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Looks much more like a case of a guilty Afghan framing an innocent Afghan for a crime, than a case of the US flipping coins in order to kidnap civilians 'at random'.

You're being far too charitable to the occupying forces. Remember, they tortured the guy to death. Whether their own people picked the guy up off the street, or they outsourced the task to their local proxy forces (likely offering cash incentives, thus more or less guaranteeing that exactly this sort of thing would happpen), ultimately doesn't matter too much. If at all.

This article doesn't appear to substantiate the claim that anyone was kidnapped solely for owning a Casio. Can you quote the specific excerpt that you believe substantiates this claim?

This fellow, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salih_Uyar

According to Mother Jones:

   More than a dozen detainees were cited for owning cheap digital watches, particularly "the infamous Casio watch of the type used by Al Qaeda members for bomb detonators."

▲ 0xDEAFBEAD 3 days ago | parent [-]

>You're being far too charitable to the occupying forces.

I was responding to the specific claim: "The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured". This claim seems to be clear hyperbole.

>they outsourced the task to their local proxy forces (likely offering cash incentives, thus more or less guaranteeing that exactly this sort of thing would happpen)

It says right there in the Dilawar article that the Afghan who framed him is suspected of being responsible for the rocket attack. But yes, I suppose this was all secretly orchestrated by the US somehow...

It says right there in the Salih Uyar article that the watch was just one reason. You can see the other reasons here (Wikipedia citation): https://web.archive.org/web/20060711215342/http://www.ciponl...

A pattern I'm seeing in this thread: Someone makes a hyperbolic "America is evil" claim. I spend, like, 60 seconds investigating. The claim doesn't appear to hold up.

It seems clear to me that you, and others, love to exaggerate how evil the US is, regardless of the facts. And you haven't given a historical example of a country that did a good job of addressing counterinsurgency/counterterrorism with belligerents who hide in a civilian popuation. For example, perhaps you think that China's method in Xinjiang represents a superior approach? Please, provide a model that you think worked well!

I just want you to do one of two things: (a) admit you/others in this thread might be exaggerating a smidge, or (b) embrace the logical implication of your position, that the US should withdraw from NATO.

I don't care which of those you do -- I just want you to be consistent!

As an American, I personally have become more and more convinced that the US should withdraw from NATO, with every comment that's left in this thread. It just isn't worth the risk that something like this will happen again in the future, should the US become involved in another major war.

And, I don't think Americans should die for people who love to exaggerate how evil we are. That's absurd, frankly.

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aguaviva 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'll cop to (a), but only out of laziness, not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute. And definitely not to (b), which definitely does not follow from what you (falsely) think to be my position, at all.

Frankly -- to every extent you think we're busily trying to "dial up" America's innate evilness, it seems you're definitely trying to divert/deflect blame for its actions, also. For example, spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him); without focusing on the infinitely bigger circumstances behind his death, which is the simple fact of the occupying soldiers choosing to beat the guy to a bloody pulp in the first place.

There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.

Someone makes a hyperbolic "America is evil" claim.

They said nothing of the sort. The initial commenter made some serious (and in my view perfectly justified) criticisms of the fact that the US never seems to have undergone a genuine moral reckoning for the moral disaster that was the 2003 Iraq invasion.

But this is very different from an essentializing, moralistic statement like "America is evil". So for all your concerns about hyperbolicizing over small details such as why exactly so-and-so got picked up before they were tortured, you're clearly doing some serious hyperbolicizing yourself in this case, and in a much intentional, top-down way.

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0xDEAFBEAD 3 days ago | parent [-]

>not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute

Why do the errors of your "laziness" all point in the same direction? Motivated reasoning is the obvious explanation.

>spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him)

Yet again I will emphasize that I was responding to the claim "The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured". Way up in this thread I stated:

>Can you provide a citation for the claim that these were literally random civilians (as opposed to people suspected of committing a crime or plotting to commit a crime)?

Perhaps you were too lazy to read that part?

The question here is not how gruesome the crime is. Repeating myself yet again: The question is the degree to which this crime reflects on the entire US nation, vs specific culpable individuals. Insofar as it reflects on the entire US nation, that's where the implication that we should withdraw from NATO is straightforward.

>There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.

I already stated in this thread: "I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq."

I won't respond to you further in this thread. It's increasingly clear based on your responses that you simply aren't reading what I'm writing, and aren't thinking very hard about this topic.

And, I don't think my nation should be defending yours. You're not an ally. An "alliance" means mutual benefit. But there's no benefit to me from partnering with you. Defending you is charity, and considered as charity, it is frankly terrible. I don't believe in charity for wealthy, self-righteous, entitled, smug, thankless people -- especially not when it entails significant personal risk.

You haven't remotely justified why my tax dollars should pay for your defense, given the risk of US service members committing more gruesome war crimes in the course of defending you, same way they did in WW2.

	▲	aguaviva 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		But there's no benefit to me from partnering with -you-. Defending you is charity, and considered as charity, it is frankly terrible. I don't believe in charity for wealthy, entitled, smug, thankless people. The extent to which you're going out of your way to launch an all-out, gratuitously personalized and caustic attack like this (based on fully imagined attributes, such as how "wealthy" you think I am, or what kind of passport you think I hold) -- is really quite bizarre.