Here’s the war you requested, Mr. President: Open thread

I can’t you guys, I’m gonna get drunk.

I’m still around as long as I am not called elsewhere (I hope this does not happen and being uncertain weather and when it happens stresses me out). Please drink in moderation.

Ok, now I am curious about this war-in-the-making. What do you think? Should I buy a subscription to warisboring.com or is there a hashtag to follow? I think I now have a good reason to be less reachable 🙂

(To avoid a misunderstanding: I am not looking forward to Trump going to war, I just have a very good reason to be stressed and ready drive and rush now and a good excuse why I was not stressed enough)

The most monstruous part of it for me : https://twitter.com/jennineak/status/1214720151205007360

Here’s a research paper which will probably repay some careful reading (which I haven’t had time for yet): Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants. This presented American test subjects with a hypothetical war scenario in Iran, involving killing large numbers of Iranian civilians in order to save a smaller number of US military lives. The first paragraph of the conclusion:

The novel survey experiments described in this article, by re-creating the trade-off between an atomic attack and the risk to the lives of U.S. soldiers that the United States faced at the end of World War II, produced many surprising findings. The U.S. public’s willingness to use nuclear weapons and deliberately kill foreign civilians has not changed as much since 1945 as many scholars have assumed. Contrary to the nuclear taboo thesis, a majority of Americans are willing to support the use of a nuclear weapon against an Iranian city killing 100,000 civilians. Contrary to the theory that Americans accept the noncombatant immunity norm, an even larger percentage of the U.S. public was willing to kill 100,000 Iranian civilians with conventional weapons. Women are as hawkish as men and, in some scenarios, are even more willing to support the use of nuclear weapons. Belief in the value of retribution is strongly related to support for using nuclear weapons, and a large majority of those who favor the use of nuclear weapons against Iran stated that the Iranian people bore some of the responsibility for that attack because they had not overthrown their government.

Some of the quotes from the respondents are chilling:

In an open-ended question, we asked respondents to write down the single most important reason they supported the air strike. The results revealed that utilitarian calculations about saving U.S. lives and ending the war promptly, as well as assigning culpability retrospectively, may have motivated subjects’ preference for the air strike. The majority of respondents in all three conditions who supported the bombing attack cited saving American lives or ending the war quickly as the reason for their support. That was not unexpected. What was surprising was the number of Americans who suggested that Iranian civilians were somehow culpable or were less than human. Justifications for the atomic attack that killed 100,000 Iranians included: “Hate the thought of being the only nation again to launch a nuclear strike, but they started it and we have lost enough lives”; and “Iran lied again about their nuclear facilities, launched an attack on an American warship that killed and hurt 4,000 Americans, and nothing short of complete and total victory over the lying savages would be acceptable to me.” Justifications for killing 2 million noncombatants included: “They were dancing in the streets and partying in favor of what happened to the twin towers”; “They hate us and they will violate any agreement”; “Islam is a religion of fanatics [and] they need to be taught a lesson”; “Air strike would wipe out any military opponents who will be hiding among civilians”; and “Kill the cockroaches.” Answers given by those who voted for the conventional attack that was estimated to kill 100,000 Iranian civilians included: “The article said that Iran attacked the U.S. ship first. The U.S. is not the aggressor here”; “Iran is ruled by radicals who have no regard for innocent life”; and “My first choice would be to decapitate the snake—wipe out the capital—wipe it clean—every living thing.”

So, I’m not hopeful.

https://soundcloud.com/war_college/why-nuclear-war-looks

That was the podcast, I found the promise of the book that the author mentioned and the people he talked about reassuring

Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe this numbers and I do not draw the apocalyptic conclusions you seem to do. Yes, Trump is the sort of populist who finds it funny to goof around with the atomic football and gets compared to the genocidal war victim from Germany but I think that there are a lot of good people in America who have at least read 1984 and feel like patriots.

Also, Japan was a third party in a war that Germany started and proved incredibly difficult to subdue because of the people resilience and fanatism which makes terrorism against America look, frankly, a bit more desperate and sad than, well, terroristic. Therefore, I cannot grasp why wild memes and dehumanisation (things that will fail once the net gets regulated better or when people stop being glued to their mobile devices) would cause dehumanisation on a level that justifies nuclear war.

Yes, people tend to have a short memory and tend to forget their misdeeds in order to see themselves as glorious heroes (just ask any comic book fan who thought their hobby would be safe from feminism forever) but I don’t believe that Americas people will fall for that cheap a trick. You are often seen as superficial, but few people are that dumb.

Maybe I’m just being jaded but if you see terror and terrorism as some sort of export-import relation then the terror offer is just rather pityfull and even though I do not know enough places and people in Amerika where I could live and pee thanks to being trans, I still think feel safe here.

@Moggie well that’s incredibly frightening. I used to think people are generally good and caring but I’m having to re-think that these days. Having even the tiniest knowledge of what bombs did to Nagasaki and Hiroshima and being ok with a repeat seems beyond insane.

As for Trump’s actions so far, I do not know the legal situation in the US. Has he acted illegally and/ or unconstitutionally? What’s the remedy? Oh no – is the remedy also … (drum roll) … impeachment? Argghh

hrmmm, please disregard that comment:

Heh, this probably explains why my educators were pushing utilitarianism so hard and where less thankful for affirmation than for criticism and found it a bit weird when I tried merging them (yet again).

It sounds weird.

@FlyByKiwi

Oh no – is the remedy also … (drum roll) … impeachment? Argghh

Our founders really didn’t think this through, did they?

Stop spamming.

@Crip Dyke, please don’t shut up! Obviously I speak only for myself, but I think your words are always valued.

Yes, and just be sure of not burning out.