4 ms·
In the US "what we pay them to do" is vernacular for "it's their assigned job" or "it's what we asked them to do". I admit it's a bit of a weird phrase but its
by timsally 13y ago
In the US "what we pay them to do" is vernacular for "it's their assigned job" or "it's what we asked them to do". I admit it's a bit of a weird phrase but its not actually referring to money. To your point: if the claim is that we're asking our military or our intelligence agencies to do things that aren't effective, then let's have that debate. Nuclear force reduction and end illegal surveillance? Sure. Nuclear disarmament and shutting down our SIGINT mission? Not so much.
- ekianjo 13y ago> Nuclear disarmament and shutting down our SIGINT mission? I assume you missed the excellent post about "Everything in Dr Strangelove was true" a couple of days ago ? Maybe that will make you think twice about how safe it is to actually have nuclear weapons. But that's a different topic. Back on your original post, my main issue with what you wrote is that you seemed to justify something intolerable just because "people are paid for that".
- tptacek 13y agoCould you perhaps be specific about the "intolerable" thing we're talking about? Because all I see you writing about is nuclear weapons.
- fulafel 13y ago"I was just following orders" is a discredited defense in war crime trials.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoThis is why the people responsible (i.e. commanding officers, if the war crime was under orders) are tried, and the people committing them have to deal with processing it.
- Zigurd 13y agoSeveral thousand Japanese soldiers, the vast majority of which were not command staff, were tried for war crimes. About 1000 were sentenced to hang, and many more were sentenced to life in prison or long prison terms.