Dav8or
Final Approach
Uh... OK. Whatever. I'll avoid responding to his dumb posts in the future then. My bad.
Former Drone Pilots Denounce 'Morally Outrageous' Program
- Thread starter Jaybird180
- Start date
Uh... OK. Whatever. I'll avoid responding to his dumb posts in the future then. My bad.
Dav8or
Final Approach
It is sad to see so many Americans that believe the only solution to conflict is more and more war. The Middle East is a never ending cycle of revenge. Over and over again. The best thing is to break that cycle by getting out of it.
We have the perfect opportunity now if we had the strength to do so. Let the Russians and the French go nuts and attack the evil sand people. That will deflect the anger towards them as we back out.
We should focus on ISIS, AL Qaeda, or whatever they will be called next that are here, brewing in our country right now. That's what really hurts us, not some idiots that are raping and pillaging 12,000 miles away. Root out and find the next idiot couple, or individual that wants to shoot up a party, or bomb a marathon before they can pull off their "jihad".
Shepherd
Final Approach
If it does not expire, why are you required to take the oath again upon reenlistment?
Different oaths for Enlisted, Officers and National Guard, but mostly just mindless bureaucracy.
Shepherd
Final Approach
I received a letter from the DoD a couple months back telling me I'm on the hook until age 70.
I'm going to look really ridiculous wearing a uniform at that age. Maybe they will let me wear a velour sweatsuit and drive around in a golf cart.
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Velocity173
I haven't heard a thing since I retired. I keep my uniforms ready to go in my closet but that's about it. Short of some alien invasion (I'm a pilot, I can fly), I can't see them recalling me. Plenty of experience still in aviation and a line of people willing to raise their right hand and carry on the tradition.
Palmpilot
Touchdown! Greaser!
Reminds me of the Phil Ochs song from the 1960s:
We're the Cops of the World
The Dalai Lama's thoughts on war seem apropos of this thread:
More Hard Hitting Words From The Dalai Lama About The Mass Brainwashing Of Society
Unfortunately, some wars really do seem necessary. Telling which is which is the hard part. There don't seem to be any easy answers.
Everskyward
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Everskyward
Yup.Reminds me of the Phil Ochs song from the 1960s:
We're the Cops of the World
The Dalai Lama's thoughts on war seem apropos of this thread:
More Hard Hitting Words From The Dalai Lama About The Mass Brainwashing Of Society
Unfortunately, some wars really do seem necessary. Telling which is which is the hard part. There don't seem to be any easy answers.
Another article apropos to this thread.
60 Words And A War Without End
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Velocity173
Reminds me of the Phil Ochs song from the 1960s:
We're the Cops of the World
The Dalai Lama's thoughts on war seem apropos of this thread:
More Hard Hitting Words From The Dalai Lama About The Mass Brainwashing Of Society
Unfortunately, some wars really do seem necessary. Telling which is which is the hard part. There don't seem to be any easy answers.
I' agree, engaging in warfare can be necessary and can prevent further suffering. What would Bosnia or Kosovo look like right now if we had not intervened? Probably hundreds of thousands more killed I can tell you that. It would be nice to say "why can't we all just get along" but the reality is there are distinct cultural differences amoung ourselves and when they're in stark contrast, war is a result.
In the ME is our intervention working? Nope, but you never know until you try. No one has the perfect play book on how to fight a war and can foresee the results of American intervention. People back home have the luxury of arm chair quarterbacking; See, I told you so. They wonder why we haven't won. Well, there is no "winning" there. No one is going to come to a peace agreement. Just like in Astan, the Mujahideen weren't going to come to peace with the Soviets. Can't apply WWII societies / govts to third world countries. Doesn't work that way.
My whole thought process in Iraq was, well, I don't really care about being here. I don't think we're doing any good but I'll choose my battles wisely (self defense) and not sacrifice my morals in the process. Concentrate on staying alive and getting back to family. Let the politicians who sent me here worry about effects of their decision making.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Some might want to reflect on that war and realize that part of what the Serbians were trying to do is what many in this country think we should do. Namely, remove all the Muslims.
The thing is, at this point we have tried and tried and tried and have failed. We have been at it long enough to know the results of American intervention. Time to try the alternate.
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Velocity173
Totally agree on both counts. I would clarify my remarks on the Bosnian conflict that the political pressure (Richard Holbrooke) was just as important as the strong arm of the allied forces.
timwinters
Ejection Handle Pulled
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerer of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds...Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait `till their judgement day comes, yeah!
Now in darkness, world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more war pigs have the power,
hand of god has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, god is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercy for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings...Oh lord, yeah!
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerer of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds...Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait `till their judgement day comes, yeah!
Now in darkness, world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more war pigs have the power,
hand of god has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, god is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercy for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings...Oh lord, yeah!
Dav8or
Final Approach
Clearly you haven't been paying attention. If you're going to nuke, tactical nukes are pointless. There are Muslims all over the world and therefore there will be radical Islamists everywhere. You will need to blanket nuke a sizable portion of the world and that doesn't address those that are amongst us. Then there is the whole nuclear winter thing and the fact that the rest of the world isn't going to take kindly to our unilaterally ending humanity...
denverpilot
Tied Down
That's why "fair" was inside quotation marks.
"Normal" is just a setting on the clothes dryer. Especially when it comes to warfare.
Jaybird180
Final Approach
The ones that are based on lies, deceit and misdirection to get us involved are the ones that we should not participate in. It really is that simple.Unfortunately, some wars really do seem necessary. Telling which is which is the hard part. There don't seem to be any easy answers.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
A complicated situation to be certain. We didn't belong there in the first place, but ISIS, or ISIL, or IS, or Murder Inc. is our child. We created the conditions that allowed it to flourish.
We would be well within our rights to say no more, to just pull our people out and forget all abut that part of the world. But it does get difficult when we see atrocities, when these people make Nazis look like pikers. Karma is inescapable, what goes around comes around nearly always. But we don't seem to be patient enough to wait for it.
So we carry out airstrikes with our warcraft and declare victory after victory. What else can we really do? Are we supposed to send in our soldiers? They already went in, ISIS, or ISIL, or IS, or Murder Inc. is the result.
I would hope that this is the lesson that will finally stop us from nation building and trying to enforces our values on peoples around the world. But I know its forlorn hope. After all, where did the Ayatollah come from in the first place?
We would be well within our rights to say no more, to just pull our people out and forget all abut that part of the world. But it does get difficult when we see atrocities, when these people make Nazis look like pikers. Karma is inescapable, what goes around comes around nearly always. But we don't seem to be patient enough to wait for it.
So we carry out airstrikes with our warcraft and declare victory after victory. What else can we really do? Are we supposed to send in our soldiers? They already went in, ISIS, or ISIL, or IS, or Murder Inc. is the result.
I would hope that this is the lesson that will finally stop us from nation building and trying to enforces our values on peoples around the world. But I know its forlorn hope. After all, where did the Ayatollah come from in the first place?
Mason
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ISIS is not the result of sending our troops in. It is the result of pulling our troops out, prematurely. Against the advice of virtually all military commanders.
DesertNomad
Pattern Altitude
ISIS is ultimately the result of the breakdown of the Sykes-Picot Agreement... an agreement that was doomed to fail from the very outset.
You should read some of Robert Fisk's reporting on the Mid East... He has lived in Beirut for more than 3 decades a a a reporter for the UK Independent. I actually met him once at a book signing in Dubai.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yN679oUX37I
GlennAB1
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The bad guys need to quit hiding amongst the civilians.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Not going to happen. They know you want to fight "fair" more than you want them dead.
cowman
Final Approach
...pulled out of a situation entirely created by us because we were responding to a different situation also created by us because of another situation....
We are where we are, maybe if we'd stayed the course it would have gone differently. It didn't, now what.... we spend ourselves into debt trying to swat hornets? Let the Russians take this one.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Hmmm... when Saddam Hussein was running things they didn't have any of this ISIS type nonsense. Whatever happened to that guy anyhow??
So if we pulled out prematurely, how long should we have stayed? Another 5 years, a decade, twenty years? Maybe make Iraq a 51st state? Bush and Co. royally screwed the pooch and at some point it is wise to cut the losses. Bottom line is, the death count of Americans overall has gone way down since we left because guess what? There aren't as many of us on hand to readily shoot, or blow up.
BTW, what does the last "S" in ISIS stand for? Syria and that's because it is a movement that started in Syria during their civil war. We didn't in my mind have all that much to do with starting that civil war. However when the newly formed ISIS came knocking on the door of Iraq, the brand new "Iraqi Army" confronted them with all the training and equipment we gave them. Some of those "soldiers" threw down their arms and ran away, others embraced ISIS with open arms.
This tells me this-
- The Arab world is a messed up place.
- Borders and national identity mean almost nothing to the Arabs.
- The USA has no f'in clue when it comes to Arabs, or Arab culture.
- Our way of life is not compatible with theirs.
- We have no freakin' business being there anymore!
Sadly, I hear all these people beating drums to get us to go back and invade ONE MORE TIME like a bunch of retarded dumb asses that just can't learn no matter how many times we get knocked in the head. It baffles me and leaves me dumfounded as to why we can't just get out and stay out.
Phoenix
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When we drone a soldier while he is home having tea with his family that really isn't hiding out among civilians. These guys aren't deployed in a foreign country.
Justifying the murdering of civilians via RC airplanes does not make it moral. Or right. Or a winning strategy. But yeah with a few trillion more dollars we can win this thing...
cowman
Final Approach
I'm not trying to place any blame. I'm just saying hey, maybe if you got raped the last 5 times you accepted a ride from a complete stranger at 2am.... maybe stop accepting rides from complete strangers at 2am.
I know our culture is big on finding a villain every time anything goes wrong but I happen to think preventing the next bad thing is more important than that and if you don't stop to think about the causes.... what lead the villain to do what he did for one... the bad thing will happen again.
Dav8or
Final Approach
What?? You need to work on your analogies. That one doesn't fit anywhere in the Middle East.
Exactly!! Stop doing the same ol', same ol'.
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Bob Noel
It sounds like a number of people ignore the basic evil crap that has been polluting the middle east before the USA was even formed. All the blame is being assigned to the USA without even a headnod to the pondscum pigs hiding behind religion to kill civilians.
Is that clearer?
cowman
Final Approach
One of the most brilliant things that has been done for aviation safety over the past few decades is when they started looking at human factors. Upon discovering a pilot made a catastrophic error they started looking at why he made that error- what led him to it. They started discovering how and why highly skilled professional pilots genuinely trying to do their best could make what seemed like incredibly boneheaded errors in hindsight.
They do this because it really isn't anywhere near as important to blame someone as it is to understand why a tragedy happened so that we can prevent a future one.
This is how we should be looking at national security. Not in terms of blame or good & evil but rather cause and effect. Even if the US had in every way been the instigator and absolutely totally to blame for all terrorism(and I don't think we are) should that influence how we respond? Do we defend our homeland any less?
This is about strategy not blame. The strategy we keep using over there doesn't work. It spawns more terrorism and costs us dearly in blood and money. We've tried arming enemies of our enemies and ended up arming ISIS(among others). We've tried large boots on the ground campaigns. We've been doing bombings and special forces assaults for a long time. None of this stuff is working. We won both world wars in less time than we've been at this. Walking away is one of the few things we have never tried... let's give it a shot.
They do this because it really isn't anywhere near as important to blame someone as it is to understand why a tragedy happened so that we can prevent a future one.
This is how we should be looking at national security. Not in terms of blame or good & evil but rather cause and effect. Even if the US had in every way been the instigator and absolutely totally to blame for all terrorism(and I don't think we are) should that influence how we respond? Do we defend our homeland any less?
This is about strategy not blame. The strategy we keep using over there doesn't work. It spawns more terrorism and costs us dearly in blood and money. We've tried arming enemies of our enemies and ended up arming ISIS(among others). We've tried large boots on the ground campaigns. We've been doing bombings and special forces assaults for a long time. None of this stuff is working. We won both world wars in less time than we've been at this. Walking away is one of the few things we have never tried... let's give it a shot.
DesertNomad
Pattern Altitude
If "we" is the USA, then I agree. However, the British and French have a strong connection to Syria imploding. After WWI the nations we know today (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan) were created by the European powers with little regard for the real situation on the ground. They are "artificial countries" and the borders have no connection to any sense of nationhood. A civil war and breakdown of the western nation-state system was inevitable there.
Phoenix
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Phoenix
Nonsense. If that were true diversity would be a bad idea. If they can't assimilate over there among similar people bringing them here would be retarded. Must be some other reason for all the strife.
Datadriver
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I always doubt the amount of civilian casualty figures. These guys don't wear uniforms, so I don't know how we can look at the bodies and determine "militant, not a militant, militant, etc".
With the enemy employing women and even kids as suicide bombers I don't see the logic. Having said all that, an airpower only approach will definitely hit some civvies.
With the enemy employing women and even kids as suicide bombers I don't see the logic. Having said all that, an airpower only approach will definitely hit some civvies.
Complicated, yes; but we aren't that omnipotent, such that we get to take full credit (blame) for the situation.
And really, other than informing present strategy, who did what, and when, and to who, doesn't matter now. Not what the Brits did a 100 years ago, or who we backed 20 years ago.
Dang, we did team up with Stalin when it served our needs against the Nazis; If you concede that some kind of stability in a region so important to our economy is within our legitimate interests - who would you have chosen?
The lesson to be learned is that this stuff is complicated, and no one will get it right all the time. Maybe not even most of the time. To my mind, an ascendant Iran, with nukes, and visions of empire, might have made Saddam not look so very bad, in comparison.
After the fact, and naive, analysis leaves me cold - evil people are behaving badly, to the detriment of our interests. It's legitimate to use whatever advantages we own, and that suit the need, against them.
Not gonna be a neat, complete, and total solution. Never perfection, just halting progress, some regression on occasion, and Karma almost never has anything to do with it.
Dav8or
Final Approach
So if it has always been a pit of evil, why did we go there in the first place and why have we stayed there so long? The British gave it their shot at fixing it and failed. We gave it our shot at fixing it and failed. It is best to stop trying to fix it.
I'm beyond laying blame. We just need to get out and quit trying to fix it. However to look back at history, it is ludicrous to think we have only done good there, or even mostly done good there. We have served our interest there only and done it on the cheap.
Like I have said before, we suck at being world police and we suck at nation building. It's time we we pulled back to our borders and practice those skills here at home first.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Yep. It's crazy mixed up bull crap. Let's leave it alone so the Arab folks living over there can fix it, or not. Their choice.
Dav8or
Final Approach
In the past, yeah, we kinda had to get knee deep in this crap to keep cheap energy flowing our way an keep our economy humming along. The beauty of it now is, we can opt out of this crap and we can be OK. It no longer has to be "in our interests".
That's what I call progress.
DesertNomad
Pattern Altitude
I never suggested bringing them here. However drawing Iraq on the map when nobody identifies with being Iraqi is also retarded. The same thing happened when European powers drew Africa's borders... And Africa has seen the same civil strife.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
I think we could come a long way toward reducing the national debt if the military would offer individual citizens the chance to push the button that launches the Hellfire missile off the drone !
Dav8or
Final Approach
No kidding! Pay per boom! It would be so popular they could command pretty high prices for the trigger.
I suggested something like this years ago when we were in Iraq and plagued by IEDs. I thought if we just had a network of stationary balloons with cameras and then crowd sourced the crews needed to watch those camera's feeds on the internet, we could catch the ****ers planting the IEDs nearly every time. The reward would have been, the guy that found the IED crew would get to pull the trigger on the weapon that makes them go splat.
A better idea I come to reason is to get out of that hell hole altogether.
airbornejohnny
Line Up and Wait
This.
Now, I'm not saying we need to go back there yesterday and un-F the situation, BUT having BTDT in that region behind not much more than a trigger, I can validate the frustration felt by those boots on the ground when we return from a door kicking mission and see the news' talking heads droning on and on about how soon we should leave now that major combat is over. WW2 ended two major fronts within 4 years, but during that time had flooded recruiting stations, and far less pity for the enemy.
My point is that IF we as a nation DO decide to send our military somewhere, whether it is the middle east or any other god-forsaken piece of the planet, our PC culture needs to STFU, and let the military be and do the military. Sending our troops out somewhere should in no way be such an easy decision to make. To do so, diplomacy should be so failed the diplomats are ready to resign. To make an effort so steadfast (in the diplomacy department) would warrant military action given all there is to give in the diplomacy department, with failure the only outcome.
Jaybird180
Final Approach
This.
Now, I'm not saying we need to go back there yesterday and un-F the situation, BUT having BTDT in that region behind not much more than a trigger, I can validate the frustration felt by those boots on the ground when we return from a door kicking mission and see the news' talking heads droning on and on about how soon we should leave now that major combat is over. WW2 ended two major fronts within 4 years, but during that time had flooded recruiting stations, and far less pity for the enemy.
My point is that IF we as a nation DO decide to send our military somewhere, whether it is the middle east or any other god-forsaken piece of the planet, our PC culture needs to STFU, and let the military be and do the military. Sending our troops out somewhere should in no way be such an easy decision to make. To do so, diplomacy should be so failed the diplomats are ready to resign. To make an effort so steadfast (in the diplomacy department) would warrant military action given all there is to give in the diplomacy department, with failure the only outcome.
Anther word for "diplomacy" is business negotiation. Let's cut the chase and call it what it really is. It's all about trading good and services. Nothing more and making it about anything else is a fairy tale.
Therefore in your scenario, if the other side rejects the proposal, we go in and TAKE what we want. That's how we got in this mess in the first place.
No, Jack. I'll take door #B - the door that leads to peace. If you don't want to trade with me, then I take my ball and go home. I'll offer my good/ services to someone else who WANTS them.
Failed trade is always the backstory to war. And people die over it. And that death is permanent....FOREVER.