"... you are more likely as a US citizen to drown in your bathtub (a one in 800,000 chance) than die from terrorism (a one in 3.8 million chance). And even this may be an overestimate: in 2013 the Washington Post reported that, based on the previous five years, there was only a one in 20 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack: two times less likely than dying from a lightning strike. Toddlers, using weapons found in their own homes, have killed more Americans than terrorists in recent years."
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... defensible
Terror attacks by Islamist groups
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stui magpie
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Mugwump
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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.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.
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.
Two more flags before I die!
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stui magpie
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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.
What you call binary thinking happens multiple times a day in real world situations, not just involving stick figures and foreigners.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
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Mugwump
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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.
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.
Last edited by Mugwump on Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Two more flags before I die!
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Morrigu
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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.
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.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
^^^ 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
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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.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.
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.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
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.