The Allies go in !

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Pardon me for posting - but this is exciting news !!!

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Allies-Attack-Libya-118304704.html

The airstrikes have gone in against Libya. For once, the UK, USa and the rest of the world seem to be doing the right thing. I was shocked when i heard that cameron had tried to get the SAS involved in Libya. I want to make it clear that I have never liked Gaddaffi , even if I had never posted on that subject until recently in this forum. Iin fact, i don't like the idea of any dictator oppressing their own people and getting backing from the business community to do so.

So, to herar that the Libyan rebels are getting air support and even air strikes against gaddaffian positions is welcome news.

I just hope it isn't too late. governments never do this sort of thing without wantng some kind of pay back. i still hope that there will be free elections in libya, and that this will mean more demands for freedom there and elsewhere and not a rolling back of freedom to secure ' national interests'.

ii don't want gaddaffi replaced by a puppet of UK or US choosing , I want the Libyans to be able to set their own course as a nation . And if that means that we in the west have to lower our dependence on foriegn oil, so be it.

but we must ask ourselves -
what is the UN for?
if we don't want the USA to be the world's policeman , who else is up for the job ?
how can the democratic voters in democratic nations secure the freedoms of everyone - for untill we are all free, no one really is.

I am overjoyed, not in the death and destruction that now rains down upon Gaddaffis henchmen, but the opportunity that this may open up for democracy and freedom in a land that has been denied it for so long. wee are going in on the terms asked, the only terms the libyan opposition wants. I hope that they will have enough space to build their own nation on their own terms as a result.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42164455/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12776418

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

People in my country treat war and the meatpacking industry much the same. We like winning wars and watching other people fight them just like we like minute steaks and the occasional rib-eye. The process that goes into *making* those things happen, OTOH, is nasty, brutish, and often depressing to read about and we can't have *that* in our shiny happy land o' the free and home o' the brave. Hence why this video, which should surprise no-one the least bit informed about how US soldiers fight wars in real life becomes a target of opprobrium for noting reality as it is, and hence why we want video-game war and neglect the reality of the situation, always violent, bloody, and messy and seldom having any real options at the end or the beginning to make everything worthwhile.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

In a less verbose version:

Dehumanize the enemy so that I forget that I'm killing.

Make them little dots on a screen and I'll almost believe I'm not really killing humans. Instead I'm playing a videogame. See? Abracadabra. A miracle! I see no faces - nothing bad has happened, move along.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yes. Move along, sitting in the living room wearing PJs and singing "I Wish I was an Oscar Mayer Wiener" and people dying and military actions having consequences? Not bothering them, so what does it matter?

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Just think, in a few years a third of our ground vehicles are going to be unmanned.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Better and better. X.X

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Why, let fancy gadgets fight each other.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Dehumanization is one thing. Video-game warfare is quite another thing, IMHO.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is the problem.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

*These days* being the key phrase here.

Actually that is an essential component of ANY war.

Today's war. Not any war. If you meant ANY war today, yes - correct. If you meant ANY war, at any time, no.

WW1. Pictures of German and French troops using the few hours of temporary ceasefire to meet between the trenches and exchange cigarettes and jokes. Then returning to fight and kill each other later the same day. Would you ever see that today?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Btw, from your expert's POV, what do you think caused those moments?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

That's why I don't want to think what would happen if I'm ever in such a situation. I may be all gun-hating, violence-hating right now, but when pressed by the circumstances, and with a gun in my hands, who knows, I could turn out to be the ultimate cold-blooded killing machine? I think that's why I can sometimes say hurtful things like that one about me shooting you, you remember that. Yes, people are more complex than they appear.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

The dogs that don't bark are the most dangerous. In this sense, you may consider me harmless. :-)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

There's a Lex Luther lurking in here somewhere.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

actually , i have been lurking here and listening for some time. what you, panookah , are saying is backed up by several reports I have read.

it is like cave men really did have an inbuilt biologically functioning taboo against killing their own kind. Two Neanderthal groups ,or whatever, that met across a clearing would most probably yell and holler at each other, lobbing sticks and stuff until one or other of them broke and fled.

Two bands of babboons will behave similarly. We just are not inate killers, but modern warfare makes it easier to blow up a plane or a ship in the distance that to take out somebody in hand to hand combat.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A moment that was much-exaggerated, and never applied on the Eastern or Caucasus Fronts. Even then German troops treated British and French soldiers much better than they did Russian.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I know it's futile. People have progressed because they've pursued seemingly futile goals. Not because they've sat on their asses and said "I can't do this, it's futile anyway".

ANC dehumanized the people it was fighting against? That's new. I always thought they regarded the SYSTEM they were fighting against as inhuman. Not the people upholding it. I thought this was what allowed them to start a massive reconciliation process immediately after that system was dismantled, instead of starting a bloody vendetta once they had power in their hands.

But you learn new things every day...

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's interesting. And an actual soldier's insight (even if it's a cook) is much more valuable than the theoretical blabbering of a thousand book monkeys, so thanks. :-)

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I have always admire them for the way they did that.
O/t I know, but I just want to say - it *was* remarkable.