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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
On the issue of drones: "I want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties…. For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al- Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it's been applied."
President Obama, January 2012. Note that, as commander-in-chief, Obama personally authorizes every single drone strike.
edited 2nd Dec '12 6:08:38 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.Drone strikes are imperialistic. Not in the conventional sense of taking over and exploiting a weaker country for one's own gain, but in the sense that they reveal a particularly poisonous attitude. Obama is obviously aware of the collateral damage these attacks do (as well as the huge diplomatic cost) but seems to consider the deaths of "their" women and children to be an acceptable loss, the violation of "their" national sovereignty to be acceptable behaviour, so long as it protects "our" interests and citizenry. Not even acknowledging the 178 innocent people our drones have killed is the height of arrogance, and it betrays a deep contempt for the people we are supposedly "liberating". Its like the "White Man's Burden" - "Oh well, we have to do this in order to free you from centuries of intolerance and oppression, and to stop your silly little confederates from threatening us. We don't expect you to understand, but, hey, you're just a silly little tribesman!"
edited 2nd Dec '12 6:10:07 PM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiHow are drone strikes any different than bombings, cruise missiles, shelling from artillery, infantry shooting people with assault rifles, or any other method of killing people that we use and, occasionally, use on the wrong people?
If you're just calling out collateral damage, fine. It's terrible and no one's denying that. But if you're calling out drones specifically, then you need a reason why drones are worse than any other given method of causing death and destruction.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.So, do you have the statistics for other methods of delivering ordinance on-target, for comparison? Because I completely and utterly fail to understand why people care more about drone strikes than they care about missile strikes, or air strikes, or artillery strikes, or anything other kind of strike that doesn't involve drones.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Looking at that, we have an overall record of 1 in 5 deaths being civilians. That's a little skewed by the Chenagai airstrike
which killed more civilians than everything else under Bush combined. Since 2007 it has been a pretty steady 10% civilian casualty rate.
That's not a very good record, but it is significantly better than any past war we've fought. The main problem here isn't the accuracy of our strikes but the nebulous nature of what is a valid target.
See here
. Drones are quite a bit better than everything else that has been tried. The problem isn't that they are more likely to hurt civilians than other weapons: they are less likely. The problem is that the use of other weapons is subject to checks and balances, while drone strikes are more-or-less subject to the president's whim.
edited 2nd Dec '12 7:19:17 PM by EdwardsGrizzly
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The thing about drone strikes is how the US government, including Obama himself, has continually denied any collateral damage regarding drone strikes.
Another issue is how we define "civilians" as "anyone without a weapon". Signature strikes are when we attack people we don't even know - only that they seem to be carrying weapons.
edited 2nd Dec '12 7:22:23 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.The fundamental problem here is that we have leaders reckless enough to kill children in alarming numbers. Our record with drones, while sub-par, is still comparatively better than other weapons, as Grizzly mentioned.
I don't think drones added anything new in terms of America eschewing it's accountability for the collateral damage it causes. We've been enforcing economic sanctions on Iran for years, which has caused many of their children to starve to death. Unlike drone casualties, this is not something that is simply ignored, it is actively celebrated. It is cheered on as some moral victory for us that we're killing people, just not with bullets and explosives. The problem, quite clearly, is us as a country, not the methods we use.
"With the unprecedented ability of remotely piloted aircraft to precisely target a military objective while minimizing collateral damage, one could argue that never before has there been a weapon that allows us to distinguish more effectively between an al-Qa'ida terrorist and innocent civilians." - Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan, April 2012. Brennan claims we know the civilians from terrorists, yet we're killing civilians anyway. That's number one.
"[T]here is still a very firm emphasis on being surgical and targeting only those who have a direct interest in attacking the United States." - Senior Obama administration official, April 2012. The official claims we're "only" targeting those who will attack the United States. I guess those 178 children really wanted to attack us.
"[A] hallmark of our counter-terrorism efforts has been our ability to be exceptionally precise, exceptionally surgical and exceptionally targeted." - White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, January 2012. Carney's saying that the drone strikes are "precise", effectively denying that we're causing collateral damage at all.
edited 2nd Dec '12 7:55:59 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.I guess the problem is that drone strikes seem to be violating some accepted norms of diplomacy.
If we used a guerrilla force or missile strikes, for example, to repeatedly harass people in Pakistan, that would be just as bad. The difference is that that's not likely to happen; we would probably get cooperation from the Pakistani government and we would be more careful not to focus on lethality. The mindset of people thinking that it's ok to bypass such steps with drone strikes seems to be the core of the complaints.
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Which of those is supposed to say "drones never cause collateral damage, ever"? Because the message I get from them is "drones cause less collateral damage than other options available" — which, according to Grizzly's link, is true. So I'm not really sure what you're faulting them for.
That is an entirely legitimate complaint — that our use of drones in other nations' territory without their permission is causing diplomatic problems. I generally feel that if a nation like Afghanistan or Pakistan is unwilling or unable to effectively deal with threats to the United States within their borders, then we're justified in dealing with those threats ourselves — but I also admit that the opposing position is legitimate, unlike the general "zomg drones are bad!" sentiment that I see a lot of.
edited 2nd Dec '12 8:01:18 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I thought we classified everyone killed in drone strikes as enemy combatants to avoid that problem!