Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If a group did attack a military convoy with a remote controlled IED, it wouldn't be an act of terrorism.
Terrorism is the indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
A remote controlled IED isn't indiscriminate, and a military convoy isn't civilian.
It's also worth pointing out that war/conflict are not the same thing, the definition of who is protected during a conflict is much broader than members of the armed forces during a formal war.
Pressure/etc. detonated IEDs are sort of a grey area, honestly, as are military landmines, cluster munitions where you know a large fraction will become UXO, especially in civilian areas, and inaccurate area attacks like WW2 airstrikes.
Plenty of actual, Iraqi civilian targets were killed by Al-Qa'ida in Iraq and other terrorists with car bombs, suicide bombers, hostage takings etc.
The distinction is pretty clear between the two, I think if you are accusing media of whitewashing all Iraqi insurgents under the banner of terrorism you should back it up.
The actual terms used in Iraq by the US Military varied, too, from "insurgents", "Anti-Iraqi Forces" (irony, when it was Iraqis attacking the US..."), "foreign fighters", "former regime elements" (even when they were foreign and/or people Saddam had persecuted), Iranian-sponsored militias, etc.
The techniques of terrorists (say: car bombings) are shockingly little different in practice from drone strikes. Sure, certainly the intent is very different, but the result is nevertheless a disturbingly high death toll for innocents. And that should concern us a fuck of a lot more than it does today.
[NB That's not to say I can't understand the violent reaction of the members of the Nationalist community - even if I am appalled by what they often chose to do]
During Obama's administration alone (6 years) more than 2400 people have been killed by US drone strikes, nearly 300 of them civilians (89% "terrorists"/military). Certainly that is a better ratio than the IRA, but the fact that we are willingly waging such a devastating war with significant "collateral damage" (in another 6 years or so we will have killed as many civilians as the IRA did) with so little public debate or oversight should be chilling to anyone.
Note that although that's probably the best argument, I'm still not completely satisfied with it.
Source? Debating the definitions of words is often silly, but I think it's worth pointing out that 1) the definition of "terrorism" isn't broadly agreed upon, and 2) the definition you're using is more narrow than peoples'. The definition that searching google gives is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims", which drone attacks certainly fit into.
More generally, it seems that condemning vague things like "torture" and "terrorism" accomplishes very little, because people will simply use different definitions of the terms to skirt the condemnation. So we have to condemn specific things that are wrong, like waterboarding and drone strikes.
Most people's definition of terrorism is "any violent act committed by a Muslim without clear monetary gain," so this definition is actually much more general.
>"the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims"
War, then?
As you said, though, debating definitions is a waste of time.
I disagree with you that "most people" use the definition you claim, but of course neither of us have any data and we both think the debate is silly anyway.
I think the point is that drone strikes (targeting angry people with guns and bombs) are meaningfully different than someone blowing themselves up in a a crowded market or mosque (targeting people whose religion is slightly different from his or her own).
You can say they're the same because they're "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims", but there's something of a different quality to those political aims that warrants a distinction.
I regret making a comment that encourages this sort of debate over what terrible things should and shouldn't be labeled a certain way.
Noam Chomsky certainly thinks so. He had this to say [1] in 2013:
"Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it [...] All of these operations, they are terror operations. You are generating more terrorist operations.
"People have a reaction” when they lose a loved one to an American drone strike, he added. “They don’t say, ‘Fine, I don’t care if my cousin was murdered.’ They become what we call terrorists. This is completely understood from the highest level.”
[1] http://www.mediaite.com/tv/noam-chomsky-obama-is-running-big...
I remember when Maryland residents lived in constant fear of going outside for a few weeks in 2002, due to a pair of uncaught snipers [1]. If I lived in Yemen, I would feel that way 100% of the time.
Example: If a street gang occupies your neighborhood, you and your neighbors could remove them by 1) taking up arms and confronting them until they take enough casualties that they they have to retreat or surrender, or 2) kidnapping a straggler once every week or so, skinning him alive, recording it on videotape, and hanging him from a lamppost with the videotape around his neck.
1) is an attack on the ability to fight, 2) is an attack on the will to fight.
So IMO Scahill is getting to the essence of it in your reference here.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bombers-Bombed-Allied-1940-1945/dp...
Two firebombing runs on Tokyo alone killed more people than the atomic bombs, and by the time of Hiroshima, almost every major city in Japan had been hit, some almost totally burned out.
The firebombing of Japan was so brutal that the Japanese supreme war council didn't even bother to convene until three days after Hiroshima - when the Soviet Union entered the war. Apart from being a new type of bomb, Hiroshima did not stand out as a substantial escalation.
Thus, the use of drones, against terrorists (those who would attack civilians) or enemy combatants (those who target military or infrastructure targets) is certainly not terrorism. OTOH, if drones were deliberately (and not accidentally) targeting civilian, non-military, non-infrastructure targets, that would be terrorism.
Eliminating terrorists with drones is going to minimize the number of terrorist attacks just as eliminating terrorist with sniper rifles, or bombing.
I am speaking as someone who nearly escaped a terrorist attack in Israel (Jerusalem BMW attack).
But yeah, to some extent is probably was a terrorist attack.
""" “We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”
“What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” he asked. He found the question impossible to answer. """
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?pagewan...
A government targeted with drones would not dare take the risk of finding out the "wrong way" whether or not the incoming drone is loaded with explosives, or is a cheap toy. Now imagine a steady stream of hundreds of cheap toys, with one every now and again loaded with explosives.
Say (just to pull random numbers) that a real "homemade" drone costs $10k/piece, and a fake one drops down to $100/piece and you can send out 101 w/one real for the cost of 2 real ones. Yet the cost of defending against the attack has gone up 100-fold.
“In such circumstances,” the report asked, “how could the United States credibly condemn Russian targeted killings?”
Good question.
OTOH, during Operation Cast Lead (I was in Israel for that entire 3 week war) Hamas did deliberately use children as human shields: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1304
However, Palestinians have deliberately targeted Israeli children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'alot_massacre An attack of a school, 22 children killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avivim_school_bus_massacre An attack of a school bus, 7 children killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_discotheque_suicid... An attack of a Discotheque, 21 teenagers killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercaz_HaRav_massacre An attack of a Yeshiva (religious school), 7 children killed.
In each of these cases and many others, Palestinians are deliberately targeting children.
It is really upsetting when different groups and people single out Israel when the US and other countries do exactly the same thing as Israel. Israel is attempting to defend its citizens against terrorists to the best of its ability just as the US is trying to defend its citizens to the best of its ability.
Good point about US actions. A little off topic, but I strongly support the US closing most foreign military bases, staying out of the middle east and other places around the world unless allies or US interests are directly invaded. The days of my country being the world's only military super power should have ended long ago - certainly before our invasion of Iraq.
On the topic of the middle east: Europe is obviously a lot closer to the middle east that the US and I would support the idea of Europeans placing peace keeping observers in Israel, Palestine, and generally around the middle east. Sort of the same way that Canada, the US, and Mexico all have a stake in what happens in our area of the world (North America). Does that make sense to you?
According to Russia, this definition have in several instances included regular Ukrainian troops, who according to the Ukranian government, is fighting terrorists/insurgents that are targeting Ukranian civilians on Ukrainian territory. See how this gets messy quickly, when either side have completely different versions of events?
The "we need to protect our civilians (even if they live in a different country, were born there, and have never been our citizens) against individuals who are targeting them" argument is one of history's oldest excuses for going to war. Sometimes it may be justified, but it also very often conveniently ignore that the "targeted civilians" may themselves have been insurgents or terrorists or infiltrators who were legitimate targets.
It's a popular excuse whether or not it is true, because assuming your attacks go well, it gets very hard to find out the truth when everyone involved has been conveniently killed.
They still send in troops/police that try to disarm suspects, because the Russian population in some regions would feel oppressed if they started assassinating suspects without a trial and they don't need a new Chechnya.
And outside of Russia they intervene much less militarily than the US is doing right now. (compared to the US, Russia's interventions are almost nonexistent)
Drones certainly lower the political cost of war, but they aren't something that "risks" war without end, they are something developed and deployed in an environment where "war without end" was already the established reality.
a) every operation is conducted in total secrecy
b) most of it is executed remotely, or occasionally via Special Forces commandos on the ground when drones can't get the job done
c) they are (apparently) based off of a 'kill-list', which is essentially an assassination list
This is very different than the decades of conventional warfare the US traditionally engaged in, using troops and engagements openly talked about to the public (even if it's after the fact).
It is only comparable to the CIA operations in latin america in the 1980s.
No, there aren't.
> a) every operation is conducted in total secrecy
Within the drone program, which is largely a secrete component of an overt global military anti-"terrorism" campaign, sure. But having a major secret component of an overt effort isn't new or unique since the inception of the drone program, its been a regular part of the post-WWII permanent war.
> b) most of it is executed remotely, or occasionally via Special Forces commandos on the ground when drones can't get the job done
Yes, the technology for precisely targetted remote attacks is new, though using whatever remote attack capability was available isn't. So, yes, technology advances.
Obviously, use of Special Forces is not new.
> c) they are (apparently) based off of a 'kill-list', which is essentially an assassination list
Assassination as a tool of state policy by the US in the covert portion of its permanent wars isn't a new product of drones, either.
On an interesting digression, "War Without End" is a two-part Babylon 5 episode that won a Hugo award.
The problem with peace is that it is symmetrical. Everybody has to agree to peace before it will happen. War is asymmetrical. It takes only one entity (including, at the limit, one person) to make a war, even if everybody else wants peace.
We humans often fail to see this because we are so myopic and vengeful. We suck at seeing the big picture and taking the long view.
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions."
Nice intro with video of Eisenhowr giving the speech: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mili...
Full text of speech: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
Pretty much `they` have won and we - the 99% - have lost. Queue the downvotes ;)
But many if not a majority do work for the Advertising Content-Industrial Complex, and any critique of said complex does bring on the downvotes[1][2]. Occasionally, under articles that attract ACIC dissenters, such critique will garner support[3].
--
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837683
Congress is where the true power lies. They could, with a single vote, shut down any and all of it. Blame them.
Or, if you rather, blame yourself for voting the wrong people into Congress.
At this point, the only way to stop these particular pigs from feeding at the trough would be to destroy the trough. That will happen eventually, but you might not enjoy it.
Cries of "we're too stupid, save us from ourselves!" are unlikely to ever be answered with acceptable solutions.
> or powerful as a five-star general who
You have all the power in the world. You don't seem to know it. Maybe that's the problem.
> Eisenhower could have ordered projects, divisions, and fleets mothballed
No, Congress could have done that. Not Ike. He might have tried, and he would have been cockblocked. Too much money in it. Do you think the coast states would have wanted fleets mothballed with their economies tanking soon afterward?
> Prior to WWII in this country the phrase "standing army" was one of derision.
Why isn't it now? Why when I mention the idea that I think having a standing army is bad now, people treat me like a kook?
The truth is, you want to have a standing army. You vote that way. You get neurotically worried if someone like me suggests that maybe we don't need a navy at all (but how would we save the poor oppressed people of X with our bombs and collateral damage?!!?!).
> At this point, the only way to stop these particular pigs
You're the pig.
Nobody claimed stupidity. Well-informedness is a matter of security clearance.
> You have all the power in the world. blah, blah, blah
Why hide behind ambiguous vitriol? If you actually have a point make it.
> Eisenhower could have ordered projects, divisions, and fleets mothballed.
Executive orders give the POTUS extraordinary powers during war-time and times of national emergency. Entire wars have been fought upon executive order. Do you want to discuss specifics or just continue being nasty to people you're talking to? See http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/01/29/obama-could-issue-an...
> You're the pig.
Classy. What particular item of conversation makes you say that to the person you're responding to? I didn't see anything that could have provoked that.
Executive orders do not give POTUS powers, they are means by which POTUS exercises power the office already possesses.
You might want to re-read your comment. Upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7949955), I've already made the unnecessary-military argument you're struggling to articulate, and I mentioned the "standing army" phenomenon here because Eisenhower's voters had lived most of their lives in that intellectual climate. It's clear that he could have relied on that built-in skepticism in a way that no leader today could.
Now I'm "a pig" because I'm a little skeptical of the tired Eisenhower hagiography one always reads in these threads? Just face it, your hero didn't save us. Anyway the MIC is just a specific example of a general trend with this nation. You might even like some of the other examples: the War on Drugs, the War on Immigrants, the War on Fat, etc. If a system always does the same thing, one expects that system to keep doing that thing. "Voting" isn't somehow external to the system under discussion.
Similar to how the co-opting of vaccinations in very much the same countries has lead to killing of doctors who only come to help.
We are teaching a whole new generation to fear technology and it may take another to fix that.
I think there is a limit to putting real robots on the battlefield, humans will always be necessary. It's always been possible to get the support of citizens and sometimes foreign government support by having real humans in the field doing humanitarian work. This cannot be replaced by dumb robots, a human face will be required to work with machines or else they will always be seen as inferior and untrustworthy.
I could see the US Government eventually having ATLAS style robots with tablets / large screens for faces, kind of like robocop but the soldier would just be remote controlling the robot.
Probably get some sort of Office 360 interface so we can kill from home. Maybe a new version of Python called KillScript that has some Hebbian learning libraries built in. TFIDF says it is a good time to be average.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...