Russian Plane Crash

[vorlon13]

Aviation is a funny thing. If there is a real problem somewhere that causes a hull loss, and that cause is not specifically and correctly identified and corrected, that problem will keep causing hull losses until somebody pulls their head out of their butt and takes appropriate action.

I recall the infamous DC-10 cargo door back in the '70s. During ground testing, Douglas blew off a cargo door when pressurizing the plane, and the resulting damage seriously damaged the aircraft. The actual cause was a horribly rinky-dink mechanism for closing the door and sealing it. Douglas chose to put a warning sticker on the door advising the ground crew to make sure they closed the door correctly. Later, a lightly loaded DC-10 had a cargo door blow off in flight, and since the plane wasn't very full, the pilot was able to use the wing engines to steer the plane (left right and up down) (years before the Sioux City crash where the technique was again used and made that pilot famous), and the plane was saved.

Douglas then executed a very poor 'upgrade' to the door mechanism that did not fix the problem, and also, the ineffective repair was not made to all the DC-10s.

Then another DC-10 crashed, killing 350 people, same cause, and THIS TIME, they fixed the GODDAMN cargo door.


See how weird and funny aviation is ??

If the Egyptians and/or the Russians punt their investigation and/or what ever it takes to fix the actual problem, it WILL OCCUR AGAIN, and ANOTHER plane will crash.


Amazing, I realize. Nothing else in the world is like that at all.


[sarcasm mode off]

[Ludwig]

Babies grow up to be enemy soldiers and your side will just have to fight them in the future.

Hmm, yes. You're in august company with that opinion. Heinrich Himmler used the same argument in a speech at Posen in October of 1943 to justify killing women and children in the Holocaust.

So, good job. You obviously have it all figured out.

Just because a Nazi said it doesn't mean that it's wrong, does it? Playing the devil's advocate here.

[Minimalist]

Even babies?

"Collateral damage."

And we're oh-so-sorry every time we do it.

[abaris]

Just because a Nazi said it doesn't mean that it's wrong, does it? Playing the devil's advocate here.

It's usually a special mindset behind saying something like that. So, no playing devil's advocat. Just a despicable statement that should be called out.

[Ludwig]

Just because a Nazi said it doesn't mean that it's wrong, does it? Playing the devil's advocate here.

It's usually a special mindset behind saying something like that. So, no playing devil's advocat. Just a despicable statement that should be called out.

I agree that it's despicable but I don't think the reasoning is incorrect. At least some of the children of your "enemy" will grow up and enlist in their country's military. Does that mean we should kill children because of that? I don't think it does but that's mostly a result of my own subjective moral code.

[Minimalist]

At least some of the children of your "enemy" will grow up and enlist in their country's military

We seem to create new enemies every day.  Somehow we are under the impression that killing their relatives has no impact on the survivors.

[abaris]

We seem to create new enemies every day.  Somehow we are under the impression that killing their relatives has no impact on the survivors.

Exactly, and I rather not live in a world where Himmler's word ever becomes a reasonable strategy.

[Anomalocaris]

It's usually a special mindset behind saying something like that. So, no playing devil's advocat. Just a despicable statement that should be called out.

I agree that it's despicable but I don't think the reasoning is incorrect. At least some of the children of your "enemy" will grow up and enlist in their country's military. Does that mean we should kill children because of that? I don't think it does but that's mostly a result of my own subjective moral code.

Killing some of their children would only mean the rest of their children would be that much more motivated to hurt you then they otherwise would have been. Israel has adopted precisely the idiotic policy of thinking killing a few of those who would have grown up to be terrorists actually pays.

I have a hard time understanding the blind spot the west has over exactly how multilayered resentment over the west's nearly unconditional support for Israel since 1956 forms the much of the basement and foundation upon which the superstructure of modern Islamism is built.

[Anomalocaris]

We seem to create new enemies every day.  Somehow we are under the impression that killing their relatives has no impact on the survivors.

Exactly, and I rather not live in a world where Himmler's word ever becomes a reasonable strategy.

It is only a reasonable strategy if you are assured of killing almost all of them.  Otherwise the killings will only fill the survivors with such an unshakeable resolve that would massively outweigh their diminished numbers.

Himmler adapted this strategy on the explicit assumption that he could kill almost all of them.  He was wrong.  He should have looked at the strength of Germany's enemies and know he can't be right.  But he was stupid as well as inhuman. We most certainly can't kill nearly as high a percentage as himmler did.  So we would be that much more stupid than himmler, to say nothing about being as inhuman as himmler, to even think about trying this monumentally inhuman strategy.

[Minimalist]

We seem to create new enemies every day.  Somehow we are under the impression that killing their relatives has no impact on the survivors.

Exactly, and I rather not live in a world where Himmler's word ever becomes a reasonable strategy.

Actually, I don't think you can give Himmler the credit for that "strategy."  It is much, much, older.

1Sa 15:3

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.