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Comment by analognoise | Hacker News Reader

This is why drones are insidious - anyone can press a button. You move from some percentage of born warriors, to 100% keyboard warriors.

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Armchair general here - from what I have heard drones take its toll on the "keyboard warriors" too. And I am not that sure that drone strikes are morally different from any point in history where one side had a uncontested technological superiority.

I feel the same about the volunteer military. It also lowers the bar for entry. The most important thing a state does in engage in war. Everyone from all levels of society should pay that price.

Drones are not "insidious" - war isn't supposed to be fair. Once you decide to go to war you try to achieve your objectives with the minimum loss of life among your own troops.

It lowers the bar to entry - it's the same way we used 'contractors' in Iraq and their deaths weren't reported along with our casualties. It detaches the public from the military movements, because they appear to be zero cost.

Drones are the same.

By that logic any effective weapon lowers the bar to entry. Should we equip our troops with bronze spears?

Soldiers don't decide when the country goes to war; when we ask them to go we should provide the best equipment we can.

Drones do lower the cost of war and the barrier to entry, but they also make war a lot less like war and a lot more like policing.

So the question is: why do we not we require an act of congress to do policing? How much 'stability' should our society require?

The difference is that police, at least in theory, do not default to "kill any males 16 or older in the target area".

That's a war crime whether you use drones or not.

Whether something is a war crime rather does depend on whether you are on the winning side or not.

e.g. Curtis LeMay stated that he thought that had the US lost the war with Japan "he fully expected to be tried for war crimes."

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

Less so for the last several decades than any time in the past, due to the establishment of first as hoc (e.g., ICTY) and then standing (i.e., ICC) tribunals not directly tied to a particular belligerent's military.

But, yes, that's still an issue, particularly with the US electing not to ratify the Rome Statute.

Worth noting that I've been reading a lot about the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan recently and have started reading "The Wrong Enemy" about the US involvement in Afghanistan:

http://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Enemy-America-Afghanistan-2001-2...

NB I'm certainly not one for prosecuting low level individuals (i.e. the forces actually on the ground) apart from exceptional circumstances (e.g. the Royal Marine who was caught on camera executing a wounded person) but I do have a lot of anger directed at the political and military leaderships in the UK.

And who will prosecute America?

> it's the same way we used 'contractors' in Iraq

That's my favourite spin doctoring of the 21st C: the renaming of "mercenaries" to "contractors".

a mercenary is a professional soldier, the spin doctoring goes way back.

It's less spin doctoring than technical jargon. Security contractors guard things - buildings, convoys, etc. To call someone a mercenary implies that he's going to be engaged in offensive operations.

Most of the contractors we had in Iraq and A-stan weren't doing any fighting. They were people who did things like cooking and driving.

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