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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Pi 
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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as far as I can tell, plumbers, even the radical ones, are not giving sermons on why you should drown yourself or anyone else in bath tubs.
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Pi = Infinite = Collingwood = Always
Floreat Pica |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ we are a long way from winning the war on sanitary ware.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| stui magpie wrote: | I was using David's words (paraphrase)
It's easy to sook about civilian casualties when one side uses the civilians as human shields.
the thing forgotten is that those who hide amongst the civilians, not only have no empathy for them but they do it deliberately so that civilian deaths (which they don't care about) get media which, strangely, supports their cause. Just look at isreal and the palestinians for an example.
If those people were surrounded by ISIS fighters, they were already dead. That they couldn't be saved is tragic, that they were killed by those trying to save them, equally so.
In no way does it equate with those people deliberately taking civilian lives and anyone who thinks it does is a deluded fool. |
The way it does equate is that they're still dead. But you don't need to pretend that anyone here is lacking a basic understanding of the difference between murder and manslaughter. What you and Mugwump seem reluctant to concede is that, just as manslaughter is still a crime, the fact of not meaning to kill someone doesn't mean you aren't responsible for their deaths.
Here's the thing about human shields (if that is indeed the reason for this tragedy and not just the US military trying to spin their way out of their horrific error): it's not actually an excuse. If a gunman takes five people hostage in a building, is it standard practice to fire indiscriminately through the window until everyone is dead? Reckon a police officer who did that wouldn't be considered culpable?
War is difficult and requires a great deal of risky, life-and-death decisionmaking. Sometimes mistakes are made. But when a mistake causes a massacre, then that can't be shrugged off as "shit happens". That is monstrous and dehumanising.
As for your "sooking about civilian casualties", could you make it any clearer that you don't give a #£&*?
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | I was using David's words (paraphrase)
It's easy to sook about civilian casualties when one side uses the civilians as human shields.
the thing forgotten is that those who hide amongst the civilians, not only have no empathy for them but they do it deliberately so that civilian deaths (which they don't care about) get media which, strangely, supports their cause. Just look at isreal and the palestinians for an example.
If those people were surrounded by ISIS fighters, they were already dead. That they couldn't be saved is tragic, that they were killed by those trying to save them, equally so.
In no way does it equate with those people deliberately taking civilian lives and anyone who thinks it does is a deluded fool. |
The way it does equate is that they're still dead. But you don't need to pretend that anyone here is lacking a basic understanding of the difference between murder and manslaughter. What you and Mugwump seem reluctant to concede is that, just as manslaughter is still a crime, the fact of not meaning to kill someone doesn't mean you aren't responsible for their deaths.
Here's the thing about human shields (if that is indeed the reason for this tragedy and not just the US military trying to spin their way out of their horrific error): it's not actually an excuse. If a gunman takes five people hostage in a building, is it standard practice to fire indiscriminately through the window until everyone is dead? Reckon a police officer who did that wouldn't be considered culpable? |
Yes. But you seem to assume that the US fire was indiscriminate and that they didn't care about killing the innocent. I don't share that assumption
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War is difficult and requires a great deal of risky, life-and-death decisionmaking. Sometimes mistakes are made. But when a mistake causes a massacre, then that can't be shrugged off as "shit happens". That is monstrous and dehumanising. |
What would you like to see? Videos of the people in command self flagellating? Consider it in the context of your favourite trolley car scenarios. | Quote: |
As for your "sooking about civilian casualties", could you make it any clearer that you don't give a #£&*? |
Poor choice of wording, I'll pay that, but not an entirely inaccurate conclusion
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | What you and Mugwump seem reluctant to concede is that, just as manslaughter is still a crime, the fact of not meaning to kill someone doesn't mean you aren't responsible for their deaths.
If a gunman takes five people hostage in a building, is it standard practice to fire indiscriminately through the window until everyone is dead? Reckon a police officer who did that wouldn't be considered culpable?
War is difficult and requires a great deal of risky, life-and-death decisionmaking. Sometimes mistakes are made. But when a mistake causes a massacre, then that can't be shrugged off as "shit happens". That is monstrous and dehumanising. |
I just think the context of war makes your analogies void. There is no comparable circumstance in life where killing and maiming is not only accepted, but essential to the task. Concepts like murder and manslaughter can certainly make sense in wartime, but only in a context where combat is not taking place, or there is no reasonable assumption of enemy action. In combat, such legal finery does not work well. It works even less well when the combatant is as criminal as IS.
How do you know that this was shrugged off as "shit happens" ? The military is perhaps the ultimate learning organisation (second maybe to airlines), and I am sure there will be an internal inquiry in an attempt to stop it happening again. The article does not deal with that. Yet whatever learning process takes place, it will happen again, because combat is about the least structured and most lethal (not to mention the most unspeakably foul) human activity ever devised. It's why we should avoid it far more than we do. But if we do enter into it, then we should understand that errors are an inevitable part of what we chose to do.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| stui magpie wrote: |
Yes. But you seem to assume that the US fire was indiscriminate and that they didn't care about killing the innocent. I don't share that assumption |
I think it's most likely that they didn't wish to kill civilians, but in this and many other instances their response has been, effectively, "shit happens" (or worse, labelling innocent male victims as "enemy combatants"). They've also shown far too little interest in taking the necessary steps to prevent such deaths from happening in the first place, as the many casualties from drone strikes testify. So, to me, the crime here is one of negligence, not necessarily indifference.
| stui magpie wrote: | | What would you like to see? Videos of the people in command self flagellating? Consider it in the context of your favourite trolley car scenarios. |
I'm not interested in self-flagellation or crocodile tears; I hope that an inquiry will be held and that if it is found that anything could have been done to prevent this massacre those responsible for carrying out this air strike will lose their jobs and be charged with criminal negligence occasioning death. I do not for a moment believe, of course, that any of the above will occur.
As for trolley cars, I wrote an article on this precise topic it was about refugees, but if you skip through all that, you'll see I addressed this basic point then:
https://newmatilda.com/2016/05/16/refugees-are-not-your-trolley-problem/
| Quote: | The biggest danger of transposing such utilitarian hypotheticals to real-world situations is that these thought exercises are, by their very nature, dualistic. In any first-year philosophy tutorial, you will inevitably get someone (likely facetiously) seek a way out of the problem perhaps the victims can be warned, or the train can be derailed, or the driver can take better precautions.
They do this at least in part because that is the way we deal with problems in the real world. It is rare that a situation arises with only two possible outcomes (even if were talking in broad categories). But the ethical justification for acts with a grave human cost nearly always depends on binaries.
For otherwise compassionate people to accept a mass crime, they have to be assured that an even greater atrocity will otherwise occur and the more alternative outcomes there are, the weaker that argument becomes.
...
In truth, trolley problems only ever happen to two kinds of people: stick figures in highly refined thought exercises, and foreigners who we treat as if they were stick figures. This dehumanisation is essential; it makes pulling the switch in the trolley car far less discomforting. Consequences that we would ordinarily find monstrous become possible. |
In short, trolley problem reasoning is exactly what we have here: defenders of the US military depend on a combination of binary thinking and unwarranted deference to authority. Throw those out the window and the incident (and others like it) become much harder to dismiss.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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And I think your disdain for authority, and the military in particular, leads your thinking here.
What you call binary thinking happens multiple times a day in real world situations, not just involving stick figures and foreigners.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Binary thinking, David ? Surely you are being ironic.
It was a combat situation. The probable complexity, pressure and uncertainties of the situation, and the contradictory and shifting objectives it involves, are about as far from binary thinking and the trolley car problem as can be imagined. Yet you want an inquiry which is going to come up with a neat clear conclusion about negligence or not. Phew !
But let's play the game. You are a pilot in these circumstances, David, charged with destroying IS and aiding the Iraqi fighters on the ground. The Iraqi forces (probably from the equivalent of about Lieutenant level) - call in an airstrike at a target on the ground, because someone is trying to kill them from what appears to be an IS strongpoint. What are you going to do ? Bail out and conduct your own reconnaissance, then try and find your plane again ? And when they charge you with negligence, do you feel that justice has been done ? It's not a trolley car problem, it's a real world messy situation full of complex issues.
Alternatively, you eschew airstrikes and consider it ok that many more civilians get killed in ISIS's city-prison through a long ground war - it's ok because you do not personally have an involvement in that.
It's not binary thinking to recognise that a decision has to be made, to understand that there are no good options and perfect information, and to admit that therefore horrible things are going to happen in war.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:09 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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Hmmm I have little interest in apportioning blame or in this discussion if I'm honest - but I would like to say that as part of my role I develop and conduct training in identifying and managing a critical bleeding episode.
We try to make the simulation as real as possible with the aim of making actions and decisions in a " real life" episode second nature, instinctive, ingrained if you like - similar to the ambos, the police and I would imagine the military.
Despite all of this in a real life episode some of the best clinicians falter and make mistakes that can and have cost lives. Unless you are going to employ robots there will always be errors of judgement when humans are involved!
I know how different it is for me being on the end the phone giving clinical advice to what it was when I was an active participant in a critical bleed or resus.
Errors of judgement regardless of the consequences unless you are talking pure negligence are very different from deliberate acts to maim and murder.
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βThe greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.β |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| ^^^ So, is it an "error or accident" or a "deliberate" act when you direct a squadron of your fighter 'planes to obliterate a building with reckless disregard to whether there are civilians in the building? We're not talking here about a guy who accidentally shoots a child that he mistook for a sniper - we're talking about responsibility for the consequences of a deliberate decision to reduce that building, right there, to a pile of rubble. It's a command decision, not a mistake. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | ^^^ So, is it an "error or accident" or a "deliberate" act when you direct a squadron of your fighter 'planes to obliterate a building with reckless disregard to whether there are civilians in the building? We're not talking here about a guy who accidentally shoots a child that he mistook for a sniper - we're talking about responsibility for the consequences of a deliberate decision to reduce that building, right there, to a pile of rubble. It's a command decision, not a mistake. |
Yes it's a command decision. You can only assume there was reckless disregard as neither of us know what information was presented in the decision making.
I'll assume that people in those command positions don't make decisions without facts. They rely on others to provide those facts and hence mistakes can be made.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| That's not correct, though. Every time a command decision is made to bomb a residential building to smithereens, there's a reasonable likelihood that there will be civilians in it. Hence my use of the expression "reckless disregard". I was using a simple descriptor. It can be defended in any number of ways, if you wish - but it won't have persuasive force unless you start from the proposition that this was a residential area they were bombing and explain how that is morally OK. The decision to bomb that residential area was quite deliberate. This was no "mistake". They meant to bomb those buildings and they did. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Mugwump wrote: | ^ Binary thinking, David ? Surely you are being ironic.
It was a combat situation. The probable complexity, pressure and uncertainties of the situation, and the contradictory and shifting objectives it involves, are about as far from binary thinking and the trolley car problem as can be imagined. Yet you want an inquiry which is going to come up with a neat clear conclusion about negligence or not. Phew !
But let's play the game. You are a pilot in these circumstances, David, charged with destroying IS and aiding the Iraqi fighters on the ground. The Iraqi forces (probably from the equivalent of about Lieutenant level) - call in an airstrike at a target on the ground, because someone is trying to kill them from what appears to be an IS strongpoint. What are you going to do ? Bail out and conduct your own reconnaissance, then try and find your plane again ? And when they charge you with negligence, do you feel that justice has been done ? It's not a trolley car problem, it's a real world messy situation full of complex issues.
Alternatively, you eschew airstrikes and consider it ok that many more civilians get killed in ISIS's city-prison through a long ground war - it's ok because you do not personally have an involvement in that.
It's not binary thinking to recognise that a decision has to be made, to understand that there are no good options and perfect information, and to admit that therefore horrible things are going to happen in war. |
If one has any serious regard for human life and the gravity of cutting it short and that of injuring others for life, and leaving widows, orphans and grieving parents behind then one adopts whatever precautions are required in order to avoid that, even if it means ten ISIS commanders go untargeted. You check and triple check. You abort at the very last moment if you have to. If you're unsure, you pull out. Of course you do.
And if you don't, then it's because you've internalised the (yes, binary) trolley problem logic of killing a few to save a few more. And whether or not you meant it to happen this time or that time, you are deliberately making that choice, because if you are not putting in the due diligence to ensure that there are no civilian casualties, then you have already decided that there will be at one time or other. America's track record in this area seems to suggest that they have well and truly made that choice.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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