Abortion Thread CCLX

[regexcellent]

Not surprised you're more concerned with body counts than whether or not the mission was accomplished. That's the same thinking that just helped the Army lose two COIN campaigns.

The army can accomplish quite a lot when the administration lets it do its job.

[Tupac Shakur]

MtG, you're forgetting the most important part: there are no Rangers in the Marine Corps!

Why have Rangers when the average Marine is a better soldier?

The army can accomplish quite a lot when the administration lets it do its job.

You never hear this kind of whining from the Marines. The Navy doesn't give them dick and they're still out there kicking ass.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Not surprised you're more concerned with body counts than whether or not the mission was accomplished. That's the same thinking that just helped the Army lose two COIN campaigns.

So what's your MOS, cracker?

[regexcellent]

So what's your MOS, cracker?

He's a 59B: Armchair General

[Tupac Shakur]

I'm only an O-4. Armchair Major in the TSA.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Not surprised you're more concerned with body counts than whether or not the mission was accomplished. That's the same thinking that just helped the Army lose two COIN campaigns.

Ask any veterans of the 1991 Iraqi army if the mission was accomplished? And nobody wins in Afghanistan. Not even Alexander the Great. It's a ****ing pile of rocks with little clumps of goat ****. As long as you have three goat****ers in a cave somewhere, you have an insurgency.

COIN can only be successful if you have a semi-functional host government which at some point is able to assume internal defense and not act as a recruiting tool for insurgents. That is a political function beyond the scope of any military engagement.

[regexcellent]

The army can't accomplish a mission which is overloaded with mission creep when it isn't downright undefined. And neither can the Marines.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I'm only an O-4. Armchair Major.

Chairborne Getting purple hearts for paper cuts for 200 years, while men do the actual fighting.

[Felch]

For that matter, how do I know that the other people I encounter are real and I'm not just a brain in a jar?

Well when you start talking about standards like sentience, you're opening a can of worms. How do you know that worms aren't sentient? It's not like anybody know what a worm thinks or feels.

I won't shed any tears if a non-sentient first trimester fetus gets terminated.

Okay, humanity means nothing to you, only sentience. That's a reasonable standard. At what point do you think a human is sufficiently sentient to warrant rights?

[regexcellent]

I WANNA BE A CHAIRBORNE RANGER!
DEFENDING YOU WITH MY SWINGLINE STAPLER!

(we've been known to sing that when the air force is doing its PT at the same time; they always insist on singing cadences which is really annoying so we respond with stuff like that)

[Tupac Shakur]

Chairborne Getting purple hearts for paper cuts for 200 years, while men Marines do the actual fighting.

Fixed that for ya.

[Felch]

Sentience is a philosophical construct, not a scientific or medical one.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that the scientific method will never give us any insight into sentience? Because that would mean that sentience was supernatural.

[regexcellent]

Fixed that for ya.

Army Rangers and Pathfinders do way more fighting than 99% of marines, and they do it better. The marines are also the last branch to get in line with joint operations, finally creating MARSOC which is the little brother of Army SF.

[Tupac Shakur]

Army Rangers and Pathfinders do way more fighting than 99% of marines, and they do it better. The marines are also the last branch to get in line with joint operations, finally creating MARSOC which is the little brother of Army SF.

I wouldn't want to do joint ops either when the rest of the military is just going to hold me back. As for SOF, the Navy rules the roost there and I doubt they want the Marines coming in and stealing the SEALs thunder. Don't have to worry about the Army doing that, obviously.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that the scientific method will never give us any insight into sentience? Because that would mean that sentience was supernatural.

No, it would mean that the definition of sentience is subjective. The scientific method can determine levels and modes of brain function, etc., but it doesn't attempt to argue the whether the data fits an imprecise term like sentience. Whether an animal is conscious can be objectively measured, as there are objective, established requirements for an animal to be considered conscious. The definition of sentience is subjective.

Arguably, my cat was sentient by some definitions. He could think how to act (i.e. not go for the fish on my plate unless I had my back turned), respond to sensations, display emotions, interact socially with multiple species. According to the minimalist definition of being able to feel emotion and respond to sensation, he certainly was. Some people aren't comfortable with extending sentience to animals, so there's debate on other requirements or definitions. It's all useless, when you can use underlying objective measurements of brain structure or function.