5 ms·

Why? Why can't they be the same thing, just in different contexts? On both sides there's people who believe the enemy will destroy the world, and believes in a

Why? Why can't they be the same thing, just in different contexts? On both sides there's people who believe the enemy will destroy the world, and believes in a particular ideal, and who sends out armies to achieve their goals, and both sides are very clearly not very precise in who they actually target (the bombing on Doctor's Without Border, anyone?). Both sides cause tons of civilian casualties, both refuse to apologize, both sides are full of rhetorics, both want the other to disappear, etc... While you can point out differences in their justifications, you can't pretend their actions are unrelated.

tome 11y ago
This kind of moral equivocation can only come if you really have no clue about the reality of these conflicts, in my opinion. It's one of the great weaknesses of our civilisation that we are "too broad-minded to take own own side in a quarrel" (to quote a phrase I just learned today). In the large, one side wants to impose rule based on beliefs about what an omnipotent sky person wants and is willing to sacrifice innocent lives (even celebrate such sacrifice) to do so. The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. In the small, things don't always play out quite like this, but to draw equivalence between the two sides is morally abhorrent.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  God has little to do with political plays. Not all muslim extremist are believers, just like not all the american politicians who say they're christians are actually christians[0]. More often than not, it's a facade from the leaders to draw in more pawn soldiers who believe in the cause. You talk a lot about not having a clue on "the reality of the conflicts" and yet, you are unable to take a step back and look from the perspective of someone completely alien to the situation. America has, time and time again, used and abused its armies for strategic and economical purposes (The "if you have oil..." meme has been beaten to death, hasn't it?). It certainly is willing to sacrifice innocent lives as long as it doesn't make the news - which it doesn't because of how hostile the entire country is to muslim ideals. And I've heard more than once the term "God" being thrown around by US politicians to justify these things. Does all of this ring a bell to you? One of the sides is certainly a lot more barbaric than the other, what with the beheadings and what not... but whether your family is dying to american bombs or to barbarians doesn't really change squat for the victims. With the exception that one of them is actually less destructive - take a guess which? [0] Since we're talking about countries with backwards ideologies, how is it that it's political suicide to be an atheist in the US? We have plenty of them in France and nobody gives a shit... Edit: I'll add to this... It's really hard to take a step back and picture yourself as being the bad guy. It's nearly impossible, in fact. You are raised on one side of a conflict and you simply do not have the full picture unless you've yourself lived on the other side or been with people on the other side. But try to understand this: In these wars, there's no "bad guy and good guy". There's two bad guys and a lot of followers who have been completely brainwashed to think the causes are worthy. Wars are not about justice. They're not about spreading culture, be that culture islam or democracy. We'd be at war with North Korea if they were about any of those things. Wars are strategic, and always about taking something away from the enemy, be it territory, riches or political power. The two sides are equally bad, and the civilians/soldiers on both sides only see how evil the other side is - they don't get to see the evil of their own.
  - tome 11y ago
    Regarding "God", certainly a lot of terrorising has happened at the hands of secular Middle Eastern entities, from Ghaddafi to Saddam to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Bridages. My "in the large" sweeps a lot under the carpet! We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread. EDIT: Sorry for making this personal. Some details removed.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      > I was just surprised to see someone I esteem so highly as jacquesm expousing what is, to my mind, such an ill-informed opinion Embrace the occasion to reconsider whether it's actually ill-informed, then. :) To clarify what I was saying before, I don't mean to say that "God" hasn't been the main driver for wars and terror before. My point is that it's usually just an excuse, so that more may join the cause. If you want to wage war on Madeupistan and 95% of your country is hardcore vegetarian, it's easier to get followers if you tell your people you're spreading vegetarianism than if you tell them you want their unobtainium mines. > We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread. Wanna try twitter? #140characters
      - tome 11y ago
        EDIT: Deleted because it was inappropriate to make this personal.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        You respect people when you agree with them, and when you disagree they are 'ill informed'. See there the root of many a problem, it is just this side of possible that I'm not quite as ill informed as you make me out to be and to realize that we disagree strongly on a point where neither of us is willing to make a concession. I'm not calling you un-informed either, I'm sure you have your reasons for believing what you do.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  > The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties This is why you're wrong. No, the leaders (whether it is the politicians or the military command) don't care about civilian casualties unless there's large vocal resistance.
  - hueving 11y ago
    Based on what evidence?
    - Natanael_L 11y ago
      How about their behavior? Displacing democratically elected leaders like CIA has been doing? Lying about WMDs like with Iraq? Being careless in general? Refusing to change, justifying collateral damage with unproven "national security"? Doing nothing to avoid civilians from being harmed? They're not bothering to ensure the military knows what areas to avoid and confirming who's who before bombing. They so obviously put profits first, and care more about having puppets in the governments than about the people. (It is even more obvious in the case of Russia's support of Assad.) NSA have even admitted they kill on metadata = the position of cell phones, with as much accuracy as programs like COTRAVELER can give you when you have no clue who's who. Guess why so many weddings have been hit? Because somebody 2-3 degrees off from the suspect suddenly meets a hundred people including more people linked to some other suspect. So they bomb the place.
will_brown 11y ago
IS = an ideological network of individuals hiding among civilian populations across the globe US = an nation state with an identifiable military subjected to rule of law >and both sides are very clearly not very precise in who they actually target (the bombing on Doctor's Without Border, anyone?). Both sides cause tons of civilian casualties For better or worse the US is operating on intelligence specifically designed to avoid/minimize civilian populations, which is very difficult when IS doesn't wear military uniform (as required by the laws of war to distinguish military actors from civilian populace) and hides among civilians. I don't know if it is "tons" or what that even means in relation to human death figures, but I'll concede it happens, still it should be defined as collateral damage because the goal of US operations is not to kill the civilian populace but those individuals bearing the most responsibility. On the other hand IS specifically designs its quasi-military attacks to be inflicted directly on the civilian populations with the goal of maximizing civilian casualties. These are not just differences in justifications, but differences in actions...at least according to the law. Now I could see your issue if the US was secretly funding, training and arming non-identifiable combatants and recruiting/embedding them all over the globe to specifically orchestrate indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations.
- drumdance 11y ago
  I donn't think the US is exactly the same as ISIS, but the fact remains that our invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. When you're under attack from a vastly superior military, your options for response are very limited. It's hard for us in the US to even conceive what it would be like to be in that situation. The only analog is a War of the Worlds style invasion by aliens.
  - tome 11y ago
    This is certainly a fair point as far as it goes[1], but let's not forgot that Islamic terror was directed at the US for many years before Iraq! [1] and I still hold the idea that I held in 2003, that the Iraq war was a completely idiotic veture
    - 11y ago

tome 11y ago

This kind of moral equivocation can only come if you really have no clue about the reality of these conflicts, in my opinion. It's one of the great weaknesses of our civilisation that we are "too broad-minded to take own own side in a quarrel" (to quote a phrase I just learned today). In the large, one side wants to impose rule based on beliefs about what an omnipotent sky person wants and is willing to sacrifice innocent lives (even celebrate such sacrifice) to do so. The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. In the small, things don't always play out quite like this, but to draw equivalence between the two sides is morally abhorrent.

scrollaway 11y ago
God has little to do with political plays. Not all muslim extremist are believers, just like not all the american politicians who say they're christians are actually christians[0]. More often than not, it's a facade from the leaders to draw in more pawn soldiers who believe in the cause. You talk a lot about not having a clue on "the reality of the conflicts" and yet, you are unable to take a step back and look from the perspective of someone completely alien to the situation. America has, time and time again, used and abused its armies for strategic and economical purposes (The "if you have oil..." meme has been beaten to death, hasn't it?). It certainly is willing to sacrifice innocent lives as long as it doesn't make the news - which it doesn't because of how hostile the entire country is to muslim ideals. And I've heard more than once the term "God" being thrown around by US politicians to justify these things. Does all of this ring a bell to you? One of the sides is certainly a lot more barbaric than the other, what with the beheadings and what not... but whether your family is dying to american bombs or to barbarians doesn't really change squat for the victims. With the exception that one of them is actually less destructive - take a guess which? [0] Since we're talking about countries with backwards ideologies, how is it that it's political suicide to be an atheist in the US? We have plenty of them in France and nobody gives a shit... Edit: I'll add to this... It's really hard to take a step back and picture yourself as being the bad guy. It's nearly impossible, in fact. You are raised on one side of a conflict and you simply do not have the full picture unless you've yourself lived on the other side or been with people on the other side. But try to understand this: In these wars, there's no "bad guy and good guy". There's two bad guys and a lot of followers who have been completely brainwashed to think the causes are worthy. Wars are not about justice. They're not about spreading culture, be that culture islam or democracy. We'd be at war with North Korea if they were about any of those things. Wars are strategic, and always about taking something away from the enemy, be it territory, riches or political power. The two sides are equally bad, and the civilians/soldiers on both sides only see how evil the other side is - they don't get to see the evil of their own.
- tome 11y ago
  Regarding "God", certainly a lot of terrorising has happened at the hands of secular Middle Eastern entities, from Ghaddafi to Saddam to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Bridages. My "in the large" sweeps a lot under the carpet! We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread. EDIT: Sorry for making this personal. Some details removed.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    > I was just surprised to see someone I esteem so highly as jacquesm expousing what is, to my mind, such an ill-informed opinion Embrace the occasion to reconsider whether it's actually ill-informed, then. :) To clarify what I was saying before, I don't mean to say that "God" hasn't been the main driver for wars and terror before. My point is that it's usually just an excuse, so that more may join the cause. If you want to wage war on Madeupistan and 95% of your country is hardcore vegetarian, it's easier to get followers if you tell your people you're spreading vegetarianism than if you tell them you want their unobtainium mines. > We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread. Wanna try twitter? #140characters
    - tome 11y ago
      EDIT: Deleted because it was inappropriate to make this personal.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        You respect people when you agree with them, and when you disagree they are 'ill informed'. See there the root of many a problem, it is just this side of possible that I'm not quite as ill informed as you make me out to be and to realize that we disagree strongly on a point where neither of us is willing to make a concession. I'm not calling you un-informed either, I'm sure you have your reasons for believing what you do.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
Natanael_L 11y ago
> The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties This is why you're wrong. No, the leaders (whether it is the politicians or the military command) don't care about civilian casualties unless there's large vocal resistance.
- hueving 11y ago
  Based on what evidence?
  - Natanael_L 11y ago
    How about their behavior? Displacing democratically elected leaders like CIA has been doing? Lying about WMDs like with Iraq? Being careless in general? Refusing to change, justifying collateral damage with unproven "national security"? Doing nothing to avoid civilians from being harmed? They're not bothering to ensure the military knows what areas to avoid and confirming who's who before bombing. They so obviously put profits first, and care more about having puppets in the governments than about the people. (It is even more obvious in the case of Russia's support of Assad.) NSA have even admitted they kill on metadata = the position of cell phones, with as much accuracy as programs like COTRAVELER can give you when you have no clue who's who. Guess why so many weddings have been hit? Because somebody 2-3 degrees off from the suspect suddenly meets a hundred people including more people linked to some other suspect. So they bomb the place.

will_brown 11y ago

IS = an ideological network of individuals hiding among civilian populations across the globe US = an nation state with an identifiable military subjected to rule of law >and both sides are very clearly not very precise in who they actually target (the bombing on Doctor's Without Border, anyone?). Both sides cause tons of civilian casualties For better or worse the US is operating on intelligence specifically designed to avoid/minimize civilian populations, which is very difficult when IS doesn't wear military uniform (as required by the laws of war to distinguish military actors from civilian populace) and hides among civilians. I don't know if it is "tons" or what that even means in relation to human death figures, but I'll concede it happens, still it should be defined as collateral damage because the goal of US operations is not to kill the civilian populace but those individuals bearing the most responsibility. On the other hand IS specifically designs its quasi-military attacks to be inflicted directly on the civilian populations with the goal of maximizing civilian casualties. These are not just differences in justifications, but differences in actions...at least according to the law. Now I could see your issue if the US was secretly funding, training and arming non-identifiable combatants and recruiting/embedding them all over the globe to specifically orchestrate indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations.

drumdance 11y ago
I donn't think the US is exactly the same as ISIS, but the fact remains that our invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. When you're under attack from a vastly superior military, your options for response are very limited. It's hard for us in the US to even conceive what it would be like to be in that situation. The only analog is a War of the Worlds style invasion by aliens.
- tome 11y ago
  This is certainly a fair point as far as it goes[1], but let's not forgot that Islamic terror was directed at the US for many years before Iraq! [1] and I still hold the idea that I held in 2003, that the Iraq war was a completely idiotic veture
  - 11y ago