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>1. Do drones cause more civilian casualties than traditional air strikes?

Yes, since drones are used IN ADDITION to traditional air strikes, and for different kind of attacks. If anything, with drones getting cheaper, smaller plus not needing pilots and not having any casualties on the operating side, etc, they will also be used more than "traditional air strikes" which are much more difficult to approve and costlier.

Technological changes are enablers and multipliers -- they change what we can do and how often we can do it.

>2. Do drones terrorize civilians more than a traditional infantry occupation, such as that prosecuted by the US in Iraq?

Yes, since suddenly you have essentially small planes taking over the area and killing people, especially when they can be used to occupy and have almost zero casualties from the occupying site.

>4. This point is silly. In war you needn't get clearance before killing one's enemies - attempting to do so constitutes an increase in respect for human life.

There's also the fact that those are not even used in a properly declared war, and are even used against sovereign countries.

> Yes, since drones are used IN ADDITION to traditional air strikes, and for different kind of attacks.

"Traditional" air strikes haven't been going on since 2001 (for Afghanistan) and 2003 (for Iraq). Do you really think that fighter jets are just roaming around randomly in Afghanistan bombing random things? There are plenty of aircraft, sure, but they are doing missions like CAS (close air support of ground troops) or delivering bombs to precise targets.... the same kind of thing drones are doing. Except drones carry smaller bombs than 500lb JDAMs, which helps drones reduce collateral damage (and civilian casualties) from the equivalent strike directed by a manned attack fighter.

But either way, being used for "different kinds of attacks" is not even close to illegal. If anything using drones with lower-payload ordnance to perform different missions instead of manned fighters with cluster bombs or JDAMs is a noted improvement in the U.S. military's efforts to reduce CIVCAS and collateral property damage.

> If anything, with drones getting cheaper, smaller plus not needing pilots and not having any casualties on the operating side, etc, they will also be used more than "traditional air strikes" which are much more difficult to approve and costlier.

Drones are, sadly, not getting any cheaper. They are cheaper to train pilots for, that much is true. But again, "it's not quite as sporting" isn't an argument against drones.... the same argument was used about long-range artillery in the Russo-Japanese war (some British fogies actually said they would never personally use artillery if they couldn't personally see the aimpoint, an attitude which didn't last long on the Western Front). The Germans used the same argument to complain about Americans using a brutal, evil weapon in WWI... that's right, the shotgun, the "OMG drones!!" of 1917.

>"Traditional" air strikes haven't been going on since 2001 (for Afghanistan) and 2003 (for Iraq).

So? If there's an operational need for them, they'll come back at an instant. They haven't stopped because drones, just because that part of the whole operation was over. You usually do those at the first stage of a "war", not at the "ocuppying force" stages.

>The Germans used the same argument to complain about Americans using a brutal, evil weapon in WWI... that's right, the shotgun, the "OMG drones!!" of 1917.

Is that said as if things turned all the better for the increased arms race? If anything I'd like to see those things controlled and restricted, like with do with other kinds of weapons with international treaties.

There's an hypocrisy involved in all this, that usually the persons saying it's all OK will be all tears and patriotic songs if it's even a person on their land that gets the same treatment, wheres the lives of 100s of innocent people on foreign lands are somehow not worth much.

> If there's an operational need for them, they'll come back at an instant.

Yes, they will come back if they're needed. The reason they're not needed is because drones are available.

> Is that said as if things turned all the better for the increased arms race?

It's said as in shotguns were not the horrific inhumane weapon they were made out to be, in comparison to all the more innovate and brutal ways we've figured out how to kill each other in the decades since. At least the shotgun stood a good chance of putting someone hors de combat instead of killing them outright; rifle ammunition was and is designed explicitly to cause massive trauma leading to death.

> wheres the lives of 100s of innocent people on foreign lands are somehow not worth much.

The Taliban kill far, far more Muslims than the West could hope to match. The same was (and now is) true in Iraq. The lives of innocents abroad are worth something, which is one of the reasons why America risks her own blood and treasure: Having a reasonably stable and secure Afghanistan, without Muslims killing Muslims every day, is flat-out good for America too.

Likewise for nearby Pakistan, a possessor of nuclear weapons (and victim of recent Taliban attacks at Karachi airport); the insurgency there isn't just bad for the innocent peoples of Pakistan, it's bad for the rest of the world including America.

Read the summary, and you'll find it is not condemning the specific technology, but rather the way it's being used. The website is named after drones because they happen to be the warfare tactic du jour. If instead we were lobbing bombs from howitzers, it would make perfect sense to title the website accordingly.

I had a similar initial reaction. Discussion on drones often conflate issues relating to the use of drones per se, and the policy of the US to target humans for killing as part of a murky overlay between anti-terrorism and a defacto war, which is likely illegal to begin with.

The act of using a drone versus a plane to drop the missile is surely not in of itself controversial. The main issue as to the use of drones is that the lower cost of flying these machines means the US can a) afford more sorties which further terrorises the civilians (as it is not a war, it is by definition terrorism) and b) the lowered risk to US life and 'shot down plane' stories means the US media is less likely to give a shit and report on it.

I have never heard anyone say that the U.S. is at "war" in Pakistan. Instead Pakistan allows military strikes on terrorists that the U.S. is in a forever war with.

That is part of what makes the use of drones there scary. If military jets were bombing areas in Pakistan, there would be an outcry. Drones for some reason are different. They feel like a slippery slope towards a new way of thinking about an almost casual and less invasive military violence that is somehow more permissible than "traditional" (jets, troops) forms of military engagement.

Now that I think about it, maybe the above is just because most countries share no experience with being the _victims_ of drone strikes. Most countries can relate to a physical invasion or of planes bombing from above. But drones are so new and so specifically tied to the fight with terrorists that perhaps there is a feeling that drones are something that happens to "other people's countries" (so to speak), and that is what makes them less bad some how.

A good recent Rolling Stone article on the Forever War:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/three-troubling-le...

> If military jets were bombing areas in Pakistan, there would be an outcry.

That literally just happened the other day, after Pakistan Taliban forces attacked the airport at Karachi. Where was the outcry? Did we miss it? Or do people not notice Pakistani civilians dying when it's Pakistani aircraft dropping the ordnance?

If it's OK for Pakistan to bomb people that the U.S. is also at war with then I don't see why it is wrong for Pakistan to allow the U.S. to bomb people that the U.S. is at war with. That was, after all, the story of WWII in the European Theater of Operations.