[Bradley Manning] ought to be regarded as a hero... Like the trade agreement, the public has a right to know what's being done to them by their so-called elected representatives, but there's a principle that he's violating, namely that power has to be protected from scrutiny...that's the principle of every dictatorship ... you can hear it from the high priests of government. Bradley Manning is violating that. -- Noam Chomsky
What else is there to say? And I mean "say", not "squirm".
Do you have any other nice interviews with Chomsky like that? I find it very hard (as a non-native speaker) to hear and understand what he says in interviews, so text is best for me...
Yeah, let's all tell google that we're visiting some subversive website. Then when the NSA scoops up the most recent dump of activity, they can correlate all the Verizon and AT&T IP addresses, and the Google cookies, and compile their... "list" of subversive Hacker News readers, right?
Something they wouldn't be able to capture via normal streams, since the HTTPS connection to commondreams.org masks the referrer info so that it can't be sniffed from any plaintext HTTP GETS.
Here's a video interview with Chomsky linked to within the OP's link
("What do Takism Square, Google Glass, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NSA data gathering have in common? Find out in this interview with Noam Chomsky.")
Indeed. Given Google's insatiable thirst for data, and the NSA's apparent open-door policy with regards to other people's data, will Google glass essentially be seen as a way for the NSA and chums to watch what everyone is doing, all the time? How do you feel about someone in your workplace/social space/anywhere recording you on behalf of the NSA?
Hopefully people will put their money where their mouths are, though that doesn't extend beyond Glass and into Gmail use, Skype, Microsoft, etc. because we generally use them without paying.
There is a practical way to reduce terrorism and make the US and the world safer that won't cost a dime and doesn't require compromises on civil liberties.
Stop starting and getting involved in foreign wars, stop supporting the abusive policies of Israel, and stop supporting corrupt and abusive governments around the world.
You don't hear much about that option on TV, but it's by far the simplest and best course for all concerned save a handful of greedy and duplicitous folks at the top.
It may sound crazy to you, but yes you do actually stand a greater chance of making peace with enemies and therefore reducing attacks from them if you stop shooting at them and bombing them and ask them kindly why they are flying planes into your buildings and then make a good faith effort to address those issues.
Some people when oppressed, rightly or wrongly, feel that they are powerless to resolve their grievances, real or perceived, within the social norms around them, lash out. Some are better at lashing out than others.
The most dangerous person in the room is the one with nothing to lose. One way, quite possibly not the only way, to stop them being so dangerous is to give them something of worth, then they'll have something to lose. Social security, good healthcare, foreign aid, and taxes do serve some purpose for the greater good.
There is justice and pragmatism, the best solutions solve both.
You're right, it sounds completely crazy to me. Nobody really bombed or shot Timothy McVeigh. Or the RAF. Or the Brigate Rosse. They did all their shooting and bombing all by themselves, at the cost of hundreds upon hundreds of innocent lives. It's not that the questions of causes or morality of our own actions are illegitimate - they aren't. The idea that we're going to practically stop amoral nutjobs by just being ever so much nicer seems based on nothing but wishful thinking, though.
Evolving beyond being amoral nutjobs ourselves is the first step to eliminating amoral nutjobbery elsewhere. There's a lot of extra work that needs to be done on top of that, such as good-faith social programs to help their society recover, etc.
I think the point is that you can't stop the amoral nutjobs (awesome term BTW!) by killing them (and their family and friends) either, because that just embitters another generation.
Your examples actually illustrate this perfectly - Timothy McVeigh justified his murdering in revenge for the murdering done at Waco; and both the RAF and Brigate Rosse were driven partly by the injustice of former Nazis (those nutjobs really took their amorality seriously!) returning to power.
I accept that there are psychopaths who murder for no reason, but luckily for our species they are very rare. All the killing discussed above was triggered by severe injustice including murder - revenge. Our civilised societies are practically defined by their rejection of revenge as a reason for anything, replacing it with either rehabilitation or prevention. "An eye for an eye" is the mark of a primitive society (or person) that doesn't understand positive feedback loops.
Then you look at other options. But in this case a good faith effort could resolve the problem very quickly. The people attacking the US aren't really asking for that much. They just want the US to stop sponsoring violence and tyranny in their region.
This.. This is the problem. Yes of course Americans are not safe and are under threat. When you are an occupying force you are bound to find a few enemies.
Perhaps, but what if those billions were spend on safer cars or medical advancement? Surely those billions could save a whole lot more lives than by terrorizing the rest of the world.
From the perspective of people who peddle weapons and fear to those who have to pay for the weapons and act on the fear, yes. That is exactly the correct response.
Well, the US has had 3k or so killed in the past 15 years. In response it killed hundreds of thousands and caused widespread devastation and misery in several foreign wars.
These wars created multiple large transnational extremist anti-US movements that now have advanced military equipment, are skilled veterans of war, and are spreading their influence to neighboring countries.
Really? You had to drag Israel into that? You're aware that the only "abuse" Arabs are actually angry about is the fact that Israel exists at all? I'm an Arab so let me tell you, any stupidity that is committed in the West Bank is overblown by Arabs to delegitimate Israel which is part of Arabs quest to get rid of Israel altogether. They consider the whole of Israel to be occupied territory, this is why whether Israel keeps on building in the West Bank or not is meaningless for peace. They would have to stop building everywhere in Israel, pack up and go somewhere else to end the conflict. This is why many in Israel see the West Bank settlement as a secondary issue when it comes to bringing real peace although they are aware that it's bad for their image...
danenania's point remains valid if the Israel part is omitted.
I grew up under a military dictatorship endorsed by the US and I can tell you there are still lots of people very resentful of that support. Reducing foreign intervention is the cheapest way to demotivate potential terrorists.
Unfortunately, doing so now would risk making them believe they won something.
That would only demotivate terrorists against us. They still have plenty of other targets. I don't see how isolationism for the states will actually make the world better. We tried it before, it didn't work.
As long as they are internal affairs, it's their problem. If the problems cross borders, there are international organizations with proper authority do deal with them.
When one country decides to make a military intervention, the international bodies are further weakened.
What international police force with proper authority are you talking about? NATO? The UN? I think most of the world is actually against a world-wide police force with any real authority.
> international organizations with proper authority do deal with them.
Are you kidding? The UN has no authority unless given to it by the country involved, which of course they won't. (Example: Syria and chemical weapons.)
It's cute how they tried to fix it by starting a new council to replace it (instead of simply fixing it) - and the new council appears to be "the UN council to criticize Israel and ignore everyone else".
The UN is a joke. They are not weakened by country's military intervention, they are weakened because they have no legitimacy in anyone's eyes because of their own policies.
> danenania's point remains valid if the Israel part is omitted.
You mean "only if". The Muslims who hate Jews (and via extension Israel), are happy to hate America without any help from America's policies.
It makes no difference what Israel does - they will hate Jews and Israel without reservations and without end. The only thing Israel can do is make them scared, which will hopefully keep their hate in theory and not in practice.
Danenania: Are you really naive enough to believe that if Israel makes "peace", and/or gives up land it will help? Israel made peace with Egypt, and gave up tons of land - but the people there still hate Israel and wish for its destruction.
Israel made peace with Jordan and gave up land and water - but the people of Jordan still hate Israel.
You really think it's America's policies that cause the hate? It's not. It's what America stands for - primarily freedom of religion, and the acceptance of secularism.
Regardless of one's perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the fact remains that providing extensive military support to a nation that is a symbol of oppression in the region greatly increases the risk of terrorist attacks against the US. Save for a tiny elite, there is no corresponding benefit for the American people that justifies this risk, while the costs are many.
I am aware of how jealous the Arabs are of Israel, and how they wish they could also have those freedoms. It's of course part of the reason that the Arab administrations demonize Israel so much - so that their own people don't complain about their own countries.
But that's exactly why the US should support them so strongly, this is what America was founded on. Even if there is no benefit.
> greatly increases the risk of terrorist attacks against the US.
No it doesn't. America is also a symbol of freedom, just like Israel and they hate America just fine, even without mentioning Israel.
But you are wrong about the benefits though, just for the consumer an enormous amount of technology comes out of Israel. And for America to turn away from Israel would be the same as renouncing the principles America was founded on. I hope to never see a day when America doesn't at least try to uphold these values (even if the actions aren't what they should, at least the ideal is there).
I'm sure you've head the saying about trading security for liberty. And the same is true for ideals. Sometimes you have to fight for your ideals. Even if there is a cost. The downsides of having no ideals at all is just not worth it.
There needs to be more good faith from both sides; until then it will be quite a mess. As a stable functioning democracy, the Israeli people really should decide to stop the settlements even though that won't bring about peace: it does them no real good while merely agitating an already volatile situation. The Palestinians (including Gaza and Hezbollah) should also develop their government into something not dysfunctional, and should recognize Israel's right to exist. Then we could move on to the next step, but they must start with baby steps.
America can't just exit from this or other worldwide situation. Isolationism will only make things worse. Ya, we do make mistakes and we could do better, but just disappearing won't bring about any meaningful peace. We can argue all day if its worse for civilians to be killed by drones or the Taliban, but they are still dead.
The US can't prevent regional conflicts. Getting involved just helps them to spiral out of control and simultaneously puts America's own neck on the line.
If there were actually a situation where a so-called adversary presented a legitimate threat to the US if left alone, it might be a different debate, but that hasn't been the case for many years. None of the states that the US is currently fighting in could hope to threaten it militarily in their wildest dreams. Iran, for example, which we are supposed to be so frightened of, has 1/45th the gdp and roughy 1/100th the military budget of the US.
The US could cut its military budget by half and go into full defensive mode and still be completely untouchable by state actors, while removing the primary motivation for non-state attacks. True, the taliban might still kill people, just as plenty of regimes that the US supports like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain kill those it opposes. The US can't fix the world. It has enough problems of its own to worry about.
The US could cut its military budget by more than half and not have to even become less offensive. It might need to stop building weapon systems to win a war against the Soviet Union though.
Setting aside the tanks that are built solely to keep congressmen in office, consider US carrier groups — around which the entire US surface fleet is built — it's an open scandal that military exercises with allies frequently result in US carriers being taken out by diesel subs and cruise missiles, but rather than realize that the carrier group is now just as obsolete as the battleship flotilla, the rules of the game get changed. It's like the Japanese planning for Midway all over again (where naval cadets did exactly what the US did and annihilated the Japanese forces so they changed the rules and ran the simulation again).
The killer robots are inevitable, at least they are an improvement on the more imprecise F-22 airstrikes (we now have precision to make real mistakes, before mistakes were inevitable because we lacked precision). On the other hand, we are just a few steps away from SkyNet.
But the issue is should we be in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq at all, or just let those countries go to hell by themselves? Civilians die either way given that peace is elusive. If you visit these countries, perhaps your perspectives shifts from "we should get out" to "we should at least try and do something!" Morality goes both ways.
Sure, but "at least try and do something" seems to always result in the US military killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
I'm not saying isolationism/non-interventionism is the best way, but the US doesn't seem to be able to follow up "let's do something" with anything other than a big remote-controlled radar-invisible flying death party.
You are misusing "isolationism" here. The word you are looking for is "non-interventionism". What OP was suggesting was that the US should "stop supporting the abusive policies of Israel", not stop all trade, travel, etc.
Favorite quote: "Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists maybe in history."
"Suppose you are walking down the street and you don't know whether two minutes from now the guy across the street and everything around him is going to be blown away by a sudden explosion run by somebody a couple thousand miles away. You're terrorized. And in fact villages, regions, countries are terrorized by these [drone] operations."
OK, I can understand Chomsky's argument that drone strikes should be classed as a terrorist operations. But the 'biggest in history'? What about the fire-bombing of Tokyo, the rape of Nankin or the genocide of Cambodia?
Just consider the time spent on TV, the time by pundits spent rationalizing it, the time spent in secret discussions with allies, the INCREDIBLY HUGE budgets, the vast network of stationed weapons and personel, the vast network of snoops, the ripple effect it had and has on authoritative regimes all over the world ("living in a post-9/11 world" you say? cut me a piece of that!), and the vulture corporations getting in on all that. And then there is the fact that with the current trajectory it will go on forever, as we've been proudly been told from day one.
Though I wouldn't call that "Obama's campaign", he did expand it, and he is currently responsible for it continuing while he wards of clouds that could rain on the parade.
Terror and murder count don't go hand in hand. They are rather orthogonal.
There were murdering regimes that murdered without sowing too much terror through the population because they were good at hiding and squashing the news. As people disappeared news did spread but it was always rumors that could be dismissed.
Then there is terror -- a single death using a particular technique or weapon withe the particular amount of publicity could be very terrorizing. It is is always attacks on small-town America. Imagine this news story "Cuban drone killed a young family in the small town Idaho because it was believe to be the hiding spot of (Luis Posada Carriles)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles], a known terrorist sheltered and protected by the US government"
Ok, so one family killed. Now imagine the terror, the talking heads ("experts") on TV, the news channels, the presidential address, declarations of war, additional security checks etc etc.
It's a fact that humans are products of their environment[1,2]. This has been known for quite some time. However the degree to which we are products of our environment has always been a hot topic of discussion. On one side we have a status quo in the medical profession that insist we are pre determined for disease both physically and mentally. On the other side we have social scientists that say we are solely products of our environment and genetics only gives us predispositions to things like mental illness or obesity and so on.
I tend to agree with the social scientists. We have triggers; genetically. They are either pulled or left alone. The environment in which you live is the catalyst for that type of action.
Going off of that I'll point to Michel Foucault, a mid-twentieth century philosopher and social critic. The bulk of his work focuses on dissecting the ideas of power and knowledge. He understands these two entities to be synonymous with each other, which lays the foundation for his critique of governmental and institutional power. Through his critiques, Foucault positions himself as a post-modernist philosopher interested in the societal controls of modernity. He believes power, and therefore knowledge is not absolute; it is defined, enforced and accepted within the society in which it’s institutionalized. This of course is the opposite of modernism, which exercises the belief that science and reason possess the knowledge for an ultimate truth. Stemming from the industrial revolution, modernity reigned supreme through much of the twentieth century and arguably still does today.
Without the willingness to accept that our environment effects so much of what we do we will never understand the means in which to change it. The ideas of violence and power are not born inside of our minds. They grow, over time, from our perceptions. Forcing an ideology or a standard on an environment will not change the behavior of the individuals occupying it; it will only enforce the causation of negative action.
The quote in the linked article from the bit about Google glass was a bit short, so I transcribed it, corrections are welcome (it starts at 11:07).
--
Meanwhile, in the course of this "Terrorist Generation" campaign, for Obama to claim, "you know, I'm really worried about terrorists, so I have to to read -- well, they claim they don't read it -- I have to get information about your email, where you are, who you're talking to, what you have on Facebook; I've gotta put that on my big database"... actually, we're moving into a world which was described, pretty accurately I think, by one of the founders of Google... I don't know if you followed the stories about Google Glass?
Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which have a small computer on them. So you can be on the internet 24 hours a day, just what you want. It's a way of destroying people, but quite apart from that, this little device has a camera, and presumably, if it doesn't already it will soon have a recorder, which means that everything that's going on around you, goes up on the internet.
Some reporter asked Erich Schmidt, didn't he think this was an invasion of privacy, and his answer was exactly right, comes right out of the Obama administration, he said: "If you're doing anything that you don't want to be on the internet, you shouldn't be doing it." This is a dream that Orwell couldn't have concocted.
We're moving into it, and it's not the only case. If you read the technical journals, there's more stuff coming along. So, for example, right now there are corporations that are concerned about using computers with components made in China, because it's technically possible to build into the hardware devices which will record what the computer is doing and send it to those bad guys. well, the articles don't point out that if the Chinese can do it, we can do it better, and probably are, so it may end up in Obama's database the next time you hit the computer.
--
I guess you can scoff about the notion that computer would (need to) have a "recorder", or point out that Glass doesn't record without the user's say so, but still.. considering his age and that it's not his field, that guy is paying more attention to things than many of those geeking out about them. And that Schmidt quote is a smug, idiotic statement; a threat, or should I say, a dare. If he wanted to make a difference and be remembered well, other choices would have been more appropriate for him. Oh well.
If you're looking for a simple way to reduce support for the Taliban and start bringing stability to Pakistan and Afghanistan, look no further than grounding the drones.
Vietnam taught U.S. strategists that wars of attrition simply don't work. You'll never kill all of the enemy because every attack creates more enemies than it destroys. In this sense, drone attacks do exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to do. U.S. drones do more for General Atomics than they do for U.S. citizens! Every shot fired generates future business for weapons manufacturers.
The use of drones also sets an ugly precedent. If the U.S. can kill anyone they want, anywhere they want, so too can China or Russia or any other country. Sooner or later that's going to be U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. There will be moral outrage, but no moral high-ground to stand on and no recourse. Just terror.
>Vietnam taught U.S. strategists that wars of attrition simply don't work. You'll never kill all of the enemy because every attack creates more enemies than it destroys.
There is an absolutely amazing Rumsfield moment where he acknowledges this, but draws the conclusion that the solution is to kill them more quickly!
> U.S. drones do more for General Atomics than they do for U.S. citizens!
Understandably nobody wants to think their own country, that they have been taught to love and idolize, would deliberately target and kill goat herders without too much evidence. "Well of course these are all accidents" everyone replies with a unified voice. But are they? How do we know? There is no transcript, court record or transparency in the process.
I believe there is not a single shred of _written down_ evidence that shows targeting of innocent civilians to be taking place. But large bureaucratic systems always evolve hidden channels and vocabulary (using double meaning words) to exactly indicate what is do be done while also allowing for plausible deniability.
(For example think about at-will employment states and racial or sexual discrimination. If anyone can be fired for any reason any time, but oh, one cannot discriminate, companies evolve language such as "personality fit", "restructuring", "not a team player" to indicate internally what they mean when they want to fire someone whose race they don't like).
I believe there is such a language / channel (hell, there maybe even open discussions, wouldn't be surprised) between contractors like drone builders, NSA, CIA and other government agencies that signal and encourage targeting of civilians. Why? Because it is simply too profitable. Every new terrorist cell, every IED, every phone call captured that mentions "revenge", "jihad" or Arabic version of "the motherfuckers killed my 13 year son when he was out with the goats in the mountain" is linked to money in the bank for everyone involved -- drone manufacturers, drone maintainers, logistics, all the hire-ups, government departments, pilots. Everyone in the chain gets paid the more severe and persistent the threat gets.
71 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadWhat else is there to say? And I mean "say", not "squirm".
I liked the discussion of proto-humans, and comparisons to other species. Helps put our violence and self-destructiveness into perspective for me.
Something they wouldn't be able to capture via normal streams, since the HTTPS connection to commondreams.org masks the referrer info so that it can't be sniffed from any plaintext HTTP GETS.
Hey, I wonder why the site's down?
("What do Takism Square, Google Glass, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NSA data gathering have in common? Find out in this interview with Noam Chomsky.")
http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals-...
Stop starting and getting involved in foreign wars, stop supporting the abusive policies of Israel, and stop supporting corrupt and abusive governments around the world.
You don't hear much about that option on TV, but it's by far the simplest and best course for all concerned save a handful of greedy and duplicitous folks at the top.
The most dangerous person in the room is the one with nothing to lose. One way, quite possibly not the only way, to stop them being so dangerous is to give them something of worth, then they'll have something to lose. Social security, good healthcare, foreign aid, and taxes do serve some purpose for the greater good.
There is justice and pragmatism, the best solutions solve both.
US is a terrorizing and terror generating machine.
Just saying that the problem is complex. I don't live in US and my country was attacked twice, a hundred people killed, in the last 20 years.
These wars created multiple large transnational extremist anti-US movements that now have advanced military equipment, are skilled veterans of war, and are spreading their influence to neighboring countries.
Not a great trade.
Imagine if a crazy guy in my country uses our nuclear capabilities as an answer? can I justify them?
Remember that Salman Rushdie didn't invade any country.
Really? You had to drag Israel into that? You're aware that the only "abuse" Arabs are actually angry about is the fact that Israel exists at all? I'm an Arab so let me tell you, any stupidity that is committed in the West Bank is overblown by Arabs to delegitimate Israel which is part of Arabs quest to get rid of Israel altogether. They consider the whole of Israel to be occupied territory, this is why whether Israel keeps on building in the West Bank or not is meaningless for peace. They would have to stop building everywhere in Israel, pack up and go somewhere else to end the conflict. This is why many in Israel see the West Bank settlement as a secondary issue when it comes to bringing real peace although they are aware that it's bad for their image...
I grew up under a military dictatorship endorsed by the US and I can tell you there are still lots of people very resentful of that support. Reducing foreign intervention is the cheapest way to demotivate potential terrorists.
Unfortunately, doing so now would risk making them believe they won something.
As long as they are internal affairs, it's their problem. If the problems cross borders, there are international organizations with proper authority do deal with them.
When one country decides to make a military intervention, the international bodies are further weakened.
Are you kidding? The UN has no authority unless given to it by the country involved, which of course they won't. (Example: Syria and chemical weapons.)
Plus the UN lost most of it's moral authority by allowing jokes like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Commission_on_Hu... to exist for years.
It's cute how they tried to fix it by starting a new council to replace it (instead of simply fixing it) - and the new council appears to be "the UN council to criticize Israel and ignore everyone else".
The UN is a joke. They are not weakened by country's military intervention, they are weakened because they have no legitimacy in anyone's eyes because of their own policies.
You mean "only if". The Muslims who hate Jews (and via extension Israel), are happy to hate America without any help from America's policies.
It makes no difference what Israel does - they will hate Jews and Israel without reservations and without end. The only thing Israel can do is make them scared, which will hopefully keep their hate in theory and not in practice.
Danenania: Are you really naive enough to believe that if Israel makes "peace", and/or gives up land it will help? Israel made peace with Egypt, and gave up tons of land - but the people there still hate Israel and wish for its destruction.
Israel made peace with Jordan and gave up land and water - but the people of Jordan still hate Israel.
You really think it's America's policies that cause the hate? It's not. It's what America stands for - primarily freedom of religion, and the acceptance of secularism.
I am aware of how jealous the Arabs are of Israel, and how they wish they could also have those freedoms. It's of course part of the reason that the Arab administrations demonize Israel so much - so that their own people don't complain about their own countries.
But that's exactly why the US should support them so strongly, this is what America was founded on. Even if there is no benefit.
> greatly increases the risk of terrorist attacks against the US.
No it doesn't. America is also a symbol of freedom, just like Israel and they hate America just fine, even without mentioning Israel.
But you are wrong about the benefits though, just for the consumer an enormous amount of technology comes out of Israel. And for America to turn away from Israel would be the same as renouncing the principles America was founded on. I hope to never see a day when America doesn't at least try to uphold these values (even if the actions aren't what they should, at least the ideal is there).
I'm sure you've head the saying about trading security for liberty. And the same is true for ideals. Sometimes you have to fight for your ideals. Even if there is a cost. The downsides of having no ideals at all is just not worth it.
America can't just exit from this or other worldwide situation. Isolationism will only make things worse. Ya, we do make mistakes and we could do better, but just disappearing won't bring about any meaningful peace. We can argue all day if its worse for civilians to be killed by drones or the Taliban, but they are still dead.
If there were actually a situation where a so-called adversary presented a legitimate threat to the US if left alone, it might be a different debate, but that hasn't been the case for many years. None of the states that the US is currently fighting in could hope to threaten it militarily in their wildest dreams. Iran, for example, which we are supposed to be so frightened of, has 1/45th the gdp and roughy 1/100th the military budget of the US.
The US could cut its military budget by half and go into full defensive mode and still be completely untouchable by state actors, while removing the primary motivation for non-state attacks. True, the taliban might still kill people, just as plenty of regimes that the US supports like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain kill those it opposes. The US can't fix the world. It has enough problems of its own to worry about.
Setting aside the tanks that are built solely to keep congressmen in office, consider US carrier groups — around which the entire US surface fleet is built — it's an open scandal that military exercises with allies frequently result in US carriers being taken out by diesel subs and cruise missiles, but rather than realize that the carrier group is now just as obsolete as the battleship flotilla, the rules of the game get changed. It's like the Japanese planning for Midway all over again (where naval cadets did exactly what the US did and annihilated the Japanese forces so they changed the rules and ran the simulation again).
Except in one situation it's not "us" killing them. Or our tax dollars paying for the flying killer robots that do the job.
But the issue is should we be in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq at all, or just let those countries go to hell by themselves? Civilians die either way given that peace is elusive. If you visit these countries, perhaps your perspectives shifts from "we should get out" to "we should at least try and do something!" Morality goes both ways.
I'm not saying isolationism/non-interventionism is the best way, but the US doesn't seem to be able to follow up "let's do something" with anything other than a big remote-controlled radar-invisible flying death party.
How about no.
You are misusing "isolationism" here. The word you are looking for is "non-interventionism". What OP was suggesting was that the US should "stop supporting the abusive policies of Israel", not stop all trade, travel, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism
Been seeing this a lot around here lately...Could be the same user, but I've seen it happening enough that I bet it's not.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1gxehl/chomsky_sp...
"Suppose you are walking down the street and you don't know whether two minutes from now the guy across the street and everything around him is going to be blown away by a sudden explosion run by somebody a couple thousand miles away. You're terrorized. And in fact villages, regions, countries are terrorized by these [drone] operations."
Just consider the time spent on TV, the time by pundits spent rationalizing it, the time spent in secret discussions with allies, the INCREDIBLY HUGE budgets, the vast network of stationed weapons and personel, the vast network of snoops, the ripple effect it had and has on authoritative regimes all over the world ("living in a post-9/11 world" you say? cut me a piece of that!), and the vulture corporations getting in on all that. And then there is the fact that with the current trajectory it will go on forever, as we've been proudly been told from day one.
Though I wouldn't call that "Obama's campaign", he did expand it, and he is currently responsible for it continuing while he wards of clouds that could rain on the parade.
There were murdering regimes that murdered without sowing too much terror through the population because they were good at hiding and squashing the news. As people disappeared news did spread but it was always rumors that could be dismissed.
Then there is terror -- a single death using a particular technique or weapon withe the particular amount of publicity could be very terrorizing. It is is always attacks on small-town America. Imagine this news story "Cuban drone killed a young family in the small town Idaho because it was believe to be the hiding spot of (Luis Posada Carriles)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles], a known terrorist sheltered and protected by the US government"
Ok, so one family killed. Now imagine the terror, the talking heads ("experts") on TV, the news channels, the presidential address, declarations of war, additional security checks etc etc.
See the difference?
It's a fact that humans are products of their environment[1,2]. This has been known for quite some time. However the degree to which we are products of our environment has always been a hot topic of discussion. On one side we have a status quo in the medical profession that insist we are pre determined for disease both physically and mentally. On the other side we have social scientists that say we are solely products of our environment and genetics only gives us predispositions to things like mental illness or obesity and so on.
I tend to agree with the social scientists. We have triggers; genetically. They are either pulled or left alone. The environment in which you live is the catalyst for that type of action.
Going off of that I'll point to Michel Foucault, a mid-twentieth century philosopher and social critic. The bulk of his work focuses on dissecting the ideas of power and knowledge. He understands these two entities to be synonymous with each other, which lays the foundation for his critique of governmental and institutional power. Through his critiques, Foucault positions himself as a post-modernist philosopher interested in the societal controls of modernity. He believes power, and therefore knowledge is not absolute; it is defined, enforced and accepted within the society in which it’s institutionalized. This of course is the opposite of modernism, which exercises the belief that science and reason possess the knowledge for an ultimate truth. Stemming from the industrial revolution, modernity reigned supreme through much of the twentieth century and arguably still does today.
Without the willingness to accept that our environment effects so much of what we do we will never understand the means in which to change it. The ideas of violence and power are not born inside of our minds. They grow, over time, from our perceptions. Forcing an ideology or a standard on an environment will not change the behavior of the individuals occupying it; it will only enforce the causation of negative action.
1.) http://www.mindingourbodies.ca/sites/default/files/suicide_a...
2.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007....
+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis
--
Meanwhile, in the course of this "Terrorist Generation" campaign, for Obama to claim, "you know, I'm really worried about terrorists, so I have to to read -- well, they claim they don't read it -- I have to get information about your email, where you are, who you're talking to, what you have on Facebook; I've gotta put that on my big database"... actually, we're moving into a world which was described, pretty accurately I think, by one of the founders of Google... I don't know if you followed the stories about Google Glass?
Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which have a small computer on them. So you can be on the internet 24 hours a day, just what you want. It's a way of destroying people, but quite apart from that, this little device has a camera, and presumably, if it doesn't already it will soon have a recorder, which means that everything that's going on around you, goes up on the internet.
Some reporter asked Erich Schmidt, didn't he think this was an invasion of privacy, and his answer was exactly right, comes right out of the Obama administration, he said: "If you're doing anything that you don't want to be on the internet, you shouldn't be doing it." This is a dream that Orwell couldn't have concocted.
We're moving into it, and it's not the only case. If you read the technical journals, there's more stuff coming along. So, for example, right now there are corporations that are concerned about using computers with components made in China, because it's technically possible to build into the hardware devices which will record what the computer is doing and send it to those bad guys. well, the articles don't point out that if the Chinese can do it, we can do it better, and probably are, so it may end up in Obama's database the next time you hit the computer.
--
I guess you can scoff about the notion that computer would (need to) have a "recorder", or point out that Glass doesn't record without the user's say so, but still.. considering his age and that it's not his field, that guy is paying more attention to things than many of those geeking out about them. And that Schmidt quote is a smug, idiotic statement; a threat, or should I say, a dare. If he wanted to make a difference and be remembered well, other choices would have been more appropriate for him. Oh well.
Vietnam taught U.S. strategists that wars of attrition simply don't work. You'll never kill all of the enemy because every attack creates more enemies than it destroys. In this sense, drone attacks do exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to do. U.S. drones do more for General Atomics than they do for U.S. citizens! Every shot fired generates future business for weapons manufacturers.
The use of drones also sets an ugly precedent. If the U.S. can kill anyone they want, anywhere they want, so too can China or Russia or any other country. Sooner or later that's going to be U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. There will be moral outrage, but no moral high-ground to stand on and no recourse. Just terror.
There is an absolutely amazing Rumsfield moment where he acknowledges this, but draws the conclusion that the solution is to kill them more quickly!
Understandably nobody wants to think their own country, that they have been taught to love and idolize, would deliberately target and kill goat herders without too much evidence. "Well of course these are all accidents" everyone replies with a unified voice. But are they? How do we know? There is no transcript, court record or transparency in the process.
I believe there is not a single shred of _written down_ evidence that shows targeting of innocent civilians to be taking place. But large bureaucratic systems always evolve hidden channels and vocabulary (using double meaning words) to exactly indicate what is do be done while also allowing for plausible deniability.
(For example think about at-will employment states and racial or sexual discrimination. If anyone can be fired for any reason any time, but oh, one cannot discriminate, companies evolve language such as "personality fit", "restructuring", "not a team player" to indicate internally what they mean when they want to fire someone whose race they don't like).
I believe there is such a language / channel (hell, there maybe even open discussions, wouldn't be surprised) between contractors like drone builders, NSA, CIA and other government agencies that signal and encourage targeting of civilians. Why? Because it is simply too profitable. Every new terrorist cell, every IED, every phone call captured that mentions "revenge", "jihad" or Arabic version of "the motherfuckers killed my 13 year son when he was out with the goats in the mountain" is linked to money in the bank for everyone involved -- drone manufacturers, drone maintainers, logistics, all the hire-ups, government departments, pilots. Everyone in the chain gets paid the more severe and persistent the threat gets.