Can you please cite the ways in which you feel cruise missiles or high-altitude bombing are different than drone strikes, other than the manner of control?
For what it's worth, I agree with you that militaristic action should not be performed casually... but once it has been legitimately justified, then you are allowed to attack your enemy using any manner that will minimize your own casualties so long as they don't violate the laws of war (i.e., don't use chemical weapons, don't use weapons that intentionally maim but don't kill, etc.). In my opinion, Afghanistan was justified. Pakistan in the Tribal Areas near the Afghan border is definitely much more dubious.
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Al Qaeda and the Taliban also have done an amazing amount of well documented amazingly bad things. Perhaps they aren't quite on the level of Hitler, but they're still pretty bad. Let's turn back the clock a bit and replace Hitler with the German Kaiser from WW1. He was less obviously "bad" than Hitler, but still a legitimate military target as the leader of his country's armed forces.
Going back to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, one of bad things they've done is purposely hiding among civilians, which is a violation of the laws of war. Unfortunately, this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Personally, I think drones, out of all the options we presently have, probably are the best method to minimize collateral damage while still taking out the targets.
Ahh well maybe that's one issue here. I originally meant the drone program is fundamentally different. I think I used that in equivalency to strikes too at one point, but I don't mean to use them interchangeably. The program is more about HOW they're used than the actual technology itself, the "convenience" I'm talking about is part the technology and the other part the ease in which they're actually used by our government (under mere suspicion... that's kind of crucial!). I could be wrong here, but I don't think the CIA has personally controlled + performed missile strikes anywhere close to this degree before? The Special Activities Division of the CIA is what does the whole drone thing, and they're historically more covert action afaik, so having them control a fleet of missile RC planes is a really huge change to their purpose. Also, I just completely disagree with your assessment of the the who Afghanistan/Pakistan thing, but yeah that's more an opiniony thing.
The thing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they're not leaders of a country. The War on Terror is so incredibly different than wars of the past for this reason. They're from and reside in particular countries, and there's always suspicion floated about countries that maybe be harboring/aiding them, but we're still at war with a group of individuals not directly associated with a country. They're "hiding among civilians" because they actually are civilians. Terrorists don't go hole up in terrorists fortresses, they organize covertly in their homes. Basically, they could be anywhere *dramatic music*
I disagree that it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" because I frankly don't believe there is no other way to go about this, and I doubt the probability for collateral really changed any minds. We could have continued using drones in the more traditional military (air support) and covert (surveillance) functions, but someone somewhere realized everything would just be easier if you invested more in the drone program and brute forced the whole thing.
I feel like when you're hunting an enemy you know lives in civilian neighborhoods, and are bound to be among innocents, the foreign collateral cost should absolutely inform how you go about doing things. Of course, I'm just saying this based on just a belief that there's ways to assassinate individual targets without the use of rockets, and neither of us feasibly know enough about real military tactics to really say definitively what the best way to do this is.
Speaking as a human being, if you're going to rationalize bombing the shit out of a bunch of people including women and children, then you should not be doing it from safely in your ivory tower, sorry, but that's shit.
Like Andrew said, war is supposed to be bad for everyone. That's the primary deterrent against war.
What have we gained in the last 10 years of perpetual war? Fucking nothing except a bunch of PR spin, a few dead soldiers, and a few hundred thousand broken families on both sides. Woo! 'MURRICA!
How many problems would you have with drones if you had to be the one to bust down the doors and get shot because some fat-ass at home decided drones were "too painless"? Should we take away their body armor too? Would that ratchet the casualty numbers enough for you?
I'm not arguing with your stance on the morality or legality of U.S. actions in the middle east. Hell, I agree with you on most of it. I'm just saying that if America can't decide that these military actions are a bad thing based solely on all the civilian casualties that take place already, then we have a problem that tossing a few more of our boys into the meat grinder isn't going to solve.
Please, can we stop being so melodramatic? I think it's safe to say that no US sortie deliberately targets civilians. As mentioned before, our enemies in this conflict force civilians to act as a meat-shield to force this very argument. It's a shitty deal, but it's not so clear and cookie-cutter as you would like us to believe. It's unfair and illogical to expect our military to sit back and take fire from an enemy fire without response.
The US is perfectly fine by playing by the rules, it's our enemy which won't step up to the plate. What to do tactically (beyond the obvious strategic answer of pulling out)?
Speaking as a human being, if you're going to rationalize bombing the shit out of a bunch of people including women and children, then you should not be doing it from safely in your ivory tower, sorry, but that's shit.
Like Andrew said, war is supposed to be bad for everyone. That's the primary deterrent against war.
What have we gained in the last 10 years of perpetual war? Fucking nothing except a bunch of PR spin, a few dead soldiers, and a few hundred thousand broken families on both sides. Woo! 'MURRICA!
How many problems would you have with drones if you had to be the one to bust down the doors and get shot because some fat-ass at home decided drones were "too painless"? Should we take away their body armor too? Would that ratchet the casualty numbers enough for you?
I'm not arguing with your stance on the morality or legality of U.S. actions in the middle east. Hell, i agree with you on most of it. I'm just saying that if America can't decide that these military actions are a bad thing based solely on all the civilian casualties that take place already, then we have a problem that tossing a few more of our boys into the meat grinder isn't going to solve.
I think the Cindy Sheehans in this country are about all we've got, because as a group, we DON'T care about brown non-Americans getting burned up by the thousands.
Maybe if our news were far less sanitized, we might.
Please, can we stop being so melodramatic? I think it's safe to say that no US sortie deliberately targets civilians. As mentioned before, our enemies in this conflict force civilians to act as a meat-shield to force this very argument. It's a shitty deal, but it's not so clear and cookie-cutter as you would like us to believe. It's unfair and illogical to expect our military to sit back and take fire from an enemy fire without response.
The US is perfectly fine by playing by the rules, it's our enemy which won't step up to the plate. What to do tactically (beyond the obvious strategic answer of pulling out)?
The "enemy" is and has been far overstated. 9/11 had a lot more to do with luck than with lax security (though we had plenty of lax security). It was solved by one thing: armoring and locking cockpit doors. That's it. Done.
The TSA has not stopped one bomb. They have failed all of their own audits. The DHS is pushing for more and more domestic power trumping the Bill of Rights, and can now stop you within 100 miles of any US border, including coastlines, and seize your shit with no warrant.
The unilateral assassination of bearded nutjobs and their entire villages is equally theater and equally impotent. Why are we doing it? Because a select clique of people are making billions of dollars off of it and NO other reason.
Please, can we stop being so melodramatic? I think it's safe to say that no US sortie deliberately targets civilians. As mentioned before, our enemies in this conflict force civilians to act as a meat-shield to force this very argument. It's a shitty deal, but it's not so clear and cookie-cutter as you would like us to believe. It's unfair and illogical to expect our military to sit back and take fire from an enemy fire without response.
The US is perfectly fine by playing by the rules, it's our enemy which won't step up to the plate. What to do tactically (beyond the obvious strategic answer of pulling out)?
Having a bomb dropped on your house and having it take out both your neighbors is not the same as shielding yourself with civilians. They don't choose to live in towns to force Americans to kill innocent people, they actually just live there. There's no Al Qaeda pentagon.
I think the Cindy Sheehans in this country are about all we've got, because as a group, we DON'T care about brown non-Americans getting burned up by the thousands.
Maybe if our news were far less sanitized, we might.
Damn strait we don't care enough. I just think that getting Americans to care one at a time by killing their children is an impracticable solution.
Instead, what can we do about unsanitizing that news?
Having a bomb dropped on your house and having it take out both your neighbors is not the same as shielding yourself with civilians. They don't choose to live in towns to force Americans to kill innocent people, they actually just live there. There's no Al Qaeda pentagon.
If you know that you actions are going to put your neighbors in danger, then you are responsible for not removing that danger either by changing your actions, moving, or warning your neighbors.
Not that that excuses the ass hat who lobbed the bomb of some of the responsibility as well. There's blame to go around
I think the Cindy Sheehans in this country are about all we've got, because as a group, we DON'T care about brown non-Americans getting burned up by the thousands.
Maybe if our news were far less sanitized, we might.
Damn strait we don't care enough. I just think that getting Americans to care one at a time by killing their children is an impracticable solution.
Instead, what can we do about unsanitizing that news?
Raise FDR from the grave along with all the other trust busters with the balls to do anything about the dark sides of capitalism because we evidently have none of those types alive today.
9/11 is what got a lot of Americans on board with "whatever we can pretend makes us safer" and was an undeniable cultural touchstone.
I don't think it has a lot to do with the federal government's current strategy/dogma, but I do think that it laid the foundation for the culture of fear that the US now operates under.
Things were VERY different in this country, both politically and socially, before the WTC came down. It's very difficult to get the zeitgeist of those decades from a book.
I could be wrong here, but I don't think the CIA has personally controlled + performed missile strikes anywhere close to this degree before? The Special Activities Division of the CIA is what does the whole drone thing, and they're historically more covert action afaik, so having them control a fleet of missile RC planes is a really huge change to their purpose.
Okay, if your concern is more about the CIA as opposed to the Air Force doing this sort of thing for various hierarchy of command things, then yeah, I suppose I can see your point to an extent.
The thing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they're not leaders of a country. The War on Terror is so incredibly different than wars of the past for this reason. They're from and reside in particular countries, and there's always suspicion floated about countries that maybe be harboring/aiding them, but we're still at war with a group of individuals not directly associated with a country. They're "hiding among civilians" because they actually are civilians. Terrorists don't go hole up in terrorists fortresses, they organize covertly in their homes. Basically, they could be anywhere *dramatic music*
Umm, the Taliban were the leaders of Afghanistan until we deposed them. They're now basically in the same state as, to use the WW2 example again, German soldiers fighting against American troops in lands occupied by the Americans before they finally surrendered. Al Qaeda is basically a mercenary force fighting with and to aid the Taliban. The definition of a "civilian" in their case is a bit different, I agree, but they are active combatants. Maybe I should use the term "non-combatant" instead of civilian as when you're dealing with armed forces that are no longer associated with a proper government, things get complicated. I mean, Cobra Commander was technically a civilian by your definition, but he's also a bad dude commanding a large army of "civilians."
Having a bomb dropped on your house and having it take out both your neighbors is not the same as shielding yourself with civilians. They don't choose to live in towns to force Americans to kill innocent people, they actually just live there. There's no Al Qaeda pentagon.
No, but there's also no reason why they can't just set up a camp outside of town for their forces either. They are actively fighting against us and refuse to remain outside of non-combatant areas while they are fighting. They can either give up fighting or actually fight by the laws of war.
The Karzai government is so corrupt, it's essentially a front for the Taliban at this point.
I dunno if I'd call it a front. That's giving it too much credit for competence. Between all the corruption and cluelessness, they just have no idea what the hell they're doing over there.
Umm, the Taliban were the leaders of Afghanistan until we deposed them. They're now basically in the same state as, to use the WW2 example again, German soldiers fighting against American troops in lands occupied by the Americans before they finally surrendered. Al Qaeda is basically a mercenary force fighting with and to aid the Taliban. The definition of a "civilian" in their case is a bit different, I agree, but they are active combatants. Maybe I should use the term "non-combatant" instead of civilian as when you're dealing with armed forces that are no longer associated with a proper government, things get complicated. I mean, Cobra Commander was technically a civilian by your definition, but he's also a bad dude commanding a large army of "civilians."
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No, but there's also no reason why they can't just set up a camp outside of town for their forces either. They are actively fighting against us and refuse to remain outside of non-combatant areas while they are fighting. They can either give up fighting or actually fight by the laws of war.
Sorry I was thinking more of the Pakistan thing, where a whole lot of the questionable drone strikes were, and specifically what the Brookings Institute figure is in reference to! Whoops.
Also the thing is that these people don't necessarily have forces. Keep in mind they're often "suspected terrorists." That's how I mean they're civilians. Here's the kind of person who is being targetted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Aulaqi
Guys like this "inspire" guys like Faisal Shasad (Times Square bomber), they don't lead big military forces.
Sorry I was thinking more of the Pakistan thing, where a whole lot of the questionable drone strikes were, and specifically what the Brookings Institute figure is in reference to! Whoops.
Fair enough. One thing that makes Pakistan such a messy situation is the fact that the so-called tribal areas (where the Taliban are hanging out) along the Afghan border really have no government whatsoever. The local population there is so crazy that the central government is like, "fuck it, just leave them alone as it's too much trouble to keep them in line." We're talking the kind of people who have to have their tribal elders tell them to "please stop using landmines to settle your family feuds." It's technically Pakistani territory, but in reality it's this weird stateless zone.
Also the thing is that these people don't necessarily have forces. Keep in mind they're often "suspected terrorists." That's how I mean they're civilians. Here's the kind of person who is being targetted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Aulaqi
Guys like this "inspire" guys like Faisal Shasad (Times Square bomber), they don't lead big military forces.
Well, he more than inspires... apparently he is also involved in planning attacks, although given how Al Qaeda has to lay low these days, he probably isn't that active in planning anymore and just posts crap on the intartubes to get others to do his dirty work for him. Modern terrorism, sadly, is a new frontier that really hasn't been touched upon in the laws of war. In a way, we're using traditional techniques that are acceptable by the laws of war when used against traditional enemies, but we're stuck using them against non-traditional enemies and we haven't sussed out just what the right way to handle them.
Well, he more than inspires... apparently he is also involved in planning attacks, although given how Al Qaeda has to lay low these days, he probably isn't that active in planning anymore and just posts crap on the intartubes to get others to do his dirty work for him. Modern terrorism, sadly, is a new frontier that really hasn't been touched upon in the laws of war. In a way, we're using traditional techniques that are acceptable by the laws of war when used against traditional enemies, but we're stuck using them against non-traditional enemies and we haven't sussed out just what the right way to handle them.
Yeah! This is what I was saying originally tho :P This whole situation and method of dealing with it is very new and different. If you get really reductionist about it, sure it's similar to military conflicts of the past... people be dyin. When you look at really how the combatants, battlefield, weapons and political landscape have all changed, we're in new territory here.
Ah, I guess I misunderstood... Your problem (again, assuming I'm finally understanding you) isn't so much the use of drones in combat, it was the targets that the drones were being used against. I suspect that when all is said and done (hopefully it will be said and done one day), there will be various norms and treaties that will be established to amend the laws of war to deal with situations such as these.
Yeah, like if we used them on the front lines of battle, that's pretty much business as usual. No different than any air to ground strike. Putting them in CIA hands and using them to assassinate targets that are suspected of doing terroristy things (that not be direct violent action) ... that's a new way of doing business.
It's not really new, it's just new technology. It's the same search-and-destroy missions we had in Vietnam, but this time better informed (kind of) and without American soldiers present.
It's not really new, it's just new technology. It's the same search-and-destroy missions we had in Vietnam, but this time better informed (kind of) and without American soldiers present.
Better informed is up for serious debate.
Without soldiers present just makes it easier to pull the trigger because the logistics of killing some poor bastard who just got labeled an enemy of the state 24 hours ago are GREATLY reduced. This is a bad precedent.
I have to run off so I don't have time to look for it, but an article came out recently showing the process leading up to a drone strike, and honestly there is far, far more analysis and evidence required than your average military strike, to the point where, relative to most military action, I can't really get pissed about it. Especially if you are trying to use the drones strikes to compare the guy doing them to the last guy, who, you know, invading two whole countries.
When you have troops on the ground, the level of evidence required to bomb a house is "Our troops say to bomb that house." Shit, having troops nearby often means have artillery nearby, which in invasion of Iraq showed that US troops have absolutely no qualms about calling down on random villages if they feel threatened. As artillery shells are cheap and turnaround is fast, that can lead to some pretty fucked-up shit. Putting troops at risk simply to justify launching a strike is stupid on many, many levels.
Well I'll wait on the article because frankly I have trouble believing that there's as much oversight as we'd generally like when everything is considered a national secret. Not only may we have to wait 30-50 years to see the supporting documentation for any single strike, but by that time the claims in any such documentation will be extremely difficult to independently verify.
Without soldiers, you also don't have emotional impulses to do the fucking village because your best friend died in the morning.
No, you just "do the fucking village" by default because that's the extent of the precision of your ordinance...
It's not really new, it's just new technology. It's the same search-and-destroy missions we had in Vietnam, but this time better informed (kind of) and without American soldiers present.
Yeah I've heard Vietnam strategies were also messed up and valued body count over minimizing civilian death. As an aside, I feel like it's harder to find info about it tho, since it was way easier to control where information winds up back then. I mean, I'm still saying it's all very different, but we definitely don't have a history of having a careful military touch. I mean... Hiroshima and Nagasaki.. god damn.
A drone bomb can pick what side of the house you want to hit and contain the blast inside the compound walls. When they did percision strikes in Vietnam, it was by saturating the village in napalm from an F-4 or flying a prop plane overhead with a 250 pound bomb and pulling a fucking cord. These civilian casualties are not people in the same town, they are people in the same room.
Without soldiers present just makes it easier to pull the trigger because the logistics of killing some poor bastard who just got labeled an enemy of the state 24 hours ago are GREATLY reduced. This is a bad precedent.
I've read reports that basically say the exact opposite of this.
What is removed is the danger to the person actually pulling the trigger. Thus, if there's any doubt as to the identity of the target (or safety of striking said target), the "pilot" can decide not to engage without having to also weigh his own personal safety.
With drones, there is no danger of an emergent situation requiring an action of self-preservation. Any mission can be aborted at any point up to the trigger actually being pulled.
Also, multiple people can review the situation live as the call is being made. Recordings can be trivially reviewed to ensure that the "correct" decision was made.
Don't get me wrong: there are huge problems with what we are doing and the way we are doing it, but the drones themselves, as technology, are in my opinion nothing but an improvement from both a strategic perspective AND a mitigation-of-human-suffering perspective.
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The thing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they're not leaders of a country. The War on Terror is so incredibly different than wars of the past for this reason. They're from and reside in particular countries, and there's always suspicion floated about countries that maybe be harboring/aiding them, but we're still at war with a group of individuals not directly associated with a country. They're "hiding among civilians" because they actually are civilians. Terrorists don't go hole up in terrorists fortresses, they organize covertly in their homes. Basically, they could be anywhere *dramatic music*
I disagree that it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" because I frankly don't believe there is no other way to go about this, and I doubt the probability for collateral really changed any minds. We could have continued using drones in the more traditional military (air support) and covert (surveillance) functions, but someone somewhere realized everything would just be easier if you invested more in the drone program and brute forced the whole thing.
I feel like when you're hunting an enemy you know lives in civilian neighborhoods, and are bound to be among innocents, the foreign collateral cost should absolutely inform how you go about doing things. Of course, I'm just saying this based on just a belief that there's ways to assassinate individual targets without the use of rockets, and neither of us feasibly know enough about real military tactics to really say definitively what the best way to do this is.
I'm not arguing with your stance on the morality or legality of U.S. actions in the middle east. Hell, I agree with you on most of it. I'm just saying that if America can't decide that these military actions are a bad thing based solely on all the civilian casualties that take place already, then we have a problem that tossing a few more of our boys into the meat grinder isn't going to solve.
The US is perfectly fine by playing by the rules, it's our enemy which won't step up to the plate. What to do tactically (beyond the obvious strategic answer of pulling out)?
Maybe if our news were far less sanitized, we might. The "enemy" is and has been far overstated. 9/11 had a lot more to do with luck than with lax security (though we had plenty of lax security). It was solved by one thing: armoring and locking cockpit doors. That's it. Done.
The TSA has not stopped one bomb. They have failed all of their own audits. The DHS is pushing for more and more domestic power trumping the Bill of Rights, and can now stop you within 100 miles of any US border, including coastlines, and seize your shit with no warrant.
The unilateral assassination of bearded nutjobs and their entire villages is equally theater and equally impotent. Why are we doing it? Because a select clique of people are making billions of dollars off of it and NO other reason.
Instead, what can we do about unsanitizing that news?
If you know that you actions are going to put your neighbors in danger, then you are responsible for not removing that danger either by changing your actions, moving, or warning your neighbors.
Not that that excuses the ass hat who lobbed the bomb of some of the responsibility as well. There's blame to go around
I don't think it has a lot to do with the federal government's current strategy/dogma, but I do think that it laid the foundation for the culture of fear that the US now operates under.
Things were VERY different in this country, both politically and socially, before the WTC came down. It's very difficult to get the zeitgeist of those decades from a book.
Also the thing is that these people don't necessarily have forces. Keep in mind they're often "suspected terrorists." That's how I mean they're civilians. Here's the kind of person who is being targetted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Aulaqi
Guys like this "inspire" guys like Faisal Shasad (Times Square bomber), they don't lead big military forces.
Without soldiers present just makes it easier to pull the trigger because the logistics of killing some poor bastard who just got labeled an enemy of the state 24 hours ago are GREATLY reduced. This is a bad precedent.
When you have troops on the ground, the level of evidence required to bomb a house is "Our troops say to bomb that house." Shit, having troops nearby often means have artillery nearby, which in invasion of Iraq showed that US troops have absolutely no qualms about calling down on random villages if they feel threatened. As artillery shells are cheap and turnaround is fast, that can lead to some pretty fucked-up shit. Putting troops at risk simply to justify launching a strike is stupid on many, many levels.
Anyone need a refresher?
What is removed is the danger to the person actually pulling the trigger. Thus, if there's any doubt as to the identity of the target (or safety of striking said target), the "pilot" can decide not to engage without having to also weigh his own personal safety.
With drones, there is no danger of an emergent situation requiring an action of self-preservation. Any mission can be aborted at any point up to the trigger actually being pulled.
Also, multiple people can review the situation live as the call is being made. Recordings can be trivially reviewed to ensure that the "correct" decision was made.
Don't get me wrong: there are huge problems with what we are doing and the way we are doing it, but the drones themselves, as technology, are in my opinion nothing but an improvement from both a strategic perspective AND a mitigation-of-human-suffering perspective.