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This might shock you, but life and the world I live in is actually as real as the ones other people live in. You don't become real by serving in the military, o

by lkbm 3y ago

This might shock you, but life and the world I live in is actually as real as the ones other people live in. You don't become real by serving in the military, or having a family member in the military. It affected people in the military a lot—I mentioned that. It massively effected people in certain other countries, as I mentioned. But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed?

phone8675309 3y ago
> But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed? Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. The US government used the occasion to assassinate American citizens abroad with drones with no due process. Everything you say or do on the Internet is tracked not only by advertisers but by the US government itself. Trillions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians are dead thanks to the war and sanctions conducted by the US. This ended up being a complete waste in Afghanistan due to the Taliban immediately retaking the country. If you can't see these as impacts then it's because your separation from them is a privilege.
- lkbm 3y ago
  > Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. What age? As I said, I was 19 at the time. For Americans, we're looking at ~2500 for Afghanistan and another ~5000 for Iraq. That's several times fewer than the number of high schools. A lot more were wounded. There's a good chance most people knew someone wounded in one of the wars. But "someone I know was killed" is true with or without the wars. If the number of fatal car accidents increased by 5%, would you say this was a major change to our day to day life? That would take about three years to exceed the total US deaths from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars over their entire many-year time span.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    It’s not about just the dead. Think about all the people who deployed, leaving family and friends behind. Kids didn’t see their parents for months to years at a time. People got divorced. PTSD is a very real thing. To couch your arguments in a death count is quite lazy.
    - lkbm 3y ago
      Reminder: this is the thing I'm responding to: "Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war." I didn't come up with deaths as the metric. Notice that only one comment mentions people being wounded: mine.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nyc_data_geek 3y ago
Police in the US have been drastically more militarized since 9/11/01. Also, we now live in a surveillance state to a degree inconceivable prior to the passage of the PATRIOT Act, which was rammed through in the days following that event, without scrutiny or debate. We are all subjected to drastically more surveillance, and militarized policing, as a result of the events that day, even those of us lucky enough to be insulated from the direct kinetic impacts of the war we started as a result of it. To say nothing of extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial killings, and the trillions of our tax dollars wasted on a war against a regime that had nothing to do with the event itself. We could have made a much better world, for that money. edit: "We" meaning citizens of the US, although to a large degree these impacts are not only felt by US citizens.
- lkbm 3y ago
  Yeah, the militarization of the police is a good call-out. That's a big mostly-second-order effect of the 9/11 response. The surveillance and other Patriot Act changes were very bad. As much as I hate and have railed against them from the start, they don't have a real, tangible effect on most people in the way COVID did, but they're a real problem, and clearly direct result of 9/11.
tekla 3y ago
Is this how the US devolves? 9/11 directly contributed to the massive increase in spying against citizens and illegal activities. The fact that you don't see an issue with this, means just how successful it was in doing so.
- lkbm 3y ago
  No, I have a huge issue with it. I've been shouting on the internet about the Patriot Act and whatnot since it was passed. It's very, very bad. It also has no noticeable, tangible effect on my life, or the lives of most people. It's a big problem that fucks a small number of people in a way that's semi-random. Actually...this isn't 100% true. Abu Ghraib, and specifically Sen Inhofe's "outaged at the outrage" response, helped prompt me to donate 33% of my income to charity for several years in part. At the time, I thought that was the maximum I could deduct and I wanted to minimize the amount of tax dollars I sent to a government that was actively torturing people. My savings would be vastly larger if not for Abu Ghraib.
idontpost 3y ago
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by lkbm 3y ago

phone8675309 3y ago

> But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed? Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. The US government used the occasion to assassinate American citizens abroad with drones with no due process. Everything you say or do on the Internet is tracked not only by advertisers but by the US government itself. Trillions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians are dead thanks to the war and sanctions conducted by the US. This ended up being a complete waste in Afghanistan due to the Taliban immediately retaking the country. If you can't see these as impacts then it's because your separation from them is a privilege.

lkbm 3y ago
> Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. What age? As I said, I was 19 at the time. For Americans, we're looking at ~2500 for Afghanistan and another ~5000 for Iraq. That's several times fewer than the number of high schools. A lot more were wounded. There's a good chance most people knew someone wounded in one of the wars. But "someone I know was killed" is true with or without the wars. If the number of fatal car accidents increased by 5%, would you say this was a major change to our day to day life? That would take about three years to exceed the total US deaths from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars over their entire many-year time span.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  It’s not about just the dead. Think about all the people who deployed, leaving family and friends behind. Kids didn’t see their parents for months to years at a time. People got divorced. PTSD is a very real thing. To couch your arguments in a death count is quite lazy.
  - lkbm 3y ago
    Reminder: this is the thing I'm responding to: "Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war." I didn't come up with deaths as the metric. Notice that only one comment mentions people being wounded: mine.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nyc_data_geek 3y ago

Police in the US have been drastically more militarized since 9/11/01. Also, we now live in a surveillance state to a degree inconceivable prior to the passage of the PATRIOT Act, which was rammed through in the days following that event, without scrutiny or debate. We are all subjected to drastically more surveillance, and militarized policing, as a result of the events that day, even those of us lucky enough to be insulated from the direct kinetic impacts of the war we started as a result of it. To say nothing of extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial killings, and the trillions of our tax dollars wasted on a war against a regime that had nothing to do with the event itself. We could have made a much better world, for that money. edit: "We" meaning citizens of the US, although to a large degree these impacts are not only felt by US citizens.

lkbm 3y ago
Yeah, the militarization of the police is a good call-out. That's a big mostly-second-order effect of the 9/11 response. The surveillance and other Patriot Act changes were very bad. As much as I hate and have railed against them from the start, they don't have a real, tangible effect on most people in the way COVID did, but they're a real problem, and clearly direct result of 9/11.

tekla 3y ago

Is this how the US devolves? 9/11 directly contributed to the massive increase in spying against citizens and illegal activities. The fact that you don't see an issue with this, means just how successful it was in doing so.

lkbm 3y ago
No, I have a huge issue with it. I've been shouting on the internet about the Patriot Act and whatnot since it was passed. It's very, very bad. It also has no noticeable, tangible effect on my life, or the lives of most people. It's a big problem that fucks a small number of people in a way that's semi-random. Actually...this isn't 100% true. Abu Ghraib, and specifically Sen Inhofe's "outaged at the outrage" response, helped prompt me to donate 33% of my income to charity for several years in part. At the time, I thought that was the maximum I could deduct and I wanted to minimize the amount of tax dollars I sent to a government that was actively torturing people. My savings would be vastly larger if not for Abu Ghraib.

idontpost 3y ago

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