Atheist Heroes?

[AFTT47]

I've always admired Reginald Finely - The Infidel Guy. He was a podcast pioneer and tireless advocate.

[brewer]

Until I joined this site the only public atheist I had ever heard of was O'Hair. Other than the law suit, I didn't think that much of her.

Guess I didn't know that I needed a spokesman/hero for my position/non belief. Still don't think I do.

[Simon Moon]

Until I joined this site the only public atheist I had ever heard of was O'Hair. Other than the law suit, I didn't think that much of her.

Guess I didn't know that I needed a spokesman/hero for my position/non belief. Still don't think I do.

Yep.

No one speaks for me. 

Sure, if a particular atheist has a great response to a theist claim or argument, I will respect them for that (and probably steal it).

[Whateverist]

Okay, I'll go with Rob. He has obviously given it a lot of thought and created the website. Rob are you willing to be my atheist hero?

[Vincent]

I really love the YouTube channels DarkMatter2525, Jacelyn Glenn and The Thinking Atheist. They all helped bring me into atheism. That guy from the Atheist Voice is pretty respect-worthy as well. 

Carl Sagan is one of my role models, as is Bill Nye (though I think he's an agnostic). I am partial to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but simultaneously I have some disagreements with them.

[The Grand Nudger]

Everything you just typed is based on the assumption that our covert and intelligence agencies are so inept, so utterly devoid of competence that there is no way we could of resolved this surgically and ahead of time. 

You think that they could have?  Why didn't they, then?

To support his position you then have to compound that with the admission that you would rather foreign innocents die than friendly troops who volunteered for war. That minimizing damage to troops is more important than minimizing collateral.

Quote any such admission, douche, lol.  I think, that once the decision is made to trade volleys, minimizing friendly casualties - and "friendly" includes foreign civilians who are non-combatants..... in case you didn't realize........ is the best scenario we can actually manage, even if it isn't the best that we can imagine.  I said as much -explicitly-.  Wish in one hand Rob, shit in the other, and tell me which fills up first?

At no point was that conceded and at no point was a case made why another possibility simply was not possible therefore justifying the deaths of countless innocents.

Collateral damage is a fact, not an idea in search of justification.  Notify  me when you come down from the clouds.  The death of non-combatants is distasteful, but unavoidable.  It racks my dreams, it;s the most painful thing I can conceive of.  I don't decide whether or not charlie thinks of his fellow countrymen as meatshields, and the alternative is to let him shoot me or continue to fuck them over.  What would you do, faced with that decision, hold your fire?  Doubtful.  Nothing pisses me off more, than a person who forces me to shoot someone else to get to them.  Turns me into a real cunt.  All of a sudden, I want to kill their children and all their friends, and break everything they've ever touched.  I want to burn their city to the ground and drink from their busted skulls.  Can you put yourself in my shoes....and can you see why I take offense to the idea that I would rather innocents die than soldiers?  Soldiers agree to fight and die, and presumably they agree to fight and die against other soldiers.  I hate, -hate- people who fuck with that relationship.  Why should I have to explain this at all?  If your objections to either Hitchens comments or my own rest upon this.....is it even worth my time to straighten you out?

Fuck it, go ahead.  Tell us what we should have done, from the ivory tower, in the best -imaginable- scenario, when everything goes right and you don't have to make tough decisions.  Tell me I'd rather innocents die than soldiers if that's what you need to do, if it makes sense of the world to you.........I'll be that villain, if that's what you need.  You're absolutely right, fuck em, I'd rather they die than my buddy Smitty.   I don't get to make that call, though, so they continue breathing and my friends are buried in their stead, cut down and laid low for being foolish enough to stand up to the people who saw them as nothing more than cheap kevlar vests.  But, I guess, we should have just let them keep fucking their own people over - or wait for spies and assassins to solve the problem.  Mea culpa.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're reading something into my comments and Hitchens comments...that was never there to begin with. He and I both would (and do, and did) advocate for a war to remove a despot, neither of us advocate for the slaughter of "innocents" - whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.

[Reforged]

Everything you just typed is based on the assumption that our covert and intelligence agencies are so inept, so utterly devoid of competence that there is no way we could of resolved this surgically and ahead of time. 

You think that they could have?  Why didn't they, then?

To support his position you then have to compound that with the admission that you would rather foreign innocents die than friendly troops who volunteered for war. That minimizing damage to troops is more important than minimizing collateral.

Quote any such admission, douche, lol.  I think, that once the decision is made to trade volleys, minimizing friendly casualties - and "friendly" includes foreign civilians who are non-combatants..... in case you didn't realize........ is the best scenario we can actually manage, even if it isn't the best that we can imagine.  I said as much -explicitly-.  Wish in one hand Rob, shit in the other, and tell me which fills up first?

At no point was that conceded and at no point was a case made why another possibility simply was not possible therefore justifying the deaths of countless innocents.

Collateral damage is a fact, not an idea in search of justification.  Notify  me when you come down from the clouds.  The death of non-combatants is distasteful, but unavoidable.  It racks my dreams, it;s the most painful thing I can conceive of.  I don't decide whether or not charlie thinks of his fellow countrymen as meatshields, and the alternative is to let him shoot me or continue to fuck them over.  What would you do, faced with that decision, hold your fire?  Doubtful.  Nothing pisses me off more, than a person who forces me to shoot someone else to get to them.  Turns me into a real cunt.  All of a sudden, I want to kill their children and all their friends, and break everything they've ever touched.  I want to burn their city to the ground and drink from their busted skulls.  Can you put yourself in my shoes....and can you see why I take offense to the idea that I would rather innocents die than soldiers?  Soldiers agree to fight and die, and presumably they agree to fight and die against other soldiers.  I hate, -hate- people who fuck with that relationship.  Why should I have to explain this at all?  If your objections to either Hitchens comments or my own rest upon this.....is it even worth my time to straighten you out?

Fuck it, go ahead.  Tell us what we should have done, from the ivory tower, in the best -imaginable- scenario, when everything goes right and you don't have to make tough decisions.  Tell me I'd rather innocents die than soldiers if that's what you need to do, if it makes sense of the world to you.........I'll be that villain, if that's what you need.  You're absolutely right, fuck em, I'd rather they die than my buddy Smitty.   I don't get to make that call, though, so they continue breathing and my friends are buried in their stead, cut down and laid low for being foolish enough to stand up to the people who saw them as nothing more than cheap kevlar vests.  But, I guess, we should have just let them keep fucking their own people over - or wait for spies and assassins to solve the problem.  Mea culpa.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're reading something into my comments and Hitchens comments...that was never there to begin with.  He and I both would (and do, and did) advocate for a war to remove a despot, neither of us advocate for the slaughter of "innocents" - whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.

Shock and awe leads to an astonishingly high number of civilian casualties so that a higher percentage of friendly troops might live. You support the tactic then you support that. I'm not saying thats necessarily immoral as its only natural to care more about members of your own nation but its the position you have to take if you support it with any intellectual honesty.

How should I know what the exact motivations of the intelligence community are? There are many reasons why occupation would have more profitable aspects to it than simply preventing a conflict as there are a wealth of resources to be had as well as various political reasons why it might be advantageous. Some of them are pretty well known, whether or not they're true is open to speculation. The fact of the matter is we're asked to accept they had the wiles and the power to put in dictators and fund coups when ever it suited national interests... but they couldn't infiltrate a country whose security is decades behind most? Its never explained why thats the case. If it were then fair enough but it isn't, not even vaguely.

Its a fact that people go apeshit when body bags start coming home. Doesn't matter how few. 
If you think the simple calculation that it would be politically less disastrous for a ton of brown, faceless, nameless civilians to die overseas than the red, white and blue troops whos faces and names would be endlessly circulated round the media to the chant "How could they let this happen to our heroes!?" didn't take place then I'm not sure what to say. How do you think Guantanamo is still open for business?
They went in with shock and awe because it meant minimizing friendly casualties at the cost of severe collateral. It was a cost they deemed acceptable. Evidently so did Hitchens. The fact he did is *not* the part I object to.
I don't necessarily disagree or even care about any of that. The only part I object to is where Hitchens circumvented that issue. Instead of facing it head on he sidestepped it everytime. It would of been an unpopular sentiment to express and he would of got covered in shit for it as would his points. It was intellectually dishonest and I think he should of taken the hit.

[The Grand Nudger]

You do realize that the vast majority of civilian casualties in that war are attributed to prolonged occupation by ground forces and insurgency, not the bombers you think "shock and awe" refers to?  The bombs dropping were largely for the cameras.  You, and everyone else ate that shit up, apparently, so I guess that part of the plan worked, but it was ineffective on it's own.  I support rapid dominance, because it seeks to end wars quickly by crippling the enemies will to fight.  Not by killing civilians, but by destroying an enemies military and infrastructure all at once, everywhere.  There's nothing in there about saving our troops at the expense of brown lives, asshole.  Rapid dominance requires an overwhelming show of military force, and that means that even the boots on the ground put themselves out there, at risk..but you didn't get to see that, because having a live cam broadcasting to the world in an infantry company during an assault is a bad idea, rgr?

Again, friendlies -include- foreign non-combatants. Do you have a problem with minimizing the number of dead non-combatants, or did you just not realize that they were included in that group? The idea, is that a quick war kills fewer people, understand? OFC we try to minimize the number of american soldiers that die, we also try to minimize the number of civilians who die. Who the fuck do you think we are, and where is it that you get your information from? What's a person supposed to say, when asked a question ala "what about the cost in dead civilians", really, what is a person supposed to say? There's nothing -to- say. The hope is that the number of dead civilians is minimal, but we don't have any direct control over that.....it's not like we can enforce an emergency evacuation, but the ruling government can, and it isn't as though they don't know what we're going to hit.....

........wish in one hand, shit in another.

I'm really not sure what you're expecting, people die in wars. If you think that people who advocate for war are advocating for the killing of civilians, then you would be wrong. If you think that shock and awe has something to do with killing civilians to save soldiers, you would be wrong. Refusing to engage pointless, headline baiting questions and comments is, I guess, sidestepping, but perhaps I should have done what Hitchens did and ignored your baiting. All it's done is piss me off, and I know you can't give a fuck about whether or not any of it is true, or you'd have taken the 5 seconds to google it before you opened your mouth. Now you're onto some conspiracy bullshit, with nameless guys in a room making political calculations regarding brown people? I bet that makes for good TV...but that's not actually how those decisions are made. Just remember that these are my friends, and me, you're talking about. Good people, professionals, with a difficult job.

We're not the Bond villains you seem to think we are, not even the guys all the way at the top. They're geriatrics, about as threatening and sinister as your grandfather, who have a duty to uphold our integrity -even- when we're dropping bombs.

[Reforged]

You do realize that the vast majority of civilian casualties in that war are attributed to prolonged occupation by ground forces and insurgency, not the bombers you think "shock and awe" refers to?  The bombs dropping were largely for the cameras.  You, and everyone else ate that shit up, apparently, so I guess that part of the plan worked, but it was ineffective on it's own.  I support rapid dominance, because it seeks to end wars quickly by crippling the enemies will to fight.  Not by killing civilians, but by destroying an enemies military and infrastructure all at once, everywhere.  There's nothing in there about saving our troops at the expense of brown lives, asshole.  Rapid dominance requires an overwhelming show of military force, and that means that even the boots on the ground put themselves out there, at risk..but you didn't get to see that, because having a live cam broadcasting to the world in an infantry company during an assault is a bad idea.  

Again, friendlies -include- foreign non-combatants.  Do you have a problem with minimizing the number of dead non-combatants, or did you just not realize that they were included in that group?  The idea, is that a quick war kills fewer people, understand? OFC we try to minimize the number of american soldiers that die, we also try to minimize the number of civilians who die.  Who the fuck do you think we are, and where is it that you get your information from?  What's a person supposed to say, when asked a question ala "what about the cost in dead civilians", really, what is a person supposed to say?  There's nothing -to- say.  The hope is that the number of dead civilians is minimal, but we don't have any direct control over that..

........wish in one hand, shit in another.

I'm really not sure what you're expecting, people die in wars.  If you think that people who advocate for war are advocating for the killing of civilians, then you would be wrong.  If you think that shock and awe has something to do with killing civilians to save soldiers, you would be wrong.  Refusing to engage pointless, headline baiting questions and comments is, I guess, sidestepping, but perhaps I should have done what Hitchens did and ignored your baiting.  All it's done is piss me off, and I know you can't give a fuck about whether or not any of it is true, or you'd have taken the 5 seconds to google it before you opened your mouth.  Now you're onto some conspiracy bullshit, with nameless guys in a room making political calculations regarding brown people?  I bet that makes for good TV...but that's not actually how those decisions are made.  Just remember that these are my friends, and me, you're talking about.  Good people, professionals, with a difficult job.  

We're not the bond villains you seem to think we are, not even the guys all the way at the top.  They're geriatrics, about as threatening and sinister as your grandfather.

So they dropped bombs for the cameras. Sounds like a great PR team they had.
I've "googled" it for a while now, the statistics of civilian casualties were extensive. Unless you're telling me those were made up I think its best we end this conversation because its clear this is a waste of my time. "Rapid dominance" or whatever you want to call it had the result of an astounding number of civilians dying by our hand and a small number of our troops dying. Our first priority was our troops. Thats the reality, thats always the reality. Its a reality Hitchens never once addressed, thats what I object to. Its actually ridiculous I have to drive that home.
If you can't argue from a place that isn't personal then fine. Don't expect me to humor it, I have better things to do than help you turn this into something its not.

[The Grand Nudger]

It worked, didn't it? When you think "shock and awe" you think bombers.  Our military has a history of using the media in it's middle eastern wars. It's ridiculous that you think you have a point. The first priority of any military commander is to win, to achieve the objective, the second is to preserve his forces, and then we think about the civvies and all of the rest of it. They're on our minds, because we're people...and we'll be doing the shooting, or commanding the shooters.

You think someone should have to explain that? Why should Hitchens, or anyone, have to specifically address something you feel is "always the reality"? Doesn't that sound a bit silly to you? Do you think we killed more civilians in this war, than in, say WW2? If you had to rate our performance, by reference to the fire bombing of Dresden, for example....where would you place the bombing of Bagdad? War is shitty, people die. Honestly, what is it that you want me to say, or for Hitchens to have said? What would make you feel better?

You mis-characterize a military doctrine, stopping -just- shy of calling me and everyone who participated a racist murderer...and then tell me not to argue from a personal place? Fuck you, lol. You're aiming your naivety at the wrong group of people Drake. Why didn't the Iraqis evacuate high value targets and cities more adequateley? Allow me to suggest a possibility, because the people in charge, over there, just didn't give a fuck. The more civilian casualties the better. They didn't stand a chance to win, and their only hope was that we would lose our will or the nod of the international community. Do you think we would have purposely fired on refugee convoys? Do you think that soldiers want to kill civilians? Do you really think that there's an analyst in DC somewhere running numbers ala "1 US GI=30 dead brown people"?

You've fixated on the number of civilian dead. I get that, but the number of civilian dead is not, primarily, due to shock and awe. Shock and awe...rapid dominance, not what I call it, that's actually what it's called, was our -invasion- plan. Once in, once we had control, that's not shock and awe anymore. The civilian casualties -really- mounted during occupation, not during invasion. Rapid dominance worked, they quit, and yes, civilians died, but had the only civilian deaths occurred during the rapid dominance phase, it would be seen as a remarkably decent war to be a civvie in. It's usually a hell of alot worse.