Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Of course they are to blame. People often times go to prison if they kill someone on the road even if they didn't intend to.

The people you're talking about are more to blame, given how much they were war profiteers themselves and were intertwined with war profiteering firms.

Also it can't seriously be called negligent killing if there's no serious effort to reduce or let alone count the dead and find what the "mistakes" were. Probably because there are no mistakes, it's calculated acceptable "colateral damage" (I hate this euphemism). Just like after Trump changed the rules and US related killing rate rised by some 400% or so right after that.




I agree with you, but why don't at least left-wing Americans agree too? Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.


I don't know. I'm not an american. World is a mess though, and if people try to make sense of it by the use of some very large highlevel abstractions like left/right/democracy/islamism/etc. they're likely to fail.

I'm sure if someone tried, they can find good sounding justification for a lot of things within any of these highlevel thought systems. For example my mind boggles at the fact, that part of american left is pro-Assad (which is basically a horryfying middle-eastern dictator). If what he does would be happening in America, they'd be horrified. Currently there's some pushback against a new proposed CIA chiefess, because of overseeing torture. Yet Assad is acceptable despite running horrendous prisons like Adra, Sednaya, etc. (read some HRW reports, see "Caesar" photos).

To me it's more interesting to look at behavior/stated motivations of individual people, which leads to a more realistic view of the world. Yet it will cover very little, almost nothing, because it's hard to generalize from that.


The US left is generally anti-Assad, both due to his atrocities and the perception that the Russian government is propping him up. There is a wing of the left who support him due to a belief that the US are trying to destabilize his regime and install a puppet by funding violent rebel groups. They're not exactly wrong, but they're blinded by ideology and in some cases conspiracy theory thinking like the chemical attacks being fake or his atrocities all being US propaganda. I would say this is only a small minority on the left, though. Most of the left hates Assad and his regime. The right at the moment seem to be more sympathetic to him.


Not sure, I've wondered this myself. At a certain level, there's the fact that the US is simply a very patriotic place. Similarly, in Russia it's also not socially accepted to publicly criticize military service members. That said, there are many other "patriotic" countries in the world, and not all of them impose this social reverence on the military, so some other factor is at play.

Common knowledge says that the US was probably not always like this. I'm not old enough to remember the Vietnam era, but the stereotype goes that returning soldiers / military were treated with disdain by the civilian population. I have to admit I've wondered at how widespread this mistreatment was, but it is probably safe to say that the military of the time didn't enjoy all the unequivocal support, standing ovations and endless TYFYS that permeate American culture these days.

I do know that after 9/11 and at the outset of the GWOT it was universally taboo to do anything but loudly praise the military. Where this sentiment came from, how it was disseminated, why it persists to this day : all are frankly mysteries to me. It didn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now.


The US has been at war, somewhere in the world, since its inception as a nation.

It has dropped one bomb every twenty minutes, mostly on innocent people, for the last 3 decades.

The US currently has the world ensnared in its remote military bases, and is a number one cause of trouble in the world. It regularly defeats real democracies using covert means, installing its own puppets to function as feudal lords. When covert means fail, the USA goes overt - and has practiced and refined its presentation of these actions such that the rest of the world is helpless to do anything about it. Nobody wants to believe it, but the USA is a wholesale exporter of death, destruction and mayhem.

Yet, the American people are ignorant of all of this, because of the luxuries afforded them by their state.

Until we deal with the decadence problem, we will not be able to deal with the militarism.


What you say may be true...but it has worked out pretty well for us.


For some of you. For a majority of Americans, however, living in poverty - not so. Its very much an imperialist scenario. Sure, you have your bread and circuses. But don't look behind the curtain in any of your major metropolitan cities. The sight of 80,000 people, families, living on the streets in LA won't make you proud.


Even HN posters are keen to show proper respect to soldiers and get angry if you don't do the same.

In a Western democracy soldiers are volunteers to enact the will of The People as expressed by a democratically elected government. If the representatives of The People, chosen by The People, decide that a war is necessary then they go - it's rare for soldiers to be eager to rush into war. Well apart from Colin Powell who sat there and lied to the UN with a straight face. It's usually chickenhawks like Bliar and Obama who are eager to strut about on the world stage.


Groupthink is an ultimate political power, and it has been weaponised.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: