And that is all they are, excuses.
Should they each be charged with the same crime and receive the same punishment?
It isn't unavoidable, don't fire the damn missiles from the Drone.
The US and UK are like a little kid who fucks with a hornets nest, gets stung and retaliates by getting a flamethrower.
(Very Very hypothetically) Russia annexes half of western Europe and starts massing troops on the border and deploying landing craft then you can open fire.
It's not very realistic purely because of the way the world currently works, as Von Clausewitz said "War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means" and it shouldn't be.
Fortunately weaponized lasers are coming. Those should succeed in reducing collateral damage almost entirely. All that needs fixing after that is the often-faulty intelligence, and weeding out gung-ho idiot drone operators.
If that is true, then it's not "could have", it's "almost definitely will".
First responders and funerals are unavoidable collateral damage?
Same goes with war crimes; cf. the U.S. attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, 2015. No matter what the facts are in that case, the U.S. is never going to admit responsibility for a war crime. Blaming the pilots for "human error", no consequences for any commanding officers, is the path they will take.
Drone strikes that hit civilians and a specific target are sloppy assassinations, and terrorism.
As for the indiscriminate killing of civilians, what else would you call the example from the article?
> in Pakistan, in attempts to take out 41 men, American drones actually killed an estimated 1,147 people (while not all of the 41 targeted figures even died).
That said, from the perspective of people on the ground, there is no doubt that they are generally terrifying and horrifying. While the strikes might help degrade ISIS leadership and operations, they also help create extremely strong anti-US emotions by killing innocent men, women, and children.
The hard question is, what is the alternative? Ignore ISIS? That's dangerous. Put boots on the ground? Not going to happen--the American people are sick of that. So perhaps drone strikes are simply the least terrible of several terrible options.
Maybe, although it's hard to imagine there's no intent for drone strikes to act as a deterrent. It's not identical to idiomatic terrorism, but also not completely different.
> Ignore ISIS? That's dangerous.
There are no choices available here that aren't extremely dangerous. None. Least of all the cookie-cutter 'war hawk' attitudes that got us into this mess in the first place.
Personally my suspicion is that ignoring them is probably the least dangerous. ISIS is an organisation that feeds on radicalisation, it feeds on aggression. Aggression is its recruiting tool.
Build a mosque. Build a mosque so f%cking huge and beautiful that even hearing about it makes ISIS fighters weep.
Change the music and all this will be over in a few years. Feed the war machine and we're here for another generation at least.
Really the only problem we have is the fact the US keeps using it as a tool of assassination which results in too much collateral damage:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-...
That and the Bush's family relations with the Bin Laden family in the decades past.
I'm no fan of how Bush handled things but painting flying airliners filled with civilians into skyscrapers filled with civilians and hitting government and infrastructure targets after publicly declaring war with the same brush is ridiculous.
Attacking civilians is bad in any context and strictly illegal.
Declaring war then attacking government, military, and critical infrastructure after such a declaration is quite different from flying a plane of civilians into a civilian building out of nowhere. Equating the two is as disingenuous as comparing a loan shark beating someone for non-payment to someone getting evicted.
It would be ironic if future videos claiming responsibility for violent attacks start using the exact same terms and language as the US politicians, such as "Shock & Awe".
When a major component of allowing a conflict to proceed is support or merely just apathy from the populace that has elected the leaders that are targeting your people, it would seem that the most effective way to highlight the hypocrisy of the elected leaders of your enemies would be to mirror their tactics as precisely as possible as opposed to escalation. Mirroring puts it in people's mind that they need to oppose further violence from their side to stop future attacks against themselves.
Sadly, the other side adopting a strict eye for an eye approach to retaliation (tit for tat) might be the only way that either side can actually avoid making the whole world blind, since it would at least promote dialogue where people on both sides at least ask themselves "When we commit X against them, they commit X against us. Maybe we should try to stop committing X and see if they will too". The current approach of planning out attacks that escalate the conflict just makes things worse.
I'm curious if there has been any solid game theory research into the impact of tit-for-tat retaliation versus escalating retaliation.
and Civilization simulator ends up with the planet in nuclear-winter, 3 nation-states turning all resources into armies, forgoing peace treaties and maintaining borders via nuclear bombardment. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_play...
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The problem with disarmament, of course, is that if A disarms and B doesn't.. A is vulnerable to B.
After being robbed twice, a game developer & his wife seriously considered purchasing a guard dog or a firearm. They were very uncomfortable with the idea of escalation and wondered where it would end.
He built "The Castle Doctrine" -- a game where a man with a wife and kids spends his money fortifying his home against invaders, then invades other homes to take their treasure.. to spend on more fortifications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBrc8HpPIs (interview with the developer)
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Not the scientific rigor you were asking for but an interesting exploration.