Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

eminetra.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 273 posts

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#121

Post by wayoutthere »

torstenvl wrote: post #119
wayoutthere wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s 800,000 direct civilian combat deaths and likely several times that from the ancillary dangers of war (starvation, land mines, etc). The designation of “non civilian combatant” was grossly overapplied (see OP about “he had a radio” or “he had an AK-47” as if every Afghan household didn’t have one after 40 years of war). https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

The cited source does not support the stated proposition. Your link says 335,000 civilians, and it counts all deaths, not just those caused by the U.S. I was directly involved in U.S. CIVCAS mitigation measures in a Daesh convoy engagement by U.S. air power in the summer of 2016. I cannot comment on anything that transpired within the classified space. However, there was substantial reporting on the discrepancy betwe…

Actual combatants have been estimated closer to 150,000 (the only numbers we have are DOD numbers which have been shown to be highly suspect whenever things have been leaked from people like Chelsea Manning).

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#122

Post by hhsbz »

simonh wrote: post #115
hhsbz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't based on what, UN polls?

Seven rounds of internationally monitored and accredited national and regional elections over the past two decades.

The turnout of the latest election is 19%

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#123

Post by CyanBird »

dmos62 wrote: post #98
ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hid…

> My point being, it's not always malice

Correct, yet the malice lies on said situations being allowed to continue time and time again, and fester

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#124

Post by fallingknife »

pjc50 wrote: post #89
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, any goal you support could be achieved wrongly by terrible means. I support stimulatinf the economy, but not by bringing back child labour Secondly, there has been a complete failure of leadership in rebuilding afganistan and in communicating to the public that you can't just pack up and leave. I just listened to the podcast with an afgan vet, he was there for 10 years. On the first year they shipped a hydro…

Another 10 years would not have installed the turbine. > complete failure of leadership in rebuilding Afghanistan Agree. It's been a bipartisan failure with the aid of the media for two decades. But it's also an extremely hard problem, and it ties into an area that America is particularly bad at: state capacity. You can't build a government by being anti-government. > and in communicating to the public that you can't…

You could just support a bunch of preexisting local warlords instead of trying to build a national army. A lot of them probably don't like the Taliban any more than we do.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#125

Post by [deleted] »

wayoutthere wrote: post #121
torstenvl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cited source does not support the stated proposition. Your link says 335,000 civilians, and it counts all deaths, not just those caused by the U.S. I was directly involved in U.S. CIVCAS mitigation measures in a Daesh convoy engagement by U.S. air power in the summer of 2016. I cannot comment on anything that transpired within the classified space. However, there was substantial reporting on the discrepancy betwe…

Actual combatants have been estimated closer to 150,000 (the only numbers we have are DOD numbers which have been shown to be highly suspect whenever things have been leaked from people like Chelsea Manning).

[deleted]

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#126

Post by Bayart »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

I wonder if Facebook Twitter etc. banning violent and bloody content has prevented the public from protesting these things more widely. It is well known that TV broadcasts of Vietnam led to outrage growing against that war.

That form of sanitization came from traditional media and civil society.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#127

Post by higherup »

kzrdude wrote: post #42
bearclaw89 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....was only saying that this video doesn't prove it was innocent lives....

Since the the actual drone operator is claiming that they were innocent, then it seems strange to insist that they could have been combatants based on no evidence? Here is another reversal comic/satire about killing civilians: https://thenib.com/yemen-bombs-yet-another-wedding-in-americ...

What do you do when assasins call you an assasin (Apocalypse now...)?

What do you call it when you kill, in the name of saving lives?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#128

Post by EMM_386 »

Laremere wrote: post #96
ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

I wonder if Facebook Twitter etc. banning violent and bloody content has prevented the public from protesting these things more widely. It is well known that TV broadcasts of Vietnam led to outrage growing against that war.

In a similar vein, I wonder if medical privacy laws are hurting us in this pandemic. If every time the hospitals filled up with patients, camera crews went through and documented all of the people suffering and dying, would those who aren't taking the pandemic seriously have their mind swayed? Obviously those medical privacy laws exist for a reason, but perhaps there should be more effort to ethically document suffer…

There are many documentary videos inside ERs during the pandemic. They blur the faces of everyone who has not consented to be on camera.

In one I recently saw, they interview some very sick patients. They have to use walkie-talkies to speak to them from outside the room. Some of them are having a lot of trouble breathing but still say they don't regret getting the vaccine as they don't trust it.

Videos like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu2J8zRftJE

This particular one is closer to the start of the pandemic but there are numerous others.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#129

Post by notsureaboutpg »

dmos62 wrote: post #98
ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hid…

The article says 2 innocent adults and a child were killed and not seemed civilian casualties. How is that okay? Even if it's an accident how can they artificially deflate the number of civilian casualties like that?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#130

Post by notsureaboutpg »

nceqs3 wrote: post #57
cies wrote: post #37

> accidental killing of children On purpose is a war crime now, so it has to be accidental. Starting/continuing a war is not accidental though. It sure can be baseless (imho most if not all recent US wars were baseless).

The war on ISIS? I heard Raqqa was lovely under their control.

Pyongyang is not lovely but we don't fight a war over it.
Post reply on HN