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

eminetra.co.uk

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

#131

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

blitzar wrote: post #95
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.

> “We killed two innocent men and a charger,” the U.S. official wrote in a personal journal that day, using the military jargon “charger,” which means child. Got to wonder why the need to replace a 5 character 1 syllable word with a longer 7 character 2 syllable word, a little easier to stomach than saying, writing, or feeling like you just killed a child?

Just a guess, but it could also be because "charger" is easier to decipher over a bad radio connection.

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

#132

Post by sandos »

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…

Sounds very much like "Generation kill". Soldiers are happy when one day, finally, they kill more enemy combatants than civilians!

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

#133

Post by oauea »

Y-bar wrote: post #60
adjkant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From another comment chain (credit to @belter), this seems like the original source: https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa... Comment chain (along with archive link for EU access): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28299929

> This site isn't currently available in the EU Do you happen to know another source or archived version? Edit: thanks for the updated links!

I always think it's interesting when Americans try to hide their news from foreigners. So much for being proud of your country, I guess?

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

#134

Post by simonh »

hhsbz wrote: post #122
simonh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The turnout of the latest election is 19%

For several elections it's hovered around the 1/3 mark. That's not bad by regional standards, and bear in mind several large and populous regions in Afghanistan are non-Pushtun and even follow different branches of Islam. There's just no way the Taliban can conceivably command anything more than middling minority support.

They just have more guns and a bloodier determination to use them. Unfortunately, as is often the case, that’s all it takes.

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

#135

Post by cm2187 »

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.

The mandatory draft probably did more than the coverage.

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

#136

Post by taway784 »

crazy_horse wrote: post #108
wayoutthere wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

Genuine question - how do you get that 1 million figure?

There are many estimates, but the estimate in Iraq alone is 1/2 Million children deaths -- back in 1996. The US State Secretary Madeline Albright -- on video -- not only doesnt deny it but says it was worht the cost!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bntsfiAXMEE

In the case of Iraq, the deaths were due to two reasons

- President Bush 1's strategy to destroy civil infrastructure (water purification plants, sewage plants), which resulted in...bad water and mass deaths via disease

- President Clinton's sanctions which disallowed almost everything as dual use and prevented critical relief, essentially starving society for 8+ years.

The interview is from half-way thru the Clinton term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

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

#137

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

It's never malice. Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it."

Reality: "A patrol nearby said they took fire from the compound at such and such grid coordinates" It gets bombed. Turns out the unit on the ground was mistaken.

War is hell. War criminals should be punished. But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I love seeing these posts because it's clear that almost nobody here has experienced war. My ROEs were ridiculously strict on the ground in southern Afghanistan.

It's important to have some context as well:

> According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.

So sure. Both sides have killed civilians. But one side tries it's best to be accountable and limit human suffering while still carrying out missions. The alternative is to not be there at all.

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

#138

Post by gus_massa »

Zenst wrote: post #55

When we often look at drones and the advent of AI and the fear of automated killing drones but lets take another perspective. AI that assists in preventing innocents being killed. Still manually controlled but an AI to override hostile action when it deems it wrong. We all focus upon AI to identify and select targets, but an AI to help identify and prevent innocents being impacted - surely that approach would be a wo…

The problem is that you imagine that the AI will have the final word, but I imagine that the drone operator will have two button. One to launch the missile and another to override the AI block. And they will just get use to press the two buttons just in case.

On the other hand, AI can be used to identify possible targets, and the drone operator must just click to confirm the strike. The risk is that it's possible to combine an AI with a low threshold to report possible cases and internal rules that encourage drone operators just to confirm any AI report.

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

#139

Post by kzrdude »

croes wrote: post #93
kzrdude wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has now, apparently

Nope, still they same message. Maybe wayback has some geoblocking too.

Then we have different responses. I see the page fine on desktop but not mobile. Also Europe.

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

#140

Post by AlexandrB »

fallingknife wrote: post #124
pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes, the bastion of freedom: warlords.

Not to say that this wouldn't work or is a bad idea! But the US would either have to drop the pretense that they're "liberating" Afghanistan or spin such a move harder than they've ever spun before. It was a lot easier during the Cold War when you could just call the Taliban "communist" to justify just about any military or covert action.

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