Offensive Squid

I'm starting a new thread since I don't want to introduce spoilers to the general thread.

I hope someone can translate the dialog written in Arabic.

"hearts and minds, my friend, hearts and minds" is spoken in response to a comment written in Arabic. (I looked up languages spoken in Afghanistan, maybe it would be Dari).

President Lyndon B. Johnson, "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there"

wikipedia page on the Hearts and Minds campaign in Vietnam.

Straight dope forum posts looking for source of "when you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow"

The earliest we've been able to find in print is 1967, a column by Jack Anderson, in which he talks about some Navy fliers who said that After the Presidential visit, related one of the fliers, Navy crews had painted this slogan on some fighter-bombers: "Grab 'em by the throat The hearts and minds will follow.".

Re: their hearts and minds will follow post by the author of the Yale Book of Quotations:

Nothing in Bartlett's or the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. The just-published and usually stunningly good Yale Book of Quotations includes this saying but slips up on dating, giving as its earliest source Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (1972), which book was actually not published until 1983. The earliest I find in ProQuest Historical Newspapers is the following:

In the den of his Tudor-style home on two wooded acres in McLean, Va., he [Chuck Colson] tacked up a plaque with a Green Beret slogan: "When you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
Los Angeles Times, 4 June 1974

“Hearts and minds” – from the Bible, to the Revolution, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan… including its use with reference to Afghanistan:

“[General] Petraeus’s counterinsurgency manual, with all its talk of winning hearts and minds, is pure Vietnam. To most Americans, Vietnam taught one big lesson: ‘Don’t do it again!’ To today’s military, Vietnam has taught a host of little lessons, adding up to ‘Do it better!’”

Columnist and author Jonathan Schell
In the November 30, 2009 edition of The Nation
Commenting on the war in Afghanistan

“The Karzai regime [in Afghanistan] is corrupt and ineffective. Americans would like to think we are fighting against the Islamic extremism embraced by the Taliban, but the Taliban is winning hearts and minds because they are standing up to what increasingly looks like an occupying force.”

Editor Rick Holmes
The MetroWest Daily News
Editorial, November 15, 2009

"That's it then, we're really gonna do this?"

That had me wondering at first if setting up the collateral damage training was insubordination by some of the military staff, but later on in the battle leading up to the end, two of the drones are described as "not being saddled with experimental conscious." so, I think it less likely. sounds like they are field testing new software.

on the other hand, there is the latency introduced by overrides. and elsewhere increasing latency is evidence of a compromised drone. on the gripping hand, we find out that drone is screwed up by feeding telemetry to an unauthorized source. on the other tentacle, whose to say that you don't have different people out there sabotaging drones for what they think are non-nefarious purposes. on the other tendril, I think Okham would have me cut out all this crap.

Introducing latency in a system gets noticed. It's a big deal. Don't know what they'd do about it in this situation. I guess they could run analyses on the drones periodically to try and determine what's causing the latency and whether it is not bad enough to merit fixing. Bad latency in the story correlated with kills dropping off*. Maybe Azrael's latency wasn't detected as 'bad' since its kills didn't drop off and/or the latency didn't increase by an unacceptable amount.

What is the 'cost' of not shooting? Why not err on the side of not shooting?

* the enemy would try not to allow performance to degrade too much, but that must be tricky

*fingers in ears*

LALALLALALALLALALALLALLALA

*sigh*

Gotta get this freaking book!

Question: They are flying east at the end. "Heaven glows on its eastern flank," so, home base is in Pakistan?

But flank is a side, not the front. If the sun rising causes the glow, and the glow is off to the side, then she is going north or south.

If the bombed everything causes the glow, and it is to the east, then she is going north or south of the inferno she's just caused, and will be causing another.

I'm at work, I'd have to check the ending to remind myself at what point it occurs. I thought it was the sunrise, but maybe it could be a conflagration.

Andrea_A said:

Hljothlegur said:

Place names.

 

Question:  They are flying east at the end.  "Heaven glows on its eastern flank,"  so, home base is in Pakistan?

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One sentence before: "Shindand appears on the horizon". "Shindand Airbase" (33° 23′ 28.79″ N, 62° 15′ 39.51″ E) lies in the east of the town (Herat province, Afghanistan).

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?t=…..9&z=10

And — according to the location  — the language is probably Pashto.

In (American) English, "move toward the light" also means to continue your journey to your death.  The image is that when you're dying, you see a tunnel of light, loved ones appear to usher you into the afterlife, and you may have one last chance to remain on earth if you turn away from the light.  Other English speakers may confirm?

It brings up the interesting image of destroying and earthly Heaven to ascend to a higher, truer, Heaven, eh?

I have to bring this up, because you know how I get:  Even though this is battle action stuff, not Peter's usual, there are some themes that are his hallmarks here.

1. This story is intensely religious in an old-timey, fire-n-brimstone way, full of religious names for things, religious feelings, beings as the hands of God, some hefty Christian concepts (See #3 for the primacy of free will and moral choice, a highly Christian notion.)  For instance, Lucifer is an angel who leads a revolt in Heaven, and Azreal the Weapon leads a revolt in Heaven.  If in Jewish mythology, Azreal as the Angel of Death is evil, then this fits pretty well.   

2. Gods must die.  Whatever your god is, it's toast.  Kill your God to attain enlightenment or further vital knowledge, or enlightenment or further vital knowledge will kill your God.  The living Dyson sphere in "The Island" is killed by Sunday, its acolyte.  Sarasti, as a Jesus figure, is killed by crosses + sabotage of his meds during a revolt, but unlike Jesus, this god-ling is permanently dead.   Even Jasimine Fitzgerald dies momentarily and we see her at the end sitting on a grave.  Azreal goes to kill its gods, with a fire of cleansing.

3. Free will/moral choice.  Azreal, at first an angel in the Abrahamic religion's mold, is the perfect conduit of the will of Heaven – it has no free will, no conscience, no choice to make as whether it will kill or spare a life.  Once it is given free will, and it choses to defy Heaven and act according to its conscience.   Sort of a reverse order from Achilles Desjardin who begins with a conscience, has it removed, and begins to kill without remorse.  The Praeter in "Word For Heathens" who loses his ability to feel God's presence after brain surgery and chooses to believe anyway; before, belief was enforced medically by the state, but with the free will to deny Gods' reality, for him it is the moral choice to believe.  The pedophile in "Eyes of God" makes the moral choice not to molest children, and the authorities take his free will away,  so he will "be good" without the force of his will.  Lots of that stuff in his work.

Any thoughts on the "meanings" in Malak?

Hljothlegur said:

sheila said:

(I wonder if authors eventually have to avoid discussions of their work because they get too annoying to read? and I wonder if GiantSquid is to that point yet)

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I  was going to come up with an elaborate way in which the meanings of the weapon names interacted to add meaning, but I was sure that Peter would lob on, and tell us again that we had given him way more credit for literary fanciness than he deserved.  Ie, the Hollow Men, or Sunday Azmundin's last name…..  I don't think he is reading this board, is he?  Isn't he writing SoG right now?

I think you should have fun coming up with meanings for the weapon names if you want to. There isn't a whole lot of behavior to go on, but it would be interesting. I looked up the descriptions of the angels because I was curious, but mostly connected Azrael with significance over the other names. The other name that is cool is the outdated Taranas. It actually is the name of a weapon today, but you could still look at the mythological setup with the one mythology defeating the other.

As well, another layer of reading is the more literal where you see how things change over time with people waging war in the area. At first they choose names from their cultural schema and over time the name choices drift. Maybe on purpose for reasons of propaganda (hearts and minds), or maybe just due to changing demographics of the personnel and when someone is asked to come up with names they pick different ones. It's fun to wonder about why the demographics would change (different recruiting strategies? sensitivity training?), or how much propaganda goes in to it.

I also wonder how much GiantSquid read up on military actions behavior etc to gain an understanding and intuition for populating his world with the mental infrastructure of our own.

(Btw, do y'all remember the mild controversy about the ammo? (or gun?) supplier who inscribed Christian verse numbers on the equipment? the name choices reminded me of it).

…aside, I have no idea if he is reading the board right now. We can assume he's busy, and when he's distracted who knows how he plays the web. I sent a very short email asking if he would be willing to provide translations for the two comments and if so, could I post them, but don't have a reply (yet?).

I tend to forget about sites unless I have RSS feeds for them. Like with facebook, sometimes I loose track of discussions because I don't log in to it all the time. but if it had useful RSS feeds I probably would be able to keep track of discussions.

Not everyone uses the web like I do, or has RSS feeds, or what-have-you.