Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question is are you in a state of war? Are these considered casualties of war? If yes, then execution without trial is a given.
Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.
You are so last century mate!
Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
51–60 of 124 posts
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#52She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings without a trial...
This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more precise definition of what is exactly wrong here. Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it i…
"This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war."
Except there is no man in the loop in the kill chain.
"where the maimed survivors of a mistaken drone
strike on unarmed civilians in February 2010,
which killed 23 people, describe what happened
when they were attacked. The juxtaposition of
the appallingly gung-ho attitude of the drone
operatives, re-enacted from a transcript of
the event, and raw footage of the dead bodies" [0]
Death by algorythm, remote control, sanctioned higher up the command chain, does not.
[0] "National Bird review – chilling film reveals truths about drones" ~ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/17/national-bird-r...
[1] "Into the Fog of War" ~ http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-23/soldier's-story-exp...
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Black and white decisions are a luxury that not all people are afforded. Yes it's terrible that innocent lives are lost but it's at least equally terrible, many would argue even more so, that innocent lives of your clan are lost. For many decisions outside the obvious, it is often the case that you're selecting from a pool of bad choices.
> Black and white decisions are a luxury that not all people are afforded. Specially if you are in a hurry for dinner with your pals and you need to press that "yes, do drone strike" button in your mobile phone while you are getting dressed, even though you never heard about this "Abdulah" guy whose photograph you are seeing in the screen right now, but he is unshaven and looks dirty, and is not looking friendly to t…
I assure you not everyone shares your opinion (as not everyone shares mine). I'll just state there are lots of inconvenient truths in life and, until, you encounter them, you may not fully understand. The trick is to realize the possibility and not hold an absolute stance when in discussion. We are always learning.
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
enemy soldiers There is a legal obligation in the Geneva protocols 1949 to identify who you're targeting and refrain from targeting civilians. https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/9ac284404d38ed2bc125... "refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in r…
A lot of comments with similar sentiments, so I'll reply just to yours, because it's on top. Basically, you're making my point for me: there's nothing inherently wrong with remote strikes or drones in particular. It's just a tool; and as a tool, it can be used rightly and wrongly. So, the fact that Clinton used that tool doesn't make her bad. But if you would have information about her using that tool to authorize a…
The Reprieve report 'You Never Die Twice: Multiple Kills in the US Drone Program' (November 2014) provided the first estimate of the number of people – including children – killed each time the US attempts to assassinate a ‘high value target.’ For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals.
That was a while ago. Things have continued in much the same way and the civilian death toll is much higher, compared to a comparatively small number of jihadis successfully targeted.
Point is, Clinton knows how destructive these things are to the innocent populations in the area they operate.
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question is are you in a state of war? Are these considered casualties of war? If yes, then execution without trial is a given.
Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.
But the U.S. is at war with ISIL, as part of a joint task force involving the Pakistan armed forces.
It's not total war, so the real issue is whether or not the CIA drone assassinations killed innocent civilians. The article mentions how drone attacks have killed civilians, but it doesn't specify if those are the CIA requested attacks or if they were approved by Clinton.
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#56She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings without a trial...
Question is are you in a state of war? Are these considered casualties of war? If yes, then execution without trial is a given.
The US can declare it's at war with "bad behavior", and its executive would believe it's legally covered, no matter who they're killing over it.
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Black and white decisions are a luxury that not all people are afforded. Yes it's terrible that innocent lives are lost but it's at least equally terrible, many would argue even more so, that innocent lives of your clan are lost. For many decisions outside the obvious, it is often the case that you're selecting from a pool of bad choices.
> Black and white decisions are a luxury... Yes and no. In this case a lot of the 'grey' in these decisions is caused directly by wilful and callous foriegn policy, in which Clinton has played her part. You don't see the Prime Minister of Sweden executing foreigners on his Apple Watch
Except life is not like writing a program where you've coded down some rabbit hole and realize you should have done X several layers up and are able to go back and fix it. It's more of hack as you go and hope the whole thing doesn't blow up until you, possibly, get a chance to rewrite or build an improved version
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which of course is the only bad thing about drone strikes, right? That they could ever hit the "right guys"? Who cares that hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, if they are not american citizens? Disgusting, really. EDIT, for the downvoters you'll have to justify what in my comment you do not like. The parent is making the case that what worries him/her is that drone strikes will eventually be used to attack am…
Showing concern for one group of people does not imply a lack of concern for another group. You're drawing conclusions that are not supported by the original comment and being needlessly antagonistic. That's why you're getting downvoted.
Sorry but western media (of which this forum is a subset, whether you like or not), is strangely always extremely affected by all attacks performed against western targets, but usually completely oblivious to the attacks that western powers are performing on foreign targets, usually civilians.
This does not look to me like it "does not imply a lack of concern for another group". Once is ok, twice is ok, but whenever you see that "not lacking concern for another group" actually means "not giving a sxxt about them, because they are just second class people and who the hell knows where they live anyway", sorry but I need to point it out.
Because being good on paper means nothing if you are actually pulling the trigger like a madman all around the world.
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question is are you in a state of war? Are these considered casualties of war? If yes, then execution without trial is a given.
Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.
One could reasonably argue that the location of the strikes were regions which were not under the writ of the Pakistani govt.
Didn't the Pak army launch a major operation is recent years to retake control of FATA and NWFP from the Taliban / local armed tribals?
Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says
#60I finished watching "13 Hours" last night, a movie about the Benghazi events. The use of drones to kill indirect threats is ubiquitous and yet when it came to saving Americans citizens, drones suddenly weren't in use? dafuq.
Drone strikes are arranged and approved weeks and even months in advance it's not like the US has an army of drones waiting to strike at targets of opportunity.
Also allot of the "drone strikes" that happen over pakistan aren't actually drone strikes it's just more convenient to both Pakistan and the US to claim that no manned aircraft are used but quite a few released/leaked BDA images show craters that are way too big for AGM-114's and even the GBU-12's which is the biggest thing that US drones can currently carry.
While some of the craters might be caused due to secondaries many of them don't show the tell signs of being secondary explosions.
But onto Benghazi drones wouldn't really help, drones won't stop mobs of 100's of people with AK47's storming a compound, even full on CAS with gunships could had very little effect on the end result as far as US casualties go, the people storming the both the embassy and the secondary "support compound" were doing it knowing that they will most likely die in the process. These aren't regular armies that when they suffer even high single digit %'s force depletion sound the retreat because it would be foolish to stay otherwise.