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[Nadaka]

I was actually conflicted on the second gulf war. And that stems from a little fact that isn't popular. We fucked up. We lost the first gulf war. Saddam should have never been allowed to remain in power after Kuwait. There was plenty of evidence for his war crimes and he could have been tried and executed in Iraq or tried and imprisoned for life in Europe. How could Bush #41 have be so ridiculously incompetent? Why didn't he have anyone telling him how badly he was screwing up?

We still had no right to go back in the second time. Particularly because the supposed justification was an absolute fabrication out of the office of the VP.

[Truean]

Serbia deserved all the bombs it got, but they should've come much earlier, to break the siege of Sarajevo.

When the people of the country we're talking about willingly erect a statue of our president on a street that is named after him and hail him as a hero, and that's real.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8336789.stm Also having the entire UN on your side is not the same as going in practically solo by comparison. It is very different from Iraq. There are people there who love Clinton to this day for what he did.

They welcomed Clinton there. They throw shoes at Bush in Iraq and I know a lot of people who would throw shoes at him here if they could get away with it.

[scriver]

Wasn't Saddam only in charge because of US support to begin with? Or at least allied by yhe time of Kuwait, iirc.

[MonkeyHead]

Yea, the CIA supported him in his war against Iran, as I mentioned a few posts above.

[Truean]

Yea, the CIA supported him in his war against Iran, as I mentioned a few posts above.

We keep doing that and it keeps biting us in the ass. Bay of Pigs, Iran Contra Central America, Sadam, the Taliban (against the Russians). I could go on but why...?

Whether we should meddle or not, we suck at it....

[MonkeyHead]

Yea, its not as if you guys learnt very much from the "Golden age of Imperialism" where all of us in Europe learnt that lesson the hard way, and helped give birth to your country.

[Truean]

Yea, its not as if you guys learnt very much from the "Golden age of Imperialism" where all of us in Europe learnt that lesson the hard way, and helped give birth to your country.

Americans in general still think we're better than the rest of the world. It's kind of a problem and if this keeps up then they won't even be able to pretend much longer.

[MonkeyHead]

TBH it took me a looooong time (almost into my twenties) to realise that EVERYONE out there is massivley proud of thier country, and will "overlook" the rubbishy bits while extoling its virtues, just like I do for Wales. I think a lot of poeple in this world as of yet have not had this epiphany. It sure as ell made me look at the world in a different way.

[RedKing]

I was actually conflicted on the second gulf war. And that stems from a little fact that isn't popular. We fucked up. We lost the first gulf war. Saddam should have never been allowed to remain in power after Kuwait. There was plenty of evidence for his war crimes and he could have been tried and executed in Iraq or tried and imprisoned for life in Europe. How could Bush #41 have be so ridiculously incompetent? Why didn't he have anyone telling him how badly he was screwing up?

Because:

1. We didn't have a mandate to go into Baghdad and enact a regime change. The UN mandate was strictly for defending Kuwait and pushing back the Iraqi Army.
2. The Soviet Union was still in the act of disintegrating, and invading a country on the Soviet border could have provided the hardliners with the excuse they needed to launch (another) coup attempt.
3. Internal projections were that it would have been very costly (in both human and financial terms) to effect such an operation. I believe a certain Dick Cheney argued successfully that it wasn't worth spending human lives on. He was a smart man, that Dick Cheney. 
4. It was still the tail end of the Cold War. Maintaining status quo was the watchword of the day.

I actually think Bush Sr. was a pretty damn shrewd President when it came to foreign policy. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a potential shitstorm of epic proportions (a Soviet Civil War would have been.....yeah, let's just be glad we didn't go there) and he managed to simultaneously help nudge it towards collapse and make sure the pieces hit the ground softly. If he had been too eager to assist the pro-democracy forces, it would have provided the hardliners with justification for a bloodbath crackdown. If he had been too hands-off, then the fledgling new states would have wound back up in the Russian sphere under the CIS or some other incarnation of the Soviet Union under a new name. His approach was basically to tell the breakaway states, "You have to get yourselves free, but once you're free we'll be here to provide you help." It was a tightwire act that he pulled off spectacularly well.

[Fenrir]

TBH it took me a looooong time (almost into my twenties) to realise that EVERYONE out there is massivley proud of thier country, and will "overlook" the rubbishy bits while extoling its virtues, just like I do for Wales. I think a lot of poeple in this world as of yet have not had this epiphany. It sure as ell made me look at the world in a different way.

I also happen to notice that people use words like ‘we’ and ‘us’ to refer to their nations, even when they are talking about long dead people and past events that did not really have much to do with the person speaking, so as to imply that the speaker is somehow partly responsible or, at least, is in possession of those qualities that made those other people do what they did. I have caught myself doing this too.

[Truean]

http://news.yahoo.com/govt-pay-family-17-8m-military-jet-crash-195421909.html

So a military fighter jet crashes, due in part to mechanical failure and part to terrible judgment by the military, into two residential homes. This kills four people including two infants their mother and grandmother. They are survived by a loving father three adult siblings and their grandfather....

Look at the absolutely sickening comments on the bottom....

The Government did not pay this family, the taxpayer paid for it! The American people weren't flying the jet, but we paid for it. What happened to calculating what these immigrants would make in thier lifetime and paying that, as I am sure it wouldn't have come to $17.8 million dollars. Everytime the Government screws up the taxpayer gets screwed, WTH!

This person votes.... Could he say that to the victim's face? It's frightening. Justice would be letting the victim's family beat this poster senseless for speaking this way.... We owe them the money in the very least. I don't know what it's like to have the flesh burned off your bones by a jet fueled fireball, but I can't imagine it's worth only $17.8 Million no matter who pays it.

There are lots of other comments. Some, thankfully are positive, but too many are negative and geared towards the cost or the fact that they are from Korea. Racism, alive and well. Pretty much an entire family for $17.8 Million. That isn't too much; it's too little. Let's see that's 17.8/4 = $4.45 Million per person.... That's insanely low. If those girls earned an average wage of 30,000, never mind inflation or the fact that it could be higher (especially in California), over a 30 or 40 year period, we're talking 900,0000 or 1,200,000 right there just in lost wages per kid without inflation. What's your entire life worth from cradle to grave? Nevermind what it's like for the husband to lose his wife/kids/mother in law or for the adult children to  loose their mom, sisters and grandma, or for grandpa to lose grandma, daughter in law and granddaughters.... Too much?

I agree with the family, who did not object to the award.
"If the cost of paying fair compensation as ordered by this court will be factored into the daily decisions by our military in its operations that affect both military and civilian safety," other families may be saved, the family's statement said.

People are so nearsighted and greedy that all they see is a large amount of money. They don't think of the immense pain behind it in that verdict. All they are willing or able to think about is what they would do with $17.8 Million. This attitude absolutely and completely sickens me. "It's too much?" No, it's too little. It would've been far more if not for the fact that this was a bench trial before a judge instead of a jury.

I assure you, a jury would've given the proper amount and it would've been astronomically higher. Four people across three generations two of them infants. Lovely....

[Fenrir]

How much money exactly is enough payment for having your family killed by a jet? How would you go about calculating that?

[Frumple]

Yeah, that's one of the weird things for me, personally, when you start talking money of that amount. I can feed, house, and cloth myself for the rest of my life on a single million, with enough left over to probably do the same thing for two or three of my family members. That 17.8 will (can, at least) do the same thing for the immediate survivors, their family, and their descendants for several generations, while having enough left over to do the same thing for probably a couple other full families.

I'm not, and wouldn't, say anything on that particular case. All I can really say is I don't see how anyone can really need, much less use -- without being horrendously inefficient or going into a large scale business -- more than a million dollars. It's one of the reasons that the wealthy culture in America (and I'm counting any and every one with more than about a 70k a year income in that) is almost completely incomprehensible to me. I've calculated it out; I can eat comfortably for multiple decades on the price of some of the lower end luxury cars. I can feed several other people, healthily, on the same budget, for only a slightly shorter amount of time. There's just... there's just a point, after which, more money just doesn't do anything meaningful, unless it's going to help other people. There's nothing you can really do at that point that can improve your life, on a personal level, more than you'd be perfectly capable of doing with less.

I guess the point to me would be giving the victims however much money, even astronomically more than they'll receive, wouldn't trouble me in the least if they turned the excess into good works. Similarly, giving them enough to live well for the rest of their life (1 mill a head, as vulgar a way of putting it as that is) and then spreading the rest among appropriate charities would sit best with me.

Perhaps as Fenrir notes, there's a point where 'more money' isn't going to have any meaningful impact. Ten million or twenty million or twenty billion, it's just... there's a cut off point, where it stops mattering to anyone sane. It's not that it's too much, or too little, it's just that it's... tangential, I guess. There's not a price you can put on life according to traditional morality, so trying to recompense lost life with money is... missing the point, I guess. Trying to feed someone with steel. Steel makes makes pretty useful building material, but it doesn't do much as food goes.

What would more do? Assuage the moral guilt of the people that caused the incident? Somehow set something right? I'm not saying it wouldn't be just have given more, I'm just saying I don't see/understand how it would impact the tragedy.

I would see justice, personally, as giving the lives of the ones responsible for the crash to the injured family. That's tangential to the question I present above, though.

[scriver]

Well, some money is necessary, not just because of the possible lost income of the deceased, but to show the government isn't taking this lightly (because it alo sets precedent for the government to pay if it happens again). However, I can't help but feel that a large part of that incredibly higb sum of money would have been better used making sure whatever caused the crash doesn't happen again.

[Fenrir]

Frumple, I think that you are assuming incorrectly that people make money simply for the utility of it. There are people that enjoy earning money, so, while they have money in excess of what they truly need to sustain themselves, I would suppose that they just like the feeling of earning money. I am, of course, speculating, but it does not seem completely incomprehensible to me.

More on topic, I can only agree with what you say about compensation. All we can do is try to make them comfortable, but no amount of money is going to compensate for their loss. It is not even vindication, as it is the public’s money and paying it is not going to hurt the people responsible.