Drugs mostly hurt those that use them. Guns hurt others. Poor equivalence. Unless you want to talk about Purdue Pharma.
Honestly, how can you follow the first sentence with the second with not a shred of self-awareness? You don't think that's an equivalency right there? Your sentiment is plain, and if you meant it another way, you should have said that. The difference is the terrorists at the airport were trying to hurt as many people as possible, and the man who ordered the missile strike almost certainly thought he was doing so to save lives. Yes, the relatives and friends of the victims will have a hard time parsing that in their grief, and it's beyond reasonable to expect that of them. But that doesn't change that it is indeed important why. Yes, Bailey. Pretty sure every adult over the age of 25 knows that. That isn't the question. Several people have been processing this in several ways, and it's been a heated topic because we all know what happens next. No one on this site wants to see that. My initial reaction was dammit, we should have stayed. It took me about 3 hours to realize that it simply wasn't tenable. The same problems with religious indoctrination, kleptocracy and lack of commitment were there when we came in, and 20 years later it hasn't been changed. Why do we think it will change in another 20? In this particular case it's hard to argue that more people aren't going to have their lives ruined in Afghanistan because we are leaving. There are 16 million Afghani women. But again, my statement all along has been at some point their society has to make the commitment themselves. I'm not sure that's true. There was a semi-functional government there for most of the last two decades. They certainly investigated and lodged protests about US actions in the past. What we won't likely get is a chance to investigate these claims by an external group. The Taliban has the story it wants. And we won't see much coverage or interest in the dozen or so conflicts going on around the world, or what the Taliban is going to do in areas outside of Kabul.
When the Colombian drug trade was curtailed, they resorted to kidnapping to fund the revolution. With our guns. We should institutionalize the manufacture, distribution, and sale of drugs, taxing the shit out of it to fund education and recovery. 3rd world countries will need proper support to fund education and recovery. Same goes for petroleum. Why do we find violence rewarding? Because it's profitable.
No, I condescendingly looked down on anyone who was basically screaming "Resistance is futile! Violence and intimidation isn't going to work on Afghanistan, especially not against the Taliban's highly successful campaign of violence and intimidation!" But I'm done trying to discuss it with people that are only interested in repeating the same smug lectures they've been dispensing for nearly two decades. Enjoy your "America bad, all wars bad, resisting evil with anything other than a strongly worded letter bad" circle jerk.
Certainly I find it hard to see even the most well intentioned war of aggression as anything worth celebrating.
Celebrating? Nah. But sometimes bad people commit indefensible acts, and the only way to stop them is with physical force. It's not pretty and it's not without cost, but it's true.
I know, I'm just not convinced history has really taught us anything positive about using force in anything other than defence. I'm not using cheap tactics when I keep going back to the British and our justifications. An entire culture was created which still exists to this day based around the convction our navies were setting forth to benignly enlighten, educate and civilise the savages. It didn't turn out that way and the consequences are still potent and deadly centuries later.
Yes, they admitted to their mistake, and it was the press that held them to account. Incredibly unfortunate. The biggest take away from all of this for me was that they hit the car while it was parked at a home. There's no possible way it was an imminent threat to the camp when it wasn't moving. The initial impression they gave was that it was traveling toward the base. Whoever made that call should face court martial IMO. So yes, Rick was correct, I was wrong.
What? I am sorry my newsfeed was spammed with some little blonde girl who disappeared in a van down by the river or something like that. I am still trying to figure out why chris farley's ghost killed some blonde chick. In this day and age shouldn't we have cameras on every non descript white van in america and every little blonde girl? I know we don't want to save them, but at least that way we get the pictures people care about. I am not sure what is so special about blonde karens, but isn't there something more salient going on?
... arguing something you didn't say? Wow. How novel. I wonder how others felt when you did the same to them.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/biden-afghanistan-exit-troops-milley.amp Interesting take.
What a fucking surprise. Ten dead, including an aid worker and seven small children. Followed by days of lying about what had happened. And now they've investigated themselves and found that they did nothing wrong!
What a psychotic thing to say. Accidents don't just "happen". They require agency, as does lying about them. There is no scenario in which you do something like this in which it's acceptable to say that there was neither misconduct or negligence.
I bet if I killed dozens of your friends on Monday you'd flinch if you saw someone that looks just like me walking in your direction on Tuesday.
I might "flinch". But I'm not justified in murdering them, lying about having murdered them or claiming I didn't do anything wrong when murdering them.
Who's saying it was justified? They clearly didn't intend to attack people that weren't attacking them. They acknowledge they fucked up. Did they lie or did they simply repeat what information they had at the time? No one is claiming that killing people who didn't pose a threat wasn't wrong. No one is saying it was a cool and awesome thing to do. Who exactly do you want hanged for this? The guy that mistook those people for a threat and reported what he thought he saw? The guy that ordered the strike based on bad intel? The guy that didn't double-check the first guys observations? The guy that actually carried out the order and pressed the button? Biden, just because he's a president and thus a war criminal by default?
