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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

#341

Post by cmdkeen »

fit2rule wrote: post #264
cmdkeen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the most basic rules of human life, that have been taught us since we rose from this Earth" That is just fundamentally untrue. The notion that all life is sacred and killing for a living is wrong is a very, very modern notion. Members of the military kill because it needs to happen. They would rather be members of a professional, trained force that means the number of total dead is minimised to the greatest extent p…

>The notion that all life is sacred and killing for a living is wrong is a very, very modern notion. Since time began, humans have been trying to stop it. So I don't think you're thinking this through .. >Members of the military kill because it needs to happen. Members of the military kill because they are ordered to do so, and no longer have the ability to express their own inherent free will. Nowhere in the history…

Who? You're quoting fancy philosophical terms, so here goes: Aristotle: the sort of war that involves hunting “those human beings who are naturally suited to be ruled but [are] unwilling…[is] by nature just” Plato's Republic had warriors as a vital part of his ideal society. Aquinas and Augustine gave us the Western "Just War" theory though other cultures had covered the idea earlier. Even Cardinal Wolsey's (and the Church's) thinking around perpetual peace was to allow fighting non-Christians.

Kant and Bentham are hardly since time immemorial. I'll give you Jesus (only 2000 years), but the God of the Old Testament was rather pro-conflict, and other religions have very pro-conflict tenements.

The accepted views of the majority of humanity until the late 20th century (perhaps not even now) is that different genders and races were unequal, that some were fit to rule over others, and that war was an inevitable consequence and participation in it was an honourable, noble and patriotic (once patriotism had emerged as a concept) activity.

Who is not thinking this through. Plus the killing has massively reduced - the last decade has been one of the lowest for deaths in conflict in human history.

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

#342

Post by classicsnoot »

forktheif wrote: post #78

Again with the drone bashing. Civilians got killed by manned aircraft too. A-10s launching Hellfires at a wedding party, or AH-64 Apaches gunning down farmers in a field. It happens. And whether the pilot is sitting in the aircraft or a thousand miles away makes no difference. It's the same imperfect people making the same imperfect decisions based on imperfect information.

The issue is not that it happened. The issue is not that people died. The issue is that Drone Warfare allows rich people in power to remotely kill people they deem as threats whilst selling a story of reduced casualties on both sides. The casualties of this kind of war will be human at first...

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

#343

Post by mikeash »

quinnchr wrote: post #322
mikeash wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Making war is also an incredibly difficult and unsolved problem. We regularly just "decide" to make war for a particular objective, with very little thought to how it will be accomplished (And what plans we do have usually end up not working as expected). Why should resolving to make peace not war require more thoughtfulness than waging war?

They both require thoughtfulness. I'd have the same kinds of things to say to someone who simply proposed "war", without details, as the solution to anything.

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

#344

Post by pavanred »

melling wrote: post #36
ck2 wrote: post #4

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…

Its not about precision weapons anymore., its not about killing the right or wrong people. Its not even war anymore, its a kill list and the real question is will the kill list ever end, the kill list has been endlessly growing.

Dirty Wars [1] is a fine piece of investigative journalism by Jeremy Schaill about exactly this.

[1] http://dirtywars.org/

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

#345

Post by mikeash »

fit2rule wrote: post #330
mikeash wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

>But making peace isn't simply a matter of declaring that you will "make peace, not war". Yes it is. Because the same is true of war: you have to decide to do it. The problem is, the American people have subjugated all their decision-making responsibilities to people who are too lazy, stupid, or just plain evil to think that anything other than non-stop war is their solution. This has been the case in America for 80…

It takes far more than just a decision. It's an extremely difficult problem.

So is succeeding at war, of course. But we're not talking with anyone who simply advocates "war" as a solution.

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

#346

Post by mikeash »

ris wrote: post #265
mikeash wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what timescale does "never" apply? Large technological gaps in weapons between different people carrying out a fight aren't that uncommon, after all. A couple hundred years later and you can hardly tell the difference.

> On what timescale does "never" apply? Non-temporal colloquial "never". "Never in their wildest dreams" never.

It seems reasonably possible that the people we're currently blowing up with drones would have similar technology by, say, the year 3000. (Not the exact same people, obviously, but that group of people.)

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

#347

Post by lemmsjid »

allochthon wrote: post #317
lemmsjid wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to put myself in the shoes of the potential drone targets. I live in Los Angeles, which seems to be the official city of the police helicopter (always followed closely by the news helicopter, because the possibility of violence is entertainment). Over the years it's gotten to the point where multiple times a week they're buzzing around the neighborhood, stabbing the backyard with their searchlights. I've never…

And as an American I do live with a particular type of fear, which is that of the DEA and SWAT team escalations. I disagree that this is something to be all that worried about. It detracts from the rest of your argument.

I believe the milita movement, the source of the second most destructive terrorist attack on U.S. soil in recent history, would beg to disagree. For them, it is the central issue. Oklahoma City was explicitly revenge for the Branch Davidian raid by the AFT / FBI. Who is to say the next major terrorist attack won't be from that direction? Look at the NSA revelations. Whereas more pedestrian people like me think it's more government incompetence than Illuminati machination, the NSA revelations are proof positive to people of that ilk that the overarching conspiracy they've believed was happening is patently real.

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

#348

Post by bjelkeman-again »

st0p wrote: post #229
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reply to classicsnoot: in your referenced article the estimated US population is 317 million, and the world population is 7134 million. 317/7134=0.444 so the US population is then 4.4% of the world population.

317/7134 = 0.044, which is indeed 4.4%

I blame a typo. :)

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

#349

Post by X4 »

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…

You are right that the first victim of war is "truth". But we are beyond classical war, we have global and economically driven war, that is beyond the grasp of normal people. How is it possible that the whole world is at so many "mini-wars", that the world doesn't take notice of the big picture? It's no joke, stupidity or paranoidity, when you say that the in many countries the whole media is in the control of only a few. Everybody knows only as much as he is required to know. In the USA you don't hear about wars that would make you sensitive for the topic, but about things you've already heard a thousand times. The same happens in many other big countries. People see their local news, but it omits the whole picture, just to show emphasize what's important localy. It's so subtle that people would say, that's ok, it's a kind of patriotism, maybe.

You can tell me that I'm wrong, or believe that this is mad, but please have a look at these few resources first. Let's make our decisions objectively and with critical thought as the parent thread's op said.

[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/peace/conflictmap/

[2] http://gizmodo.com/5875194/all-the-worlds-wars-and-conflicts...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

[4] http://www.warsintheworld.com/?page=static1329446051

Interesting recap of the last 23 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(1...

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

#350

Post by mark_l_watson »

jusben1369 wrote: post #316
mark_l_watson wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unbelievable that you seem to have such a hard calloused view of civilian casualties. Curious: what do you do for a living? The lies of omission by the US government in reporting any data on civilian casualties tells the real story, in my opinion. Drones are probably the sickest manifestation of the US Department of War. I used to be a defense contractor a few decades ago and was mostly proud of what I did, but what…

Hi Mark. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I have a calloused view towards civilian casualties? I'm really confused by drones. In one camp you could argue that without them there would be a much greater loss of life and more horrors of war. We would still be going after various members of the Taliban in the Afghanistan/Pakistan mountains only now it would be fighter jets and boots on the ground and the…

Sorry if I misinterpreted your post.

In any case, I fail to see why our government needs to spend as much money as all other countries combined on our military. I don't think we need boots on the ground when there is little real threat to people inside the USA. I am in favor of almost all of our military being redeployed back inside our country.

I saw a statistic last week that bathroom accidents kill 100 times more people in the USA and EU as terrorism.

The fake war on terrorism is just another way to give our tax money to the ultra-rich who do make money on forever wars.

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