Blaming Obama

It should be no mistery that I have little simpathy for the Obama administration*, but there are statements that I cannot agree with at all. Things like this, I mean:

11 dead workers from Deepwater Horizon who were killed by Ken Salazar's negligence

And this:

You believe that BP is culpable for the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, but those whose job it was to inspect the rig and make sure it was safe, and chose not to do so, are not culpable at all.

I also have this engineer's habit of wanting to know what factually went wrong before blaming someone, so I went and read the accident reports. Not only the "official version" but also the internal report form BP and the indipendent one from Berkeley University.

And all of them agree on one important aspect: the blowout originated from the bottom section of the well and most likely from the poor cementing of the production casing.

Who was in charge of the cementing job? BP and Transocean, that's who.
Not any governmental agency (their job was to review the designs, but there was no government officer out in the field supervising, nor there was supposed to be any).

I leave out Halliburton because from the reports it appears that they ran the proper tests and gave BP all the relevant information on how to correctly cement that last part of the well.

It was also BP men who decided to consider the well as stable despite contradictory test results and who decided to save time performing various activities at once: that made monitoring of mud returns difficult and generally distracted the rig crew from paying attention to the well. So the incoming blowout went undetected for many precious minutes.

Then the escaping gas from the well met insufficient or deactivated safety systems on the rig and that resulted in two explosions and a large fire; compounded with malfunctioning BOP control systems, the fire consumed Deepwater Horizon until it sank.

Taking care of the rig systems was, if I am not mistaken, prerogative of its owner: Transocean.

Statements like those above also contain the assumption that business need a controller breathing down their necks all the time or they will screw up and cause disasters.
Which is curious for someone who seems to believe in classic liberalism.

This looks a lot like a case of blaming Obama for anything that happened under his watch without consideration for how things actually went. Which is fine if you want to do anti-Obama propaganda, but not much else.

*I don't know enough of Obama the man to form a judgment on him.

Oil Where It Belongs

The other day I noticed on Watt's Up With That a couple of articles about the Deepwater Horizon disaster and related issues.

They interested me because now oil spill combat and remediation is my field of work.

But the position expressed by a good number of commenters left me disturbed. At least a bit.

There are people who seem convinced that, because there are natural seeps of crude oil and there are bacteria able to degrade crude, even gigantic spills are no big deal. A few years and the stuff will be gone, so what's to worry about?

Problem is, the big damage comes from the acute, short-term effects of crude oil. Fish and shrimps are killed or tainted becoming inedible; beaches become covered in oil/tar and unaccessible; coastal vegetation such as mangroves can be destroyed and will take many years to regrow.
Last but not least, power plants and chemical/petrochemical factories near a spillage site may have to shut down because oil-polluted water would foul their heat exchangers.

These are well-known effects and occur in a matter of days after a spillage, and after the damage is done the biodegradation time of spilled oil is a secondary concern.

I understand, really, the frustration with dumb alarmism (like that the Macondo oil spill would destroy all marine life in Gulf of Mexico), but science is not served well by swinging back into minimizing the damage.

The Third Angle

Found at Protein Wisdom:

A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

And Jeff comments:

Meanwhile, between our intentionally open borders, our now uncontrolled waters, and all the cuts to the military, it’s almost as if Obama wants us vulnerable. To something.
Or am I just connecting dots that aren’t related?

Or there may be a third option here.
Maybe the Russian sub and crew were really good at their job, and they managed to operate undetected*. You see, the designers and builders of subs and the crews manning them spend a lot of effort trying to be as stealth as possible. And effort pays off.

In other words, sometimes the other side wins because they are better than you, not because there's someone sabotaging your efforts from inside.

One aspect of Americans that I can never really grasp is hot they become scandalkized at the idea that some other country may be better than the USA in some aspects. It must be all that American Exceptionalism.

*I know, it begs the question: "How can it be known that it was there in the first place, then?". A possibility is that someone re-checked the data from surveillance systems and found a sub signature that was missed earlier.

Oh The Offense

While I was gathering some information on tandem mass-spectrometers, I came across another stinking turd of politically-correct crap:

The American Society for Mass Spectrometry and particularly the Committee on Measurements and Standards, should be applauded fortheir hard work on their revision of the document "Standard Definitions of Terms Relating to Mass Spectrometry" (J. Am. Soc. Mass Specirom. 1991, 2, 336-348). To have such a compilation of terminology is vital for us to communicate our ideas and results accurately and precisely. Indeed, this document has the potential to be the international standard for mass spectrometric terminology Thus, I am surprised that the archaic gender-specific terms "daughter," "granddaughter," and "great-granddaughter," and the anthropomorphic "parent ion" and"progeny fragment ions," are supported in this compilation.[...] When I first started publishing in mass spectrometry, I inanely used the expression "daughter ion." My mentor, who is now the Editor of this exceptional journal, urged me to stop using anthropomorphic terms to describe nonliving things. I consequently became sensitized to the term "daughter ion," and it became offensive to me. I know that there are many in our Society to whom this terminology is offensive. A very wise and sensitive scientist, who is also an Editor of one of our illustrious mass spectrometry journals, recently said, "Whoever continues to use a term after learning that it is offensive is rude. Use product ion." (Maurice Bursey, Mass Spectrom. Rev., 1991, 10, 1-2.)

And who thinks about the rights of the molecules, eh? Can you imagine how it could feel to be fragmented and ionized by a beam of electrons, then hurled through an intense electrical field, pulled and pushed by modulated magnetic fields and finally slam into a detector?

Can't you feel the oppression?

The March of Knowledge

A new experiment at CERN on the role of cosmic rays in cloud formation demonstrates that... well, we don't know so much about cloud formation yet.

It is likely that cosmic rays play a bigger role that previously thought, and the current view that some trace gases (ammonia, sulphuric acid) alone account for all the condensation nuclei is wrong.

Problem - for some - is, cloud cover is very important for Earth's climate, and current models are based on those assumptions that now seem invalid in the light of these experimental results.

A True Believer Strikes Again

Who is he? Well, that Norwegian guy who detonated a car bomb in Oslo and massacred teenagers in a youth camp on a nearby islet.

I do not think that this person is crazy - certainly not crazy as in "he didn't know what he was doing". He took years and a considerable amount of money to plan, prepare and execute his attack, so he knew very well what he was doing.

So why he committed an atrocity anyway? Because, I am convinced, he is a true believer.

Not in any formally recognized ideology or religion. No, his own creed was a home-brew from many different sources and authors - which now are often being dragged through the mud. His inspirations are vast and varied, from across pretty much all the political spectrum.

But the heterogeneity and possible contradictions in his creed were not an issue; in the end the mixture was potent enough to convince himself he had a mission to complete, a mission vital for the destiny of the world - his world, at least.

And that's why he went on to kill and destroy. Because he was convinced he had to act, he had to provide a performance that would change everything and motivate others to fight for the cause as well.

And the carnage, in his vision, was necessary. Unavoidable on the way to a new and better world.

President Rockstar - SE Asia Tour

One should see the coverage of Obama's visit on Indonesian TV to believe it.

It was a litany of Obama's ex-teacher, ex-playmate, ex-this and ex-that, and the house where he lived in Jakarta and the food he liked (nasi goreng, bakso and sate) for hours on end.

Quite obsessive, and more like the treatment given to celebrities and entertainment stars than heads of state.

Indirect Experience

In this post I'm going to write something critical of Americans in general. Just because I feel like it.

Americans as a rule do not have much first-hand experience of life in other countries. That is because there's enough variety of geography, climate and ways of life in the States that those who are not already xenophiles can have enough for a lifetime. But this condition of ignorance does not stop them from pontificating on how people in other countries should live their lives.

First-hand experience of another country means living there with the common people and among them, doing (more or less) what they do and (more or less) how they do it. Which is not an exhortation to “go native”; more like what is called full immersion in a different place and culture.

Experience of life in a foreign country is not visiting for a short time as tourists; that may at best give a superficial idea. Barely that, if as a tourist one does not venture much out of tourist villages or nice hotels.

Neither is being there as a member of armed forces stationed in a base (there are exceptions, tho). They spend most of the time among themselves and when they venture out is to get drunk and chase tails; the conflicts between foreign military personnel and civilians living around the bases have a long story.

But Americans still do pontificate about other countries. Europeans do that, too, but the difference is that Americans feel compelled to give their opinion loudly and anytime, whether requested or not.

When they do not have direct experience but still want to talk, they resort to indirect experience – often, books written by someone who has been there, in those faraway lands. Which in itself is not a bad thing, because knowledge recorded in writing is definitely positive. But as usual that can be taken to unhealthy extremes.

Even with the best intentions, an author cannot report every single thing, the smallest aspects and finest nuances of Life Elsewhere. Also for mere space reasons, because a 1000-page tome is not exactly handy, if you catch my drift.

Many authors, instead, have their own biases and narratives, and are prone to gloss over what does not agree with the narrative while insisting on what does. Some authors are even propagandists, and you know what it means.

I have already written about my dislike for Mark Stein, even if I think that a lot of what he writes seems true. But he depicts Europe as newly-medieval third world of misery and sufferance. Yet that is not the situation I observed with my very eyes in Europe. Maybe I have just been very lucky, but I doubt.

However, without direct experience to act as a reality check, it happens that many in the Sates think that Mark Stein(1) is 100% correct. And when I, in some online discussion, observe that things are not exactly like that, I get irritated replies like “Have you read Mark Stein?”. My retort should be that yes, I have read at least the condensed form you so kindly provided, but I found it not corresponding to observable reality.

Direct experience versus indirect experience, you see.

In any case, I have been avoiding discussion of that type for a long time now, because they go exactly nowhere and more often that not end in verbal brawling and insults.

(1) It's not a personal matter, just an author I am familiar with.

Cynical War

There is a conclusion I reached in the last few days: it is useless for nations at war to develop weapon systems and to employ tactics intended to minimize collateral damage.

Oh, I know that's harsh to say, but I am convinced it is only true.

In recent times, Israel among other things has developed and fielded dense explosive ordnance, which have a much smaller lethal radius compared to conventional explosives of equivalent power. They also are more expensive and require materials like tungsten which are not so common and must be imported. Have you heard even one word of thanks or appreciation from the usual suspects? Of course not, only some harping about the most negative aspects of those weapons. Update 21/10: Alright, I should have read what I wrote myself to avoid what seems self-contradiction. Seems, because then The Indipendent comes to my rescue.

A few years ago, American troops had Fallujah surrounded, but before moving in to crush their enemies they allowed civilians to evacuate. Of course that was a tactical disadvantage for Americans, because some combatants fled with the civilians and the rest used that time span to reinforce their defense. Yet, how did it go? The attackers fired white phosphorous ammunitions, and for that they were branded as genocidal imperialists or somesuch.

In contrast, the government of Sri Lanka finally mustered enough strength, moved in against the strongholds of the Tamil Tigers and achieved complete victory after many years of war. At what human cost it is not exactly known, but it is likely to run in the tens of thousands. Foreign reporters were not allowed in the area of operations, so we have not been flooded with tear-jerking images of sufferance and destruction.

A war should be conducted according to what gives tactical and strategical advantages, not according to what is supposed to meet the delicate sensibilities of the tranzists.

Meta-discussion on Gun Control

There has been a fresh wave debate of gun control issues at some blogs, and I have some sparse idea about the dabate itself. Do not expect a structured article but rather a collection of more or less loose thoughts.

• Comparing rates of homicide-by-gun between different countries is tricky (and this is valid for all sides) because those countries have different history and at any given time present a spread of cultural and socio-economic conditions. I think, but I am not sure, that crime statistics tell more about a country's cultural and socio-economic conditions than about the tightness of its gun control.
• Aggregate crime statistics for whole countries also hide a lot of useful information because they group together areas with a wide range of factors as population density, average income, type of employment etc. Not to mention cultural and eventually ethnic differences.
• The police officer with such a developed training to make him fundamentally different from common citizens is basically a myth. At least in Italy your average cop shoots a few rounds at the range from time to time; only the equivalent of SWAT teams have serious combat training. Guns are stored quite safely in police stations, true, but terrorists and maybe also criminals have attacked cops, police stations and army barracks to obtain firearms.
• While guns are rather efficient at killing people, true mass-murder is accomplished even more quickly with explosives and incendiaries. In fact, when enough motivated manpower is available, even machetes did the job. Anyway, on September 11 and on July 2005 in London, groups of islamic extremists have used machines never intended to kill and homemade explosives to cause massive destruction and loss of life.
• People who are determined to terminate their lives seem able to find a way to do so regardless of the availability of firearms. Some kill themselves via cooking gas asphyxiation, which poses a serious risk of explosion. And while I do not recommend suicide, I think that people are the owners of their own life and can end if they choose so.
• Discussions between pragmatists and people arguing from faith are pointless because facts cannot bring down a belief by themselves. Something that hits at a deep emotional level is required.

Words To Ponder

Be happy with some more recycled thoughts, for the moment.

This is from Ian B at the Devil's Knife:

John, I don't think the old government was marxist, and neither is the new one. They are radical puritans. Radical puritanism has been the driving force of anglosphere socialism for two hundred years. They went quite marxist for a while, but now they're back to their old roots.

Marxists, like capitalists, understood the economy in terms of production. Lenin said that socialism was the electrification of the USSR. They were obsessed with production statistics, the stereotypical tractor production figures. Their entire methodology was of course wrong, annd the results evil. But they at least understood the need to produce.

Anglo-socialists don't give a tinker's cuss about economic production. They measure the economy in terms of moral value. They care that a factory produces "jobs" (because work is good for the soul) but don't give a damn whether a complete tractor ever leaves it. Indeed, they would prefer that none ever did, because production produces wealth, which produces immoral gluttony. They deride production as "consumerism". They want to go back to poverty, because poor people don't have the wherewithall to be immoral. They're too busy struggling (and failing) to survive.

So, they measure economic success in terms of moral outputs, unlike Marxists who measure it in terms of economic outputs, like us free marketeers do as well. Marxists and marketeers are arguing about the best way to produce economic goods and services. The Puritans want to know how to produce the greatest morality. And from a puritan perspective, a person barely subsisting in the dark is more moral than a person living in- hated- "luxury".

They believe that shortage will lead us back to a more moral, frugal existence, like the Good Old Days. "Work" must be provided of course, but not economic production or expansion. All of our ruling class now believe these things at a gut level. They have done for a couple of centuries, to varying degrees. We are now in a new crescendo of puritanism, largely because the interfering marxists were pushed out of the way by the unfortunate collapse of communism.

Basically, the Puritan strategy is a kind of "managed decline". You don't build new power stations. You learn to live without. If we had a marxist government they'd be impressing us into slave gangs to build shiny new power stations. Which is not nice either, but is very different.

There are some interesting ideas, here. Ponder.

But Do Not Call Them Scaremongers

A gem of global warming hysteria from WUWT:

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate.

Yeah, "reasonable worst-case scenarios" in "coming centuries". I'm so scared right now.

I can't really fault those who are mad at supposed scientist spewing alarmist crap when, well, supposed scientists DO spew alarmist crap.

What You Measure

It is a undisputable fact - but not one widely discussed out of skeptical circles - that the number of temperature stations over the world has changed with time, going up and down.

Not only the number of stations has changed, but also their geographical distribution - maps of these changes can be found at Climate Audit. As you can see, station coverage is dense in the USA, Europe, Japan and south-east China, but sparse in Central Asia, Africa, South America and of course the oceans.

So what does it matter, it's still a global temperature record, no?

It is in the sense that we do not have anything better. We are stuck with this, like or not.

However, if we wanted to produce a global temperature record over some extended area (for example, the land owned by a farm) what we need to do is to place calibrated thermometers in a regular grid; record metadata for each station and apply standard data recording and processing techniques for all stations. Hot and cold spots are almost sure to appear, and they should be explained properly before being either ignored or mixed with all other data without any adjustement.

What I wonder is if with all station changes and moves the temperature record of this year is the same thing as the record of fifty years ago. Because we have two different sets of stations (different as location and other conditions), which in part overlap, producing the global record.

What can guarantee that the two sets are measuring exactly the same quantity?

The End Of The Review As We Know It

My wife nagged me enough to go and watch 2012 at the theatre, and here's my impressions.

The only way for 2012 to be a good movie would have been to delude expectations.

In order to delude expectations it should had:

- Presented a plausible motivation for the disasters shown
- Not featured preposterously impossible chase scenes
- Featured compelling, well-developed characters
- Shown the death of billions and devastation of Earth in a rather more horrifying fashion
- Not filled excessive screen time with pompous retoric and cheap moralizing

Nothing of the above occurred.

Unfillable Gaps

I have almost finished reading Jared Diamond's Collapse, and I cannot wait to start with his previous work: Guns, Germs and Steel.

I found the first part of Collapse - the one about ancient societies - to be extremely compelling; the second part is a little too environmentalist for my taste. However, Diamond surely is not an anti-human environmental extremist; he presents rational and valid points and his overall statement is that overexploitation of natural resources will result in societal collapse - which is hardly a false or partisan assertion. Details may vary, the principle is correct.

As I said, I have not read Guns, Germs and Steel but I can anticipate, more or less, one of its themes.

Sometimes, achieveng something first gives one party an advantage that is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.

For a simple example, if an infantry platoon reaches a hilltop first, it will be difficult to dislodge them, because they will be able to spot and hit attackers (of course, if no powerful fire support is available).

On a more complex case, if one country is the first to develop firearms, it will obtain an advantage over enemies or simple competitors. Can the others start manufacturing firearms themselves? Only if they already have sufficiently advanced metallurgy and chemistry already; a society at the stone-age level cannot build rifles at all - maybe some primitive mortars at best.

So, the stone-age society will survive only if the rifle-armed attackers are magnanimous enough to let the others survive.

The technological advantage is morally neutral; whether to let the less advanced ones survive or not is the ethical choice.

The Big Why

A question that has been haunting me - and many other better lerned minds, I am sure - for quite some time.

Why the classic liberal ideas were born and caught hold in Europe?

After all, the European society back then was far from open-minded and tolerant as we understand it today. Eretics were persecuted, homosexuals incarcerated, people of different skin colour regarded as inferior, kings were such due to divine right... yet the classic liberal ideas flourished.

And nowhere else.

It would be silly to look for a simplistic explanation made of one or two factors, I am sure.

Or in the end it was just chance, an accident of history?

Charles and AGW

Charles and his merry band of groupies are at it again. No, thi isn't a particularly notable thread, but just one I bothered to browse.

The LGF community has been a good one only for a brief period of time, but these days it's just dreadful. Suffocating, abusive and intellectually shallow enforced uniformity of views is the best description I can give.

There, anyone dissenting from the Charles' position on AGW is labelled denier, troll, bigot and automatically, even preemtpively, associated with intelligent designers, anti vaccination folks and the like. Even if the commenter has never touched those subjects.

All skeptical arguments are dismissed as canards and talking points, if not outright lies. Then denigrated as not being real science - without any real explanation of why, for example, the data butchery of Mann's Hockey Stick is more scientific than rebuttals to it.

The global level of discussion is generally abysmal, with only a few commenters reaching nothing better than a good level. Critics to the unending support for AGW are generally so bad to look like cartoonish, caricatural versions of what a knowledgeable skeptic would say.

But enough with the Little Green Groupies. It's nice to pile scorn on them, however there's a much bigger world out there.

It's been all around the blogs from some time, Steve McIntyre has found yet another serious flaw in another of the main ingredients of hockey sticks - the famous Yamal series by Briffa. Other people have exposed the whole story better, so go there if you please.

Charles instead thinks that McIntyre's point is disproven by the fact that he had all the data but took a few years to discover the problem. An intellectual giant that man is.

What I want to add is that falsifying the hockey stick has far-reaching implications. It is not just the most famous piece of evidence of AGW, neither a personal obsession.

To exist, the AGW hypothesis requires a rather stable global temperature followed by a sharp increase with rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere during the 20th century. A more variable temperature before that time, and even more so no sharp rise mean the death of the AGW hypothesis.

And not just that. No hockey stick temperature pattern also means that CO2 emissions are not the main temperature driver and that there is little need to worry about catastrophic or runaway global warming. No need to happily submit to carbon rationing, either.

The impact of Yamal's implosion on IPCC's own hypothesis is explained in more detail in this other blog post.

I'd like to close my piece with the quote from Lucia, another climate blogger:

One of the issues that gets lost in the whole “should we trust peer review” articles is this: Peer review is a first pass. In the full peer review process, people read articles. Then the ones who can think for themselves form their own opinions about the articles. They, they tell other people what they think.

The Hard Slog of Knowledge

The recent oublication of the discovery of an exceptionally well-preserved fossil, which could be a transitional species between lemurs and monkeys (speaking in non-rigorous terms) and thus an early ancestor of humans, has ignited a new round of controversy.

Radical Darwinists (if there can be such a thing) like Charles Johnson and his clique are nearly ecstatic; Allahpundit instead is between skeptic and dismissive while many christian fundamentalist commenters crap all over the place (but comment threads there are sewer pits pretty much like those on YouTube, only with better grammar and ortography).

In the middle, the scientist who studied the fossil apparently want to capitalize as much as they can on the discovery with a slick public relations & marketing campaign. And they toss around the nonsensical idea of "missing link" like any bible-thumper, jeez.

A lot of the debate seems to be misinformed if not dishonest, and the creationist side is the worst offender in this regard.

But instead of going on to debunking specific claims or exposing some particular aspect of evolution, I will talk about the big picture.

Evolution is a vast and complex theory - it should come as no surprise, considering how widespread and diverse life is. A very large amount of literature has been written on it since Darwin's work, probably more than to last for a lifetime of fast reading. I could say that quite a few books are necessary only to take a brief look at the various aspects of evolution.

Evolution is also multidisciplinary: it takes notions and concepts from biology, ethology, ecology, anatomy, phisiology, and archeology, geography, geology, physics, chemistry, climatology... and probably some other discipline.

It is a hard and long slog to learn even just enough of those. It takes years of study on ponderous and often dull tomes and arid journals. Not much going out to party, not much of blogging or twittering. And no, there's no shortcuts; no condensed versions, no explanatory VHS or Youtube videos (except for some divulgative ones, but divulgation is not study).

You have to walk all the hard way to the destination, and this is something not everyone is willing or able to do.

Evolution as it's taught in high schools is in many cases an extremely condensed and simplified version - simplified to meet the requirements of pupils too often barely literate above the instant message level - so much that it bears only a passing resemblance to the real thing.

Another point is that evidence has to be evaluated fairly and with as little prejudices as possible. But if someone starts from a position of strong belief in a God that created the world more or less as we see it today, it will become inpossible to accept evidence to the contrary. Some creationists would rather believe that God tricked man placing the correct fossils in the correct strata, than to consider that the biblical account of creation may be wrong, or just an allegory.

However, different ideas of God - like God as the one that merely set the universe in motion - are not in conflict with evolution.

Insipient Knowledge

I am completely fed up with the kind of knowledge too many people display. Online discussions are the worst offenders, but cases of this intellectual pathology are rife in real life as well.

I am fed up with notions - actually exact in themselves - picked almost randomly here and there and heaped without any regard for their connections or lack thereof, and the disdain for a coherent and cogent scheme of things (or narrative or paradigm if you like) able to provide context and relations for the various notions.

And of the same randomly acquired notions hastily put together without the binder of logic - the only safeguard against contradictions and fallacies.

The terrible conclusion when I see that widespread insipience is that two entire generations have been taught not how to think and reason properly, but instead what they should think under a sprinkling of facts collected in a haphazard manner.

In Perspective

According to some, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Cast Lead and the Camp X-Ray prison and other military campaigns in the same timeframe are horribly brutal, inhumane and gruesome massacres.

But when I look at history, I see a world drenched in blood. Cities razed and their citizens exterminated or taken as slaves; entire armies slaughtered on the battlefield (and often by disease, cold, famine and thirst); million tons of bombs and incendiaries dropped on the enemy without distinction between combatants and non-combatants; countryside ravaged and crops destroyed, ethnic cleansing, harsh imprisonment, torture, gratuitious violence, genocide.

Very few if any civilization or nation-states never committed any of these acts against external or domestic enemies, or even their own citizens.

Today's human nature is not very different from when the Mongols took Baghdad, or when the Japanese pillaged Nanking; the fact that a certain number of political appointees signed a document with the pompous title of "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" does not change reality - that many keep not giving a damn about other people's rights.

If anything, by historical standards the Western armies after the Vietnam War are exceptionally restrained when it comes to spilling blood and committing atrocities.

Even beyond the point of diminishing returns, because doing their best to avoid collateral damage is getting very little goodwill points for Israel and America while it can impair military effectivness (and probably eliminates the psychological impact of a ruthless use of maximum force, but this is a more complex issue).