Hacker News Reader

Comment by enko | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't finish this article. It just makes me too angry.

Warrior? How dare anyone involved in this dignify themselves with such an honour-laden term. They're just murderers, and the fact they hide behind so many layers of technology just makes it all the more cowardly and despicable.

View on HN

There is no honour in being a warrior. This concept is a vestige of our savage past. At best one could argue that it's a sometimes necessary function.

The problem is that in order to maintain the capability and infrastructure to deploy that function, and in order to offer some solace to the people we ask to carry out that function, we have to maintain the fiction that it's all very honourable.

Which leads to young people in some of the richest, most comfortable countries of the world actually volunteering to join the military, believing that they are doing a great service.

It's a despicable sham, and a horrible waste.

I wonder if you'd allow a pilot to use the term? They do much the same thing, of course they are actually physically present (miles above). They are, however, about as likely to be injured (in these counter insurgency operations) as the drone operator is driving home. I think this is largely just what modern counter insurgency wars are for Air Forces, who are largely aerial assassins rather than "warriors". It makes war less sexy, and I think that's a good thing.

This is an odd argument. Guns are technology too, are rifleman just murders roo?

Any weapon is technology, so swordsman too?

Martial arts could right be considered 'technology', so the only people who are warriors are untrained people who fight... So we are talking Bar brawlers...?

Every soldier in the US military is hiding behind a plethora of technology layers... they completely outclass their opponents... yet you draw the line at drone pilots? (how are they any different from fighter pilots?... it's not like the US has ever engaged anyone capable of shooting them down)

Funny how if you'd actually read the article you would have realized that Brandon feels a lot of regret over what he's done and clearly didn't refer to himself as a warrior. It's just a title created to sell magazines.

That is a very odd perspective. Surely the "honour" in being a warrior comes from the morality of the actions they are engaged in, and not whether or not they are personally at risk.

We all engage in moral actions every day. We're not all "honored" by being called "warriors."

Even if a killing seems justified, killing someone is not "more moral" than plenty of other daily activities. What (historically) distinguished the warrior is the personal physical risk he faced. Taking physical risk for good cause has always been honored.

There were reactions just like yours when the longbow was introduced in the 1300s. And again when the gun was introduced in the 1500s.

Those reactions were justified then, and reactions to drone warfare (several orders of magnitude more distance) are at least as justified now.

Well the Anti longbow fear was that some English middle class yeoman could defeat a (french) knight.

I can just see Saladins PR minster issuing self serving press releases about how these franks stand 200 yards away and shoot the lightly armourd cavalry to bits.

Though haven't heard of anti longbow campaigns it was Crossbows that there was an attempt to ban by the church - did you know the first war crimes trial dates from the 1300's

Before you get too angry, consider that this experience is common of soldiers in war, not many of whom would after combat use terms like warrior. I doubt he chose the headline himself or was even asked about it, and it is contradicted by the tone of the article. There are far more important questions here than which labels are used to describe the people who carry out the killings.

This one guy (part of the largest group ever inducted as drone pilots) killed 1,626 people, and that figure won't include the civilians near the targets, who were often at home or travelling with their families. The real figure is probably 2-3 times that.

“We’re gonna shoot and collapse the building. They’ve gotten intel that the guy is inside.”...Bryant stared at the screen, frozen. “There’s this giant flash, and all of a sudden there’s no person there.” He looked over at the pilot and asked, “Did that look like a child to you?” They typed a chat message to their screener, an intelligence observer who was watching the shot from “somewhere in the world”—maybe Bagram, maybe the Pentagon, Bryant had no idea—asking if a child had just run directly into the path of their shot. “And he says, ‘Per the review, it’s a dog.’ ”Bryant and the pilot replayed the shot, recorded on eight-millimeter tape. They watched it over and over, the figure darting around the corner. Bryant was certain it wasn’t a dog.

What I find most troubling about this is that:

This program has been expanded to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan already, and the same legal justification given for killing in Pakistan with no trial or even proper investigation could be given for a drone killing in Idaho. There is no limit to this war in time or space.

Even if you are on a battlefield, killing of non-uniformed and unarmed combatants is illegal under the Geneva conventions - you're supposed to avoid civilian casualties - clearly targeting houses and markets etc doesn't do that.

People who have not been positively identified as combattants and are away from any battlefield are killed without trial, without counsel, without charges and without official remorse if there was a mistake or they were innocent.

The distance created by the drone and the lack of risk to US personnel gives a very real risk that substantial abuse of this method of killing will occur. What if the US withdraws from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq, but continues to kill from a distance? What if they expand the war to other countries and don't tell anyone (JSOC is in 100 countries)? All this has been done without even declaring war.

This drone pilot deserves to be recognised for at least having the courage to speak up about what he was asked to do, about the mistakes made.

The book Dirty Wars is definitely worth reading if you are interested in finding out more about US drone programs.

http://dirtywars.org/

Before you get too angry, consider that this experience is common of soldiers in war, not many of whom would after combat use terms like warrior.

Indeed, most of the people I hear glorifying war and the military in general have never seen combat. Most of the people I know who have seen combat, don't like to talk about it at all.

And pretty much all of the people who vehemently condemn anyone who has ever been in combat (and in a sense being a drone operator qualifies, it carries many of the same moral issues) equally have no experience with combat either. Why does't that make their viewpoint equally invalid? They have no more experience with it than the armchair GI Joe's... As you say, most who have experienced combat directly (my wife's uncle is an ex-Delta Force operator, no joke) don't talk about it.

    "This program has been expanded to Yemen, Somalia, 
    Pakistan"

So basically once we place a matured Boston Robotic's PETMAN robot on the ground we'll basically have created an analog of the dystopian future from Terminator, but instead of US soil, it will be on Middle Eastern soil. Truly disgusting.

We cannot state that we are a moral/ethical nation of laws with a justice system and routinely deny others a day in court because they are not living in this country. Last I checked, Congress has not declared war in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan, so what are we doing conducting a war there. Exterminating someone without trial from the skies is not a police action.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com