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Dude, if you want peace is as much as I do, then denounce secrets and erase all national borders
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Problem is when both happen simultaniously, rooted in the other. Case in point, the Arab Spring. I’m on repeated record pointing out since day one how deeply bad of a idea it was to go in and bomb the fuck out of Libya. It’s been systemmatically growing internationally, and it’s not exactly liberating or making people more free by having nomadic factions riding around with heavy infantry weapons or well trained mercanaries for international hire to the top bidder flooding the market. This is what happened in the Mexican Rivera that caused the cartels to sophisicate in the first damn place before that market glutted and flooded back into attacking the government and pitting each king pin against one another.
Do we really want to shift the economic emphasis of the underground back to Tongs and Mercanaries? This is what happens… those secrets were secrets for a damn good reason, they were off hand comments and first person reports, and clandestine contacts via diplomatic efforts. Look up the branch of Philosophy that deals with Courtiers/Diplomats. That stuff is only occasionally reliable, most disinformation… but people kill one another over it. It’s why it most never becomes public record. It’s sure the hell NOT for you, much less someone like me who has a increased capacity for wrangling the information out half the time from educated guessing and targeted studying.
as to Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction… it wasn’t a good enough reason to invade. And yes, even the Iraqi who tipped us off to it admitted he lied so we would go in and invade. This is a side effect of poor intelligence gathering, as noted above. Much of the information turned out to be bullshit in terms of accurate information being passed down. However, it just so happened I was deployed to FOB ISKAN, which is where the Musiyyab Powerplant is outside of Iskandariya, Iraq.
If you go on google earth, you’ll notice that the first two powertowers closest to the river do not join the Iraqi grid, they cross across the river and remain in paralell until they dead end a few miles away in a old Iraqi Military Compound. The road leading up to that is known as ‘Route No Name’ (everyone refused to name it, most bombed road in Iraq) on American maps. It’s there that the UN weapon inspectors landed initially, looked around, and said there were no WMDs in the compound. The compound walls are small, but the testing range is the size of Delaware. You ask why we couldn’t find the weapons there? We were finding shitloads of weapons EVERYWHERE, 10 feet off the side of the road that both sides were using for years to blow up the other (is just happens to straddle the length of the Sunni-Shiite population’s historical boundries, where they have always fought tooth and nail every generation). We never even managed to clear that crap up, as every day out involved us finding more. Syrians would roll in depositing some new stuff, while locals made their own from old stockpiles.
Fact of the matter is, the C4 needed for blowing the WMD was found immediately, in the middle of the compound when 3rd ID first moved in. They were still advancing on Baghdad, took note for a follow up unit to come by and secure it. When that unit came 3 days later, the C4 was gone.
C4 is a common detenator used for blowing up nuclear bombs to several WMD systems (but not all, some biological weapons die in a explosion for obvious reasons). That was a well know WMD site, was the central R&D center for Saddam’s well documented Nuclear program. I literally know where his nuclear scientists lived, they still live in the same apartment complex in Iskandariya. Red Brick apartments, it has a wikipage (at least did) and have been looking for it for 15 minutes… but will find it later. None the less:
- I was at the powerplant that powered up Saddam’s mad little scheme. It’s easy to notice from the towers that the main powerplant in Iraq dedicated half of it’s electrical output to weapons research.
- The detenators were the last moved out. They became the center of the ammunition used in the Triangle of Death, capable of blowing up even tanks- most IEDs can’t do that.
- The range for WMD used for testing is roughtly the size of Delaware. That’s assuming they were stored on site.
- Lots of old, Iraq-iran war weapons were found, but decayed. There isn’t much evidence outside of a half hearted measure on Saddam’s part to elimanate some of it, the rest was left alone, but most was found to be of questionable use. There was no evidence of large scale compliance to eliminate his weapon stockpiles at anypoint, nor to decommision the WMD research facility, nor to do fucking anything of any sorts other than to toy around with inspectors.
- September 11th happened, Saddam happened to have on the record weapons of mass destruction, weapons he once have and never showed much evidence of systemmatically destroying. He was funding terrorist families in Israel, and were we actively and aggressively seaching for terrorist strongholds around the globe. In regards to Saddam… fuck, they guy fucked himself by default from playing the wrong game for years. He still could of gotten out of it by completely giving up any pretense to WMDs and begged NATO, Soviet, fucking anyone to come in and inpect everything to the end of time to show he didn’t have WMD. Iraq war can be blamed on a lot of people over many years, but we can’t forget Saddam at any point up to the invasion could of bucked up and prevented it. It was viewed as a very likely terrorist nest with WMDs easy to acquire. Dumbass didn’t accept 9-11th forced a geopolitical shift in security.
- Themain battle ground in Iraq just happened to be around the powerplant and the base that produced the WMDs. There were other theaters, several more famous, but it was here that the Triangle arouse, and that is where the fight began and ended. It is so for many factors, as Saddam stationed alot of reserve assets there, as well as the split rival population, but the coincidence of bountiful stockpiles of explosive detanators being there at the WMD site, then dissapearing was a key reason why it went on for so long, and was so destructive.
- Weapons still not accounted for. Literally, we can’t figure out despite all out cataloging, under whatever theory- where it went. Someone should be able to say ‘hey fucker, we destoryed that stuff this month of this year in this location, fuck you Americans’.
I feel sorry for the little kid playing with his plastic shovel, or the dog, that digs in the mound where some of it’s located someday, 15 years down the line. I won’t gloat. It will be a tradgedy, but many will gloat, but the essential problem remains, as well as it’s aftermath. The massive insufficiency of our current justifications for warfare, and how we debate. The international system of law and diplomacy- developed through courtiership and international law (research both, they developed together, you can’t have a one sided arguement without looking for it’s developmental paralell). Our system for warfare wasn’t based on Just War Theory, it was based on formal rules of international law. Those laws were not matching up to the reality of the situation, the public were very poorly schooled in them in the first place, and even worst, had little to no comprehension on how to investigate the claims of of generals in advocated strategic needs. This is a massive blindspot in modern philosophy (despite next to every french philosopher thinking they were experts on strategy and military matters). We’ve literally decayed and grown weak on a philosophical level, while out western war colleges develope well beyond the average philosopher’s comprehension. This is scary to me.
We need to be able to critically approach strategic assertions. Public universally isn’t in a position to do so- more so in America and China than say, Europe or South America… and between America and China, only one is a Democracy… so the argument remains a tad bit underdeveloped anywhere.
9) Your opinion doesn’t matter in a positive way. This isn’t meant to insult you, but it’s the reality of it, see the above for evidence. Though the means to decalring war is democratic, war itself is a full cognitive action investing wide aspects of our being. It comes out to it’s own comclusions, and it’s own ends. The need to cognitively understand it inherently possesses risks to other aspects of thinking, Several people died as a result of the Arab Spring, and will continue to die. I myself am freaking out about the Air Mountains long before the Arab Spring started, and now that it’s speeding up, it’s all the more unsettling as to what were gearing into, largely unintentionally on every side. Causality is a bitch. A stronger, more beautiful democracy and more freedom will NOT be the result. You dire need to know diplomatic dispates is inane. We collect that stuff to PREVENT chaos, not to encourage more bloodshed. What underlines your need- more data, can be gained from studying strategy. Start off with a classic, such as The Seven Military Classics or Clausewitz. Learn a bit of the risks, why the information is collected, then collate on your end, and warn people asymettrically on your end of bad scenerios or likely bad guys out there. You don’t need to go about telling people how to make WMDs, or how to break into bases, or which state bribed who for petty information such as which prince has a boozing problem, or who’s fucking who on the side, or who spent a million dollars on a hooker. People tend to know this sort of stuff instinctively, but it has tragic consequences on a national ego once they realize outsiders know, and it results in bloody killings, and most of them tend to be poorly aimed. Take the French Revolution as a example, several people executed didn’t even do anything wrong, or minor things. The executions were overtaken by men who desired to gain power themselves and rule. It’s easier just to expolit characterflaws diplomatically- blackmail and covert alliances, or assassination on a small scale rather than a Iraq style invasion to do the right thing. Bribe a few hedonist to lay off or play along rather than destroy a countries infrastructure. The larger your international alliances, such as Americas, the more formal, consistent, and value oriented such back water operations have to be… as everyone else ahs spies and if your only playing for your own short term advantage, everyone else will call you on it, break off the alliance network, or follow in suit in pure chaos. Even shadow governments have ethics and morals they have to follow as a result. Countries being played oftentimes realize they have little choice but to follow by the official rules of the game as a result, and when they finally do eventually get around to cleaning up their act, there isn’t much room for international interference in the first place.
The very basis for varying degrees of ify governments is a sign that society exists on many levels. Nobody sees anything exactly the same. Therefor, the facts out there always serves a particular viewpoint, if not a larger ideological framework, and that frankework is going to be increasingly bullshit and propaganda where everyone is ‘innocently’ involved in the lie. Humans are default decpetive and two face. We hide behind the masses of our crowds and pretend to innocence. But we lie and scheme all the time, it’s our nature. The need for more information in the first place is a result of this- the need to make things predictible and get the upperhand, in forming and asserting our value judgements. Truth of the matter is, we’re every bit individually as dirty and destructive as the worst sadistic bastard out there. We don’t realize this because we are onnocent of it in degrees. The opprotunity wasn’t realized when it was there, or we were to incompetent to follow suit. Human life provides many opprotunities to do it again and again however. A good bit of strategy deals with recognizing this- men are inherently bad, but also good. We’ll take up the good cause when it’s possible to make us feel good, to actualize us. We like being seen as good when we can. Just usually we don’t bother. We expect others to play to a larger frame of reference that we never fully dabble in given our location and specializations, and act shocked and offended when someone behaves quite human in breaking the rules. Those rules were poorly understood and framed, and rarely maintained.