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Comment by seren | Hacker News Reader

What I find really odd is how similar a drone strike is to a terrorist attack. A military convoy is being attacked by a remotely controlled IED, you can retaliate by sending a drone to blow up some pre-defined target. Maybe it is a fitting weapon for the twenty-first century, to put back some symmetry in asymmetric wars. The next logical step is the use of drones to perform terrorist attacks. It is easy to envision an eternal low intensity war with objectives being remotely destroyed by both opponents. It muddles further the blurry line, if any has ever existed, between regular and irregular warfare.

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I think you're getting caught up in semantics here, but you're also groping towards a critical realization: Drone strikes, by all accounts, seem to fit the definition of terrorist attacks.

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...

Some of them are effectively terrorist attacks. If anyone remembers that drone strike against Wedding convoy in Yemen. It's exactly the same if someone would bomb a wedding in US that had some military officers there.

I wish I could remember who made this comparison (I'm guessing it was Jeremy Scahill?), but I agree with the idea that the primary hallmark of terrorism is the feeling of utter powerlessness to respond or defend yourself, making drone warfare just as terrorizing as a suicide bomber.

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.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks

To be really clear about the definition of terrorism from when anarchists were proud to be called terrorists: "terrorism" is an action during a conflict that is meant to defeat the opposition by creating fear, rather than by removing its physical ability to resist.

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.

I find the official phrase 'counter-terrorism' quite fitting in this context.

The primary hallmark of terrorism is targeting civilians (as opposed to military or infrastructure targets such as trains or refineries or factories). If a drone is used to attack a factory or a military target that is not terrorism. If a drone is intentionally used to attack a civilian, non-infrastructure target (eg, a wedding) then that is terrorism.

I think "terror" can't help but be about perception, regardless of legal definitions. If only a single attack per year kills a civilian through accident, yet it is dramatic and publicized every time, it can still lead to a reaction of public terror, even if it is a less likely cause of death than slipping in the bathroom. Suicide bombers and UAVs are equally capable of creating this mass psychological effect; intent (both real and perceived) is a secondary factor.

This is a very modern definition. Most historical terrorism has been committed against property, rather than civilians.

Sure, if by similar you mean completely different.

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.

I agree, but "we" (western media, etc.) tended to call attacks on the occupation forces terrorism, too. The pretense was the war was "over", so the occupation forces were there for law and order, not war, so attacks on them were criminal/terrorist/etc. vs. "legitimate warfare".

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.

actually "we" called those attacking the coalition and Iraqi military "insurgents".

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.

I enter into evidence: Fox News 2001-2009, if not 2009-2014 too.

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.

I think the argument is that the semantics really only matter to who's making the definitions. If you're a civilian and you live in fear that you or a family member may be the casualty of an unprovoked bombing, be it by insurgents, terrorists, or drones, the distinction is irrelevant.

Terrorists often hit military targets as well (Khobar towers, Beirut Marine barracks, etc.). Throughout most of "the troubles" the IRA targeted the military or police, should they not have been considered terrorists?

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.

The IRA, INLA and their equivalents on the other side of the sectarian line such as the UVF were always considered terrorists here in the UK.

[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]

Pulling up some quick numbers, the IRA (more properly the Provisional IRA) killed roughly 1600 people over 3 decades of operation during the troubles, with about 60% of those deaths being of military/police and slightly more than 600 killings of civilians.

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.

> Terrorism is the indiscriminate targeting of civilians.

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.

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.

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.

Certainly no disagreement that there are things far worse than drone strikes.

I regret making a comment that encourages this sort of debate over what terrible things should and shouldn't be labeled a certain way.

>2) the definition you're using is more narrow than peoples'.

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.

Whoops, missed a word: "more narrow than many peoples'".

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.

Maybe you're right, but terrorism has really no clear cut definition. I am pretty sure I have never heard a suicide bomber detonating in a military base being described otherwise than "terrorist".

Are you willing to hold Churchill and the RAF to the same standard?

My father was in the RAF during WW2 (not in Bomber Command though) and I've often wondered about the morality of what our country did then - the best defense I've seen of the strategy was that unlike for the Nazis the indiscriminate killing of civilians was never a goal in itself for the Allies but something that was a means to the end of finishing the war.

Note that although that's probably the best argument, I'm still not completely satisfied with it.

I'm really not trying to troll here, but what then of military attacks on civilian targets?

"Civilian" targets can become valid military targets. For example, if an enemy force forms a line of resistance within an urban or suburban area, then it is legitimate to attack and destroy that area. A civilian area that is not occupied by an enemy force is not a legitimate target, and attacking it constitutes a war crime.

I always found that type of argumentation interesting, war is a crime.

The Law of Armed Conflict exists because you can't stop war from happening, especially if you aren't willing to fight a war yourself to stop it.

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.

Sure, but "war crime" is a phrase with a particular history and usage that means something more specific. Even opposing sides in war often agree on some boundaries.

war crime?

A terrorist attack is defined by the object of the attack, not the method of the attack. Attacking civilian targets is terrorism. Attacking military targets and infrastructure, and especially in the case of attacking infrastructure when the fewest civilians would be killed (eg, nights or Sundays) is not terrorism.

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).

The trouble is, for most of the population over there, they feel like they could easily be the (mistaken/accidental) target of one of these. Living with a drone circling one's life inspires fear in both civilians and terrorists.

So Heroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist attacks?

I'm not sure they qualify as that, but there are certainly people that believe that Robert McNamara was a war criminal [0]:

""" “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...

IIRC both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because it would hurt japanese military the most. Back in those days a plenty of civilians died anyway during regular bomb raids.

But yeah, to some extent is probably was a terrorist attack.

That's the excuse that was given, but the regular bombings had been systematically doing precision raids during the day and indiscriminate firebombing during the night for months at that time. They were running out of significant cities to bomb well before Hiroshima, to the point where they'd started firebombing much smaller cities with no air defences or military presence to speak of as well - some of which were almost entirely obliterated.

One of the interesting aspects is how the mere existence of cheap drones will need to alter defence. Consider that for a terrorist group, once they've demonstrated the willingness to use drones, they can drastically increase the cost in defending against attacks by using very cheap fakes.

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 World War II bombings targeted civilians, and were designed in such a way to inflict firestorms and terror. By body count alone drones and IEDs are quite tame.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bombers-Bombed-Allied-1940-1945/dp...

It is true that if you consider Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the situation has much improved since then.

Note that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not even the most brutal bombing runs on Japan that summer.

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.

In particular the 2008 terrorist attack at the Taj hotel in Mumbai, wherein the attackers were directed by controllers in Pakistan via cell phone and VoIP always struck me as the horrifying equivalent of a terrorist poor man's drone.

The drones are taking poor man jobs.

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