also assumes the media is impartial. 99% of the media had a point of view that they show and you rarely get unaltered footage. It’s usually edited to fit their story and view.
Saying you have no sympathy for them is not the same as saying they deserved it. They made a concious decision to be where they were, walk into a combat zone, and associate and walk next to people who were legitimate targets.
It may have been preferable that they lived. However is it at all surprising that given the personal choices they made, that they did not?
the thing to watch regarding obamacare (to me) is the hmo organizations that run healthcare in the prisons. these are already in place, highly polished, and well-regarded by politicians. they’re also horrible. google ‘cms prison death’ or call a few attorneys and mention that a family member died due to their negligence… malpractice attorneys will not touch it, because ‘it’s the govt’. welcome to the new era of healthcare.
“Think about these ratios:
US soldiers killed in Pacific theatre / Japanese civilian casualties
and
US soldiers killed in Iraq / Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers in Iraq
These two numbers are why we were good then and bad now.”
That is actually a bad way to do it. Back then our soldiers knew EXACTLY who the enemy was. Japanese soldiers weren’t wearing plainclothes and firing their artillery from schoolhouses. The enemy we’re fighting in the Middle East is intentionally trying to cause civilian casualties, because they love the good press they get out of it. So a strict ratio is not correct.
And I’ve seen analysis of that wikileaks video, and really people need to stop taking it out of context. The first bunch of shooting, in my opinion, was perfectly justified. There was a battle going on all around them, and they come across this group of a dozen men hiding behind buildings, carrying RPGs and automatic weapons… you’re telling me that our troops can’t fire into that?? Now I’m unsure about the whole story behind the shooting of the vehicle that wounded the kids (not that the kids were visible before the shooting… despite the wikileaks arrows pointing to a gray blob in the passenger seat), but the first set of shootings was definitely justified.
Let’s not pretend that because a guy works for Reuters that he’s not also working for the insurgents. In fact, MOST Reuters freelancers from that area of the world work to at least some degree to help those groups get out their propaganda. They’re not as innocent as they pretend to be. And when you walk into a war zone surrounded by terrorists with weapons, what exactly do you think will happen? There’s a reason the streets were clear except for those 12 people. There was fighting going on nearby, and innocent Iraqis know to get the hell out of the way when shooting starts.
War is a terrible thing, and civilian casualties happen. That’s why we should avoid war whenever possible. But people trying to make this wikileaks video into some proof of a war crime have not yet presented enough evidence to make that case.
The terrorists won a long time ago. The current Republican party is an example of that. Fear is their number one weapon and talking point. They use fear as their argument for everything they oppose.
As for health care rationing. If any of you think that health care isn’t already rationed, then NONE of you has ever actually used your health insurance (if you have insurance). Get a debilitating disease. Have a child with a serious condition. See how fast your care is rationed.
Going to war unnecessarily is a crime, so the fact that we are even in Iraq is a war crime as far as I’m concerned.
Michael Chaney: I’m perfectly willing to accept the possibility that I’m mistaken about them being unarmed. I admit, that was the narrative I was given, so that was what I was going with. Heh. I assumed the things I saw that looked like weapons weren’t, because I’d been told there weren’t any, even when I saw things that my hindbrain clearly identified as weapons.
All of which, I think, even further demonstrates my point that we see what we think we’re going to see. And chopper pilots in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to be expecting to see weapons.
Do you have a source for your statements about the video? I’d like to be able to spread that around.
As for health care rationing. If any of you think that health care isn’t already rationed, then NONE of you has ever actually used your health insurance (if you have insurance). Get a debilitating disease. Have a child with a serious condition. See how fast your care is rationed.
And my food is “rationed” because I can’t afford 7 million steaks right now. This argument of “We can ration all we want because things are already rationed – you can’t afford everything you want!” has been a popular one from Democrats over the past year or so, but it requires a complete lack of any intelligence.
If you don’t realize that there’s a difference between “I can’t afford to purchase any more of Product A right now” and “The government won’t allow me to purchase Product A” then you deserve the totalitarian government you’re getting.
What we need are price markers. Nobody should get any health care with zero marginal cost unless they’re a complete charity case. Ordinary people should have to pay SOMETHING for everything, and that something should be proportional to price. The reason health care is so expensive in this country is because products TEND to get expensive when the marginal cost of getting more of that product is zero. If I told you that for $20 a month you could have all of the orange juice you wanted, wouldn’t you drink a hell of a lot of orange juice? Wouldn’t the price of orange juice go up?
Going to war unnecessarily is a crime, so the fact that we are even in Iraq is a war crime as far as I’m concerned.
You can “consider” it whatever you want, but there is no international court for “good reasons to go to war.” A “war crime” has become a cute word to use for things people disagree with, but in the real world it has a real meaning. We have real international courts to deal with those things. Going into a war that you and I don’t personally think was completely necessary is not a war crime. If soldiers had killed unarmed civilians for no reason other than that they thought it would be fun, then THAT would be a real war crime. The wikileaks video does not live up to a war crime.
And to the idiots like Andrew Sullivan who are breathlessly masturbating over the idea of a US war crime… how often are you guys pointing out that the people who were shot were committing a war crime just by being there. Being on a battlefield without an identifying uniform is a war crime. It increases civilian casualties because your opponent is not sure who to shoot at.
#5, Masshole
The military also trained me to make an impeccable bed. Yet I don’t “relish” checking into a hotel room and finding hospital corners in the sheets.
The military trained me to meticulously assemble my uniform. Yet I don’t “relish” a perfect Windsor knot in my tie or razor sharp creases on my shirt.
The military taught me carry 100+ pounds many miles over rough terrain. Yet I don’t “relish” carrying ten bags of groceries from the car into the kitchen.
I get it. There’s a persistent perception that military folks are the high school dropouts, the directionless, the unmotivated, the socially awkward. That they’re trained to be robots; unthinking in the face of authority, emotionless when faced with disaster. Truth is, however, that trying to distill a single personality type out of several hundred thousand folks is a fool’s errand.
The Apache pilots’ primary mission is close air support. In other words, when ground forces are faced with a (real or perceived) overwhelming obstacle the Apaches show up to help tilt the odds in their favor. What the pilot was expressing wasn’t his joy in the kill. He wasn’t “relishing” it. He was instead supremely happy to have contributed in some measure to the safety of the combat troops on the ground.
With an ever-restrictive ROE and a huge emphasis on the Law of Armed Conflict and the Law of Land Warfare it’s irresponsible to label our ground forces as a uniformly irresponsible toward civilians, bloodthirsty or even just callous. The vitriol should be reserved almost exclusively for the government that sent our forces there in the first place. Not for a video that shows our troops responding to a threat that was equal parts real and perceived.
Waste93:
Would your argument apply equally to reporters embedded with US and allied military? I mean, if they’re hanging around with people who blow up and shoot civilians pretty routinely, and who torture and murder their captives, align themselves with violent thugs and religious fanatics to keep power, etc., don’t they deserve whatever they get?
It’s my understanding that the man driving the van happened upon the wounded as he was taking his kids to their tutor. If this is the case, then it’s even more disgusting how people blame him for what happened.
Also, how is shooting on the van as it picks up the wounded not a violation of the Geneva Conventions (not that the U.S. has ever really cared about them, except when it’s convenient, but I’m just wondering)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Geneva_Convention
Is it because he didn’t have a uniform that it’s okay to shoot an unarmed person as he’s tending to the wounded that have already been considered to be the enemy?
And let’s not forget the other articles Radley linked to.
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal…
and
At first, the American-led military command in Kabul said that the two men who died were “insurgents” who had “engaged” — in other words, shot at — the forces at the scene. The initial account also said that the troops then stumbled onto the bodies of three women “tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room.
Military officials later suggested that the women — who among them had 16 children — had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have killed them.
But the military later said the men were innocent civilians shot after they went outside, armed, to investigate the presence of the forces conducting the raid. Then on Sunday night they admitted that the women were also killed during the raid.
Finally, I’ll just say that the excuses provided for these incidents from people on boards like this one are no different that the excuses you read from people who defend the police when they fuck up.
If a tactic or policy was leading to the regular deaths of American civilians, you can be sure said tactic or policy would be changed. But unfortunately, it seems that most folks think that the lives of U.S. soldiers are inherently more valuable than the lives of foreign civilians.
RE: Death Panels
I don’t remember if Krugman was a “death panels = bad” guy or a “death panels don’t exist” guy but now he is a “death panels = good” guy.
This guy retells a great story about visiting the Mt Huashan trail in terrible weather conditions:
http://www.ssqq.com/ARCHIVE/vinlin27d.htm
Nick, please explain to me how eliminating medical treatments that are either not effective or actually counterproductive and simply waste money is a “death panel”.
In the Army’s report, they concluded that what was thought to be an RPG was really a long-range photography lens; likewise, what was thought to be an AK-47, was a camera.
In the report (not credible as it comes from gov’t), they claim to have found an AK-47 and RPG at the scene. They include a pic of an AK-47 but the pic of the RPG is blacked out (redacted).
Wikileaks also released the unedited, 40 minute video.
Are you under the impression that I made up that phrase? I can assure you I did not. Krugman is the one referring to it as a “death panel” so maybe you should ask him. If it makes you feel better, I’ll refer to it as the “government board that can deny medical treatments”.
#45
Hey Scott. I made no reference to the background of military recruits nor officers. You’re projecting something you clearly have an issue with onto me. I knew guys in high school that were dumb as a rock that went into the Army and I knew ROTC Navy guys in college that were whip smart and are now aviators. I’m well aware there is a wide swath of society making up the armed forces, so go find someone else to bitch about that to.
“He was instead supremely happy to have contributed in some measure to the safety of the combat troops on the ground.” Perhaps he was. Killing people in combat is just a nasty side effect of that. Maybe he was crying on the inside.
The bottom line is he did his job, killing, in support of his comrades, who are there to kill also. I never condemned anyone in my post. I only pointed out that we shouldn’t be surprised when someone trained to kill takes pride in their job or expresses excitement about finally getting to put that training to use.
If you want to argue about my post, at least argue about what I said, not what you want to read into it.
Actually, there is. It’s called the United Nations. It was created (largely) by the United States to prevent nations from going to war for “bad reasons”. The UN did not approve the US war on Iraq, therefore the war was criminal. Not only was it an international crime, but was a crime against US Federal crime because the UN Charter is a ratified treaty and thus becomes US law under Article VI of the US Constitution.
Whether or not the US should be (or should ever have been) a part of the UN is another matter entirely.
t’s my understanding that the man driving the van happened upon the wounded as he was taking his kids to their tutor. If this is the case, then it’s even more disgusting how people blame him for what happened.
Also, how is shooting on the van as it picks up the wounded not a violation of the Geneva Conventions (not that the U.S. has ever really cared about them, except when it’s convenient, but I’m just wondering)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Geneva_Convention
Is it because he didn’t have a uniform that it’s okay to shoot an unarmed person as he’s tending to the wounded that have already been considered to be the enemy?
First of all, if you believe that van was just taking kids to the tutor I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Do you notice how many random people you saw walking down the street? How many cars just happened to drive by in the entire video? The primary reason people are freaking out about that video is because they’re viewing it as somebody living in the United States, and they just imagine that helicopter came across random people in the street and started shooting. In fact, what happened was that there was a battle happening on the next street over. The men who were shot were all coming over to take part in that battle. The US ground troops asked for air support to take those men out, which they did. When there’s a battle going on you don’t just drive your car through it when taking your kids to a tutor. You don’t stop and get involved. Terrorists in that part of the world have been known to hold their children in front of them as shields, hoping that US or Israeli troops will shoot them so they can take pictures of the bloody children to send to the Associated Press or Reuters. They also often use children on the battlefield, knowing that US and Israeli troops won’t shoot at them. They’re very useful for handing out ammunition during battle, and for planting bombs.
And let’s recall that the US only has to shoot plainclothes people because the insurgents are committing war crimes by refusing to identify themselves. They WANT us to shoot civilians. They also paint up trucks in red cross colors and use those to transport weapons and soldiers. And when US/Israeli troops are too disciplined to fire on them then they fake it and pretend a red cross truck was blown up (this happened in Israel about two years ago). The media and other people who love to hate US and Israeli troops eat those stories up whether they’re true or not.
Anybody who is calling OUR troops war criminals from that video either has no idea what a war is like, or just hates our troops so much that they’re letting that hatred cloud their judgment.
I was against the Iraq War, too. But our soldiers didn’t make the decision to go there. Don’t hate them just because you don’t like the politicians that sent them there.
Actually, there is. It’s called the United Nations. It was created (largely) by the United States to prevent nations from going to war for “bad reasons”. The UN did not approve the US war on Iraq, therefore the war was criminal. Not only was it an international crime, but was a crime against US Federal crime because the UN Charter is a ratified treaty and thus becomes US law under Article VI of the US Constitution.
Negative. The UN has no authority to judge whether one nation can go to war or not. The UN has the authority to send troops to stop a war if they don’t like it, but they have no courts that try countries for going to war for the wrong reasons.
All you have to do is think about the case if you were right. The UN will never authorize ANY war that the US gets involved in – Russia and China veto everything. They would have vetoed our involvement in WWII if they’d been around back then. Therefore, ALL wars the US gets involved in are “illegal” by that definition.
Our country has only ratified sending diplomats to the UN to vote, and to give the UN money. The UN has no authority to tell us anything, or to do anything to us, or to charge anybody from our country or our country itself with any crime.
Um…Nick, Krugman is making a joke there by referring to a commission to study the effectiveness of medical treatments as a “Death Panel”. He’s just tweaking the wingnuts a bit. Sorry you missed it.
So, just to sum up, what’s going on here is that this commission will comb through data with respect to which treatments work and which ones don’t. They’ll then recommend that treatments that don’t work not be paid for by Medicare.
If you and your doctor disagree, you’ll be free to get private insurance to pay for those treatments or pay for them yourself out of pocket.
perlhaqr – Go watch the raw video at liveleak, you can get a lot. Oddly, I didn’t see what I expected – I was a bit surprised by it. Instapundit has had a number links, also, that are worth looking at.
As for whoever mentioned the Geneva Conventions – I think we’ve been over this – what? – a million times already? That’s a set of rules of warfare between countries that deals with uniformed soldiers of those countries. The insurgents in Iraq fail to meet the requirements. The fact that the Reuters guy is dressed like the militants should be your first clue that they wear no uniforms. That’s part of the idea – blend in with the common people.
In fact, by definition the UN cannot have authority on whether we can go to war on not. The US Constitution says that war is declared by Congress. It does not say that it has to be voted on by China and Russia first. It would be giving up our sovereignty if we bought the perverse logic that a war is illegal unless China and Russia say that they’re okay with it.
I was against the Iraq War, but I don’t want China and Russia stepping in and overruling Congress and the President. I just want a better Congress and President.
First of all, if you believe that van was just taking kids to the tutor I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I don’t know what he was doing, other than tending to wounded men who were considered to be the enemy. How is firing on him in line with the Geneva Convention? And if you’re quick to believe what the military tells you, when the military has a long, long, documented history of deliberately lying, then you might not want to suggest someone else is being gullible.
In fact, what happened was that there was a battle happening on the next street over. The men who were shot were all coming over to take part in that battle.
Link, please. And see my last sentence.
But our soldiers didn’t make the decision to go there. Don’t hate them just because you don’t like the politicians that sent them there.
What makes you think that criticizing the actions of certain troops doing certain things means “hating the troops?” That’s ridiculous. Troops are human beings and individuals and should be judged as human beings and individuals. I could just as soon “hate the troops” as I could consider them to be “heroes.” Some are heroes and some are assholes. Just like the rest of us.
Radley Balko then: “Mackey didn’t spread misinformation about death panels, call anyone names, or use ad hominem attacks.”
http://www.theagitator.com/2009/08/15/whole-foods-2/
Let’s face it: you might not like Sarah Palin, but she was right about death panels. Anytime you ration healthcare (and it will be rationed if the government takes over) you have people deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. Sometimes in healthcare “doesn’t get care” means “death”. So you end up with a committee of bureaucrats who decide who lives and who dies. Chances are if you’re connected in the government, your chance of being in the “who dies” list is significantly lower.
That’s a set of rules of warfare between countries that deals with uniformed soldiers of those countries. The insurgents in Iraq fail to meet the requirements.
Okay, so, if the enemy isn’t wearing a uniform, he has no right to be treated by the rules of the Geneva Convention. That’s really convenient for people who like the idea of shooting on ambulance drivers, but it doesn’t mean it’s honorable or legitimate behavior to shoot at ambulance drivers on a “battlefield.”
MH, I’ve been here long enough to have understand that most of the regular commentors like yourself are very reasonable people. So it’s a little surprising that you choose to be offended that someone called you out for making a statement that draws a vulgar conclusion (“they relish the kill”) from a lazy premise.
Regardless, I’m sure it won’t be long until you comment on another of Radley’s posts and I can resume giving you mental high-fives… and I mean that with all sincerity.
You really thought the Gillespie Obamacare link was worth sharing? An excerpt of a hit peice that radically mischaracterizes the original NYT article. You could’ve at least linked directly to Morrissey at Hot Air.
Having now taken the time to actually read the NYT Leonhardt article, I don’t know how Morrissey sleeps at night. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made about the Obamacare law, but Morrissey’s dishonest characterization of the NYT article undermines my respect for anything else he might have to say.
To be clear, Leonhardt is advocating giving individuals (whether in Medicare or private insurance) MORE information (about the costs and outcomes of various options) and MORE choice about their own treatment as a way to reduce wasteful overconsumption. To read that and then turn around and be all, “OMG DEATH PANELS” is to abandon all logic and critical thinking in favor of whipping up blind panic.
I know you can do better, because your own original content never stoops to such lows.
Megyn Kelly of Fox, who is very hot, just called Wikileaks a left-wing website. So, everything…according to Megyn…they say is bullshit. She then followed up with a fair and balanced debate on the video.
First of all, if you believe that van was just taking kids to the tutor I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I don’t know what he was doing, other than tending to wounded men who were considered to be the enemy. How is firing on him in line with the Geneva Convention? And if you’re quick to believe what the military tells you, when the military has a long, long, documented history of deliberately lying, then you might not want to suggest someone else is being gullible.
In fact, what happened was that there was a battle happening on the next street over. The men who were shot were all coming over to take part in that battle.
Link, please. And see my last sentence.
But our soldiers didn’t make the decision to go there. Don’t hate them just because you don’t like the politicians that sent them there.
What makes you think that criticizing the actions of certain troops doing certain things means “hating the troops?” That’s ridiculous. Troops are human beings and individuals and should be judged as human beings and individuals. I could just as soon “hate the troops” as I could consider them to be “heroes.” Some are heroes and some are assholes. Just like the rest of us.
Sure the government has lied many times. But troop hating morons like Andrew Sullivan and the people promoting that video have lied much more often. You blindly believe anything they say because it fits the narrative you have in your head, of trigger happy idiot US troops who just shoot anybody they come across.
All you have to do is watch the damn video to know that there was a battle happening on the next street over and that the ground forces had called in the air support. And as I said: how many people do you see walking down the street? How many people do you see outside their homes other than the dozen men walking around with weapons towards the battle? The answer isn’t “not many” or even “just a couple” – it’s NONE. Nobody walks into a battlefield unless they want to get involved in the battle. Those 12 men had weapons (not all of them, but some of them), they were sneaking around buildings like they were getting ready to engage in a battle, and they were walking towards a battle that was at most a few blocks away. That’s about as obvious as can be. What do you expect, for US troops to land and ask for soldier identification before firing?? You want to explain that story to the parents of the US soldier who died only because you were afraid to allow our troops to fire on people walking towards war zones with weapons who were behaving in a threatening manner??
And of course there are plenty of troops who are jerks and assholes and idiots. But you are accusing them of WAR CRIMES. That’s a very serious charge with very specific criteria. The wikileaks video shows nothing of the kind.
Some people will jump at any chance to besmirch our troops. Attack our politicians all day. But let’s give the troops who daily put their lives on the line for us some courtesy and respect until we have actual proof that one of them is doing something wrong. They’re not the reason we’re over there.
Sure the government has lied many times. But troop hating morons like Andrew Sullivan and the people promoting that video have lied much more often. You blindly believe anything they say because it fits the narrative you have in your head, of trigger happy idiot US troops who just shoot anybody they come across.
I haven’t said I believe anything, except what is shown on the video. You keep making assumptions about what I believe because I think it’s wrong to shoot at ambulance drivers. And if you think that the military and the “national security” branches of the government have lied less often than loudmouth pundits, you really need to brush up on your history.
And of course there are plenty of troops who are jerks and assholes and idiots. But you are accusing them of WAR CRIMES.
See, you’re so emotional about this, you’re making stuff up. I’m not accusing anyone of anything except killing people who didn’t need to be killed. I’m not even accusing them, I’m pointing out that this is what they did.
But let’s give the troops who daily put their lives on the line for us some courtesy and respect until we have actual proof that one of them is doing something wrong.
Troops don’t deserve any more courtesy and respect than any other government workers. Obviously, whole groups of people shouldn’t be criticized for the actions of a few, but, I’m sorry, legal or not, shooting at ambulance drivers is wrong. It’s sad that it’s even an arguable point.
You keep typing my name so I know you’re replying to me but I have to wonder if you are actually reading my comments. If you are then why are you answering questions that I didn’t ask? Did something I wrote lead you believe I was unfamiliar with Krugman’s opinion of the phrase “death panel”? How about something that implied I didn’t know how “this commission” was supposed to work? I don’t understand your point. Are you defending the corporate welfare package they called health care reform?
I agree. Has nothing to do with the video, though…
Jeff W,
How does it make you feel when current and former soldiers criticize the conduct shown in that video? Are they “jumping at any opportunity to besmirch our troops”?
Calling it a war crime is an emotional overreaction, but you should probably calm down yourself.
Troops don’t deserve any more courtesy and respect than any other government workers. Obviously, whole groups of people shouldn’t be criticized for the actions of a few, but, I’m sorry, legal or not, shooting at ambulance drivers is wrong. It’s sad that it’s even an arguable point.
You’re in the 0.0001% fringe of society that believes that. If you really don’t think that troops who risk their life fighting terrorists overseas are more deserving of respect than somebody working in the back of a post office then your whole moral compass is screwed up. If your answer is “Well they shouldn’t be over there” then that’s no better, because they didn’t CHOOSE to be deployed there. They’re protecting their country and protecting their fellow US soldiers. It’s the politicians who decide where the troops go, and the politicians who deserve the scorn when bad wars are started. The troops didn’t start this war.
And which video, pray tell, have you seen that shows US troops shooting at an ambulance? I saw troops firing on terrorists who were trying to remove some of their fellow terrorists from a battlefield. I know, I know, the US troops should have landed in the middle of a battlefield and asked everybody for their terrorist ID card before shooting. But, you know, they’re lazy…
US troops will not fire on anything that says it’s an ambulance, even though there’s a 99.9% chance that any vehicle that has “ambulance” printed on it that’s driving through a battlefield in the middle east is full of healthy soldiers and weapons. The fact that you’d suggest for one moment that those troops were firing on what they thought was an honest to goodness ambulance just displays your overly emotional, irrational hatred for American troops.
Jeff W,
How does it make you feel when current and former soldiers criticize the conduct shown in that video? Are they “jumping at any opportunity to besmirch our troops”?
Calling it a war crime is an emotional overreaction, but you should probably calm down yourself.
Calling me emotional doesn’t make me emotional. I’m simply pointing out the simple fact that there are people out there who hate our troops. Some of them are here, and they are letting THEIR emotions getting the best of them, calling people war criminals who have done nothing wrong.
Sure there are troops who are criticizing some decisions in the video as incorrect decisions. But there’s a difference between an incorrect decision and a WAR CRIME. Where have you seen any current US soldier call that video a war crime? Send me a link.
“War crime” is a word thrown around in politics now like “Nazi” or “fascist”. It’s code for “I don’t agree with that.” But those words DO mean something. And it demeans people who were victims of REAL Nazis and fascists and war crimes when they’re used like this.
And anybody who isn’t pointing out that the only war crimes committed in that video were the terrorists who were taking part in a battle with weapons and without any identifying uniforms is just hopelessly biased. How does it feel to be biased toward terrorists and against US troops?
Jeff W,
Calling an insurgent a “terrorist” shows a complete lack of understanding of what those words mean. Those words do have actual meanings, you know.
Obama authorizes assassinations of American citizens.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations/index.html
Still think it’s not a totalitarian dictatorship?
If you really don’t think that troops who risk their life fighting terrorists overseas are more deserving of respect than somebody working in the back of a post office then your whole moral compass is screwed up.
It depends on the person. Celebrating soldiers as a group is no more intellectually defensible than condemning soldiers as a group.
And a vehicle that is picking up wounded “soldiers” (or “soldiers?” in this case) is working as an ambulance. You can call them “terrorists” (even though you really don’t know who they were), but it makes no difference. It was removing wounded “enemies” (or “enemies?” in this case) from a battlefield. It’s wrong to attack vehicles which are acting as ambulances and which pose no threat to the soldiers.
The fact that you’d suggest for one moment that those troops were firing on what they thought was an honest to goodness ambulance just displays your overly emotional, irrational hatred for American troops.
Why do you continue to make things up? I have no doubt that the soldiers shared your emotional, baseless feeling that anyone in that area they thought was a terrorist simply had to be a terrorist and deserved to be shot. And I suspect that they, like you, thought the vehicle wasn’t an ambulance, because it didn’t have a big sign that said, “AMBULANCE” on it.
You can keep repeating, like a child, that I hate American troops, even after I’ve said that I don’t, but that merely reflects poorly on your abilities to argue a reasoned point.
Scariest teahouse? Nah, but cute:
http://hanibal-latestnews.blogspot.com/2009/03/takasugi-treehouse-is-scariest-teahouse.html
Notice also, Jeff, that I’m not making assertions about how you feel or what you think or what kind of a person you are. I’m talking about what happened in the video and why I think it was wrong. This is how adults should strive to disagree. Give it a shot.
No Les, you are taking the worst motives that any human can have, and then assuming that those must have been the motives of the US troops. I mean, they’re US troops! They must be war criminals! Nobody on earth is more evil than them! Surely it makes sense to spend all day criticizing them other than, you know, terrorists (oh, and sorry for using that word “terrorist”, I don’t mean to upset your sensibilities… should I use “freedom fighter” from now on?).
The troops in those video have been summoned to a battle field to protect their fellow American soldiers. They see enemies with weapons preparing to engage. Their DUTY is to shoot them. They received orders to shoot. And so they did.
It’s perfectly fine to criticize our government or the wars that we’re in. I do it all the time. But when you get so emotional that you become unhinged and start throwing around outrageous accusations toward our soldiers who spend all day fighting in a war zone so that you have the freedom to smear them on the internet at home, that’s when you know that you need to step back, take a deep breath, and re-set your moral compass.
From Wikipedia article on Mount_Hua, a YouTube video and a detailed map.
How does what is going on in Iraq have anything to do with shit that I sling on the internet?
Perlhaqr’s (#21) post is so perfect, so complete, that I felt compelled to really spend some time with it. Thanks for the indulgence:
Indeed. And this is pretty much exactly what 9/11 was about. A bunch of people who’ve turned their country into a war zone with a lot of help by America and Russia (to name a few) decided to share what happens with some people sitting at their desks in New York City…who support those same wars far, far away that get a lot of people killed and shit blown up as a way of life. I have no idea why Americans made such a big deal out of it or called 9/11 “horrific”. It is simply what happens in war. 9/11 was only horrific to people who have no idea what happens in war zones…and New Yorkers just hadn’t realized they were at war.
Remember when the video came out of some muslims around the world laughing when dudes were diving out windows of WTC? Why the outrage? It happens in war, just like snickering because your buddy just drove over a body.
Naw. It set some records, but nothing really horrifying if you know anything about what happens in war and are honest about it. The Indianapolis was horrific…but it gave us a great scene in Jaws.
Which is exactly why peace-loving people don’t support wars while war-loving people do support wars.
I know what you’re saying. I mean, how many years has it been since the war in Iraq started and here we are (years later) and we still have to light up a bunch of dudes standing in broad daylight on a street corner because we’re not sure if one of them has a rifle. So, to review: Your first thought will be “That’s a weapon” which means it is OK to open fire.
Now if only someone could remind me what the fuck the mission is about.
Again, I hear ya. Those complainers are pussies. During WWII, my grandpa used to tell me he’d target medics just to increase his kill count (no he didn’t).
It reminds me of that movie quote “If they run, they’re Viet Cong. If they stand still, they’re well-disciplined Viet Cong.” Logically if you’re initial assumption of them being insurgents is incorrect it does not validate the later assumption that those picking them up are also insurgents. Let’s not even mention that the statements used to get approval to fire (AK47s, RPGs, they’re trying to recover the weapons) are incorrect. Apparently the bar is “do you THINK they have AK47s?” If so, fire. I am crazy, but I have to believe there’s something wrong with that kind of engagement rule.
It is as if you didn’t read this part: “But let’s not forget that the day-to-day, more mundane atrocities of war are just as unconscionable. A damned good reason to avoid avoidable wars in the first place.” The point being some of us EXPECT these things to happen, think they are wrong (unlike many, many Americans), and believe “the only winning move is not to play.” Thanks be to “War Games” with Matthew Broderick.
My expectations are that soldiers kill people and blow shit up and the people they kill don’t like it and the shit they blow up pisses people off. I don’t make heroes out of them for doing so. I also don’t consider them “peace-keeping forces”. And, I will not reduce their responsibility because other invading forces have behaved more brutally. That’s just silly.
Most importantly, soldiers are responsible for their actions. In spite of the often common perception that they can just kill anyone, they really can’t. This is especially true in Iraq given the specific state of command (it is NOT a battlefield). Anyone with ANY sense of military history knows that. Now, the gap between how soldiers are supposed to act (as defined by their leaders) and how well they’re held accountable is pretty big.
No Les, you are taking the worst motives that any human can have, and then assuming that those must have been the motives of the US troops. I mean, they’re US troops! They must be war criminals! Nobody on earth is more evil than them!
Please stop beating that man. He appears to be out of straw.
Well, Jeff, there’s no point in arguing with you, really, because you’re going to continue to childishly accuse me of hating the troops because I dare to criticize their actions in this video. I don’t know if the active-duty soldiers who agree with me also hate the troops.
I might just as well be arguing with young-earth creationist about geology. You have your faith and you’re sticking to it and anyone who questions it has evil motives. It’s not an exchange that has any intellectual value, so I’ll just say, Adios Amoeba!
Count me in too. For all 4 statements.
…as determined by the state instead of decided by the individual who earned the right to make that decision through accumulation of funds.
I’ve seen the list of things the state declares both “good” and “bad” and I want no part of it.
Jeff,
There are plenty of muslim soldiers who would love to suit up in uniforms and climb into an Apache and tap into satellite data on US positions and go toe-to-toe with Marines. However; they don’t have any of that shit, so they do what they do. When the US collapses, what will you (as a super-patriot) do to fend off the invading Chinese army? Put on a uniform, march out onto Main Street to get gunned down by a Chinese jet?
This whole “war crimes” is bullshit. All of war is a crime. “Crime” comes from “laws” and laws are made by the dude at the top with the biggest gun to justify whatever he does to stay at the top.
Les, I’ve actually argued with young earthers, and they’re more clear minded then you.
Although a better example would be arguing with idiot protesters (be they right wingers or left wingers) who call the President a Nazi or “worse than Hitler”. I tell them they’re morons and then they scream, “I can criticize government! How dare you tell me I can’t criticize the government, you pawn! You useful idiot!”
No. You can criticize the government and you can criticize troop tactics. But when you call somebody “worse than Hitler” because you don’t like what they did to the tax code, you’re just a freaking moron. And when you accuse troops of war crimes because you think they were too excited about protecting their fellow soldiers and following orders from their commander, you’re just as stupid. We’ve reached this level in society where we can’t just criticize people for what they do, we have to impugn their motives and ascribe the worst possible reasons for their behavior.
Ask yourself a question: How much time do you spend accusing US troops of war crimes? How much time do you spend accusing terrorists (excuse me, “freedom fighters”) of war crimes? If those numbers are remotely close then you need to re-evaluate how much you hate this country.
Jeff,
There are plenty of muslim soldiers who would love to suit up in uniforms and climb into an Apache and tap into satellite data on US positions and go toe-to-toe with Marines. However; they don’t have any of that shit, so they do what they do. When the US collapses, what will you (as a super-patriot) do to fend off the invading Chinese army? Put on a uniform, march out onto Main Street to get gunned down by a Chinese jet?
This whole “war crimes” is bullshit. All of war is a crime. “Crime” comes from “laws” and laws are made by the dude at the top with the biggest gun to justify whatever he does to stay at the top.
So it was a crime when our troops fought the Nazis? It was a crime when they defended themselves during the War of 1812 or during Pearl Harbor?
This is moral equivalency of the worst kind. No, there is nothing that could happen in my life that would cause me to use my children as a human shield. And no, there is nothing that could happen in my life that would cause me to perform terrorism.
I know that you love to sit around with your other unemployed friends smoking up and dreaming about a world without guns where we’re all at peace, man. But in the real world, if the United States laid down its arms then our enemies wouldn’t lay down theirs, they’d invade us and take us over.
Chuchundra, as a medical marijuana user, I really don’t want the federal government deciding what medicine is “needless.” And any observer of the War on Drugs would agree with me.
Jeff,
Really, as another poster stated: stop beating that man, he has no more straw!
Boyd, have you read what these morons have been typing and accusing me of? Don’t defend them – their stink will rub off on you.
People who believe in complete moral relativism, who morally equate the people who flew planes in the WTC with our soldiers in Iraq, make me sick.
Buddy Hinton:
Here are the two numbers:
~100,000 / 2,120,000 = 4.7%
4,386 / ~100,000 (Iraq Body Count) = 4.4%
I chose the IBC number in spite of your request for only Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers because you wanted all Japanese civilian casualties. Apples to apples and all…
People who believe in complete moral relativism, who morally equate the people who flew planes in the WTC with our soldiers in Iraq, make me sick.
You are going to live forever.
When you’re looking at the HCR atrocity, for example, any rational person would justifiably fear of the loss of individual freedom and property–not to mention multiplying the odds of an economic collapse. That is true regardless of how the impotent elephants tapped into it, or didn’t.
If you can only see one party as a harbinger of pants-wetting voters clamoring to junk their freedoms (and those of their unwilling neighbors) in exchange for false promises of safety, then you’re not paying attention.
The donkeys are more collectivist (ruthlessly so). Collectivism has no power without hatred and fear. Many people fall for the Democrat’s fear mongering and willingly give them permission to rip off their neighbors to build a “safety net”. You’re the perfect mark for Democrat swindlers if you’re afraid you’ll have an accident, lose your job, or that you won’t be able to compete with others. They’ve inundated their voters with class warfare propaganda about how “the man” has rigged the system. Typically, they misdirect by blaming failures of market manipulation on “deregulation” or “unrestrained greed” when they are actually the result of government interfering in the market (either directly through taxes and price fixing, or via the corporate cronies who bought political influence to protect themselves from competition, i.e. rent seeking). They also exaggerate and just make up things, like convincing old people that Republicans are coming after their Social Security checks. (That worked so well, it completely sucked any factual, rational analysis out of any discussions of reform, thus dooming future generations to a hideous calamity.)
Sure, Republicans whip up fear and hatred of violent Islamics, or immigrants, or gays. But they’re amateurs compared to the donkeys.
You’re ignoring the crucial ethical distinctions between dealing with an insurance company you chose and being forced into a government-controlled system. What you’re suggesting is like saying that your friend shouldn’t complain about being mugged, because he could have lost that money gambling.
Not that the current insurance business has any resemblance to a free market, due to the influence of Medicare on pricing, not to mention the tax-exemption of employer-provided insurance. Without that, people would have less insurance, which is a good thing. Then, more people would pay attention to the pricing signals, either of paying out of pocket for care or shopping around for an insurance company that provided for catastrophic coverage for a reasonable price.
You want to whine about pre-existing conditions not being covered? That’s nonsense. Without such clauses, I could choose not to be insured, find out I have a costly accident or disease, and then start paying a fraction of the cost by getting insurance–then dropping it once I’m healed.
This weirds me out because it’s like you have a video feed from my room. But why did you leave out that I’m nailing Selma Hayek as I type this?
Cuchundra:
“If you and your doctor disagree, you’ll be free to get private insurance to pay for those treatments or pay for them yourself out of pocket.”
But aren’t they already taking money out of my pocket to pay for medicare? You mean if the government is wrong about my medical needs I have to pay for two policies? I thought this was supposed to make my health care cheaper. I guess for people who can’t afford the treatment they need on top of paying for medicare, these really are death panels.
Has anyone here, anyone at all, voted up one of Jeff’s comments? I think he actually thinks that it’s more likely that everyone here hates the troops and supports terrorists than it is that he’s making bad arguments.
Uncle Sam always has your best interest at heart. Bureaucrats’ decisions are never tainted by political considerations. They are never lazy and certainly not corrupt.
</sarcasm>
Have you been on an island for the past year? Nancy Pelosi won’t let you go find whatever kind of insurance you want. Thanks to the pre-existing conditions and the influence of the 800-pound gorilla (government) on the private side of the market, quality private insurance will whither and die, until everyone has to run into the loving arms of Mama Pelosi and her government option.
They’ve taken away reasonable means of individuals making sensible choices, and you’re actually hyping it as a positive.
tb,
Your number for Iraqi civilians may be a bit high. I think that number was from the Lancette study that has been widely discredited. Also that number includes not only those civilians killed by US forces, but those killed by terrorists. Pull those out and the ratio is probably half that from WWII.
tb,
Also you are not comparing apples to apples as you state. The vast majority of the Japanese casualties probably were from US action. The Japanese government wasn’t in the habit of blowing up their own people trying to kill other Japanese. Jokes about Baka bombs and banzai charges aside.
Many of the terrorists in Iraq are foreign fighters. They are not sanctioned by the government. And they purposefuly target Iraqi civilians. So you do have to pull those numbers out if you want to compare apples and apples.
I think he actually thinks that it’s more likely that everyone here hates the troops and supports terrorists than it is that he’s making bad arguments.
Among his many fallacies, strawman is his most frequent. Name calling also seems to be a strong character of his arguments:
But troop hating morons like Andrew Sullivan
I tell them they’re morons and then they scream, “I can criticize government!
But when you call somebody “worse than Hitler” because you don’t like what they did to the tax code, you’re just a freaking moron.
have you read what these morons have been typing and accusing me of?
Mr. W, what exactly have these morons been typing and accusing you of? Can you please point to the places where all these morons were even talking about you? While I can’t promise I read every moronic word of this thread, it seems to me some morons were discussing the proper use of force in a military and civilian context – some morons are supporting the troops’ actions as proper, other morons saying the actions of those troops were murder, while other morons were just showing moronic despair that we are in war at all . No morons were talking about you. You were talking about those you disagreed, calling them morons, and not so much the subject at hand.
The who the what now? So you’re saying it’s a good thing that people with a pre-existing condition can’t get health insurance? It was wrong to try and change this?
Oh, and dude, there ain’t no public option. Haven’t you been paying attention?
Someone must have been doing it, because I’m reading through it for the first time and have been voting them down… and they haven’t been changing from what they were, meaning someone else had voted them up as I went down the page.
Chuchundra,
In some ways the ban on pre-existing conditions is bad. By it’s nature it raises the premiums on everyone else. It’s kind of like saying you can’t have higher premiums on someone with three DUI convictions and a half dozen accidents. Granted in that case that is the drivers on choice to put themselves in the position and many healthcare problems are not the fault of the person that suffers from them. But from the business side there is no difference between having to cover one or the other.
Define public option. You have to remember that the government is going to set up a commision of the Sec of Health will decide what is required for all incurance plans to carry. If they don’t they can’t sell insurance. So now you can adjust your deductibles and buy insurance a la carte. You aren’t going to be able to do that anymore
Going back to the insurance analogy. Now you can have a $250 deductible or pay less and get $1000 deductible. You can get full coverage or maybe just collision insurance. Depends on the state of course. What is happening now is the Government is going to say you have a $1000 deductible, must have full coverage, the guy with a clean driving record is going to pay the same as the guy with 3 DUI’s and 6 accidents. And if you don’t do this you go to jail. Now you want to place a bet on what happens to your premiums?
It’s easy to vote yourself up as many times as you want by gaming the page. We just don’t see it much on this site because the grownups who hang out here have better things to do than pretend to be popular.
It was absolutely wrong because the way you accomplish this is to use the main force of government to threaten people with fines and jail time if they don’t adopt rules which will drive them out of business.
There is a reason why there are pre-existing condition exclusions on insurance policies. It’s why you can’t sign up for home insurance when your house is ablaze.
You need a $100,000 knee surgery but you chose not to get insurance? No problem. Sign up, pay 2% of the cost of the operation, then drop your insurance.
How do you not see this as a bad thing? I know, you’re only worried about the pitiful “victim” who can’t get insurance, but really needs it, as if their need justified looting their neighbors’ bank accounts against their will.
It’s because I’m paying attention that I can see the public option coming, like a freight train. It is inevitable, because they are hamstringing the insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals. When private insurance, overburdened by these insane rules, start to fold and people are left without insurance because the market is tanking, what do you think they’ll want?
two questions:
1) Were the people walking around aware of the helicopter? Or was it far enough away that they were unconcerned – they don’t appear to be soldiers in combat worrying about being shot at.
2) If the wounded man couldn’t be killed because he didn’t have a weapon, why is it okay to shoot people trying to rescue him?
//Rationing will happen one way or another through ability to pay, insurance companies, or the government. //
By your apparent definition, ANY scarce resource will be rationed, since some people will necessarily get less than they’d like. Most people prefer to use the term “ration” to refer to means of resource allocation other than willingness to buy or sell at a given price.
The primary purpose and effect of rationing (allocating via means other than price) is to divert resources from those who value them more to those who value them less. Because of differences between short-term and long-term valuations, there are occasions when short-term rationing can enhance economic efficiency. Generally, though, rationing policies which are in place for longer than the market reaction times are purely detrimental to efficiency.
For example, suppose a doctor has time to treat Bob or Joe. If forgoing the treatment would let Bob have an extra $500 in his pocket, Bob would gladly take the $500. Joe really wants the treatment, and would rather give up $1,000 than go untreated. If the doctor treats Bob instead of Joe, such action will destroy $500 worth of wealth that could have benefited him, Bob, and Joe in some combination (e.g. Joe gives the doctor an extra $100 to treat him instead of Bob, and he pays Bob $700 to forgo treatment; the Doctor is $100 better off than he would have been treating Bob; Bob gets $700 for a treatment when he would have been willing to take $500, and Joe spends $800 on a treatment for which he would have been willing to pay $1,000).
Fundamentally, letting people decide how much they’re willing to pay for things is the fairest and least-corrupting way of allocating resources to those who value them most. Allocating treatment based on, e.g., a patient’s apparent pain level encourages people to maximize their need. Allowing people to decide what they’re willing to pay based upon their pain level encourages people to minimize their need (since those who are overly willing to pay for some things will have to sacrifice others). Returning to the simple example, if Bob and Joe can’t trade money in exchange for receiving or forgoing services, how could one tell who would benefit more from the doctor’s services?
#106,#108:
One problem with the health-care non-insurance is that the system would be like a fire-(non)-insurance company which, if your house burned down in November, could tell you on December 1 that if you wanted insurance to pay you anything for rebuilding costs incurred after January 1 you’d have to pay an extra $250,000/year to renew your policy. Of course, with a real fire insurance company, your premiums might go up if you had a fire *BUT* you could drop your coverage without affecting payouts for fires that had happened while you were insured.
In fact, it’s not like that at all, since insurance companies would not sell insurance to people with pre-existing conditions at any price.
If we add in the people with pre-existing conditions, then the rest of the risk pool is going to have to take up the slack with higher premiums,l but probably not as much as you might think. People without adequate health insurance are a burden on the system. They generally don’t get proper preventative care, when they get sick they go to the emergency room and then they often can’t pay. Those costs get passed on to the insurance companies and then on to you and me in the form of higher premiums.
But from a public policy point of view, there’s a big difference. Driving habits are completely under your control. So higher premiums for bad drivers are a way to incentivize people to drive better.
There’s no economic reason that we couldn’t exclude bad driving from the criteria that insurance companies use to determine premiums. Everyone would pay the same based on age, gender, etc. and the good drivers would subsidize bad ones to a certain extent. Many people would probably say that’s unfair.
Sadly, there’s no way to incent people to not get cancer or suffer from depression. So, in our new system, the healthy people subsidize the sick people.
You might think that’s unfair if you’re a healthy person, but the fact is that your status as a healthy person is really somewhat temporary. Just about every one of us will get sick eventually. We all get old, unless you get hit by a bus or something, so while you may be paying for the sick people today, some day the healthy people may be paying for you. That’s how insurance works.
On a lighter note, I *love* tea, but I wouldn’t make the trip to that teahouse if the tea was being served by a buck-naked Jessica Biel. Just looking at the pictures made me break out in a sweat.
Crazy talk.
No. That is how socialism or collectivism works. Insurance works much differently.
If only they could apply the same insurance logic to homeowner’s insurance. At least then it would work in my favor! Sure, I live in hurricane-prone South Florida (thankfully as far inland as one can get and not be in the Everglades), but why should I have to pay more than someone in, say, Phoenix? They should be subsidizing me, dangit!
“Nothing that happens in this video is anywhere near being off the scale in terms of reasonable behaviour in a war zone.”
Well yeah. And it’s often reasonable for a rapist or robber to kill his victim if he thinks they can identify him.
Personally, I support the war, though. To paraphrase the neocons, as long as the brave babykilling rapist vandals who willingly sign up to kill and destroy without question for a bunch of politicians are over there, we don’t have to deal with them over here. Sucks for the Iraqis, but better them than me (plus, Iraqis are better at putting these assholes in bodybags than Americans are; Americans are dumb enough to actually identify with these vermin). So: For the war, against the troops! Would that we could send all our cops to WTFistan, too.
#94,
“People who believe in complete moral relativism, who morally equate the people who flew planes in the WTC with our soldiers in Iraq, make me sick.”
Ugh. That is not moral relativism.
Listen up: Judging two different agents (on opposing sides of a conflict, from two different cultures, and acting in different circumstances, no less) by a single universal moral standard is the exact opposite of moral relativism. In fact, that could practically be a bullet point list of all the things that disqualify someone from being a relativist.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the term “insurance” going on here. Pre-existing conditions tend to not fall into the category of needing insurance. Instead, they need treatment that comes with well-known costs. There are exceptions, but based on how the term is being used in arguments here I don’t think the exceptions are the focus.
As an example, I do not file auto insurance claims to fill up my car with gasoline.
Now, I’d be happy to start a company offering health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. I’ll have to charge (most likely) very high premiums and I don’t know if many people would be interested in this product. I trust I don’t have to go into all the details on this point.
However; I know a lot of people would be interested in using the force of the state in providing expensive services to people who cannot afford them. I trust many on this site can also make a list of these interested parties. So, there it is in a nutshell.
These are the basic value props for collectivism. They are well-known to every libertarian and Austrian on the planet. Notice a value-prop is not that the overall expense of health care will go down or that quality of service will increase. But, none of these have anything to do with the primary question: Is it within the Constitution to force collectivism onto the American people? Hopefully, it is easily evident why that should be the most important question.
I say it is not. I also say collectivism cannot allocate precious resources more efficiently than a free market. And, wasted resources (especially in health care) costs lives. Mises has my proof…and it is a long, detailed one. You can debate the Constitution (and SCOTUS will come down in favor of big government), but there just isn’t any debating Mises.
Ugh. That is not moral relativism.
Listen up: Judging two different agents (on opposing sides of a conflict, from two different cultures, and acting in different circumstances, no less) by a single universal moral standard is the exact opposite of moral relativism. In fact, that could practically be a bullet point list of all the things that disqualify someone from being a relativist.
This really is like talking to a wall. It’s fine to go through life stupid, but this is beyond ordinary stupidity.
Let me explain this one more time: Equating terrorists who hold children in front of them as shields and our soldiers who risk their lives overseas to protect this country is not just factually and morally wrong — it’s sickening. Saying that it’s okay to hijack planes and fly them into buildings because, hey, if we were being invaded and we couldn’t fight back in a traditional format then we’d do it also is even more disgusting and sickening.
You have to be some outrageous level of evil to use children as human shields, or to deliberately murder civilians just to try to murder civilians. To actually put people who behave that way ABOVE our soldiers, as some semi-ambulatory ignorants who have posted here have done, is beyond believable. I knew that the real underbelly of the internet, like democraticunderground.com had people who believe this. These are the same people who believe that American Jews planned 9/11 and that George W Bush took orders from Blackwater like the president from season 5 of “24″. But to see that such ignorants have spread to a website like this is distressing and all too sad.
People who hate this country that much really need to spend some time in another country. The people who love America most are those who weren’t born here, who appreciate what it’s like – even under as shitty of a leadership as we’ve got right now.
I don’t think I’ve noticed any articles on the fact that insurance is a form of gambling– you pay in with the hopes of randomly getting a lot more than you paid, with the house skimming off its cut. Do you suppose there’s a religious exemption?
The bill, as passed, has no teeth in it. The government is not allowing itself to enforce collection of the penalties for not getting insurance. I gather that’s a taste-test to see how many people will actually buy in anyway.
“This really is like talking to a wall. It’s fine to go through life stupid, but this is beyond ordinary stupidity.”
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t; but what it definitely is not, is moral relativism.
“Let me explain this one more time: Equating terrorists who hold children in front of them as shields and our soldiers who risk their lives overseas to protect this country is not just factually and morally wrong — it’s sickening.”
For one thing, “moral equivalence” is rarely aimed at saying A is just as bad as B, as if moral discourse were some kind of competition to see who gets to be an Official Good Guy by being marginally less murderous and tyrannical than the mustachioed villain of the month. It’s aimed at figuring out what is right and wrong, and getting people who are doing wrong things to stop doing it, and getting anyone with the eyes to see and ears to hear to resist them if they won’t stop. One useful tool to that end is comparisons with cases of acknowledged rightness or wrongness.
Look: Charles Manson is not “as bad” as Eichman or Himmler were, in terms of body count or sheer perverse self-deception. But he was a bad guy for the exact same reasons they were. And anyone who would point out how bad Eichman or Himmler were as some sort of defense of Manson would just be confused and morally stunted. Bonus points if they cry “Moral relativism!” at any such comparison.
For another thing, who is comparing terrorists to people innocently protecting their homes? The closest thing I’ve seen people do is compare amateur political fighters from not-USA (who usually use terrorist tactics) with professional political fighters from the USA and its allies (who, again, usually use terrorist tactics, because politics happens to be all about winning concessions by terror, when it’s not about straight-up genocide and destruction). Nobody is comparing anybody to people who are just defending their countries because no such people are to be found. Except, maybe, the people fighting against the Russians in Chechnya. And if you ask me, those guys are assholes, too. Countries aren’t worth killing innocent people over.
“Saying that it’s okay to hijack planes and fly them into buildings because, hey, if we were being invaded and we couldn’t fight back in a traditional format then we’d do it also is even more disgusting and sickening.”
Who is saying it’s okay to hijack planes and fly them into buildings? Most such comparisons I see are all about calling attention to the injustice of US military activities by way of the comparison, which kind of presupposes that the whole hijacking thing was, well, pretty monstrous.
“You have to be some outrageous level of evil to use children as human shields, or to deliberately murder civilians just to try to murder civilians.”
I agree. Though terrorists (including soldiers) don’t generally murder civilians just to murder civilians. They murder civilians to terrorize other people into complying with some political desires of theirs. And the whole idea of soldiers being allowed to kill a few noncombatants here and there to maximize their own safety is kind of the same concept as using people as shields. . . Regardless, motives are less important than actions. If we start giving points for good intentions, then anything goes. Everyone has some Greater Good they’re fighting for. And in every case that Greater Good does not and can not justify a single murder.
“To actually put people who behave that way ABOVE our soldiers, as some semi-ambulatory ignorants who have posted here have done, is beyond believable.”
I don’t put people who act like soldiers above soldiers. I put them on the same level. But, being an American, American soldiers happen to pose a bigger threat to my freedom and safety than some Iraqi or Afghan thug, so monitoring and pointing out their misbehavior is that much more important to me.
“People who hate this country that much really need to spend some time in another country.”
The people who hate serial killers really need to spend some time around real mass murderers, like that creepy monkey guy that runs North Korea. That’ll learn ‘em to love good old serial killers, like real red-blooded Americans.
Jeff W,
You’re using words that I don’t think you have learned well enough. On top of that, you’d really benefit from some time spent studying logic (and of course logic fallacies) and debate. On top of THAT, you’d do well to end the snarking and ad hominems as it does nothing to benefit you or advance your point.
The nice thing about TA is that you can actually have a quality debate. You should try to be a part of that.
Bottom line: “How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people DOES IT TAKE, Admiral?”
I also say collectivism cannot allocate precious resources more efficiently than a free market.
But there is no such thing as a free market is there?
The people attacking me for defending this country against the moral relativists seem to be conveniently forgetting this post, for example, from Boyd Durkin:
Jeff,
There are plenty of muslim soldiers who would love to suit up in uniforms and climb into an Apache and tap into satellite data on US positions and go toe-to-toe with Marines. However; they don’t have any of that shit, so they do what they do. When the US collapses, what will you (as a super-patriot) do to fend off the invading Chinese army? Put on a uniform, march out onto Main Street to get gunned down by a Chinese jet?
This whole “war crimes” is bullshit. All of war is a crime. “Crime” comes from “laws” and laws are made by the dude at the top with the biggest gun to justify whatever he does to stay at the top.
That post is the definition of moral relativism. It says that any of us would commit the same acts of terrorism if put in the same position. It says ALL soldiers are morally equal, and all war is equally moral. There’s no difference between fighting the Nazis and flying planes into buildings. They’re all war, and all war is the same.
I don’t know how anybody can defend that. I’ve seen some crazy, crazy, CRAZY stuff written on the internet, but I’ve never seen a post like that which is serious. And I’m still not sure if Boyd Durkin is just trolling for entertainment, because I’m still not convinced anybody could really believe that.
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the term “insurance” going on here.”
Insurance is a risk pool, where people of similar risks pool them so that the risks are distributed. With HRC, the govt abolished health insurance and replaced it with collectivized cost pools that people are entitled to get into no matter what risk they bring to the table.
Oy, late to the debate, not sure if it matters now…my time in a combat zone was limited, never saw serious concern for my life. When I first saw the wikileaks video I was furious…more assholes getting trigger time. I’m still on the “asshole” part but I’ve changed my thoughts on some of it.
The first shoot was questionable, but I would have taken it too IF there was a firefight going on down the street. Sounds like there was, but it’s hard to say for sure. Begging some poor wounded bastard to pick up a weapon so you can kill him while your ground pounders are just around the corner is not only cruel and asinine but also stupid…you’re killing an intelligence source. Once the van showed up I’m lost at the ridiculousness of defending that shoot…the pilots might have honestly believed they were picking up weapons even though the wounded guy had run far away from any equipment before they gunned him down and they had been viewing him for an incredible amount of time. An available excuse does not an appropriate action make. The people picking him up never went anywhere near the equipment at the scene of the original shoot…were taking their time and great care dealing only with the wounded and it’s very obvious that’s all they’re doing…much like the original group was very nonchalantly strolling down the street (as opposed to someone moving to an engagement). The second they tried to help the wounded the Apache crew blurts out the closest ROE statement they can think of for an excuse to kill them. Is it defensible? yes. Was it correct? no. Can they claim they didn’t know for sure? Absolutely. But I don’t want someone whose sole thought at that point is finding an excuse to kill in the position they’re in. I don’t want them in law enforcement, and I don’t want them wearing a warrant officer’s uniform. They’re far away from any real combat that might be occurring, they’re in a real position to consider every action on the field, and certainly in position to direct ground forces already on their way to pick up suspected insurgents. I’ve run classified doc processing in my time and I’ve seen good and bad decisions written up. Shooting that van was cruel from a humanitarian viewpoint, unnecessary from a combat viewpoint, and flat fucking stupid from an intel viewpoint. Throughout it all it was like listening to teamspeak chatter on a Friday night with a bunch of tweens blasting each other on MW2. The laughter, idiotic banter, and crude statements are forgivable in a war zone…this wasn’t a war zone, it was a short-lived battle between poorly armed insurgents in a mildly stressful environment. War zone or no, piss-poor decision making is not to be exalted. BTW, laws of war are pretty clear that unmarked ambulances, medics, etc are fair game. It was asinine, not illegal (should be? is a different question).
and please…for the love of god…let’s drop the “death panel” BS…every medical system that has ever existed has someone somewhere deciding where resources go and cutting them off at some point. There’s no way in hell I can afford even simple procedures without insurance (my recent nasal surgery a stellar example) so the question is only who decides when the money runs out because I don’t get to make that decision unless I make more money than god. (way more than six figures, I make that)
False. Free markets exist all over the place. But governments to their best to interfere and punish anyone who doesn’t give them their cut of protection money, like a bunch of Gambinos.
Free market exchanges are often falsely put under the umbrella of the “black market”, whether or not that market involves stolen goods or violence. If you work “under the table” without paying payroll/income taxes, engage in barter or peacefully engage in drug trade, you’re not actually harming anyone, but government will lock you up (oftentimes after a violent raid in the dark of night), because you didn’t succumb to their mafia-like rules.
JeffW — I’m still waiting for you to point out where someone is justifying flying planes into buildings. There’s a big, BIG, BIG difference between guerrilla tactics in Iraq and what happened on 9/11. One being defended does not mean the other is being defended.
I’m still waiting for you to point out where someone is justifying flying planes into buildings.
He won’t point it out. He will just say that he’s amazed anyone could think “that way”, even though “that way” is not a way anyone here has vocalized. If he can mis-characterize his opponents’ positions, he can win the shouting match. He will ignore any comments asking him to justify what he’s saying with facts and will instead attack any arguments of facts by attacking the poster. It’s a common bullshit tactic for people who were given their opinions by others and know their opinions are true. Most likely, he’s used to talking in an echo chamber with other people who share his world-view without challenge.
It is the right of any company to refuse to do business with particular individuals, especially if such business isn’t profitable. Do you think people put their creativity, hard work, and capital into a company just to perform good deeds? (They can, of course, if they want to.)
I’m going to resist using expletives to tell you to basically go jump in a lake. It’s hard, but when people like you declare that “we” do something–as if “we” are all of a like mind, and that “we” actually have any moral authority to dispense with the justly acquired property of others to serve our needs.
When you deny someone their right to use their property as they see fit, on their own terms, you’ve lost any ethical grounding.
Now you’re just repeating the Pelosi lie, nearly verbatim. A sizeable percentage of people without insurance choose not to have it, because they are young and healthy and don’t need to go to the doctor. They don’t need preventative care, because they’re not middle-aged or elderly.
Those people are not a burden on anyone and it’s wrong to punish them for what they haven’t done.
The answer is to allow ERs to decide if they want to treat people who can’t or won’t pay, and not to bail them out with tax dollars if they do. Warren Buffett and all the wealthy elite entertainers who put their money into boosting the Democrats can stop doing that and donate their money, voluntarily, to hospitals and actually help people, instead of enabling those who put a gun to your head and force you to give.
“Public policy” = a group of self-proclaimed public “servants” are going to use money taken by the threat of force to “do good”.
Again, it’s not ethical to use force, instead of reason, to convince people to participate.
Except the basic fact that those insurance companies are not your property and it’s morally wrong for you to dictate to them how they must run their businesses.
Since when do you have the moral authority to “incent people”? Again, I’ll refrain from expletives, but you really deserve that sort of response.
OK, you’re really testing my resolve here. How dare you decide for healthy people that they’re not entitled to make their own economic and health decisions, because you’re convinced they will get sick?
Except you weren’t forced to buy insurance before, so if you thought that was a bad system, you could choose not to participate–or shop around for a high-deductible, catastrophic care plan where you save money, for example.
Really, you need to stop deciding for others what is good for them. Drop the collectivist “we” and “us” in your statements. Recognize the moral right of those who disagree with you to make their own decisions without being forcibly included in your “we” lies.
I said, “The answer is to allow ERs to decide if they want to treat people who can’t or won’t pay, and not to bail them out with tax dollars if they do.”
Other things the government does works against providing economically sensible treatment. They have allowed lobbyists, like the AMA, to buy government influence to pass laws and regulations on who can offer treatment (via licensing boards). That protects them from competition, at the expense of others.
For example, I don’t need to see an M.D. for many simple things. Maybe you wouldn’t feel safe seeing a nurse to provide treatment for strep throat or a sprained ankle, but it’s my right to do so, if I’m willing to do what you think is risky.
Young people who have entry-level jobs are often hurt by such regulations. If they call in sick, and their employer tells them they must have a doctor’s note, they often have no way other than going to the ER to see a doctor in a timely manner. To keep a job, they end up spending $500 (or, even worse, don’t pay the bill). However, without the nonsensical regulations and laws, one could open a clinic that offered simple diagnostic visits for $50 to see a nurse, for example, to serve people in such a dilemma, without needing to resort to long waiting lists or tax subsidies.
“That post is the definition of moral relativism.”
No. Making a moral comparison, even if it is a totally incorrect and inappropriate comparison, is not moral relativism. The point of making a moral comparison is to bring judgments across cases into coherence with each other. When someone compares DYI terrorism to professional terrorism (i.e. military action), on the question of whether terrorism is justified, the point just is that both of them are justified or neither are. If you cop out and say one is justified because it’s My Team, and the other is unjustified because it’s The Other Guys, then that is moral relativism. If you have other reasons for thinking the comparison is unfair or perverse, well, that’s a discussion to be had. But dressing substantive disagreements up as a deep, but substance-neutral, conflict (e.g. moral realism versus moral relativism) isn’t a good way even get to the real issue, let alone resolve it reasonably.
“It says that any of us would commit the same acts of terrorism if put in the same position. It says ALL soldiers are morally equal, and all war is equally moral.”
The first claim isn’t even a moral claim at all. I might predict that I would steal if I was desperate enough; that wouldn’t make it right for me to do so; it would at most be a caution in favor of proportionality and against haughty posturing (as in, “But for the grace of God . . .”) In any case I think the point of it was that we should look beyond superficial things (e.g. whether uniforms are being worn; whether howitzers and gunships, or AK-47′s and RPG’s and swords, are being used to kill people; etc.).
The second claim was more that all war is a crime or entails crimes, not necessarily that all war is equally bad (or equally good). But even if it did claim that, it wouldn’t be relativism; it would be erring on the side of excessive absolutism (if it were erring).
Alright, there are a few people who still don’t get it. I’m not going to keep explaining it, it’s not worth my time. For those that want to educate themselves they can re-read my posts enough times until it sinks in. Be sure to use a dictionary for the big words.
But I can’t waste any more of my time explaining simple concepts to people who live in some upside down world where al qaeda terrorists are morally equivalent (or even morally superior) to the US troops in World War II who defeated the Nazis.
If you’re that stupid then you should spend less time on internet message boards and more time re-evaluating if it’s worth continuing to live in a world that is clearly too complex for you. Just a hint: life is more complicated than “United States bad; Everybody else good.”
You haven’t really said much aside from calling people names. I get that you like to put down people who don’t subscribe to your world-view. Ad Hominem is the lowest form of argument.
Like Moron? And Stupid? And Terrorist?
Please don’t.
I thought you were done wasting your time. Why do your fingers keep moving?
You’re here too posting away, Mr.
Your final word before you take your ball and go home is “Kill yourself idiot.” You win the thread, sir.
“But I can’t waste any more of my time explaining simple concepts to people who live in some upside down world where al qaeda terrorists are morally equivalent (or even morally superior) to the US troops in World War II who defeated the Nazis.”
Well, allied soldiers in WWII kind did kind of, you know, deliberately kill noncombatants on a fairly horrifying scale just for terror’s sake. You know. But don’t let the facts get in your way or anything. As to whether they were “morally equivalent” to al Qaeda, see my Charles Manson vs. Eichmann and Himmler example above.