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I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

theguardian.com

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Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#211

Post by mikeash »

fit2rule wrote: post #138
mikeash wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...we need an organization that makes peace, for the state, far more." What does such an organization look like, and how does it work? It's very easy to say that we should just stop killing people and instead make peace. It's extremely difficult to put forth a realistic plan that accomplishes that.

Imagine if the resources being used to develop drones and bombs and other killing robots were instead being used to develop tools that would improve the lives of your average Afghani child. This would be a far more honorable investment than the current situation. Yes, I'm not sure I know what it would look like, but I'm pretty sure that its possible to develop the "B1 bomber" of education systems. I'm quite sure that…

What you describe is an incredibly difficult and completely unsolved problem.

While I agree with the sentiment, I disagree with talking about it as if it were something you could just decide to do one day, and then it would get done.

I would love to see more effort put into making peace. But making peace isn't simply a matter of declaring that you will "make peace, not war".

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#212

Post by dspeyer »

makomk wrote: post #200
dspeyer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of standard works when the executor has massively more power than the executee. For the US versus an ordinary criminal, we can do it. Facing something that looks more like a war, applying standards of justice generally results in losing.

In this case, the executor has more power than the executee. The US can reduce people to bloody smears from drones that are almost invisible to their victims, with all the actual humans safely ensconced in bases hundreds of miles away. The people they're targetting have nothing like that - they cannot fight back without putting themselves straight in the line of fire.

Not massively enough. If the US tried to arrest these targets and bring them to trial, the arresting forces would get killed.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#213

Post by gnaffle »

coldtea wrote: post #158

I thought this would be an anti-drone confession, but in reality it looks mostly manipulative. Most of it is the impact of using drones on drone operators and the soldiers who have them on THEIR side. How about the impact of drones to the OTHER side? You know, the one under attack? Even giving them both 50% share of the article is a disservice to them, and here it's even worse. How about them breaking international l…

I don't think it's manipulative at all. He says that he wishes the pro-drone people would be know more or be more forthcoming about the realities of the drone programs, and that they should be more transparent. The point of view that of the "other" side has also been mentioned many times, by The Guardian and other newspapers.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#214

Post by TeMPOraL »

rcthompson wrote: post #130

How are the drones even relevant to the discussion? There are people controlling some device in order to kill other people. Why does it matter that the device happens to be an UAV in this case? How is it different if the device in question is instead a cruise missile? A rifle? A knife? A fist? To me, the whole discussion about drones is a big misdirection that uses people's irrational fear of "killer robots" to make…

I think complaints are not about drones per se, they are about the US drone program. It doesn't matter whether it's an UAV, a manned aricraft, or a rocket propelled chainsaw. What matters is that there's a program of systematic murder of innocent people on the other side of the globe without any formal declaration of war.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#215

Post by d23 »

avenger123 wrote: post #195
jusben1369 wrote: post #112

We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. We all kno…

Thank you so much for reminding me that I should care about not being manipulated. Your comment is so full of really good unbiased views that I just wanted to tell you how much non-manipulated I felt by your comment. I especially enjoyed your notion that the Guardian is "serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion." You are so right. I always fell that the White House and the American…

He provided some very real, substantive counterpoints, none of which you responded to.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#216

Post by revelation »

rgbrenner wrote: post #115
sleepyK wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But unfortunately, it always is. American life, and American citizenship is more precious than any other life. I know it's not the same issue, but throughout the whole NSA snooping revelations, Americans have only been concerned by the legality of spying on their own citizens. All of us foreigners are fair game. This is similar. The value of an American life is much more than that of a foreigner's life.

Americans should be more concerned about the NSA spying on US citizens than on foreigners. Here's why: When the US government decides a US citizen's communication patterns makes him a terrorist, the US government is free to knock down their door in the middle of the night and whisk them off to Guantanamo, and NO ONE except the US government can do anything to stop them. When the US government decides a foreigner is a…

Arguably, if you are living in Pakistan or some other "near failed" state which gets military support from the US, you are at a much higher risk.

Some B.A. in the NSA digs through your traffic and decides you are some terrorist mastermind, next thing you know a Hellfire blows up your home and family.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#217

Post by avenger123 »

sneak wrote: post #202
avenger123 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for reminding me that I should care about not being manipulated. Your comment is so full of really good unbiased views that I just wanted to tell you how much non-manipulated I felt by your comment. I especially enjoyed your notion that the Guardian is "serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion." You are so right. I always fell that the White House and the American…

This sort of attitude is not really constructive discussion, and I personally feel it's out of place here on HN. So, personally: please don't do that.

My original response was much more involved but I curtailed it to this.

I believe I replied pretty much in the same manner as jusbin1369.

My hope is that for people that look at comments only they will actually read the article instead of reading jusbin1369's comment and skipping it because they wouldn't want to be "manipulated" or consider the article another "propaganda" piece.

I also get very wary of questioning the intelligence of HN's crowd. I would gather readers are smart enough to know when they are being manipulated or not. I don't feel I need to be told or tell anyone how to be careful.

This issue is complex. I for one am grateful that we have newspapers outside the US that are willing to do this type of reporting. We all love technology on HN and I am sure we all love drone technology (I certainly do) but personally I feel the use of technology is more important than the technology itself. I definitely think in this debate, there does seem to be room for much much more information that needs to be put out there.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#218

Post by coldtea »

melling wrote: post #179
coldtea wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We used to napalm people. Lots of "wrong people" get killed in all wars. Flying in B-17's and B-52's was pretty ugly too, we just couldn't record the carnage on video. There's probably never going to be a war where innocent people aren't killed. Precision weapons probably kill fewer people but if you want a "clean" war, I don't think that's possible. I don't war a war at all. I want sovereign countries to be left t…

Do you mean like in Syria where 130,000 people have died? http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/us-syria-crisis-to... By some accounts, 1 in 10 killed was a child. Why don't we ever discuss this on HN? Until after the WWII, the US really didn't involve itself in much of the world's conflicts. Our tradition is to pretty much leave the world to fix its own problems. We joined WWI during the last year of the war and…

>Do you mean like in Syria where 130,000 people have died?

Yes.

How many have died in the US Civil war? I read ~215K combat deaths and ~500K civillian deaths.

Should someone had intervene, e.g Britain or France, aiding one side over the other (and pushing their own agenda)?

>Until after the WWII, the US really didn't involve itself in much of the world's conflicts. Our tradition is to pretty much leave the world to fix its own problems. We joined WWI during the last year of the war and WW2 was already 3 years in before we officially joined.

Actually, in historical terms, joining WWII was an already made decision, not something the US was "dragged on". The Pearl Harbor was just a pretext, and they worked quite hard on provoking that kind of aggression from the Japanese. They US (not the people, the policy makers and large interests) saw the decline of the old colonial powers, and reached for the opportunity to get a large slice of the post-colonial pie.

Plus, it had a long colonial/invasion history of its own, from Philipines to Mexico and beyond by that time.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#219

Post by avenger123 »

d23 wrote: post #215
avenger123 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for reminding me that I should care about not being manipulated. Your comment is so full of really good unbiased views that I just wanted to tell you how much non-manipulated I felt by your comment. I especially enjoyed your notion that the Guardian is "serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion." You are so right. I always fell that the White House and the American…

He provided some very real, substantive counterpoints, none of which you responded to.

I respectfully disagree with you on this.

Viewed from another lens the comment can be considered guilty of the the same charge that the article is being accused of doing.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#220

Post by fit2rule »

sliverstorm wrote: post #206
fit2rule wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is points of views such as yours which stand in the way of true peace being attained in the world. The problem is, and always has been: education. What sort of education gets delivered to the village when the US maims half its children, kills its elders, and terrorizes its mothers?

Yes, the long-term goal should be education. No, we can't bomb them with textbooks. When women are killed for trying to get an education, perhaps more drastic action than a better water pump for farming is merited.

When all you know about a country is based on what you have been told by those who will profit from your point of view being skewed, there is no hope.

Fact: Women are killed in the USA, too. Fact: the USA has its share of militant religious fanatics, too. Are we going to bomb the USA because of this fact?

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