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Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

According to retired officers, the issue stems from training cuts.

>For nearly 30 years, all new surface warfare officers spent their first six months in uniform at the Surface Warfare Officer’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, learning the theory behind driving ships and leading sailors as division officers.

But that changed in 2003. The Navy decided to eliminate the “SWOS Basic” school and simply send surface fleet officers out to sea to learn on the job. The Navy did that mainly to save money, and the fleet has suffered severely for it, said retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold.

“The Navy has cut training as a budgetary device and they have done it at the expense of our ability to operate safely at sea,” said Lippold, who commanded the destroyer Cole in 2000 when it was attacked by terrorists in Yemen.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo...

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The Navy is still centered around too many overly expensive to build and maintain carrier groups. They had their glory days but tactics pretty force them into only being useful against smaller opponents. They do sure look pretty. Part of this inter service rivalry but part is just its too hard to give up what you are used too. However there was both traction in moving away from that[1] and the old guard coming back for more[2].

They are expensive to put together, twenty billion to thirty billion per task force and hundreds of millions per year just in crew salaries to run.

[1] https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/01/15/the-us-navy-mov... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-carriers/u-s-...

Ok, I don't like these bastards who attacked Cole, but how can they be terrorist? They attacked a military target. Is it because they masqueraded as civilians - didn't follow the laws of war?

They were part of a group that is classified as a terrorist organization.

Ok, I can buy that - it's not perfect, but the world is messy. :-/

It's also worth noting that it was a suicide bomber attack, which is rarely a facet of conventional warfare.

Rare, though with one prominent usage in the 40s:

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

The word "terrorist" has been reappropriated, possibly because "guerilla warfare", "asymmetric warfare" etc sound too glamorous. In the US it mostly means any military action by non-state actors against the US and its allies.

When you say non-state, you surely mean by parties whom aren't favourable to US interests.

It's interesting that when a government or party that's not in the US's best interests is in power, it's okay for the CIA to use asymmetric tactics to fund rebels and favourable terrorism, stage coups d'etat, overthrow governments and meddle in foreign elections but when those parties seek to do the same to the US, it's terrorism.

Kind of hypocritical really. But that's US exceptionalism for you. It's only bad when someone else does it.

It's almost impossible at this point to point a finger and say "there's the bad guy, right there" because both sides are as bad as the other and both using much the same tactics on one another, both spewing rhetoric and hatred in the face of the other terrorists. It's like trying to mediate a kindergarten playground fight where the cost of losing the fight is death instead of being dragged to the principal's office by your ears. It's so undignified it's nauseating.

I imagine when a country is founded on an illegal uprising against a significant world military and economic power that they go on to win, exceptionalism ends up baked into their cultural DNA.

Isn’t every armed uprising “illegal” in the eyes of the group that used to be in control?

Depends on which side wins.

Vietnamese exceptionalism?

> When you say non-state, you surely mean by parties whom aren't favourable to US interests.

No, I meant non-state. The US doesn't generally use the T-word for, say, Russia's actions in Crimea or in Syria. Being opposed to US interests is necessary but not sufficient to make you a terrorist in this definition.

There is a term for it. "Act of war".

The war media and armaments lobbyists don't like using the actual word "war" much. That tends to highlight the fact that none of the military actions currently underway have been sanctioned by Congress as required by the Constitution. The last legal declaration of war occurred in 1942. "Terrorism" has been a useful catch-all for some time now, but when it wears out through overuse they'll come up with something else.

That's not strictly true. The recent wars weren't "declarations of war", but most (not all) were authorized by Congress. Congress voted on military action against those countries and it passed both chambers, but they didn't "declare war". To be honest I don't understand the difference, other than the words used.

Here are the possibly relevant enumerated powers of Congress:

- define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations

- declare War

- grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal

- make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water

- raise and support Armies

- provide and maintain a Navy

- make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces

- provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions

- provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States

Nowhere in that list is "for an indefinite period of time, kill a bunch of unidentified people in unspecified foreign lands for unspecified reasons". Wars fought among nations are generally bad things, but historically there has been a protocol that the Constitution references in the simple phrase "declare war". Various acts of violence against various parties for various purposes have been considered necessary for the peace and security of any political unit, but those acts have been limited to the territory of that political unit.

Ever since the USA army wasn't properly stood down from WWII, the requirements of the military-industrial complex have dictated the invention of another procedure for killing thousands of innocents every week on an ongoing basis. A cursory examination of the Constitution reveals that this new innovation violates the enumerated powers of Congress and the executive.

It's pretty simple. Read the definition of terrorism under U.S Law [1]. Keep in mind, while it was a military target, they were not in a state of war. The goal of al Qaeda with this bombing was to coerce the U.S. to leave the peninsula.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism#U.S._law

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