I give it two days before Pakistani truthers figure out that this was a false flag operation designed to let people seize their guns.
No way man, this was a false flag operation to let people seize our guns.
seize our guns
I thought firearms were already mostly illegal in Mexico.
I give it two days before Pakistani truthers figure out that this was a false flag operation designed to let people seize their gun
Optimist. I give it thirty minutes before they figure out that it was a false flag operation by Israel (or possibly India) aimed at discrediting Islam.
This does accord with my theory that the two dumbest countries on earth, where people will do the craziest shit for the dumbest reasons, are America and Pakistan.
I wouldn't say this was crazy. Immoral, yes. But it makes a sort of sense as a reprisal against the Pakistani armed forces.
They're the only ones in Pakistan who like children.
It was an army-run school. Those were soldiers' kids.
And, to be honest, in Pathan terms that makes the attack almost ethical. Clan culture, remember. Doesn't particularly matter that the kids themselves were innocent as individuals - their fathers were the enemy, and their wider quasi-family grouping (ie the army) was the enemy, and so the kids were valid targets.
I feel like you're making my case for me, ajay.
I'm just saying it wasn't crazy - in the sense of "this action is irrational" - it's rational in the context of the army offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, and in the context of the Pathan culture it's not just rational but arguably ethical too. This is an example of people doing cruel, horrific things, but not crazy or stupid things.
And what I'm saying is that some systems are crazy (and stupid!), so explaining that it actually makes sense in context is what I mean by making my case for me. I mean, take a step back: shooting up schools makes sense in this culture. Umm...I feel like we have a strong case here!
Shooting up schools makes sense in any culture. I think you're confusing rationality with morality...
And, to be honest, in Pathan terms that makes the attack almost ethical.
Dude, maintain.
Astronomical units OT: My friend the actress got recognized, fangirled-out-over and OMG-can-we-get-a-picture-with-you'd on the street last night. It was simultaneously hilarious and quite uncanny.
Shooting up schools doesn't make sense in American culture, but people do it anyway.
14
Vendetta culture makes sense only if you are already crazy. It's like the retail version of Cold War nuclear strategy, with Herman Kahn's escalation ladders and tit for tat nuclear strikes. "You got Boston? Then we will take out Leningrad..."
"You got Boston? Then we will take out Leningrad..."
So you've got Halford on board.
14 - So you're saying this is more like a fascist committed to making Norway a more horrible country killing seventy kids attending a left-wing summer camp than like two nihilist teenagers going spree killing in Colorado? We've reached a point where we can discuss the fine-grained taxonomy of mass ground-level killings of children.
21: pretty much. I just think it's not always the best response to dismiss things like this as crazy and stupid. The people who planned and executed this were reasonably intelligent and not mentally ill. They had a goal they wanted to achieve, and they thought this was a good way to achieve it. We can ask all sorts of questions about why their goals are what they are, and what sort of framework they're working in that the mass murder of children makes sense as an option, but we should be able to condemn something without calling it crazy and stupid.
22: With you on crazy but "stupid" seems kind of fair even if there needs to be some sort of "stupid like a fox" variant.
I don't know what it says about me that I learned about the "false flag" idea from South Park.
It's stupid, but hardly in a way that distinguishes it from the baseline human stupidity you see in almost all cultures. That kind of tribal culture is at least as common as not in the world. So 5 is wrong. 12 is probably right, just overly charitable when it comes to humanity at large.
The military says that the offensive, officially known as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, has resulted in the death of 1,800 militants and cleared much of North Waziristan, the region's most notorious hub of militant activities.
"Cleared" it? Would it matter at all to our judgement of this attack how many of the "militants" in NW were women and children?
But I know nothing. Maybe the Pakistani military are fastidious about "collateral damage."
THESE PATHAN ARE BLOODTHIRSTY MADMEN! ALSO AMERICAN PEOPLE. AS WELL.
Is false-flagging the same as ratfucking?
29: In my day, it was simply called the double cross.
the the commenter who styles zirself standpipe bridgeplate has commented on our blog!
This thread is both awesome and sad at the same time.
ajay's comments remind me of the time I was in the sauna at a gym talking with another guy about some batch of Palestinian kids that had gotten killed by Israeli soldiers.
An otherwise normal seeming doctor acquaintance walks into the sauna and vehemently says "They should kill all the those vermin, women, kids, everyone. Nothing but rats that need to be destroyed." My friend and I sat for a moment, stunned, not even sure what to say. The doctor then says, "And UVa needs to fire their coach too. He sucks." Then walks out.
35.2: They beat Pitt and our coach got promoted to the Big 10.
Meanwhile, also very much on topic, I had a conversation with a Doctor acquaintance (actually, former pretty good friend who I'd lost touch with) who is now a big time Hindu nationalist and surprisingly intense anti-Muslim racist who blames everything on Islam. Though I had to admit that I didn't have a really great response to "dude, the Muslims screw everything up, look at how Pakistan did with the same start versus how we're doing."
35:
So he obviously heard you talking, but probably not saying anything unusually condemnatory or provocative, I'm guessing.
People seem to be able to compartmentalize in ways that baffle me.
And that doctor was...Standpipe Bridgeplate!
So he obviously heard you talking, but probably not saying anything unusually condemnatory or provocative, I'm guessing.
This was 7-9 years ago. Sadly, this was not the last time that I found out that "you shouldn't kill children" was a provocative statement.
Ajay is right in that I think this was a calculated ploy---the whole "get people to feel sympathy for us and make the govt leave us alone while still detonating the occassional market bomb as a hit" was just not working, so the TTP flipped to full throttle--"let the soldiers of the army know we are nor fucking around." 130 children is a lot of children in Pakistan. It's not that big a country. It's on the same order as the high end of the estimated # of children killed by American drones *since the drone campaign in Pakistan began.* in other words, the TTP just erased the biggest metric by which people say *we* are the real bad guys. I don't think they did that lightly. Especially since this involved as much close-range execution style shooting as bombing. And these are mostly boys---the little princes of their families. I can't believe there isn't a rank-and-file army family in Pakistan that is not currently completely demoralized and _terrified_. That's a lot of formerly steely, dutiful military Dads (and their freaked out mothers and wives) who are now far more likely to second-guess every tactic, every posting, every order that brings their little boys further into the aim of the TTP, and be that much more likely to be sluggish or uncooperative or quit, even sell out. This was the real deal: terrorism as a strategic act of war.
of course Ogged is right in that if its 2014 and you really think the best course (religiously, economically, culturally, personally, for your children, etc) is to fight for the TTP against anyone (even the oftenadmittedly despicable Pakistani status quo parties), you are probably crazy and stupid. Crazy and stupid is a state of being that can be encouraged by external factors (shit schools, endemic poverty, absurd oppression, constant horrible weather, etc), and it also doesn't necessarily prevent one from creating and implementing rational strategies, but it is certainly a real condition.
An otherwise normal seeming doctor acquaintance walks into the sauna and vehemently says "They should kill all the those vermin, women, kids, everyone. Nothing but rats that need to be destroyed." My friend and I sat for a moment, stunned, not even sure what to say. The doctor then says, "And UVa needs to fire their coach too. He sucks." Then walks out.
Wait, I've heard this one. Then you say "You're out of your mind! UVa's coach is doing a great job!" and then he says "You see? I told you no one cared about the Palestinians!"
That's a lot of formerly steely, dutiful military Dads (and their freaked out mothers and wives) who are now far more likely to second-guess every tactic, every posting, every order that brings their little boys further into the aim of the TTP, and be that much more likely to be sluggish or uncooperative or quit, even sell out.
So, basically you're expecting this to work in pretty much exactly the opposite way to every other mass-casualty attack in history.
So, basically you're expecting this to work in pretty much exactly the opposite way to every other mass-casualty attack in history.
Well, it was a pretty different thing, but the mass casualty attack on U.S. soldiers in Beirut, in 1983, led to the U.S. deciding to get out of Lebanon.
45: but not, I think, because the US Marine Corps became sluggish and uncooperative and started second-guessing their orders. A more recent and closer parallel might be 9/11. Sentiment in NY that day (and I was there) did not tend much towards the "shit, we'd better not even think about doing anything that might make these guys angry again".
Just in case, let's invade Lebanon while tarring Reagan for being soft on terror.
I really do want to push back against the equation of "has cultural values and principles that are alien, irrational and abhorrent" with "is crazy and stupid". A lot of Pathan culture is indeed abhorrent. To take one particularly salient example, the idea that you settle a dispute between two families by ordering one family to let their daughter be gang-raped by the other family is obscene. It's a vile, vicious, destructive way to run a society. But it's the way they've been doing things for time out of mind, and that's not because they're all congenitally feebleminded or congenitally crazy.