My problem is, folks such as yourself continue to discount the evil cost to humanity of ignorance of Americas recent multiple, heinous crimes against humanity, and folks such as yourself justify these evil acts endlessly, such that they continue unhindered by civilian oversight, in order to avoid the cold hard truth: the American people have the blood of millions of innocent people on their hands, today. Just as the German people did in 1945.
My problem with you specifically, is that you are doing this:
“People tend to turn away from disasters such as a war gone bad very quickly. They turn away because it bothers them morally, but also because the carnage challenges their strongly held self-perception that their country is a force for good in the world,” said Tirman. “In the face of something horrible, people are much more likely to become indifferent than they are to protest. Oftentimes it’s even easier to just blame the victims for causing their own suffering.”
Yes, exactly. And this is, incidentally, why Americans are so afraid of looking at the statistics of their wars.
Because the very real evil of America's wars is obvious, in plain view, for all to see.
“People tend to turn away from disasters such as a war gone bad very quickly. They turn away because it bothers them morally, but also because the carnage challenges their strongly held self-perception that their country is a force for good in the world,” said Tirman. “In the face of something horrible, people are much more likely to become indifferent than they are to protest. Oftentimes it’s even easier to just blame the victims for causing their own suffering.”
The magnitude of America's crimes against humanity is scary to comprehend - it is analogous to the situation of 1930's Nazi Germany and that is not hype. The sheer magnitude of the numbers of innocent victims is AN UTTER ATROCITY.
Do you think the American public has the temerity to survive the shock of its own complicity in the murder of literally, millions of innocent people by their own armed forces?
I don't think it will be good for America unless their war criminals are prosecuted - and we all know that isn't going to happen. Trouble is, the evidence of those crimes is not going away ...
Americans literally don't care about how many people they've killed, only if it was too expensive to do so.
HN used to just flag these discussions, now given the situation this one will stand for a while and the sentiment will momentarily be more reasonable, but just wait for the next terrorist attack for all these American morons to lose their minds and commit further atrocities.
You seem to have hit on a very important point: American's don't realize that, while their country is the #1 cause of terror and war around the world, its not 'legally at war', and therefore - laws of war that traditionally the public would understand, are simply not applicable.
This is another atrocity being committed on the general public by the military industrial criminal state. Doublethink and newspeak have been very skillfully applied to ensure a lack of culpability - however, to those of us who have had to dig innocent loved ones out from under America's piles of burning rubble, it is very, very clear that the American people are responsible for this mess, whether they understand their own laws or not.
It is utterly monstrous, and you've successfully pointed out the culturally disastrous moral authority that Americans use to justify their nations heinous crimes against humanity.
For every George Floyd there are a thousand unnamed Iraqi's. The outrage isn't there for those victims. Yet.
But there will be a time when Americans are confronted with their nations horrendous legacy for the last 20 years, and it will erase, entirely, any pretence of moral authority. One hopes that day comes sooner, and with fewer victims, but as we can see the stubborn "might makes right" attitude so many of us are exhibiting in the West, alas makes it more likely that this won't happen until even more innocent bodies are thrown on the pile ..
I dunno. I’m pretty sure I’m innocent of the horrors of the Iraq war even though I have been a US citizen over 60 years. Blaming civilians for the actions of their government is kind of what terrorists do.
You bring up some very interesting facts. Certainly being indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions should probably be keeping big time bureaucrats awake at night, but I sincerely doubt it. There are all sorts of psychological mechanisms that people employ to defend against this sort of cognitive dissonance... and unfortunately it is an easy and (sadly) natural part of being human. In the same way that Americans can eat meat while being blissfully ignorant of the environmental impact (let's not even talk about animal rights), Americans can also ignore what is occurring in dark rooms within foreign countries. It's the proverbial tree falling in the forest. My hope is that better data collection and live streaming will make global situations more 'real' to people. (ie: Abu Ghraib)
Us humans aren’t very good at learning even from recent history.
Crazed terror group murders civilians
Large Nation state kills scores of civilians in pursuit of said terror group.
How many Iraqi and Afghan people ended up dying last time around?
The tragedy is that we, as a species, know better but we don’t want to know better, we want to follow our monkey brain emotions instead.
The average age in Gaza is under 18. Courts in Texas forbid a woman at risk of dying from an unviable pregnancy to save her life, ostensibly to save the baby - but at the same time we grind cities to dust and destroy hospitals because terrorists may have walked there.
It’s all fucked up, objectively and we know better. And by not addressing the cognitive dissonance - by failing rational discourse in favor of traps and gotchas- we ultimately give air to those who launder it for outrage and clicks.
Yes, thats the point of this history lesson - we are still committing these crimes, on a regular basis, with impunity.
The only ones who can do anything about it is civilians. But, none of us seem to be too bothered by the 300,000 innocent lives lost, because America needs war.
4 million innocent people murdered in illegal wars is a lot of blood on the hands of the American people
That's very simplistic, and ignorant. Those deaths were the result of the dissolution of a regime forcefully (ie. using terror) to hold together an unstable populace. Sure, it was triggered by US actions, but that's really not the same thing...
Alas, your argument is tragic because with just a simple switch of a phrase, it becomes even more truthful:
>It's actually a tragedy, because the lessons to be learned from the failure of western imperialism come at the cost of countless lives, the least we could do is come away with something of utility.
We in the West all too often ignore the victims of Americas heinous illegal wars - over 500,000 innocent people have lost their lives because America believes it has a right to interfere in sovereign states across the globe.
Whether you are left- or right- oriented, you will be doing yourself and your culture a favour by stopping the very poor habit of ignoring the real victims of America's wars, who have too long been swept under the covers, because its either too embarrassing or the inherent evils too obvious upon inspection.
Americans of all political persuasions really need to stop America's war machine. It is, undeniably, the most negative influence in the world today.
What hyperbole? Are you really unaware that Americans murdered 5% of Iraqs population?
Are you really so ignorant of the fact that the US drops bombs on innocent people at the rate of 1 every twenty minutes for the last 20 years?
Come on, you can't be so ignorant of the fact that in the last few years the US literally turned multiple cities with populations greater than 2 million civilians into burning piles of rubble? That it dropped more bombs on Afghanistan LAST YEAR than ever before.
Seriously, there is nothing rude about pointing out America's evils, nor the ignorance of its citizens. Did you think we were all Americans here? Some of us are not that ignorant.
There is no excuse for killing innocents - in the name of whatever - America lost more than it gained by that single inhuman act of dropping Atom Bomb. War machines are still rattling - world peace is farther - But hope of a humanity not obliterated by the narrow confines of nation states and their propaganda and marching towards the goal of being at peace with itself and the universe lingers and that is what drives people like me.
I agree with everything you've said, but the frequency and scale of the killing of civilians by US bombs and missiles is incredible - it's literally at the point where only some of these events (and I guarantee we only know of a fraction of them) get even cursory attention from popular media. And when they do, it seems nobody cares.
We're bombarded (pun intended) with constant scenes of war and fighting. We're continually warned, cautioned and kept frightened about the bugbear de jour (North Korea, Russia, China, Daesh, terrorists, whoever). All this is used to justify the terrible actions and atrocities, of our military forces, used to justify ever creeping mass surveillance of the general population, because hey, we're the good guys! We need to do this to keep us safe! The enemy is worse! Etc
It hit saturation point a long time ago, and we know we can do nothing but continue sleepwalking into the dystopian nightmare that awaits us.
the US is the only country on earth that ever dropped nuclear weapons on civilians. US generals
decided to kill civilians, in retaliation, to achieve pure terror.
the US lost 3.5k civilians on 9/11 and started 2 wars for it.
but all this mil-porn floats around, civilian armchair heroes debate death and destruction with zero empathy
or connection to reality.
Are you honestly deluded enough to believe there have been no civilian casualties in the United States' war?
Are you honestly too callous and/or imbecilic to think that calling this "collateral damage" changes the situation for someone who's life has been destroyed by a foreign entity?
Again, I'm speechless at how deeply some have imbibed the propaganda of the war machine. Please, please recognize the terrible mistake in your logic.
My problem with you specifically, is that you are doing this:
“People tend to turn away from disasters such as a war gone bad very quickly. They turn away because it bothers them morally, but also because the carnage challenges their strongly held self-perception that their country is a force for good in the world,” said Tirman. “In the face of something horrible, people are much more likely to become indifferent than they are to protest. Oftentimes it’s even easier to just blame the victims for causing their own suffering.”
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-w...
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