When you break it down it shows you were you have a problem and gives you some detail so you can intelligently analyize the numbers.

Your number is not useful for intelligent analysis. It exists merely as a mindless shock number to confuse peasants.

I'm not a peasant. And I'm now done entirely talking about this number. Bring it up in any capacity and i'll just ignore it. I don't even want to talk about your opinion of the nature of the number.

The Iranians for example think they're going to join the US and Russians as big boys at the table with their nukes.

As to allying with dictators or opposing democracies... where have I said that that is the basis by which I determine friend or enemy? You're not making sense. You imply I do not choose my enemies carefully and then when I call you on it you say that I will not ally with certain types of governments and I will sometimes support other types of governments. And? Why is this strategically relevant to me?

Why do I care if a country is democratic or not from a military strategic perspective? You're projecting your own ideology and morality on me. While I believe in freedom and democracy etc... I am not bound to prioritize it in strategic matters. My priority there is the well being of my own people. if allying with a dictator to assist British and European industrial needs during the Cold War helps allies resist Soviet pressure then why wouldn't I do that?

Consider the difference between North Korea and South Korea. We could have saved lives in the war by letting the north dominate the south as well. In your mind this would have been worth it? Should we have allowed that or were the civilian deaths acceptable given the outcome?

You're damned no matter what you say because your entire moral framework is naive.

If you say the North Koreans should have been allowed to dominate the south you are saying that we should never fight against anything... including fascism. So the Nazis etc should have just been allowed to take what they want. Fighting them after all cost civilian lives.

But you're also damned if you say we should fight them because it fatally undermines your position that the civilian deaths means we can't go to war.

Your entire position is goofy.

As to ad hominems... I'm not going to get tied up in semantics. If you attempt to invalidate my position based on a baseless character assassination then I'm going to slap it aside and tell you to try something else. You say you don't want to do that? Okay... good. When you do it again, I'll remind you of your own words. Until then... I'll just leave it there.

Why is it the property owners reponsibility to go find and talk to the drone operator? The drone operator, on the other hand, knows where his toy is going so maybe HE should actually act like a responsible person and let the property owners know what he is doing ahead of time.

I wonder that the video and data didn't go up immediately. A couple of days is enough to edit the telemetry and video. Maybe they're honest, maybe they're not. However, it seems really unlikely that someone would be massively offended by a drone 70 meters up.

If they were going to file charges against anyone, it was really stupid for the police not to impound the drone as evidence.

Vice president Cheney shot a man in the face with birdshot. It barely broke the skin. And the victim was 78 years old. Skin gets easier to tear as we get older.

...no more dangerous to our existence than natural intelligence is.

And no less, for that matter.

There is nothing inherent to being "artificial" that should cause intelligence to be necessarily more hostile to mankind than a natural intelligence is, so while the idea might make for intriguing science fiction, I am of the opinion that many people who express serious concerns that there may be any real danger caused by it are allowing their imaginations to overrule rational and coherent thoughts on the matter.

To clarify my point: The article mentions Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steven Hawking. What do they all have in common? They are not AI researchers. The author of the book is a philosophy professor. They are all talking about and making predictions in a field that they aren't experts in. Yes, they are all smart people, but I see them doing more harm than good by raising alarm when they themselves aren't an authority on the subject. An alarm that isn't shared with the experts in the field.

As to whether or not I'd count my own dead. Of course I would. I'd count them seperately though. I'm not rolling all the numbers together.

I want a number for my own dead.
I want a number for enemy dead.
I want a number of civilians I killed.
I want a number of civilians the enemy killed.
And you might as well throw out some estimates of how many 'excessive deaths" happened MINUS the above numbers. Though I warn you that I"m going to take that stat with fucking bags of rock salt.

As to your statement that you're not moralizing. Okay. Any attempt to morally judge US actions in this thread going forward is going to pointed at and I'm going to ask why you're doing it.

As to the US not directly fighting the Russians and Chinese in vietname. Debatable. Absent Russian and Chinese support the Vietcong would not have been a credible resistance. There was a vibrant supply network. And there was also intelligence provided to them by the Russians and all sorts of other stuff. All of which ignores the point that we were directly fighting the Chinese in Korea and we didn't nuke them. What is more, in Korea we also engaged Russian pilots with some frequency and that didn't lead to nuclear war either.

No one wants a nuclear war... nukes are vastly over rated for their utility in diplomacy. Do you find the French to be formidable military powers? They have nukes. And no one cares.

This implies that people I deem enemy are done arbitrarily and unreasonably and without due consideration. That's not an argument I've seen you even attempt to make. And here you are presuming. Rejected.

And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.

And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.

Try.

You instantly fail. And from this you presume I don't care?

To the contrary, you know I care which is why you're trying to pull my heart strings on the issue. You know damn fucking well I care. I simply reject your notion that people the taliban kill are my fault. That's fucking stupid. I reject your number. If you want to cite collateral damage figures then I'll count civilians that I deem civilians that were accidentally killed by US weapons. THAT is what I deem collateral damage. I do not deem enemy actions my OWN collateral damage. that's absurd.

As to your ad hominems... I know what ad hominem is... so... you might as well give that up and try a less silly rhetorical tactic. Your sophistry is frankly really obvious.

No, it isn't the lowest number... it is the number of people we killed.

Your number includes people the Taliban killed and people that neither side killed.

I'm not accepting it. And if I see that number cited again in this discussion I'm going to ignore it.

I reject it.

As to your argument about unintended consequences, you're attempting to moralize the issue. Moralizing requires intent.

Will we go to WW3 over Latvia? Funny question. Will Russia? Why do people think nukes are going to fly in a proxy war? Did the US nuke Russia or China in vietnam? We didn't nuke China during the Korean war even though some of our generals REALLY wanted to.

No... there's no WW3 response in Latvia... either from the US or Russia. Russia has said that if pressed by superior conventional forces they reserve the option to use tactical nuclear weapons to break enemy formations. While the US takes the threat seriously, we also have made it known that if he does that it will be an escalation of hostilities that will be met with proportional responses. We have lot of conventional explosives that rival small nukes.

As to me sounding like an extremist... define what that means. baseless insult are of no value. I could as easily respond that you sound like a space hamster from Neptune who is plotting to steal our peanuts and fresh broccoli.

Your position is an ad hominem. You say because you are X you are wrong. Rejected.

As to direct conflict causalities being an over simplification... its what we did. What happens when you do what we did in some rube goldberg butterfly effect statistic is not something we have any control over so I'm not going to feel responsible for it.

Moral judgement require intent. So you're citing a lot of deaths of people we didn't kill, didn't intend to kill, were killed by our enemies, etc and I think you're doing that just because you want a big number to play pathos games with me on.

I don't find it to be intellectually honest. Use a number that more closely approximates what we ACTUALLY did not what happened to people we didn't kill but rather who we actually killed.

As to nato expansion not necessarily being the right move... and what is? What I find the most annoying about this argument is that you're not owning any course of action. You're basically just undermining and gainsaying things. Which is fine if you're going somewhere. But if you're just shitting all over people without offering an alternative then I don't find the argument to be compelling.

You do not want us to take more causalities. I say this because I do not want my people to die and because I do not want my people to hate. You have no respect for the life of my people or our souls. But... consider what we will become if we are full of blinding rage? We are not a stupid people. We are not poor. We are not foolish. Get us mad enough and we could rape the world.

Getting us that mad is not in your interest. You think we are unreasonable now? Think again. If the terrorist shit doesn't stop we're going to be frothing. Our rage will turn into black hatred... and then we'll kill. Not to make peace. Not to end war... to kill and destroy.

Plain crap. You know not what you are talking about. I've spent years there working as an aid worker and you assessment of the situation on the ground is laughable in its naivete. The reason it is hard to develop a country is because the governments are kleptocracies in almost every case. You analysis is typical lefty conspiracy thinking.

There are countries in Africa where all the citizens belong to the same tribe. And still there are problems.

I mean come on where do you get your information? The Onion?

I don't how many times I have to make it clear to you that i'm not going to talk about iraq because its a fucking whine and I don't find it useful on the issue of general US foreign policy or geopolitics.

Your 250k number was mostly talking about Iraq so far as I know and the methodology on that number is a fucking joke as well. But you know what... I'm not talking about it.

As to excessive deaths... I don't find this to be a useful statistic because it conflates all deaths into one number. Its more complicated than that and I don't appreciate over simplifications.

As to NATO expansions, look at what happened to countries under Russia's sway versus our own? I have very little sympathy for the Russians whining about people leaving their sphere of influence. It isn't merely the US and Russia to consider but the people caught between. The Eastern Europeans HATE the Russians. Consider what Poland etc could be today if they had not suffered under Soviet domination? The Russians can frankly go fuck themselves on the issue with a rake. Their management of their terroritory has been incompetent for generations. Look at Russia itself. The country should be extremely rich. Vast natural resources, an impressive industrial base, a generally well educated population, and they're geographically positioned between the biggest markets in the world.

As to your desire for Americans to die in wars... No. You can die. Your children can die. Your people can die. I am not sacrificing my people. If you want to sacrifice yours that is your own business. Some cultures worship death and desire it for themselves and everyone. My society desires life. We want to live. I will not send my people to war with inferior weapons because people like you feel it is unfair for us to have such an overwhelming advantage. War isn't about fairness. War is about killing the enemy. Crushing him. Bring him low, looking into his eyes, and watching him break. That is war. And robotic weapons service that function. If you feel that countries without our technological sophistication shouldn't engage in war with us... I agree. Doing so is idiotic on their part. It isn't a fair fight. They can't win. So they just shouldn't. Takes two to tango.

When the Western hegemony drops BILLIONS will die. Billions. Civilizations will be snuffed out in days to months. As the global trade networks collapse the global economy will collapse and any country that isn't self sufficient for food will starve. England for example... they rely on food imports. To blockade England is to defeat it... for if she does not surrender she shall starve. And England isn't alone in that. many countries rely on the global trade networks to survive. Just to EAT.

Terrorists attack our country, kill 3000 of our people, say our country is a paper tiger and that the future belongs to a radical throw back death cult... and we're bad people when we track the little fuckers down and burn them out of their holes? I have very little respect for that position. It is not my morality.

""No I didn't, I was doing it in the context of the Iraq war where they're understood to be excess deaths.""
excess deaths?

First, we're not talking about Iraq. I told you that.

Second, we're talking about Afghanistan.

Third, "excess deaths" what does that mean?

Fourth, your cited kill number did not include context, it did not separate out people that would have died if there were no war, the actual causality figures are actually highly estimated and no one really knows what they are, you conflated people killed by the enemy with people killed by the US, you conflated soldier deaths with civilians, deaths caused by famine or disease were conflated with deaths from weapons, etc etc etc.

Anyway, we've come to the part of the discussion where I have to start looking things up.

In regards to the Afghan war, wikipedia puts the number at:
26 thousand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Counter the USSR's attempt to conquer europe and the world actually.

We did what we could to make the Russians feel comfortable.

The opposition to the anti ICBM technology was also taken as bad faith. Why does Russia want the US to stop developing it unless Russia wants to intimidate the first world with nuclear weapons?

You don't know what the internal dialog is... you just know what is in the media. Furthermore, when has the US ever talked about invading a country like it was no big deal?

That's how EVERY country in the middle east got its current territory. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, etc. Not one of them got it any other way.

So again... if you want to question the legitimacy of Israel, then you have to question the legitimacy of all those countries.

In WWII the axis powers inflicted a 3-1 civilian-military death ratio, and that includes the holocaust.

The 10-1 ratios in drone strikes that I cited, which are the only decent estimate I could find, are not something to brag about.

And even if they were lower than usual they're only acceptable if the acts themselves are necessary, I find it dubious that these actors in other countries are particularly legitimate terrorist threats.""
Citation. That's complete bullshit.

""Re-read what I said, I wasn't 'm not appealing to your heart strings, I was talking about the bigger picture.

The drone strikes are counterproductive because of the ill-will they inflict by causing mass collateral damage.""
Citation needed.

You say I don't care about the enemy? This is incorrect. I actively want them dead.

You say I don't care about civilians? This is incorrect, my people spend more money and energy trying to avoid civilian causalities than any other power in history.

As to your desire to have some sort of philosophical revelation in the middle of a battle... that is not the point of the battle. The point is to kill the enemy, secure the objective, and limit the losses to our own forces either in people or other resources so that we can continue to prosecute the war.

If you want to have a philosophical discussion about war... that is not the place to do it. You can have it with me here and now. This is an appropriate place.

What is more, taking deaths of our own simply makes us hate the enemy. That IS human nature. If the enemy kills our robots we won't feel a sense of loss and we won't hate the enemy as much or at all.

I do not want that for my people. I want my people to be kept safe. I want them to maintain their kindness. And i want them to not hate. Your idea will backfire.

So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders

or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.

I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.
  Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

You're implying that we just killed a quarter million people with no context, reason, and that we did so intentionally.

You're also attributing all deaths to our actions when the responsibility has to be spread around to include the taliban, various terrorist sponsors, and natural forces like famine etc that kill people without any direct human volition.

I glibly dismiss the question because it isn't intellectually valid.

If you want to talk about death tolls in war zones we can do that. But laying all the death's at our feet like we intentionally killed all those people, had no reason to in, and we are solely responsible is invalid.

Wrong, we tried to actually rehabilitate Russia. We would not have funded their space program or made so many diplomatic gestures if we wanted to treat them like an enemy.

There was even serious talk about inviting them into NATO.

As to surrounding them with enemies... all we wanted to do was secure the self determination of past victims of their aggression. Our intention was not to threaten Russia but to give other nations a chance at freedom, modernity, and prosperity.

So your suggestion when NATO members invoke our aid to deal with a relevant operation in their territory and put diplomatic pressure on the US to provide logistical and tactical support... we should do nothing?

As to the legitimacy of Israel... it is no less legitimate than any other power in the middle east.

What nation do you hail from?

As to innocent people getting killed in a war... that is not unique to the drone strike.

As to collateral damage ratios... we spend more money and effort avoiding collateral damage than any other power in world history.

What is also plain to me is that our heart strings are being played upon here. You say what you think will effect us emotionally and psychologically.

Were I a soulless monster you would not be telling me these things. You cite civilian causalities because you know it effects me and you know I care.

See, I am aware of myself. I don't cite this becuase I don't care but because I make a point of stepping outside myself and getting the bigger picture. You are attempting to manipulate me with pathos.

I don't like it when people use arguments on me that are designed to work on a child or a peasant. I am neither.

In war, you use the best tools your people have to execute the missions. Our enemies have large numbers of deluded religious zealots. I will not casually sacrifice my own soldiers just so you feel some "fair" ratio of kills to deaths is met.

Ideally I want 100 percent of the enemy dead to 0 US soldiers lost. That is my ideal in war.

Many of the people upset with the US use of drones wants something like a 1:1 ratio of US dead to enemy dead. I completely and categorically reject that as being an acceptable goal.

Anything that improves the US K/D ratio in combat without other serious and reasonable issues should be employed. If we send our people to war, we owe it to them to give them the best chance to complete their missions and come home to enjoy the peace.

If we can use killer robots that will engage the radicals largely mitigating US troop losses... then I will do it.