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My understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is that they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech and t
by p4wnc6 11y ago
My understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is that they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech and tactics, especially to study things like asymmetric urban warfare in which the distinction between combatant and civilian is difficult.
We enter the conflicts under whatever pretext is popularized in the media, but the real reason is to fuel warfare R&D efforts, grow surveillance infrastructure, and collect data that reflects situations our military leaders forecast to be important.
Large contracting firms profit. Soldiers lose time, often also money, often their mental health and family relationships, and sometimes their lives. Taxpayers lose money. Foreign civilians lose their lives. Few benefits are ever given to soldiers or foreigners, if they are even paid lip service with promises of benefits at all.
It's basically a string of smaller scale proxy wars to fuel tech, surveillance, and population control between larger, "actual" wars.
I fear we are already past a point where democratic process could stop it. I think by now it would require almost an actual revolt from U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and that it would be bloody, and that part of the military engineering being studied is exactly how much civilians will tolerate before being pushed to the point of revolt.
As long as you can watch Netflix on your iPad and put it out of your mind, then while it might ruffle your feathers, you won't actually take action that could jeopardize your creature comforts. Even things like Occupy Wall Street seem like they are more data collection opportunities than anything else. "OK, so they will protest via X, Y, and Z, but too few of them can be pushed to do A, B, or C for us to care."
It's a very depressing feeling. In the meantime, just like everyone else, I have to worry about money, family, life goals, comforts, health, and all my biases push me to ignore the military industrial conflict, because already giving it maybe 1/100th of my overall bandwidth is exceedingly depressing. Something close to 40% of the country believes in young earth creationism. Open up to a highly-visited YouTube video and scroll down to the comments and behold the inanity of how we use our time and what our priorities are.
How could enough people possibly coordinate beliefs and actions around humanity-affirming rebukes of the military industrial complex? Of course they won't, so then I guess I'd better put my brain towards how to live in a world where they won't, which is too depressing to think about... and the cycle continues.
I'm sure it has been articulated even earlier than the early 1900s. It's just goes on and on.
- siquick 11y ago10 years ago this post would have felt very cynical but I can't help agreeing with a lot of what you said...
- 13thLetter 11y ago"My understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is that they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech and tactics, especially to study things like asymmetric urban warfare in which the distinction between combatant and civilian is difficult." And my "understanding" of how gravity works is that the Earth is carried around the Sun by a giant invisible rottweiler dog. If I can't back it up, though, I'm not going to get my Rottweiler Theory through peer review. What do you back up your "understanding" with?
- sago 11y agoIt's based, I think, on interpreting the evidence of the way we prosecuted recent wars, the money flows spent in waging war, and the overlap of military, industrial and political interests. My understanding differs though. My understanding is that the commenters understanding comes from finding it difficult to believe human beings, especially people seemingly smart enough to reach the top, could be that stupid. If they couldn't be that stupid or misguided, then they must have had some ulterior motive. I go with the 'yeah, the neocons really were that dumb.'
- p4wnc6 11y agoActually, I worked in the defense industry for a while, so a lot of it is based on my understanding of that work. It's not fruitful to dump some 5000 word diatribe about it though. I'm not interested in convincing anyone about it ... and anyone who doubts it or feels I couldn't produce a compelling argument if I was pressed to should absolutely feel free to disagree and I am not at all endorsing my fleeting comments as justification.
- tangled_zans 11y agoBut are you SURE you don't want to spend hours justifying your opinion to some random passive aggressive stranger? Clearly you're not allowed to share your views without being ridiculed unless you cite extensive sources and make some flow charts or something. [/sarcasm] I enjoyed reading your insight so thanks for sharing that. 13thLetter: Do you think it's possible to tell someone to elaborate on why they believe something without being an asshole. I mean, if you ask nicely then he could've written something interesting about his experiences. If you act like a passive aggressive douche then you'll just get people defensive and they won't write anything. The whole community loses. Besides, I think it's pretty pretentious to hold someone's views shared at a messaging forum to uphold to the same standard that they would need to get into a peer-reviewed journal disputing gravity. Do you even THINK before you write?