US drone strike kills 15 civilians in Yemen by mistake
reuters.com
reuters.com
We just wiped out 15 completely innocent people? Destroying their lives and their families forever?
Can you imagine the holy hell if a foreign government did that in a US city?
Shut down all armed drones. Review the entire use of them from top to bottom. This isn't a video game, there is no do-over.
EDIT: 5 minutes with Google:
http://uscrow.org/2013/08/05/how-to-kill-predator-drones-uav...
"Predator Drone UAVs communicate with line of sight radio in Mil C-Band 500-1000 MHz. Communication between the UAV Operator and the Predator Drone, which can be jammed with a spark-gap (the space between electrical terminals that allows for the transient discharge pass) radio. A spark-gap transmitter is a device for generating radio frequency and electromagnetic waves using a spark gap. Surprisingly, 90% of all military ops are performed using C-Band."
"If you weren’t paying attention, this means the predator drones utilize the same commercial civilian technology used to transmit television signals. Using simple commercial equipment such as Skygrabber you can jam the communications, blinding the operator and sending a signal to the UAV to return back to base or engage a holding pattern until retrieved. This entirely assumes the SSAAS system hasn’t been fully implemented highlighted in the article previously mentioned. You can read more about Skygrabber by clicking here."
The insanity of nonchalant accidental drone killings of foreign nationals has got to stop.
After the events of the last year, I don't have that much trouble imagining the US government doing that in a US city.
No fucking difference at all.
What makes you think that it's such a great conceptual leap to the point where they disregard the 5th (due process)?
They've already applied it to American citizens outside the country, if they're in the company of known terrorists.
Ten years ago, twenty years ago, the scope of the NSA's constitutional violations would have been unthinkable.
Now look where we are.
If you can't conceive of such a "leap", that's your problem. It's hardly outrageous to worry about such things now.
If US forces truly invade Iraq to bring justice and democracy, then let's hope one day Iraqiis government will succeed in building that. And send a justified drone after Bush.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/bush-switzerland-to...
Because if we were to apply the laws, rules used at the Nuremburg trials, every US President from WWII onwards, Truman included, could be charged:
1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace 2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace 3. War crimes 4. Crimes against humanity
You've just stepped into that intellectual minefield that's called "American Exceptionalism". Enjoy your stay.
The term was first used by Stalin to describe and condemn the position of the prominent voice in the Communist Party of the United States of America about how, precisely, the US was an exception to the rule of inevitability of revolution. While usage has shifted in terms of exactly what rule is at issue, what you reject is exactly what American Exceptionalism has always meant.
(The idea of "American Exceptionalism", though not the term itself, is generally tied back to an older quote [EDIT: by de Toqueville -- not sure how I missed including that originally] in which particular traits were identified which made America exceptional as opposed to being an example through which democratic nations in general should be viewed -- or, IOW, that America broke rather than made the rules for democracies. Which, while from a different perspective than Stalin's use of the term, also is an instance of America being an exception to rules.)
"bankrolling geopolitical stability for the rest of the world" is a nice attempt to recast maintaining a global empire through military power as if it was a selfless, altruistic deed.
But its not even remotely accurate.
Use your head for a second.
The US government hands out millions of dollars in foreign aid to it's "enemies" - governments who are quite happy to parade around talking about standing up the US, and then holding out their hand for handouts from them.
It's quite clear what they're doing - they're basically doling out money in the hopes that it'll prevent civil unrest and nations imploding - sure, they might not like these people, and they might even be actively trying to destroy them - but the alternative is to have a messy civil war, and then have to come in to clean it all up.
The US is very interested in global stability - you can argue that's also in their own interests as well, but you can't argue they don't bankroll geopolitical stability.
"For the world" is speaking to motives. America isn't bankrolling "stability for the world", its bankrolling stability where it suits the interest of American decision-makers, and instability where stability doesn't those interests.
> The US is very interested in global stability
Except for those places where its interested in altering the status quo, in which cases it spends lavishly on doing that.
> you can argue that's also in their own interests as well
"Their own interests" -- that is, those of American decision-makers -- are the only factor, not an incidental "as well" factor, in the decision of where to bankroll stability and where to bankroll instability.
America is the de facto World Police. And frankly I'd be okay with assuming that role if we did a good job with it. One problem with us being World Police is that we pursue our own geopolitical goals, and so it's impossible for a single nation to really be objective about policing the rest of the world - that's why we need institutions like the United Nations and, to a lesser extent, the World Trade Organization.
The really interesting thing about the USA, now that I think about it, is how willing we are to bankroll our gigantic military. Historically its clearly momentum from the cold war - culturally we're used to spending this kind of money to deter the Soviets. And now the fear of terrorism (and perhaps a more fundamental fear of change) keeps us spending gigantic sums on force. But we don't really take our responsibilities as World Police very seriously. If we did, we'd have something akin to an Internal Affairs department, at the federal level, that was easily accessible from anywhere in the world. And we'd stop treating foreigners like a different class of people - you can't (and indeed shouldn't) police people you see as fundamentally different, less, than yourself. That's just asking for trouble of a despotic nature.
It's not altruistic, certainly, but it's not entirely selfish either. Obviously as the preeminent world power the U.S. benefits from the status quo. However, so does Europe. And India and China have done pretty well under the worldwide stability that American military power has bankrolled.
Look at history before the rise of the U.S. Was it free of great powers intervening in lesser countries to maintain a particular world order? Of course not. A course in European history is a course in how the great powers of a Europe used military intervention to maintain their status. Today, much of what Europe (and China and India, let's be honest) would otherwise do is subsidized by the U.S. Or do you think that if America pulled out of the Middle East everyone else would just let them do whatever they want?
"The U.S. just gets the brunt of the blame for these sorts
of accidents because it bankrolls geopolitical stability
for the rest of the world."
More than that. I remember quite a few news reports of weddings in Pakistan being hit.
On the flip side, I've also heard the authenticity of those reports called into question. If a Taliban lieutenant and his posse are drone-struck, the local warlord can claim it was a peaceful civilian wedding and score some PR points.
I'm not justifying it, mind you. Commoditization of lethal force is something that scares me. I'm just pointing out the fog of war is particularly thick in that region.
Either way, for some purposes it does not matter. Either the surviving community members are being lied to and told the victims were civilians, or the victims really were civilians, but in both cases they walk away with the notion that America is blowing up civilians. That is how you "make more terrorists".
If America wants to avoid getting caught in that sort of situation, they need to make it seem implausible that that they were involved. As long as America is droning 'baddies', the possibility that they are nailing some civilians too remains.
Before drones, we did the same thing with cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, special forces raids, etc., etc., etc.
The particular weapon isn't the issue.
To be clear, this isn't a "drone" problem per so, so much as an "airpower" one. There have been plenty of incidents where the use of manned aircraft have resulted in similar (probably) inadvertent civilian casualties -- e.g. the AH-64 attack depicted in the "Collateral Murder" video or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, not to mention all of the incidents during the Vietnam War and WW2.
There has historically been a trade-off between risk to military personnel and civilian casualties. Ironically, the best way of reducing that trade off probably involves more robots, albeit ones that gives the military options other than "shoot" and "let potential militant get away".
So as you approach zero risk, the occurence of applied lethal force accelerates on a curve toward an asymptote.
In the absence of an principled, ethical personality, the discovery of impunity, combined with any obvious benefit obtained by way of abuse precipitates unrestrained abuse.
A greedy person that can get away with something will act in favor of obtaining an object of desire.
There is a reason for that. The locals use the US as their weapon of revenge. So if one family has an ongoing argument with another family and one of them is throwing a wedding, the other family reports it as an Al Quaida meeting.
Often these family conflicts have lasted for years already and likely more people died in the past (not by drones)
So it was a successful hit, you know, just not for the party that shot off the actual hardware.
That about covers it. It took me about an hour to compose the list, the main point it brings across is a very nuanced understanding of what it is to be human, described by the people that often have experienced the what they write about. since I'm the composer, I think it might help to mention that I am rated near genius (just as a rough measure - I know it has downsides - however in my case I far exceed my actual score due to some other knobs and whistles I came pre-equiped with). You're welcome. Cunt. :P
I thought the legal implications of terminating people from a foreign country remotely is either an act of aggression or already war, depending on how the affected political party sees it.
So either it means:
a) America would have to pay for the losses and families.
b) Yemen and America are in war.
c) Yemen capitulated against America.
Otherwise I don't understand. :-/
(Sorry, if someone feels that this is too logical, non-emotional. I'm of course, against killing and drone attacks.)
The problem, of course, is that there is no accountability. None. What do I do, write to my senator and say how mad I am? People write to senators saying how mad they are all the time.
And the press stands by and does nothing. They are just foreigners, its not like they were Americans.
On it's face, Obama has final responsibility for this mistake. He is the Commander in Chief of our armed forces; the drone strike policy is his; what will he say? What will he do? Ignore it? Apologize and promise to "look into it"?
I have a suggestion to align the interests of our armed forces with the interests of our nation: fine the fuck out of the group that makes the mistake. Make this incident have a material impact on next years budget. Teach decision makers that when they kill innocents, their careers are on the line. It's an embarrassment that travels all the way up the chain, all the way to the political level, but it will hurt your pocket book.
Where should the money go? The surviving families. They should be set for life. And if they radicalize and use their new wealth to arm themselves against the US? Oh well, I guess we should have thought of that before blowing whole innocent families up - and by remote control, no less. (Heck, we don't even do them the honor of putting a single American life in jeopardy to assassinate people anymore. Sheesh.)
"their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy"
"An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy"
Were they targeting the wedding car or not? One is a failure of intelligence, the other is a failure of the technology.
Why is a USA drone flying in Yemen anyway?
There's nothing puzzling about it. This is the way the world has worked for centuries, and how the U.S. has worked since its founding. The great powers intervene in small nations to put out brush fires that could upset the global status quo. It's like the history of Europe from 1500-1945.
I thought we had UN for that?
It is a failed state primarily because it has corrupt leadership that is willing to take bribes from the US government and their armaments companies to engage in extra judicial killings of their citizens.
As for how it got that way, it has nothing to do with the U.S. It's the result of the civil war in the 1990s.
The failed states you speak about have only failed because of the wars which destroy them are funded by the major powers who can keep those low level wars going indefinitely at minimal cost to themselves. Most wars come to an end because the combatants simply lack the resources to keep them going, unless they are funded from the outside, in this case the US and its Middle Eastern proxies.
Your concept of 'failed state' is the product of the noxious foul diet of neocon propaganda that passes for a liberal American education, and only exists to gain the consent of the US population to indebt them, their children and their great-grandchildren to fund their genocidal activities.
Do your self a favor and purge yourself of it.
Assuming we are at war and okay with bombing the enemy, civilians will die. That is how war works. A drone (Even one pointed at the wrong target) does a lot less damage than the traditional carpet bombing. Civilians die either way, but a lot less die with modern technology.
Now think of how many people you heard around the country shortly after, talking about their desire to turn Afghanistan/Iraq into a parking lot, or similar. And everybody who was motivated to enlist, and go kick some ass.
I'm going to guess that their reactions aren't a whole lot nicer than our reactions.
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/numbers/
There are no 100% solid estimates because of problems with reliable sources, but here are a couple of links to get you started.
http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis
http://www.longwarjournal.org/multimedia/Yemen/code/Yemen-st...
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone...
It's not exactly something that is winning the hearts and minds of people in the middle east. I guess the western powers are passed that now, and are engaged in a crusade.
You know, "most transparent Administration ever" and all that.