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Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

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Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#91

Post by jkn »

MarkMc wrote: post #59

I've never understood how these two positions are logically consistent: (1) We do not torture people on principle (2) We use drone strikes that sometimes kill innocent bystanders because the ends justifies the means In the case of torturing someone, you are inflicting only pain (which is not as bad as death) on someone who is probably guilty of a crime (which is not as bad as inflicting pain on someone who is complet…

Interesting but I think you're wrong on point 2: people don't justify drone strikes by saying "the end justifies the means" (at least they should not). This is precisely why people can logically approve of drone strikes and refuse torture. Torture is all about using awful means, while in the case of drone strikes, the killing of innocents is involuntary. It's not a means but an undesired side effect. I would argue that killing the targets is also an awful mean but that's another question... This is a classical problem in ethics[1]. Here's an online test to gauge your own consistency: http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman

[1] http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/when_is_it_ethical_to_kill_s...

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#92

Post by smky80 »

derefr wrote: post #88
smky80 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what killed Occupy? Occupy! No goal, no purpose, Occupy was subverted from the inside much like the Tea Party. The fact that George Soros was involved is a big clue. The aim went from something fairly specific, like lets bring Goldman Sachs to justice for starters, the other major investment banks and the Federal Reserve ... to "let's get those one percenters!". Yeah, let's bring the dentists of the world…

> The aim went from something fairly specific, like lets bring Goldman Sachs to justice for starters, the other major investment banks and the Federal Reserve ... to "let's get those one percenters!". Yeah, let's bring the dentists of the world to justice for their role in the housing crisis. Don't attribute to malice, stupidity. Dissolution of purpose is just what tends to happen when a movement gets popular as a fa…

> Don't attribute to malice [what can be attributed to] stupidity.

No, there really are people acting with malice out there. Pretending it is all just the result of stupidity just runs cover for those people.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#93

Post by mtgx »

"Of 746 people listed as killed in the drone strikes outlined in the document, at least 147 of the dead are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children."

And that's just the ones they are "declaring" as "innocent", while the administration unilaterally decided who's guilty and deserves to be assassinated with a drone, as an "enemy combatant".

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#94

Post by sampk »

knodi wrote: post #39

Its stuff like this that turns people into terrorist, also known as freedom fighters to others.

As a Pakistani, even though am an atheist, If one of those strikes killed one of my siblings I would totes go nuts and become a terrorist for sure and try to recruit as many others as possible. It's pretty obvious that U.S. is intentionally producing terrorists.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#95

Post by bayesianhorse »

I'm not a big fan of the drone war. But I don't want to see it only from the one side. The big question I am asking myself is: What is the alternative?

In Pakistan for example, the government condemns the drone strikes and vows to stop them. Well, they could, instantly. They can just "really" ask the US to stop it, or they could put pressure on the US by closing their borders for Afghan logistics, or they could even shoot them down. But they don't. That makes me think the Pakistani government is in tacit collusion.

The alternative to these drone strikes is not peace eternal. If there is no pressure on the Taliban, they would become a bigger problem and headache for the Pakistanis. They would have to send troops into these areas.

I highly doubt that Pakistani troops "cleaning" or even just policing the tribal areas would yield a significantly lower death toll among civilians...

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#96

Post by jkn »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #13
spodek wrote: post #3

Growing up in the 70s, we looked at news from the Soviet Union and other authoritarian regimes as blatantly untrue propaganda. By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency -- they may have lied, but not on the scale the others did. I keep slipping back into believing the United States government believes in honesty and transparency, at least relatively more than other governments. In some areas it m…

Agreed. For me, the most depressing part is that I, as a Republican [not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive [yes, I believe in Climate Change]], voted for Obama and his message of transparency. I shouldn't have "believed" in a politician, but I did. Crazy time: liberal friends are now defending the NSA's actions... Cats and dogs are living together in peace. WTF?

not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive

Hey, care to give some details? This is exactly one point of view I've been trying to understand without much success: why people would be non-progressive for intellectual rather than emotional reasons. I'm sincerely curious what your rationale is.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#97

Post by treerock »

jkn wrote: post #96
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For me, the most depressing part is that I, as a Republican [not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive [yes, I believe in Climate Change]], voted for Obama and his message of transparency. I shouldn't have "believed" in a politician, but I did. Crazy time: liberal friends are now defending the NSA's actions... Cats and dogs are living together in peace. WTF?

not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive Hey, care to give some details? This is exactly one point of view I've been trying to understand without much success: why people would be non-progressive for intellectual rather than emotional reasons. I'm sincerely curious what your rationale is.

Not the original commenter, but if you are looking for the intellectual underpinning of conservatism then I'd guess Edmund Burke would be a good start. I'd summarise as 'don't tinker with things you don't fully understand' but that overly simplifies it.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#98

Post by jehovahrova »

jkn wrote: post #96
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For me, the most depressing part is that I, as a Republican [not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive [yes, I believe in Climate Change]], voted for Obama and his message of transparency. I shouldn't have "believed" in a politician, but I did. Crazy time: liberal friends are now defending the NSA's actions... Cats and dogs are living together in peace. WTF?

not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive Hey, care to give some details? This is exactly one point of view I've been trying to understand without much success: why people would be non-progressive for intellectual rather than emotional reasons. I'm sincerely curious what your rationale is.

This certainly depends on the individual, but for me, I start with intellectual objections to government power -- and to the implicit acceptance of massive government power found in American liberalism -- and the long record of "Progressive" programs failing to meet their goals and producing instead negative consequences. An example of both of these is Social Security.

It is easy to be contemptuous of most liberal opinions (though this is not sufficient to be opposed to Progressive ideals) as they ignore the disconnect between intention and effect. Many progressive programs are righteous in intention, but harmful in effect. An example is the minimum wage.

I sympathize with OP's position. I too voted for Obama and I now have "liberal" friends making increasingly hair-brained excuses for these mad abuses of civil liberties. They love Obama the man more than they care about his rule.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

skore wrote: post #85
MarkMc wrote: post #59

I've never understood how these two positions are logically consistent: (1) We do not torture people on principle (2) We use drone strikes that sometimes kill innocent bystanders because the ends justifies the means In the case of torturing someone, you are inflicting only pain (which is not as bad as death) on someone who is probably guilty of a crime (which is not as bad as inflicting pain on someone who is complet…

> In the case of torturing someone, you are inflicting only pain (which is not as bad as death) on someone who is probably guilty of a crime (which is not as bad as inflicting pain on someone who is completely innocent). I'm afraid it's more complicated than that. I get that you're trying to draw a contrast and use "their version of things", but "their version" is completely flawed to the point of misinformation. Tor…

But the thing is that all the things you wrote about torture apply to drone strikes as well, on a much wider scale. It's not just the explosions that matter. There's a) the constant fear people have that something, somewhere near, might just explode at any time, and b) the sound of drones flying overhead, all the time, pretty much 24h/day, that keeps people from sleeping and scares the cattle. There were some good articles about how this looks in Pakistan back around 2010.

Re: Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes

#100

Post by jehovahrova »

potatolicious wrote: post #8
spodek wrote: post #3

Growing up in the 70s, we looked at news from the Soviet Union and other authoritarian regimes as blatantly untrue propaganda. By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency -- they may have lied, but not on the scale the others did. I keep slipping back into believing the United States government believes in honesty and transparency, at least relatively more than other governments. In some areas it m…

Not only is it painful to watch this, it's even more painful to think about how far we've fallen, and how quickly. It wasn't that long ago where most mainstream US media sources could be trusted to provide insightful, fact-checked journalism.

Is this sarcasm?
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