331–340 of 491 posts
Drones kill civilians? Yeah, we know. Collateral damage is a reality of war.
Drones are weapons? Is that really a revelation?
I think there is a lot to criticize about the drone program, but it shouldn't read like this.
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Surely you're intelligent enough to see the distinction between Barber surgeons, grave robbers, and killing machines. There's a whole world of applications for AI and machinery that we could be pooling our resources into, but instead we're funding a continuing war on "terror" abroad. There's no reason why the war is necessary, no reason why technological progress would be made faster in the art of killing vs anything…
War is the only way forward. The funding of war machines comes from a desire to survive. A fear to die. This will always take precedence over any other kind of progress. Stop investing in start-ups and a couple of people will be a little less wealthy. Stop investing in the military and we and/or our way of live dies within a decade.
I grew up in the DCon capital of the world, friend. I have heard every iteration of the jingoist "spend or die" speech. I am fed, clothed, and housed by tax dollars spent on "expanding capability" and "maintaining status quo". It is not about security and freedom, it is about securing profits and freeing untapped investment. Do you think that DCon is somehow different than SV? Small groups of whip smart young people using the lost ideas of an older generation to carve out a slice of an expanding market. Information Technology and War Technology are two facets of the same gem.
Your original premise may be accurate, but i do not believe it is correct. The path you take effects the place you go in many ways, and not all of them are obvious or even observable at the moment of choosing.
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Drones, Napalm, B-52 bombing—all weapons for cowards. The problem with remote-control war is that there's no political cost; remember that the Vietnam war didn't end because the great public bought into the hippies' peace&love ideology, it ended because the great public was receiving too many of their sons back in body bags.
> The problem with remote-control war is that there's no political cost Oversimplification. Domestically, the US is still paying the cost of using, eg, Agent Orange in Asia, today (children of service members born deformed).
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 am pretty sure it's easier to dehumanize people when they are merely pixels on a screen.
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>What is sad now in the USA is that there are very few politicians who speak the truth and very few news outlets that don't just cooperate in the propaganda. There never were any. Name this mystical time when he U.S. government was some benevolent force for good and not constantly lying to the civilian population to push them to unwanted wars.
I feel that the situation is worse now than in the past.
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…
Fwiw they also published an op ed by a defence minister and linked to it twice in this article so I don't see the manipulation angle on a newspaper wide scale, although obviously the guardian editorial board has some strong opinions. Stronger than other newspapers? You'd have to make that case.
Incidentally, while I appreciate your attempt to keep a clear head, your comment that things are complex applies to almost any situation worth discussing.
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Pointing out an opposing view, or the downside of the alternative to drones (boots on the ground) does not make the author a sack of shit. War will be around until humans work harder to understand each others perspectives and evolve socially as quickly as we have with technology. You can help us all to that end by not being name calling anonymously on the internet.
He isn't a sack of shit for having an opposing view point. He is a sack of shit for this middle ground all sides have a valid point and the truth is somewhere in the middle bullshit.
I can tell you are angry (i have a 6th sense with these things). I am angry too. I am so angry at what my country does, and how ignorant the majority of us are about it. I have no salve. I have no solution. War's hellish qualities serve as entertainment fodder instead of a lesson.
I am angry too, but i respect the place we are and, respectfully, you should too.
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Sarcasm is a tool for someone that can't actually come up with a counter-argument. It's an appeal to absurdity combined with a strawman. Exaggerate the other side's point until it sounds ridiculous and pretend that's an argument.
Sometimes the ridiculousness of the opposition's argument is more compelling to the majority of people than saying "You've committed fallacy A, B, C, D, & F." Especially when the 'argument' in question actually isn't even an argument. "Opinion piece is misleading because it isn't a factual non-biased piece of journalism" seems like one of these times.
The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…
There you go again ck2. One of your classic comments. 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. The real solu…
Drones are used outside of declared war zones in "targeted killings". This is an important distinction.