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On June 28 2014 07:47 xDaunt wrote:
It's always fun to see the hysterics of the peaceniks when it comes to talking about the realities of war. It'd be nice to see one post employing something resembling critical thought. Wishing me dead doesn't quite qualify.
But yeah, as a matter of general policy, it is perfectly sane to accept some degree of civilian casualties (among a whole range of other atrocious things) in exchange for protecting your troops and winning the war. War is inherently a shitty enterprise. Landmines fall well-within acceptable limits as far as I am concerned.
Can you imagine for me a hypothetical scenario where the United States was engaged in war with a party of similar power and nuclear weapons weren't an option? A scenario with hundreds of thousands or millions of troops fighting over territory with battlefronts and a need to deny routes? The nature of warfare has changed. 20th century style warfare where landmines may have served legitimate military purposes is almost extinct. Using indiscriminate, passive, terrorist weapons like landmines has no place in modern warfare.
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On the centennial of the first World War, you might want to think a bit harder on that...
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Why? To carry your historical lesson to its logical end would mean we are heading towards complete nuclear holocaust. What do landmines have to do with it?
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mines are the fucking pest. It's a terrorist weapon that is going to cost lives of civilians decades into the future. Every country that has some sense of morality cannot use them.
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On June 28 2014 10:15 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2014 07:47 xDaunt wrote:
It's always fun to see the hysterics of the peaceniks when it comes to talking about the realities of war. It'd be nice to see one post employing something resembling critical thought. Wishing me dead doesn't quite qualify.
But yeah, as a matter of general policy, it is perfectly sane to accept some degree of civilian casualties (among a whole range of other atrocious things) in exchange for protecting your troops and winning the war. War is inherently a shitty enterprise. Landmines fall well-within acceptable limits as far as I am concerned. Can you imagine for me a hypothetical scenario where the United States was engaged in war with a party of similar power and nuclear weapons weren't an option? A scenario with hundreds of thousands or millions of troops fighting over territory with battlefronts and a need to deny routes? The nature of warfare has changed. 20th century style warfare where landmines may have served legitimate military purposes are almost extinct. Using indiscriminate, passive, terrorist weapons like landmines has no place in modern warfare.
I can imagine a conflict with another nuclear power that didn't devolve into nuclear warfare. It's just a matter of how far it goes.
And I disagree that the nature of warfare has changed to the point where landmines are obsolete. As long as there are boots on the ground and territory to hold, land mines will have a place.
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Would using landmines have made it easier to enforce law and order in Iraq? Perhaps you are thinking of a Vietnam-like full blown conflict? Please elaborate.
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On June 28 2014 07:53 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2014 07:47 xDaunt wrote:
It's always fun to see the hysterics of the peaceniks when it comes to talking about the realities of war. It'd be nice to see one post employing something resembling critical thought. Wishing me dead doesn't quite qualify.
But yeah, as a matter of general policy, it is perfectly sane to accept some degree of civilian casualties (among a whole range of other atrocious things) in exchange for protecting your troops and winning the war. War is inherently a shitty enterprise. Landmines fall well-within acceptable limits as far as I am concerned. How would you define such range ? What would be a weapon that would fall out of that range ? Area control doesn't really necessite mine. What are some precise tactical case where they are needed ? Protecting base approach ? I'm kinda ok with that. I really don't think they're an essential part of most war fighting though. I'm much more in favour of drone strikes if I may do my McNamara in my turn.
I don't really know how to define the range as a concrete principal. Generally speaking, I'm okay with anything that has a legitimate military purpose and does not indiscriminately kill. Now I know a number of you are wondering how I can be okay with landmines given the second clause, but I don't see landmines as "indiscriminate killers" in the sense that should be forbidden. Landmines only kill those who tread into minefields. It's not like a biological weapon that is hatched among a population, indiscriminately killing legitimate and illegitimate targets alike.
And let's just be clear. The problem isn't the fact that a minefield is laid during war time. The problem is that various armed forces don't remove the minefields when their purpose is over. Or worse, they don't even accurately record where the mines are.
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On June 28 2014 11:54 IgnE wrote:
Would using landmines have made it easier to enforce law and order in Iraq? Perhaps you are thinking of a Vietnam-like full blown conflict? Please elaborate.
Minefields are used anywhere that you intend to set up a defensive perimeter. If you're looking to hold strategic points that may come under attack, I think that it is perfectly legitimate to lay a minefield. So yes, mines could have been useful in Iraq, and they certainly would be useful in a theater like Vietnam.
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I have a hard time imagining a legitimate theater like Vietnam. Perhaps you and I have different definitions of legitimate military purposes.
On the other hand you seem to be saying that in theory land mines could be used in a targeted, limited way, by recording mine locations and retrieving the mines after the conflict ends. In practice employing these safeguards seems to be the exception. Selling mines to groups and countries that place them everywhere and leave them there indefinitely makes one just as culpable as the people who placed them. Maybe your position is that you think we shouldn't restrict ourselves from using landmines because at some point in the future the United States may want to use them against a traditional army in the limited fashion described above.
Honestly I think it's possible to make better arguments for the use of chemical weapons than it is for the use of landmines.
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Using land mines is like using a radioactive weapon on the land. For years after people are going to be killed by the leftovers of the war. The removal process is not done with proper care, true, but the earth isn't static either. Tectonic activity and weather have proven to be able to scatter mines into places away from the original site. Hypothetically though, if it were possible to devise a land mine that makes accouting for and retrieving them much more accurate, would they still be objectionable?
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Much more accurate is a bit thin; 100% recovery would be fine, but even as a hypothetical that's implausible.
When a government has issues handling it's own veterans health care and other issues properly; counting on them to properly clean up mines seems unlikely.
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On June 28 2014 11:42 IgnE wrote:
Why? To carry your historical lesson to its logical end would mean we are heading towards complete nuclear holocaust. What do landmines have to do with it?
What? My point is that anyone who says "the nature of war has changed" is in danger of learning the hard way that no, the nature of war has not changed. I disagree that landmines do not serve any legitimate military purpose. I think it's worth weighing their relative costs and you might come out that the civilian casualties are not worth it and thus they should be banned, but it's also worth noting that the US has not deployed land mines since the early 90s, when they were only deployed in the Korean DMZ.
I think there's a clear distinction between not using them and ratifying a ban, and I would personally lean towards the US simply not using them in the absence of a major war rather than giving them up and destroying the ones in stock. That the US has not needed them because there has been no conflict where they have been necessary is very different from saying the US will never fight a war in which they are necessary.
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Buried in NY Times reports on Iraq are some interesting tidbits:
Two Iraqi advisers to Mr. Maliki said there would be more than 1,000 American private security guards coming to Iraq to protect the 300 military and intelligence advisers that will be here to help the Iraqi government fight ISIS, far more Americans than previously acknowledged. One adviser said the number of private guards would reach 1,700.
Under a diplomatic agreement between the American and Iraqi governments, the military advisers will be protected from prosecution if they inadvertently harm someone while working in Iraq. However, it was unclear if immunity provisions for the private guards had been worked out as well, and one of Mr. Maliki’s advisers said the topic was still under discussion.
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And a Pentagon official in Washington said armed Predator drone patrols had started flying over Baghdad, an operation meant to offer added protection to the first American military assessment teams that are fanning out in and around Baghdad to help the Iraqi military combat the insurgents.
The Predators, equipped with Hellfire missiles, will augment about 40 unarmed reconnaissance flights that a combination of manned and unmanned American aircraft are flying over Iraq each day. The armed drones departed from an air base in Kuwait, the Pentagon official said.
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This hits on two long-standing criticisms of both military contractors and drones, which is that they can be used to mislead the American public on a commitment that is more serious than they might believe. 300 military advisers strictly on non-combat missions sounds very different from 1000-2000 soldiers with 40 daily sorties for air support.
It also sounds strange since the military contractors are ostensibly providing security for a special forces mission, which makes you wonder what kind of security they're providing and why. It's very possible that most of the contractors will in fact be protecting other US assets, especially the US embassy, although it would still raise eyebrows about whether that's something that should be outsourced.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
all i've seen is a skeletal 'collateral damage' defense that is not really a proper argument anyway, just a framework for a potential argument along cost benefit lines. seems like that case is so hard to make that it's best left as merely a possibility for justification rather than any concrete spelling out of how exactly land mines could be justified under such a cost benefit analysis.
simply speaking there's really no argument besides "lel reality of war makes some things possibly justified" ---> "land mines is possibly justified."
besides the superhuman level of logical leaping power on display we just see a simple rationalization of an antiquated and ill considered artifice of history. land mines were not intelligently thought out and tested against any such cost benefit analysis when they were first introduced, you simply made something to blow shit up and the morality of the day, including how war is carried out, simply used it. to jump around to some sort of possibilia justification argument is just pure reflexive defense of traditional brutality against any expansion of human care for the world.
p.s. the reality of war surely has not changed with people like this around. that reality is only as real as the war combatants behavior and ideas. with toughminded combatants on both sides we'll have the realities of war introduced to us peaceniks in no time.
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Mississippi Republican candidate Chris McDaniel hasn’t given up, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that he’s still looking into voting irregularities in his runoff election against incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran.
“We’ve found more than a thousand examples of that in one county alone widespread irregularities,” McDaniel said to Hannity on Thursday night.
Cochran defeated McDaniel in a tight runoff election on Tuesday, 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent, according to The Associated Press. McDaniel slammed Cochran’s hypocrisy for reaching out to Democrats to help him win.
Source
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Mercs being hired for services rendered shouldn't be the problem its whos hireing them is the problem. The last thing we need is to piss off both sides of a petty religious war. I would wonder where the drones and recon flights are being run out of.
What the region could really use is some good ol fashioned victorian partioning. With the turks support of a kurdish state a solid intervention followed up by redrawing the map to split syria and iraq up between the 3 sides. Shitty straight British lines be dammed.
land mines arnt any worse then the dozens of other things that war leaves in a country. War needs to be as terrible as possible to promote peace.
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On June 29 2014 02:03 Sermokala wrote:
War needs to be as terrible as possible to promote peace.
My mind is blown. Do you really believe what you write ?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
it's not that, just that how you imagine your opponent to be matters as to what the strategic equilibrium settles at.
if for instance you imagine your enemies as very terrible, then you will take more terrible actions as a result of that view of the opponent. it's a grand contribution of game theory (though this particular case isn't anything complex) to show that we can get undesirable results unintentionally. through understanding this effect we can then try to guide ourselves toward a gentler future.
in this specific example, if you think the reality of war is such and such and then adopt a harsher war policy, then war reality will really be that harsh, though you didn't think you were choosing it to be this way, your actions and views had this consequence.
edit: mines have no deterrence effect they are just high on external harm and that's not deterring fuck all.
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What does any of that has to do with game theory ? Performativity yeah.
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One of those arguments where I find myself against all sides: yeah, there are some legit uses of landmines; the border between the Koreas, or defending a mountain pass against a superior force, or simply immediate base defense. But any of these areas, small, concentrated, tactically significant, shouldn't be seeing any civilian foot traffic, and should certainly be cleaned up after the end of hostilities. Mining wide areas of jungle/forest is obviously barbaric. And yet here is xDaunt, saying Vietnam was a good place to use mines, and everybody else, saying that landmines are always wrong.
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EPT
