General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Right on cue, Glenn Greenwald turns an ISIS atrocity into an anti-Obama screed... [View all]bigtree
(85,986 posts)...I'm not particularly impressed by your own outrage about his leveraging the ISIS atrocity to highlight our own nation's barbarous military practices, complaining about an 'anti-Obama screed'.
See, Blue_Tires, President Obama will fare an article by Glen Greenwald just fine. He's not running for any political position and is secure in the one he has now. There is no real injury in making the comparison, except, possibly, to your political sensibility and your apparent desire to protect this president's political image.
Sure, Greenwald has made a leap here to highlight what he believes is an outrageous and dangerous abuse of power. I find a 'slant' in the way you've attempted to avoid discussion of any comparison in barbarity by failing to explain the substance behind Mr. Greewald's complaint. Where do we find the opportunity to discuss our own nation's barbarous practices of war? Is there a special forum for those where they can get the attention and debate that opponents of such practices believe they deserve?
You know, somehow, I think you'll survive this 'anti-Obama screed'. It's a question, though, whether we'll find room in that defense of the president to initiate or garner your participation in a discussion of the negative consequences of collateral damage done by our military. Maybe after we've relegated those to history, I don't know. We'll see...
It may well be that there is no moral equivalent between state-sanctioned defenses which inflict collateral injury and death. I suppose that it's a matter of opinion - likely less of an academic question if you or your family is caught in the way of U.S. missile-inflicted retribution. I'm almost certain it makes little difference at all to the victims and the families, and those who remain at risk from errant drone attacks what righteous cause Americans may use to justify such barbarity.
I like the first comment to his article:
BenjaminAP
04 Feb 2015 at 5:13 pm
ZINN
These words are misleading because they assume an action is either deliberate or unintentional. There is something in between, for which the word is inevitable. If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not intentional. Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.
Inevitability is intentionality, over time.
The Lakota had no language for insulting other orders of existence: pest, waste, weed
But what about bugsplat?
..according to a 2003 Washington Post story, its the name of a Defense Department computer program for calculating collateral damage
, as well as, apparently, casual terminology among Pentagon operation planners and the like to refer to the collateral damage itself
you know, the dead civilians. CIA drone operators talk about bugsplat. The British organization Reprieve calls its effort to track the number of people killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen Project Bugsplat.
In the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, they ran computer programs, and they called the program the Bugsplat program, estimating how many civilians they would kill with a given bombing raid. On the opening day, the printouts presented to General Tommy Franks indicated that 22 of the projected bombing attacks on Iraq would produce what they defined as heavy bugsplat that is, more than 30 civilian deaths per raid. Franks said, Go ahead. Were doing all 22.'
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-01-01/news/bs-ed-koehler-20120101_1_civilian-toll-civilian-deaths-drone-strikes
Calculation is inevitability. Inevitability is intentionality. Intentionality is justification.
Arendts analysis of banality didnt minimize evil. On the contrary, it intensified it. Human horror means well. There are no evil doers.