[HN Gopher] Soldiers watch the US withdrawal from Bagram through...
___________________________________________________________________
Soldiers watch the US withdrawal from Bagram through the lens of
Pokemon Go
Author : lalaland1125
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-07-02 23:28 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stripes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stripes.com)
| everyone wrote:
| "a hacked version of the game in which the user changed the
| game's GPS coordinates to Bagram."
|
| What? they need a different version of the game to do this? On
| Android anyone can can set their gps location to whatever they
| want. I do this to test stuff all the time.
| tuukkah wrote:
| _" battle digital monsters, who can be found using the app's
| barebones version of Google Maps."_
|
| Pokemon Go is based on OpenStreetMap since Dec 2017:
| https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/4/16725748/pokemon-go-map-ch...
| jl2718 wrote:
| The FOBs in Afghanistan felt like America to me. All the best
| years of my life were spent there. What I came back to was often
| unrecognizable. This feels a bit personal.
|
| Little anecdote: Bagram is quite large, and sometimes I used to
| run late at night into the places where nobody goes. Well,
| 'nobody' is a legend of some old contractors from back before the
| centralized personnel tracking systems, who had set up a
| shantytown in the junkyard in between contracts, and eventually
| just 'went native' and made it their home. I can't be sure, but
| there seemed to be signs of life in strange places. I would have
| bought property and settled in myself if I could. There were a
| lot of men I worked with who had been completely replaced by
| their families, stopped taking leave, and didn't want to go back,
| ever. I can relate. My fiancee died during my first tour, and out
| there I could be fully in love with a ghost; it was like a
| superpower. I think I needed a few more years of that.
| noduerme wrote:
| This is fucking tragic. I'm sorry man. It reminded me of
| growing up in Vegas, finding the lost places in the desert or
| the deserted places behind the casinos. I get that. And losing
| the person I loved. And seeing her when I was tripping. I get
| that too. But doing that in the middle of a fucking foreign war
| at the end of the earth, and trying to feel normal about it,
| that's ...that just seems like it would take an inhuman level
| of self control.
| jl2718 wrote:
| It was sublime. I felt no pain. I ran until she appeared. I
| ran harder until I felt my soul rise out of my body to be
| with her, legs still pumping, rocket attack buzzing overhead.
| Rapture.
|
| https://www.strava.com/activities/720237444
| gexla wrote:
| This reads like an episode from a Shawshank Redemption TV
| series.
|
| I can get how a place can become home when you feel like your
| links to other places fade, but a hint that it might be more
| healthy to move around is that you you're sticking to the
| "recognizable." It seems like you would always be living in
| some place from the past (which is an illusion because it never
| really was what you believed it was and it was always changing)
| which you feel nostalgic for. At the same time, you're building
| a new place at your other home. Once the romance with the first
| place becomes destroyed, then the back-up comes forward. I
| would bet the back-up could have an even greater hold over you
| if it's a highly controlled (slower changing) environment such
| as a military base or a prison.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Life in the FOBs in Afghanistan was a time capsule of red-
| blooded 'Merica, like hanging out between scenes of a 90s
| action movie. The gym was 24 hours, everybody was huge, and
| the music was hardcore 80/90s. Sort of like my high school
| football team. There were guns in every social situation,
| which was shocking at first until you realized that it meant
| that this was the first place on earth where you had nothing
| to fear from strangers. Everybody knew everything about the
| people around them. If you had something you were insecure
| about, you'd get tortured about it until you weren't. I never
| fit in, but these people were willing to die for me, and I
| found ways to earn respect. It was basically the neighborhood
| I grew up in, or maybe a sports team, or maybe a prison. It
| didn't really matter. Food was simple, served every 6 hours
| on a tray line, and you got everything you needed without
| thinking about it. On the bigger FOBs, the jet engines ran
| constantly in idle, and the fighter pilots pretty much did
| WTF they wanted. There were no cell phones nor internet in
| most places, which was tremendously liberating. I made the
| most of every moment there. There was always something
| important to do, and not much in the way. Most of the time I
| didn't worry about my job. We worked 12 hour days, 7 days a
| week, everybody together in one place. You're never alone on
| a deliverable; it's everybody's responsibility, everybody's
| credit, and everybody's lives on the line.
|
| It felt like focus. I came back to chaos. Jobs where you have
| no idea what to do or why, but huge pressure to make your
| boss happy, just some random person that you don't really
| know anything about, but they have the power to ruin your
| career, and you're all on your own. Shopping. Cooking.
| Cleaning. Family. Facebook. Cell phones. Internet dating.
| Interviews. Leases. License. Registration. Insurance.
| Doctors. Lawyers. Bills. Taxes. Spam. Scams. Outrage
| politics. These things are not optional. It's your entire
| life consumed by other people's rackets. It all existed
| before, but every year away, it seems like it's been put on
| overdrive when I get back. People have a tendency to
| infantilize vets by claiming we're the victims of PTSD or
| something, but no, seriously, there are some things that
| really are getting worse in normal American life, and
| especially politics of the homefront military. Maybe it's to
| be expected; a lot of us went forward to get away from that.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The "everything is organised for you and we're all a team"
| aspect of the military is something that a lot of people
| say. It seems to work well for them.
|
| But. And I'm not directing this at you, but it jumped out
| at me ..
|
| > On the bigger FOBs, the jet engines ran constantly in
| idle
|
| .. using a considerable quantity of fuel, every drop of
| which had be trucked from Karachi through unfriendly
| territory. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-
| asia-11463490 Of course it was comfortable, the kind of
| comfort only the incredible profligacy of the war machine
| can offer.
|
| Total cost: https://apnews.com/article/asia-pacific-
| afghanistan-middle-e... $800bn over 20 years. Let's say
| $40bn a year.
|
| Peak troop numbers: ~100k. So _at least_ $400,000 per troop
| per year.
|
| No wonder it was so great, I'd be disappointed if you
| didn't enjoy it if it cost that much. It's all the
| Americans grinding away in the home system that made it
| possible for you. $120/year/American.
|
| Did anyone ever say "we can't do that, we don't have the
| budget"?
| areyousure wrote:
| > every drop of which had be trucked from Karachi
|
| There were multiple supply routes used in Afghanistan: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_logistics_in_the_Afghan_
| W...
|
| In particular, the Pakistan routes were not used at all
| for many months after the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2
| 011_NATO_attack_in_Pakistan and "by February 2012 85% of
| coalition fuel supplies were being shipped through the
| northern routes".
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16154331
| noduerme wrote:
| >>It's your entire life consumed by other people's rackets
|
| I lived overseas for 10 years and can verify that things
| got a lot shittier around here while I was gone. And the
| people as a whole got a lot dumber and more gullible. Cell
| phones. Social media. The 24/7 gossip news cycle. Your
| experience of a more meaningful, directly engaged, lower-
| bullshit life is actually the way things are, or were until
| recently, in a lot of countries. America's a runaway train.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Help me out here, please. Where has been good for you?
| bsanr2 wrote:
| For better or worse, your first paragraph is never what
| America was. The second is closer. The privilege of
| purpose, handed down from on high and wrapped in an
| American flag, is the socialism-flavored tradeoff for all
| the horrible things servicemen have to contend with.
|
| I do think it's dangerous to romanticize what the military
| does for soldiers without recognizing what it does to our
| enemies and the innocents caught in the crossfire;
| especially when we, as a country, cannot fathom "service"
| (and all the things that flow from that structure, which we
| can agree can be edifying for one's soul) being anything
| but that which involves airstrikes and ammunition. As for
| how to cure the nation of its woes, I feel that a huge part
| of it is competition run amok. Things are difficult because
| it's an advantageous condition for those who are able to
| navigate the rough waters when their neighbors can't.
|
| Perhaps we go the two-birds-one-stone route. I hear that
| there are some bridges and buildings and roads that may
| need repair.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I have similar opinions on these topics as many that were
| out there, which is to say, not at all what others may
| assume or want us to think, nor what may be in our best
| interest to share.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Write more.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is fascinating. If you wrote more I'd be interested in
| reading it.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I don't fully understand. You wish to live there and stay on
| base? Or you wish to live in Afghanistan in general?
|
| I mean I've heard and seen pictures, it seems Afghanistan is
| beautiful _nature_ wise.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| After having traveled to the Middle East and Pakistan, I'd
| consider living in some of those places. I haven't made it to
| Afghanistan yet. The people are super friendly. Pakistan's
| hospitality culture is an order of magnitude more than
| anything I've experienced in the USA. I would probably want
| an air conditioner though!
| jl2718 wrote:
| Bagram valley especially, is shockingly beautiful when it
| snows in the Hindu Kush. In the early spring, you get
| sunshine and lush greens against snowy peaks. In the south,
| the mud flooding is so strong in the winter, you can ride it
| like an amusement park, and it all turns into this deep silt
| moon dust in the summer. Khandahar had a septic pit that the
| base ended up expanding all around, and there's a very slight
| drift in one direction that goes down one road. In August,
| you can smell it a little bit everywhere, but if you turn a
| corner onto that road, it will immediately knock you back.
| Sorry; unrelated, but funny.
| YinLuck- wrote:
| People rarely like or dislike a place for its nature,
| buildings, food, etc. That's all BS we tell ourselves. People
| connect with people. I can see how a military base is
| conducive to forming the kinds of personal bonds that are so
| rare in today's developed nations.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Reminds me of Apocalypse Now where colonel Kurtz explains the US
| will lose because in their minds they aren't fighting a war in
| Vietnam they're still in America.
|
| I realize nobody actually watches that movie anymore but I have
| and everything still fits.
| setBoolean wrote:
| I was too young to see the original release in a movie theater
| and was all the more exited to catch up on this when the Final
| Cut was released. Truly a remarkable and timeless piece of
| cinema. The 4K Dolby Atmos/Vision version is also highly
| recommendable if you've never seen this gem.
| divs1210 wrote:
| Is this satire? I read the whole thing and im very confused.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| No, it is not satire.
|
| Apparently there were Pokemon Go gyms and Pokestops on overseas
| military bases.
|
| The last US military Pokemon Go players put their Pokemon in
| gyms before they left.
|
| Those Pokemon are still in those gyms when they would have
| normally been kicked out by other players.
|
| This means those Pokemon will stay in those gyms until another
| Pokemon Go player comes along which might be a very long time.
| divs1210 wrote:
| I read the entire thing.
|
| What about this?
|
| > Like other veterans, he said he is pessimistic about the
| future of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal. But he hopes
| the situation improves one day, to the point he can once
| again play Pokemon Go there.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| This means that Afghanistan becomes a normal developed
| country, and he can visit their as a safe tourist and enjoy
| a game of Pokemon with the locals.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| That pessimistic / optimistic view seems like a realistic,
| yet hopeful view of the country--still not satire:
|
| Pessimistic / realistic view: once the military coalition
| forces withdraw there will almost certainly be armed
| conflict, perhaps a full civil war.
|
| Optimistic / hopeful view: somehow Afghanistan will
| stabilize enough that people will be able to travel there
| as tourists.
| pm90 wrote:
| I don't think it is.
|
| As the US withdraws it's troops after an incredible amount of
| time, the next few months will likely see many such stories
| about "life in Afghanistan" and what is being left behind.
| culturestate wrote:
| Stars and Stripes isn't _technically_ published by the
| Department of Defense, but it 's as close as you can get while
| maintaining a veneer of editorial independence. I don't think
| this variety of satire is in their repertoire.
| Havoc wrote:
| Does this website also come in functional flavour? Reset
| scrolling to top of page every couple sec for me
| pm90 wrote:
| This is incredible.
|
| What happens if a country invaded another one and both has users
| on this game? Could future invasions be for digital assets rather
| than physical ones?
| remarkEon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
|
| Already been done, in 1967.
| pmorici wrote:
| Have you ever seen the movie "Robot Jox"? it's about a future
| where conflict is settled using a match between two human
| piloted robots.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/
| dmix wrote:
| The 80s left us so many hidden sci-fi gems. Thanks for the
| link. Needed some long weekend material.
| throw7 wrote:
| "Digital rodents and abandoned Pokemon presided over the streets
| of Bagram Airfield..."
|
| Is this a joke? Satire? Why? I suppose trillions of dollars later
| this is what we deserve. Mission Accomplished.
| krapp wrote:
| Maybe you should consider reading the article past the first
| sentence.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Why? The entire article reads like that. What is one
| newsworthy thing you read in the article?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You expected "newsworthy" things in an article about
| pokemon go?
| jessaustin wrote:
| Apparently, USA military is withdrawing from Afghanistan!
| bostonsre wrote:
| Maybe it's trying to make a horrible shitty situation a little
| less bad.
|
| There was zero right answer in this war. We don't have some
| corrupt cabal of leaders in our government and military. I
| can't recall a single American that didn't want to go into
| there after 911. Our soldiers have been stuck there putting
| their lives on the line to keep the house of cards from falling
| down. This power vacuum will disappear with another incredibly
| violent war after we leave. There will be zero way for the
| current government to maintain control. I don't see how it
| could possibly avoid becoming an isis like state that will lash
| out with more terrorism and I'm afraid this won't be the last
| time American boots will be in country.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-
| war_pr...
|
| Largest anti war protests in history.
|
| > We don't have some corrupt cabal of leaders in our
| government and military
|
| You have patriots, who are far more dangerous because they
| believe they're doing the right thing. And a certain amount
| of cabal willing to lie about how much of a threat Iraq was.
|
| The only winning move is not to play.
|
| -- Wargames, 1983
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Largest anti war protests in history.
|
| For the Iraq war. The Afghanistan war had very little
| resistance as things like the Congressional approval
| happened on September 14th giving the military a blank
| check to "capture the criminals."
| bostonsre wrote:
| I was talking about Afghanistan, but it's a similar
| situation in Iraq. The justification for the Iraq war is
| bs, but the situation in both countries is similar right
| now. There are weak governments that were allies that we
| are hanging out to dry. Our soldiers feel horrible about
| leaving the people they fought besides to die from the
| onslaught that is coming. The enemy is battle hardened and
| without mercy. I feel horrible for all involved but it
| seems like it will be worse in Afghanistan. I can't imagine
| being a father to a daughter who wanted a bright future for
| their child right now. They have at most, one year of
| schooling left before those schools are snubbed out
| harshly. Our previous allies that fought along side our
| soldiers have an even more grim future. There will be a
| stasi like hunt and subsequent execution of thousands for
| those that helped us.
|
| What would you do when you fought alongside people that
| became your brothers? Would you betray them and abandon
| them to this horrible fate?
|
| It's easy to call them useful idiots sitting thousands of
| miles away and safe. They are not dumb, they see the
| reality on the ground that we are not privy to.
|
| At the same time, our soldiers are dieing. It's ugly
| whatever route we take and I don't know the least horrible
| decision that should be made.
| trasz wrote:
| Kind of telling that you're mentioning some dollars lost, and
| soldiers losing their lives, and completely ignore the
| victims of the war.
| Zababa wrote:
| Genuine question: are there any concrete proofs that the
| intervention reduced terrorism? Not that their absence would
| prove the opposite of course, but do we have any hard data or
| something?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Fairly sure the intervention predated an increase in
| terrorist acts both locally and internationally. Whether
| those are related or not is hard to show.
| austincheney wrote:
| That's complicated. The Taliban were also generally opposed
| to terrorism, though they define terrorism a bit
| differently given their extreme social positions. This
| resulted in a large rift between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
|
| You could better answer the question yourself with a study
| of recent history in the region.
| throwanem wrote:
| > I can't recall a single American that didn't want to go
| into there after 911.
|
| You must not have been paying attention. There were a hell of
| a lot of us, and we weren't quiet. Or wrong.
|
| > I'm afraid this won't be the last time American boots will
| be in country.
|
| Oh, of course not. We'll have left behind whole shipping
| containers full of the things.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That's not really true. It was very true about Iraq, but
| almost nobody (I assume there are a couple quakers out
| there somewhere) was against the action in Afghanistan.
|
| The Taliban were widely recognized as the absolute worst,
| and sheltering Bin Laden was just icing on the cake. This
| was a close to national unity as anything will ever be.
| herbst wrote:
| I don't know about America. But back then we had huge
| demonstrations every weekend in Austria trying to get
| attention from the US government to rethink their action.
|
| The public, here in central Europe, was and still is
| mainly against the US invading countries for their own
| means.
|
| (This is actually part of the reason so many of my
| generation learned to hate America for their actions in a
| early age)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Those were very likely for the Iraq war. The Afghanistan
| war happened too quickly to garner any major opposition,
| and though there was some opposition I'm not seeing four
| weeks of huge Austrian demonstrations listed on Wikipedia
| at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_
| the_war_in_Af...
|
| And I feel like holding massive anti-US protests in the
| weeks after 9/11 would have been a huge talking point in
| the last twenty years.
| herbst wrote:
| Anti-Iraq was even bigger for sure. And I am not sure
| they happened directly after 9/11 or only months later.
| But the sentiment was obvious, many people do still not
| believe the official narrative and can't excuse starting
| a war for a wrong narrative. Pretty sure demos startet
| after the first related WikiLeaks leaks?
|
| On a side note I would be surprised if Wikipedia had a
| line for a few hundred young lefties demonstrating in a
| basically forgotten country like austria. When I say
| huge, I mean relatively, Austria ain't big. But there
| should be Media and pics somewhere I guess.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Pretty sure demos startet after the first related
| WikiLeaks leaks?
|
| That's like a decade after the war started.
|
| Even in the US, by the time of the Iraq War a significant
| chunk of the population had turned anti-Afghanistan war,
| but resistance was very limited in the month between
| September 11th and the start of the war.
| remarkEon wrote:
| There was an instagram post I saw (one of the boys sent it to me,
| I'm not a social media guy) that showed the Taliban walking
| through our old FOB in Afghanistan. What was odd to me about
| seeing that is I really had no emotional response to it. I
| thought I would, but I just ... didn't care anymore. Over the
| last few weeks I've also been sent article after article about
| the withdrawal from other friends (not veterans) who are deep in
| policy circles, about how this or that thing will mean this or
| that thing for Afghanistan. Does anyone in America actually
| _care_ about what style of government Afghanistan adopts?
| Apparently these people in DC think they do.
|
| My brother today asked me if I had an opinion on the withdrawal
| from Afghanistan when we did our weekly gaming session (tonight
| was Hearts Of Iron), and I told him "no, why would I? The war was
| over years before I even got there".
| colordrops wrote:
| I apologize if this comes off as blunt, but there is
| overwhelming evidence that the purpose of US intervention in
| the middle east is almost purely for reasons of power and
| resources, and this has been obvious to scholars and even
| casual laymen observers for nearly half a century. Human rights
| and self defense have very little to do with it, and to believe
| so is to fall to propaganda.
| geraneum wrote:
| > the purpose of US intervention in the middle east is almost
| purely for reasons of power and resources
|
| True, but the power and resources for a few corporations and
| individuals for sure! But not American people. Nah, not the
| common man.
| colordrops wrote:
| Correct, the common person in the US suffers immensely due
| to the resources being poured into the military, leading to
| wealth, health care, and education outcomes far below many
| other countries with smaller GDP per Capita.
| remarkEon wrote:
| You can be as blunt and stupid as you choose.
|
| >but there is overwhelming evidence that the purpose of US
| intervention in the middle east is almost purely for reasons
| of power and resource
|
| Sure, I'll collect my check at the pump, I guess.
|
| >and this has been obvious to scholars and even casual laymen
| observers for nearly half a century
|
| I think you're missing the meaning of my original post, which
| was a comment about people who experienced war in Afghanistan
| feel about it. You're welcome to contort that into whatever
| point about human rights, "America is bad", whatever point
| you feel like. Like I said originally. I don't care.
| colordrops wrote:
| I was replying to this:
|
| > Does anyone in America actually care about what style of
| government Afghanistan adopts? Apparently these people in
| DC think they do.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Are you asking what I think the DC establishment thinks
| is the right government structure for Afghanistan?
| colordrops wrote:
| No. Buy you seem to think your policy buddies care about
| finding the right government structure. If they are true
| establishment and not just cogs they don't care about
| anything other than game theory and maximum extraction of
| value.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ah yes, the power and resources that flow from the rich
| nation of Afghanistan.
|
| I had dinner with the ambassador to the Taliban once at
| Yale, back in 2000. He said they banned TVs because there
| wasn't any Pashtun programming, so they were effectively
| just banning porn. He was accompanied by this very nice
| lady, Lailia Helms, who was the granddaughter of the
| former king of Afghanistan and married to the son of the
| former CIA director, Richard Helms. Weird.
| colordrops wrote:
| The value that is extracted is not from the "rich"
| Afghanis, but from American taxpayers, in the trillions
| to the military industrial complex.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ah, then we are on the same page.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Two things.
|
| Outside of the excessive dev costs, and high price tags
| of these things, ongoing, year after year, institutional
| knowledge of "how to construct weaponry", and "how to
| test / build" the same is absolutely vital.
|
| You absolutely cannot be in a position where no company
| and employees exist, which knows these things.
|
| The cannot be overstated. Imagine a war breaks out, and
| now you try to build ... missiles. You have no tooling,
| no factory, no employees which have ever done so, and no
| supply chains either. Nor even engineered, first step
| designs!
|
| Now, I agree things are _not_ perfect, but something must
| be in place. Something ongoing.
|
| This same logic holds with the military too. You want to
| lose a war? Have a no standing military, or one which is
| never deployed.
|
| You need trained, experienced troops, which will train
| other troops if a massive war breaks out and your numbers
| swell. You need experienced persons to lead, which have
| not been trained in isolation.
|
| Canada tries to solve this, as much as possible by
| peacekeeping. It's not perfect though, blue hats don't
| often engage in large scale actions.
|
| Point in all this is, trying to pick just, humanitarian
| causes for troop deployment, and weaponry usage in the
| field, and to keep supply chains alive, is difficult, yet
| is literally essential if you want to have a real defense
| potential.
|
| Or should the US, the West, just degrade their military,
| and hope for the best?
|
| (Canada was in Afghanistan for more than a decade.)
| duckmysick wrote:
| How does China solve this?
| sirtaj wrote:
| It really sounds like you've managed to reason into "we
| have a military, so it's best to use it for its own
| sake." If so, that's pretty frightening logic,
| particularly for anyone in the rest of the world.
| FpUser wrote:
| All the fluff aside you just said that the US (or any
| other country for that matter) needs to mess with other
| countries in order to keep their military in proper
| shape. Sure it does make sense from that standpoint. Or
| maybe not and conducting military exercise is more than
| enough given your already very advanced state.
|
| The receiving end however might hold a different point of
| view.
| trasz wrote:
| So it's all about having to choose between murdering one
| million people and finding some cheaper ways to test new
| toys?
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Standing army" used to be an epithet, a sign that a
| society had lost its way. The best military we've ever
| had was the one we built from scratch for WWII. They
| curbstomped two _actual_ "evil empires". Everything we've
| had since has been a pale imitation, not fit to wear the
| same uniform. That's because in WWII we were trying to
| win, and ever since then we've been trying to spend
| money.
|
| If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to
| remobilize. (What, are the Nazis going to rise again?)
| But if we did, we could.
| tdfx wrote:
| > If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to
| remobilize
|
| This is a very 1990s/2000s point of view. We have a real
| global competitor now. China's military spending is
| rising faster than their fast-rising GDP. Some recent war
| games exercises suggest that the US could already be in
| losing position in a conventional war with China [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/
| china-u...
| jessaustin wrote:
| That's a very 1950s point of view.
|
| Not even our generals are stupid enough to get in a war
| with China. (Our politicians probably are, but they're
| not in charge.) They'd probably take all of our Pacific
| Islands, and they would definitely sink all our carriers.
| It will take a few years for the Pentagon to forget the
| asskickings we've received recently. They're searching
| for nations smaller and weaker than Syria; China is off
| the list completely. Even though we spend far more on the
| military than they do.
|
| However, we don't have to get in a war with China. We owe
| them trillions of dollars. We're probably not going to
| start out by straight-up defaulting, but there are all
| sorts of things we could fiddle with to put the hurt on
| them. What are they going to do in response? Stop
| exporting us lots of crap? That would be _good_ for
| American workers. Maybe they 'll hack American firms'
| insecure shit more? Ditto.
|
| We would live happier, healthier, and more prosperous
| lives if we stopped viewing every challenge through a
| military lens. Especially since our military is
| incompetent to achieve any goal through military action.
| watwut wrote:
| So basically, you think that destroying lives of millions
| people as a training exercise is a good idea and makes
| America somehow noble?
| goodpoint wrote:
| It other countries did the same humanity would be in an
| endless state of global war until extinction.
|
| Besides, the idea that starting wars is an effective
| method to prevent losing wars is completely illogical.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| How does maintaining military readiness and being at war
| in Afghanistan relate? Isn't it reducing our military
| readiness and preparatory investment? Couldn't we have
| bought hundreds of aircraft carriers for the cost?
| refurb wrote:
| You'll have to define power and resources. I mean,
| Afghanistan offers very little of either and any control you
| want to exert comes at a high cost and fades pretty quickly.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Ah yes all those resources and power the US got from invading
| Afghanistan. Lol.
|
| You might want to ponder what propaganda you have been
| falling for.
| colordrops wrote:
| I said middle east, not Afghanistan. As mentioned
| elsewhere, the main resource extracted from Afghanistan is
| money from taxpayers.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Afghanistan is extremely rich in mineral resources. The
| fact that we failed to secure them isn't really proof of
| anything. We have a long history of trying to install
| foreign leaders who are friendly to US business interests
| with mixed results.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Citation needed.
|
| No doubt Afghanistan has resources but I'd like to see
| supporting evidence that it was the reason for invasion.
| voldacar wrote:
| >the purpose of US intervention in the middle east is almost
| purely for reasons of power and resources
|
| if this were the case, then the USA would have actually
| benefited from these wars. you ascribe far too much
| competence to our ruling class
|
| The actual reason is more like an unholy mishmash of the sunk
| cost fallacy and the ever-present need to pad the pockets of
| Boeing and Raytheon
| farss wrote:
| Some benefited handsomely. Most others, not so much.
| phaemon wrote:
| > if this were the case, then the USA would have actually
| benefited from these wars
|
| Well, sure, if you believe that the powers that be were
| acting for the benefit of their country rather than for
| themselves.
| rualca wrote:
| > if this were the case, then the USA would have actually
| benefited from these wars. you ascribe far too much
| competence to our ruling class
|
| Making an investment is not the same as assuring returns on
| investment.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| ">the purpose of US intervention in the middle east is
| almost purely for reasons of power and resources"
|
| "if this were the case, then the USA would have actually
| benefited from these wars."
|
| I don't see where that conclusions comes from unless you
| fall for the same mistake you mention - adress too much
| competence. Also the US ruling class can loose a gamble.
| voldacar wrote:
| I don't think you can correctly conceptualize the US
| presence in Afghanistan as a gamble for resources that
| was lost. It's been 20 years. If there was ever a gamble,
| it was a while ago
| pydry wrote:
| It was likely less about resources and more strategic
| influence. "Owning" Afghanistan would give America the
| ability to project power in a critically important region
| surrounded by American rivals where it lacked a military
| presence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_milit
| ary...
|
| It boxes Iran in, it taps on China's exposed western
| shoulder and borders the stans that buffer Russia's soft
| underbelly and it's close enough to other established air
| bases that can provide logistical support.
|
| Better yet, if you _do_ manage to capture it, it 's has
| some of the most favorable geography for repelling
| invasions of any country. If America was fully
| established there, getting it out would be pretty much
| impossible.
|
| It's not a huge shocker it was seen as a prize worthy of
| an expensive gamble at a time when America felt it was at
| the peak of its power. Anyone remember fukuyama's "the
| end of history"? America had a pretty severe case of
| hubris in the 90s/early 00s.
|
| The war was lost a while ago, of course. It's _really_
| hard to admit defeat however, and there 's always a tinge
| of hope it might be turned around, a disbelief that the
| American military could suffer _defeat_ , so, of course
| it dragged on.
|
| Anybody who has worked on a huge, vastly expensive high
| profile project knows that inertia can drag it on for
| _years_ after it 's clear to everyone that it's dead in
| the water.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| There's a whole lot of (literally) nothing between
| Afghanistan and anything worth bombing in Russia or
| China, and the US has military presence much, much closer
| to the important parts of those countries.
|
| Afghanistan would be good to have in a war with Iran, but
| I honestly think that the opportunity for that is gone.
| AFAIK Iraq has gone from being a US client state to
| nominally independent, and Russia's plan to prop up the
| Assad regime worked out very well for them.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It was "ressources and power".
|
| Strategic influence, military bases on the ground (vs.
| Iran) etc.
|
| So if one would characterize complicated geo politics as
| gamble, I think it is fair to say the gamble was lost,
| considering the huge ressources spend.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The "geopolitics" is just marketing. The point is to
| spend money that will disappear unaccountably into the
| Pentagon. Thousands of rich people get even richer. None
| of them care who is more secure or who dies, here or
| abroad. All of the fables that USA (war) news media
| excretes are for the purpose of making those rich people
| even richer.
| thephyber wrote:
| > Does anyone in America actually care about what style of
| government Afghanistan adopts?
|
| As just an ordinary American citizen, I think that question is
| nearly 20 years too late (or 32 if we consider Charlie Wilson's
| War). And that particular question is downstream of other more
| important questions.
|
| My primary calculation is: what is the likelihood that a
| central Afghan government could actually influence the
| governing of regions far from the major cities, what is the
| likelihood that American soldiers could support the central
| government in establishing order/governance there, how much
| progress have we made in 20 years, how much longer would it
| take to make such a project self-sustaining without further US
| support, would the central government be considered authentic
| by those whom it governs or just a Vichy, and how do American
| citizens know the progress we are making is real or just
| optimistic spin by professional generals whose reputation is
| tied to this engagement.
|
| Honestly I've been pretty pessimistic about Afghanistan since
| Bush 2 took his eye off the ball in 2003 and moved his efforts
| to Iraq, which was at least a stable governing organization
| (although I freely admit I would never want to live there). We
| elected Obama and Trump since, both of whom tried to pull the
| US out of these Middle East wars and mostly did (until things
| changed).
|
| If America had any real chance to help Afghanistan, it was in
| 1989 right after the Soviets left and we left the weak
| remaining government to deal with the well trained mujaheddin
| with no significant American support.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| For the past 20 years we have been focused on what it costs us
| to remain. Leaving has shown the cost to others for us to go.
| No matter what you think we should do, that cost is a bitter
| pill to swallow.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Not when I step over homeless/needy Americans.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's sad, but the USA is not what it used
| to be, and we need to target our borrowed money resources.
|
| (I have no idea as to the real reason we stayed so long
| there. I'm beginning to think it was military practice. I
| wouldn't be suprised if some defense guy said, we have to
| build up our the iron in our military in order to keep our
| lead on China's expanding fleet of war machines. (I used
| "iron" because I'm lazy, and figured it was ok because of
| what Xi just said.)
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > Does anyone in America actually care about what style of
| government Afghanistan adopts?
|
| I don't think too many people care out of compassion for
| individual Afghans, but the original reason we "liberated" them
| was because the Taliban was providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda
| to train and launch terrorist attacks. The USA created a
| democratic government in the hopes that the troops could be
| withdrawn and the local Afghan government would maintain its
| own affairs and keep terrorists from operating in its country.
| There are many Americans that care that after 20 years the
| Taliban will take over again shortly after the troops are gone.
| Nothing changed, the next OBL could be operating out of
| Afghanistan and Americans got nothing for their 20 years of
| wasted tax money except thousands of casualties and a lot of
| broken families.
|
| So I don't know if too many Americans care exactly which
| government Afghanistan adopts, but I'm pretty sure anyone
| paying attention is disappointed that they didn't get literally
| anything different.
|
| Edit: to be clear, this wasn't me critiquing the plan, saying
| whether it would or wouldn't work. This was me responding to
| GP's prompt about whether America cared about what style of
| government Afghanistan adopted. Yes America cares, not so much
| about the style of government but about the outcome. They were
| told that Afghanistan was going to get a new government that
| wouldn't allow terrorists free reign to operate as they please;
| as a result America and the world would be safer. They didn't
| get that. Yes there are other places that terrorists could
| operate from, but removing Afghanistan from the list would have
| been nice. Yes, democracy would be nice, but America would have
| accepted if Afghanistan had adopted a limited monarchy ran by a
| Grand Poobah. What we're about to end up with is the Taliban
| running the government again and probably handing a few of the
| recently vacated facilities to terrorists as new training
| camps.
| pjc50 wrote:
| OBL was, in the end, operating out of Pakistan, a
| "democratic" "US ally".
|
| It was impossible to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan
| because they could retreat to, operate from, and occasionally
| bomb US fuel supplies in, Pakistan.
|
| The quest for revenge after 9/11 just gave the US two more
| Vietnams.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| True but at least the US doesn't have the draft anymore so
| American society doesn't care much and life goes on
| unchanged. When I read about an aircraft carrier being
| diverted to cover the withdrawal I couldn't help mutter
| "Saigon".
| rascul wrote:
| > True but at least the US doesn't have the draft anymore
|
| Unfortunately it does. Hasn't been called up since the
| Vietnam War but the system is still in place and people
| are still required to register.
|
| https://www.sss.gov/
| visualradio wrote:
| > The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that
| the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government
| would maintain its own affairs
|
| Democracy in the USA is based upon directly elected local
| government and a local property tax on landowners. We never
| tried to establish anything resembling american style
| democracy in Afghanistan.
|
| Imagine if after each contentious national election the
| President appointed all of the state governors, all the
| county and city executives were also appointed by the
| governors or the President, that there was no direct property
| tax on corporate and individual land owners, and that the
| national government levied an internal sales tax.
|
| The USA wouldn't survive more than a few years under
| Afghanistan style democracy.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Afghanistan borders to many Regional-Super-Power-spheres to
| be ever left alone. Its between India/Pakistan, Russia/US and
| Belt & RoadStates/ Traditional Western Cooperate Colonies.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| And its geography is too complicated for any modern power
| to control it. Just the logistics itself is a nightmare.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| It earned the title "destroyer of empires" for many good
| reasons.
| herbst wrote:
| > The USA created a democratic government in the hopes...
|
| Saying this is kinda insulting to actually democratic
| countries. Why would exactly the country with the most broken
| democracy feel to spread that? Did they ask for that? Did
| other countries ask the US to break Afghanistan the way they
| did?
|
| I live far from both, and I do not really care. But bringing
| democracy simply sounds like a empty blanket statement that
| from a democratic perspective doesn't make much sense.
| missinformation wrote:
| Bin Laden was in Pakistan. The 9/11 attacks were carried out
| by Saudis, partially trained in the US.
|
| The blatantly false narrative about Al Qaeda should have died
| years ago.
|
| The US has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because this was in
| the interests of Israel (to control the countries bordering
| Iran), and US foreign affairs are largely influenced, if not
| straight up controlled, by israelis and/or jews (to the point
| that US soldiers in Iraq were simply called "the jews" by the
| population, according to Thomas Friedman).
|
| The idea that Afghanistan was going to adopt democracy and
| western liberalism is so absurd on its face that I won't even
| discuss it.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| To be a bit contrarianish:
|
| Afghanistan probably had a better shot at a flawed
| democracy than Iraq. The country is decentralized by the
| very nature of the geographical obstacles it sports, and
| the Pashtun culture has a concept of collective decision
| making. Look up "Jirga", it isn't that different from other
| ancient decision bodies that predated democracy in European
| cultures [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirga
|
| On the other hand, Iraq has a long tradition of absolute
| rule by ruthless powerful figures, going well back to
| antiquity. It is much easier to concentrate resources and
| build a standing military to steamroll your opponents in a
| flat agricultural country.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want to look up Mirwais Hotak and Abdur Rehman
| Khan
| herbst wrote:
| > The idea that Afghanistan was going to adopt democracy
| and western liberalism is so absurd on its face that I
| won't even discuss it.
|
| Some people are just delusional thinking implementing a
| broken half baked American forced democracy would simply
| replace thausands of years of history that lead the the
| current country.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that
| the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government
| would maintain its own affairs and keep terrorists from
| operating in its country
|
| Lemme stop you right there. Even the idea of "voting" was
| foreign to them. You have to understand, we can provide
| security, but if they think democracy is stupid what do we
| do? Tell them democracy _isn 't_ stupid?
|
| >There are many Americans that care that after 20 years the
| Taliban will take over again shortly after the troops are
| gone.
|
| Yeah, No. I mean, psychologically it's weird to see the place
| we were at for 11 months get overrun by Islamists but at some
| point we've just realized that Afghanistan is _their_
| country. If they want to run it that way, with an Islamist
| political party running the entire government then that 's
| their right. The US should stay out of it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "but if they want to run it that way, with an Islamist
| political party running the entire government then that's
| their right.
|
| I agree to that, but it is really not that simple.
|
| There are many more foreign nations and groups involved in
| Afghanistan than just the US.
|
| The Taliban are very alien to many afghan people, too and
| considered a foreign force.
|
| The solution?
|
| No simple one that I can see.
| gexla wrote:
| Love this. And it's how I feel about most things which aren't
| directly relevant to the items on my todo list in a given day.
| I care if my house was flooding, I care about tickets being
| posted to some queue that I'm being paid to watch and I care
| about anything which is generally conspiring to get me to make
| a reaction or even just move a finger to show I'm still alive.
| Outside of these things, my life is about keeping the list of
| things I care about as small as possible. Nothing about
| politics makes that list.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| This article evoked so many emotions and feelings on different
| levels.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> "Bagram once had a thriving Pokemon Go community of troops,
| contractors and civilians who played the game while exercising
| and after work."
|
| This is why i dont like Stars and Stripes. Little disingenuous
| comments like this show thier priorities. Does anyone actually
| believe that soldiers didnt play during work? And, for a soldier,
| exercising _is work_. We know that a bunch of young men away from
| home with cellphones will play mobile games. We dont need to be
| told that they are all boys scouts who would never do so during
| office hours.
|
| Im more woried about the security implications. A camera app that
| involves soldiers wandering around a base chasing gps-tagged
| sprites is ripe for intelligence gathering. How secure was
| pokemon go at this time?
| technofiend wrote:
| I haven't played the game in years but the more obvious affect
| would be in ingress as fields come down as captured assets decay
| or are taken over. Ingress fields can be transcontinental.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| For those who aren't aware of Bagram and other bases in this war
| ...
|
| Most of the US Army hid in large bases that were isolated from
| the actual war. Contractors made huge sums of money supplying
| what are essentially overseas cities that didn't contribute
| directly to fighting or controlling the area.
|
| So 40,000+ Americans lived in Bagram, most who never left the
| gates to even see Afghanistan. And after dusk, a dozen Taliban
| could take over the region outside the walls of Bagram. Or they
| could just wait for the Americans to leave the country.
|
| So playing Pokemon Go inside the walls of Bagram had no impact on
| the war, since what happened inside those walls had nothing to do
| with the war.
|
| It was a different story with the stories about fitness watches
| tracking outpost sentries and departures/arrivals from a few
| years ago.
| rexf wrote:
| This page is not working well. As I'm trying to read the bottom
| of the article, it keeps jumping to the page top.
|
| As for the content, it doesn't seem newsworthy to me. PokeGo
| players know that your Pokemon will stay in a gym for a long time
| (indefinitely) if there's no rival team to knock it out.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| There's a time limit. Eventually a "boss" will come to the gym
| and kick out the Pokemon you have earning coins there. I think
| it's 48 hours or so.
| xuki wrote:
| There is no limit.
| rexf wrote:
| Source? There is no 48 hour limit. Did you read the article?
| It's about US troop pokemon staying in gyms long after the
| personnel have left.
|
| Googling gave me this answer for how they stay in gyms:
| "Forever. Someone has to defeat it in battle to knock its
| motivation down to 0. Otherwise, it will never hit 0 through
| normal decay."
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/fjl4xz/how_long_.
| ..
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| https://www.imore.com/pokemon-go-gyms
|
| I guess they call it "motivation decay". It's a mechanic
| where you have to feed your pokemon food to keep it
| motivated. You can feed it remotely, though. They can be
| fed up to 10 times with normal food, or an unlimited number
| of times with golden raspberries.
|
| EDIT: I was wrong about getting kicked when the boss came.
| So if you kept feeding your pokemon, you could keep it
| there indefinitely. My bad.
| rexf wrote:
| As a person who plays daily, my understanding is you
| don't have to feed it any berries (and it will stay there
| indefinitely _until_ a rival team member knocks your
| pokemon out by battling).
| Larrikin wrote:
| Since when?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This was not true when I played the game at least. I know
| people who have placed Pokemon in remote gyms and had them
| stay up for almost a whole year before being taken.
|
| I stopped about a year ago fwiw.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| The most interesting part is that this game has not been flagged
| by the USA as an issue of foreign intelligence. I thought the
| placement of staff and personnel was supposed to be a much
| guarded secret.
| stickydink wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Several bases I went to in the continental US had all the
| gyms/pokestops disabled after the game came out. I wonder if
| that was intentionally not done at Bagram for morale reasons?
| throwanem wrote:
| Pretty sure the location of Bagram isn't.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A Fitbit could reveal patrol routes and timings.
|
| Something like Pokemon Go could permit dropping something
| rare to attract people to a sighted-in spot you'd then drop
| mortars on.
| throwanem wrote:
| So could an interpreter. Also, Afghanistan has mountains
| and binoculars, neither of which requires guessing Air
| Force usernames on Strava or whatever. Not that you don't
| do anything you can that works in asymmetrical warfare or
| whatever the inside-the-beltway crowd prefers to call it
| these days, but it's hardly as if there's much in the way
| of a unique threat model here.
|
| In any case, Pokemon Go's been out since, what, 2016? No
| one on any side has taken the American war in Afghanistan
| seriously since well before then. When you're just waiting
| around for Americans to acknowledge the inevitable and
| leave, there's not all that much point in finding clever
| ways to blow up Americans - all that's liable to do is make
| Americans maybe decide to stick around longer. That doesn't
| necessarily make Americans playing Pokemon Go in Bagram a
| _good_ idea, but it also doesn 't make it a bad one, and I
| can think of a lot worse.
| atatatat wrote:
| We weren't guessing usernames, lol -- these assclowns had
| a public map -- of every user's data!!
| Thorrez wrote:
| Yeah, fitness tracking app Strava revealed a secret army base:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
| akersten wrote:
| It may not be your intention, but both this and the parent
| comment really misplace the blame.
|
| The "fitness tracking app Starva" did not reveal the secret
| army base, _soldiers inappropriately using their phones and
| broadcasting their routines by using a civilian application
| designed to share their location_ revealed the secret army
| base.
|
| I know it sounds pedantic, but I think we should be very
| careful about verbiage when it comes to who is to blame here:
| it's not the apps. This kind of thing gets exacerbated hugely
| by media headlines too - always putting the app front-and-
| center and downplaying the policy/training/OpSec failures.
| This leads to erroneous and scary conclusions like "apps
| should be flagged for national security" like the GP
| mentioned - but the actual takeaway should be that we need to
| train the dang soldiers operational security.
| dlvktrsh wrote:
| I don't think it's pedantic at all. I think we misplace the
| importance of how we communicate with each other and how we
| use our already limited languages (I mean, it's hard enough
| to communicate an idea in its purest form despite being
| articulate, the internet makes it harder, and not being
| concious about what you're saying just adds to the problems
| in the world imo)
| imtringued wrote:
| Imagine if these companies did their best to hide the
| existence of secret military bases. They would need the
| location of secret military bases otherwise they cannot
| censor their public maps. The secret nature of the bases
| makes them impossible to not reveal.
| matsemann wrote:
| News are terrible at that kind of writing. For instance
| with traffic incidents, it's always "a person getting hit
| by a car", not "a driver ramming their car into a person".
| So they write it like as if the driver had no agency, and
| the incident was completely non-avoidable and no one should
| stop to think about why it happened or how it can be
| prevented in the future. For good measurement they also use
| the word "accident" a lot.
|
| Wording matter.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Wording matter. "
|
| It does.
|
| "a person getting hit by a car" is quite neutral.
|
| "a driver ramming their car into a person"."
|
| This sounds intentional and shifts blame to the driver.
| anoncake wrote:
| The wording shouldn't sound intentional but the driver
| usually _is_ to blame.
| matsemann wrote:
| Point was to show the two extremes, with news articles
| mostly using the passive one (which you call neutral but
| is far from neutral). So in practice never assigning
| blame to the driver no matter what, or even vaguely
| assigning the blame to the victim.
|
| A good image breaking down a news article in this way: ht
| tps://www.camcycle.org.uk/magazine/newsletter110/article8
| /
|
| It says "the victim was struck" as if it was their fault
| being where they were, not "the driver struck the
| victim".
| dfsegoat wrote:
| > _this game has not been flagged by the USA as an issue of
| foreign intelligence_
|
| It may be backwards. Niantic - the developer of the game, was
| founded by a guy who worked in "foreign affairs" for the US
| Govt [1]. One of his early companies was funded by In-Q-Tel,
| the CIA's venture capital branch [0].
|
| Why put boots on the ground to get street level imagery, when
| you can just have kids all over the world do it for you?
|
| [0] - https://www.networkworld.com/article/3099092/the-cia-nsa-
| and...
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanke
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I don't want to be too dismissive of your claims, because the
| sentiment is well placed- lots of apps present security
| concerns. But the location of every FOB and COP is/was well
| known to the locals. Hopefully Pokemon Go isn't revealing the
| locations of more sensitive locations, but the people running
| clandestine operations aren't letting E-3's play games on a
| cell phone next to them. There may be other vulnerabilities but
| Pokemon Go isn't too big of a problem since it only reveals
| where people have been congregating for a while. So it's
| different than a terrorist revealing their camp's location
| because Twitter geotagged a post.
| bigdict wrote:
| Are you imagining the Taliban running around with iPhones,
| ordering mortar fire on areas where all valuable Pokemon have
| been plucked by US military?
| tyingq wrote:
| It would probably be effective.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Guerillas can't be choosers.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why not? The despite most most depictions, the Taliban (and
| insurgents in general) are capable of impressive feats of
| engineering and electronic hacking. Seems like this would be
| pretty basic.
| peteretep wrote:
| The US has some very technically advanced adversaries who'd
| happily share their data with the Taliban
| paganel wrote:
| > who'd happily share their data with the Taliban
|
| Not the Taliban, but ISIS was very quick in adopting Google
| Earth/Google Maps early in their war in Syria, you could
| see some map screens in the videos where they used to
| prepare a targeted suicide bombing and such (not sure if
| those videos are on YT or Twitter anymore).
| vkou wrote:
| No, they currently don't, but this is a convenient
| boogieman to trot out whenever you need to drum up
| patriotism, or to accuse your political opponents of a lack
| of patriotism, or demand a higher defense budget or a
| justification for another extension of the forever-war in
| the Middle East.
|
| This isn't the Soviet-Afghan war, where the US was happily
| and openly supporting the same mujahedeen that eventually
| became the Taliban. Russia and China both have significant
| 'problematic' Muslim minorities, and have little taste for
| seriously sponsoring Islamic extremism.
|
| (The US and Saudi Wahhabism, on the other hand, continue to
| be odd bedfellows, because, you know, we still can't get
| over Iran.)
| contravariant wrote:
| When you put it like that, that does sound like a risk I
| wouldn't be willing to take.
| herbst wrote:
| Don't you think they have smartphones too? Why would that be
| weird?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The article mentions using a hacked client to spoof your GPS
| location. You just need a computer that can run multiple
| android emulators.
|
| You could probably just make raw API calls. I'm pretty sure
| that's how all those pokemon-mapping websites worked for the
| first several months of the game's release before they
| removed those features from the game.
| aaron695 wrote:
| If you could IED a Pokemon Go site or base location and hurt
| or kill personnel, every soldier in the region would be told
| about it and it would affect their daily lives if they played
| the game. It would work.
|
| If you could create something to drawn them in, it would work
| better, but I'm not sure how the game works. Like attacking
| certain locations in Go to make them 'hard' to draw solders
| to an 'easy' IED'ed location.
|
| The Taliban are just us, they like creativity, they'd think
| hacking Western Pokemon Go would be cool, it would help them
| recruit.
|
| But, the logistics of getting for instance a McDonalds on a
| base also has risk. It's all risk management.
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