Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Our Irregular writer Jim is in the middle of writing a series on the problematic development of robots that can fight our wars for us, slaughtering human enemies so that our soldiers don’t have to see the blood firsthand. It will be like they’re just playing a video game, shooting people from a remote location.

This isn’t some kind of Isaac Asimov science fiction ethical thought experiment. It’s a present reality. We have robotic airplanes in the skies, and now, there are robot dogs on the ground, capable of taking a solid blow and keeping on going. There would be little problem equipping these military drone dogs with guns – they could take the recoil with barely slowing down.

The following are some videos of some prototypes of these military robots, walking across any terrain, running, even jumping, with the relentless ability to just keep on coming toward their target with no fear, and no mercy.

It’s the middle of a recession, so let’s talk career development. Have you thought about joining the Army? Just think of what the Army can do for you…

…it can turn you into a raving maniac, like soldier Joshua Tabor, who was found wandering around his neighborhood wearing a helmet and threatening to break people’s windows. Back inside his home, he beat his four year old daughter, and then waterboarded her because she couldn’t say her alphabet.

He’s an army of one, he is.

It’s amazing how many people have found ways to apologize for Israel’s white phosphorus attacks against Gaza. White phosphorus is an incendiary weapon, which causes objects it lands upon to catch fire – even burning human flesh.

Now, Israel has been caught in a white phosphorus attack against a United Nations compound. Confronted by the UN after the attack, Israel called it a grave mistake.

A grave mistake? How do you accidentally attack a United Nations compound with an incendiary device?

If this attack truly was a mistake, then it only proves that the Israeli military is completely incompetent, and cannot operate in a manner that is safe to civilians.

Sending such a military to attack a territory thick with civilians, one can expect massive civilian deaths. In such a case, those deaths cannot be called mistakes, because they are sadly predictable.

This is NO COVER to Hamas, which purposefully attacks civilian areas just as Israel does. It’s to point out that neither Hamas nor Israel is in the right.

The cease fire is over. Moqtada al-Sadr has gone from insurgent to government minister to insurgent again.

Whatever you think about al-Sadr, he has been calling for a solution based on diplomatic talks instead of fighting in the streets. Not Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki has been saying that he’s going to fight against al-Sadr “until the end”.

So guess whose side the United States has taken? Al-Maliki’s, of course. He’s the American puppet, after all.

The United States military has joined the Iraqi civil war between Al-Maliki’s militias and Al-Sadr’s militias. The US military is now hurling bombs into Iraqi cities, hoping to kill Iraqis aligned with Al-Sadr.

How is that going to help make Iraq more stable?

The fact that the U.S. military is taking the side of Al-Maliki in this civil war may end up helping Al-Sadr more than Al-Maliki. After all, three-quarters of Iraqis want the American military occupation to end, and want American soldiers out of Iraq. Making it clear that Al-Sadr is the top anti-American fighter may make him stronger, not weaker. Tens of thousands of Iraqi protesters took to the streets this week against Al-Maliki, not against Al-Sadr.

George W. Bush’s strategy in Iraq is as smooth as ever, which is to say, as rough as a mule ride into the Grand Canyon at night in a snowstorm with a saddle made of sandpaper.

Just when we thought things could not get worse, there is a new threat to the survival of humankind: Killer military robots. Dr. Noel Sharkey is speaking before the Royal United Services Institute with a stark warning: Military organizations around the world, especially in the United States, are developing killer robots that can be used on the battlefield – and in government actions against resistant domestic populations, instead of human beings.

The United States military plans to spend four billion dollars in the next two years alone to enhance its current program to develop homicidal robots. Have these people not seen the Terminator movies? Have they not read I, Robot?

These robots have no compassion. They have no mercy. They will not stop until their violent missions are completed.

You won’t be able to negotiate with them, if they are sent against you. You can hit them with your fists, kick them with your feet, and it won’t make a difference to their armor plating. You can run, but they can track you down with global positioning software and sensory equipment that goes far beyond the human range of sight, sound and smell.

Once these murderous military robots are unleashed against, us, we will not stand a chance. We will all die, and if the robots escape the control of their military masters, there might not be anyone left to care.

The three trillion dollar budget viciously cuts programs that benefit the American people, so how come it’s still the biggest federal budget in history? Part of the answer is that the budget proposed by George W. Bush contains the biggest military budget since World War II.

Are we really supposed to believe that the “War On Terror”, a fight against Islamic terrorist riff raff, our generation’s equivalent of a war against pirates, costs more than the global struggle against the forces of the Soviet Union and other Communist nations? No, don’t believe that for a second – you’re being asked to believe something even worse.

You see, when they say that the military budget requested for 2009 is the biggest since World War II, they aren’t even including the nearly trillion dollars extra that the Bush White House is expected to request for the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Where is the money going this time? It’s going to fund corruption, fraud and waste. It’s going into the pockets of some very well-connected individuals – people in what the charitable refer to as the “defense” industry who have close working relationships with the Bush White House and members of Congress.

The military-linked corruption isn’t only going to the Republican side of the aisle, either. Think about the whopper unloaded upon the good people of Missouri by Democratic Congressman Ike Skelton: The Chicago Tribune cites Representative Skelton as saying that the military budget is necessary to ensure the health of the military.

The health of the military? My foot. The budget increase for the Pentagon ensures the financial health of military contractor corporations, and their investors and executives who are linked to politicians in Washington D.C. It’s a financial scheme for which members of Congress will be rewarded generously in the form of campaign donations. It’s dirty, rotten, stinking corporate pork barrel in the form of bullets and bombs.