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There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics. Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint St
by bunderbunder 13y ago
There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics.
Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program. Long story short, every politician who had a contractor working on the project in his constituency started making noise about all the jobs that would be lost if we were to shut down the program. No secret conspiracy; that was an open debate that happened in the public sector, and which many Americans were talking about over dinner.
Even the actual influencing of decisions to engage in hostilities is so everyday as to be unremarkable. For example, the big defense contractors spent a whole lot of money lobbying members of Congress to convince them that the 2009 Afghanisatan surge was a good idea. I think some wonks wrote columns about it in Foreign Policy magazine, but otherwise the news was barely even noticed.
As for how that leads to a sort of "continuous warfare" policy where we're always on the lookout for new enemies. . . I think that just emerges. If you've spending billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money on some new toy, then at some point someone's going to start asking why. And of course if your job is tied to a project, the very last thing you're going to say is, "No reason, actually this is a pretty silly lark if you ask me." So folks start coming up with hypothetical adversaries, and starts inventing war games and conducting exercises built around these hypotheses. And things just sort of roll along from there.
- cscurmudgeon 13y agoWe know that people go after profits. Nothing extraordinary here. What is extraordinary is the assertion that people acted unethically and (probably) also illegally.
- willvarfar 13y agoWhat part is illegal?
- d23 13y agoI'm guessing cscurmudgeon is arguing that it isn't.
- bunderbunder 13y agoWhich, in my opinion, isn't necessarily a terribly useful question. When it comes to where the law belongs in relation to pragmatism and ethics, I'm inclined to say that the cart belongs firmly behind both horses.
- baddox 13y agoI don't really care if it's unethical or illegal. I personally just don't want to be taxed to pay for it.
- rdtsc 13y agoI don't think direct written orders have been issued to bomb civilians. What I believe is that it is left to be decided verbally or via other non-verbal signaling. Ex. "Make sure the job gets done well, wink, wink". Or just pay more per missions flown, and don't really bother punishing past mistakes. Pretty often "mistakes" become routine. Those in the chain very quickly assimilate incentive structures.
- peterashford 13y agoWall street traders were confronted with the proof that their speculation on produce futures was causing famine and actual, real deaths. They were aware, they just didn't care. People acting unethically for profit is pretty much the American way, isn't it? It seems to me that if there's a buck in it and it's not illegal (or you can get away with it) it's pretty much justified in the US.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago> things just sort of roll along from there “They actually like deploying. So when you go visit them in Afghanistan, in the western Pacific, you don't get questions like, ‘Oh, shoot, what's sequester going to do to me?’ They know how to spell it, but that's about it. They want to know, ‘Hey, Commandant, you know, is this going to be the last deployment I'm going to get on, or am I going to actually be able to go to combat again or be able to go to WESTPAC (western pacific) again,” Amos said. “So our morale's pretty high right now, and I think it's going to stay high as long as we give them something to look forward to. The reorientation to the Pacific has just reenergized a lot of Marines as they think about Afghanistan: ‘My gosh, we're coming out of there in 2014. What's left?’ Well, we talk about Darwin, Australia. We talk about Japan. We talk about Guam. And their eyes light up.” http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cuts-top-brass-worry-troops-are-bored/73478/ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cut...