In an effort to crucify me, you are acting like CS.
I'm not trying to crucify you, dronester. "Disagreement" is not the same thing. In fact, you and I broadly agree on a great deal of the drone-attack debate. Is there a reason you're developing a martyr complex?
1. No, I did NOT bring up genocide. Xong did with message Message 19. Sheesh.
Indeed - yet he was using genocide as one of several examples of
real war crimes, and your response:
quote:
Xong writes:
But somehow these drones don't yet rise to that kind of level. They are not on the same level as genocide.
What numbers qualify for genocide Xong?
...was a clear indication that you
were in fact comparing drone strikes to genocide.
2. My examples clearly showed that it was the numbers that I was arguing about.
Your examples and
words clearly showed that you were trying to ask
What numbers qualify for genocide
Were you being intellectually dishonest
then, when you were trying to compare some thousands of not-at-all-related-to-genocide civilian deaths to genocide through numbers, or are you being intellectually dishonest
now, when you are furiously backpedaling from a clearly expressed position?
3. I used the The Mai Lai MASSACRE as a counter to the drone attacks, not the The Mai Lai GENOCIDE.
You used it in conjunction with the words
What numbers qualify for genocide
which somewhat alters the context.
4. Yes, in addition to your example of willfully killing 12 innocents,
It's interesting that you
mention my example without actually
addressing it. Why is that?
If you had to choose between 12 deaths and a thousand, which would you choose? If you take no action, a thousand people
will die. This question is not rhetorical. Which do you choose?
I am also aware that you would purposely kill hundreds of thousands of civilians by atomic bombs in merely WISHFUL HOPES of saving some american troops.
Immediately stop misrepresenting my position on the use of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII. Aside from being wholly off-topic in this discussion and a pure red herring, you aren't even accurate representing my reasons for supporting their use, and you similarly ignore the major caveat in my support.
The
real-world choice at the end of WWII was between an all-out invasion of the Japanese mainland at the cost of
not only many thousands of American troops but
also many hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers
and civilians, who were expected (as demonstrated in several previous battles on Japanese islands) to take up even farm tools as weapons against troops in the case of an invasion. The projections at the time predicted
millions of Japanese dead in order to successfully invade and capture Japan, more than an
order of magnitude greater than the projected death toll of using nuclear weapons. That death toll happened to be around double or triple of what was projected (due to non-use of bomb shelters; the Japanese didn't even sound the air raid signal, which would have saved tens of thousands of lives), but one cannot fault a decision on the ethical grounds that the people making the decision
failed to be psychic.
I also voice such support with the major caveat that what
should have happened is that the Japanese and Allied leaders should have engaged in additional diplomatic exchange. While some members of the Japanese ruling council were in fact warmongers and
wanted to force the Allies to essentially massacre all of Japan (literally; those individuals wanted to
defy the Emperor's surrender and would have done so if they had not failed to prevent the Emperor's address from being broadcast over radio to the populace), much of the council was in fact ready for peace...the Allies, for their part, should have continued talks beyond the words "unconditional surrender."
But again, it is absurd to fault those who made the decision for not being psychic. Hindsight allows us to see a potential solution that
nobody at the time actually thought was viable, and their position was
reasonable given what they were individually able to know at the time.
I'll note that my position is not at all based exclusively on the projected deaths of
American soldiers as you so dishonestly say, and that you leave out the
fact that the alternative to nuclear weaponry was reasonably projected to cause orders of magnitude more death.
I think you are horribly wrong for both examples.
Curiously, I think you're horribly dishonest.
After ten years of your failed strategy in Afghanistan
MY failed strategy?
Someone seems to have forgotten who he's speaking to. I agree that
some degree of military action in Afghanistan would have been appropriate, but I strongly believe that the full invasion and occupation that continues to this day was wrongheaded and shortsighted from the beginning.
you should embrace the inarguable conclusion that you are utterly wrong.
You have a remarkable gift, dronester, for attempting to alienate your otherwise-allies through the use of dishonest misrepresentation of their own positions and your own hyperventilating hyperbole. It's rare that I see someone I
generally agree with fail so utterly to be convincing that you have actually made me want to re-evaluate any position upon which I agree with you - I now see you as a
broken clock, and any topic upon which we agree is more likely to be based on you occasionally reaching the right answer through irrational reasoning than actually having a firm foundation in either sanity, rationality, or honesty.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
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