I don't buy this argument at all. Lots of people in the U.S. made huge money off the Iraq war, and yet that ended, and they stopped making money off it. Lots of people made lots of money off the war in Afghanistan, and yet US troops are being withdrawn, to their economic detriment. Moreover, what's on the table here is not stopping the production of drones, but stopping their use to kill innocent people.
To me this argument is an example of how narrow structural determinism is often counterposed to activism, which is why recruiting more people to narrow structural determinism doesn't necessarily contribute to, and likely could even harm, efforts to reduce the amount of injustice in the world. On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:45 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > "Robert Naiman" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> The likely status quo path is closed or no hearings, and maybe some >> kind of FISA-like secret court. The question on the table is whether a >> little activism could change the likely status quo path. > > Not likely, see http://www.ga-asi.com, the website of a privately held > company based in California. > >> ... It is likely that > >> if there is a public hearing on the drone strikes, the dispute about >> low-balling civilian casualties will surface, and if this gets play in >> the press it will drive down public and media support for the status >> quo policy. And that could save the lives of innocent people who would >> continue to be killed under the status quo policy, so it's worth >> fighting for. ... > > I think the euphemism is "collateral damage". > > -- > Ron > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
