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Comment by saulrh | Hacker News Reader

They missed an important datum - drone operators suffer from PTSD and burnout just as much as pilots of manned combat aircraft and almost as much as infantrymen. They don't need giant pictures on lawns; that know full well what they're doing, and it breaks them just as badly as if they were right there. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/distance-from-carn...

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> They don't need giant pictures on lawns; that know full well what they're doing

So are they stopping then? I know it is not all black and white and sometimes those involved in slaughter and killing of civilians get off if there is a trial based on "I was following orders" reason, and sometimes they don't.

Allegedly all these volunteers have sworn to protect the Constitution first and foremost. Obeying presidential orders is there too but it is secondary. One can ask if that person that looks like a goat herder with a staff in his hands is a threat to the US Constitution. Even if he was carrying an AK-47 still not sure if it would qualify. Blowing up a wedding or a funeral should be a punishable offense tried in the International Criminal Court, well except that US doesn't accept the jurisdiction of ICC so yeah... we've got an art installation instead and some protests around the White House walls and whatnot.

If they really felt so bad, maybe they would stop what they're doing.

Sometimes they do. And then they get replaced by another E-3 straight from tech school.

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201311/drone-uav-...

They would simply be replaced by someone willing to do the job. That's why military atrocities and war crimes are attributed to the general that ordered them, rather than the soldiers that carried them out.

I suspect the locals would happily trade emotional trauma for being surrounded by dead bodies of loved ones. I suspect their goal is to try to get them to hesitate to pull the trigger. Supposedly, Mata Hari was only hit by two or three of the bullets of the 10 or 12 shot at her for her execution.* So sometimes you can get to the people pulling the trigger.

My dad fought in the front lines of two wars. He suffered PTSD. I am sympathetic to the trauma suffered by the soldiers. But I am also sympathetic to the civilians who would like very much to not be bombed.

* http://eyewitnesstohistory.com/matahari.htm (Does not address the point I make but is an interesting read.)

It's interesting how much focus UAV pilots get. They don't make any calls when it comes to the UAV. Not where to shoot or where to fly. Those who have it really hard are the analysts (in the Air Force it's the GEOINT analyst). The analyst makes the calls while staring at a video feed in a 12-hour shift.

Poor souls.

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