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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

#431

Post by saraid216 »

avenger123 wrote: post #219
d23 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can make that charge of any warning about emotional manipulation. And since every warning is a form of emotional manipulation, it's not actually possible to escape it.

It's possible to be aware of such manipulation, but it's impossible to avoid doing it.

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

#432

Post by gnufied »

ars_technician wrote: post #422
gnufied wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If some Chinese or Russian 'freedom' fighters decide to train militarily in US with the goal of toppling current govt of China/Russia and did actually cause deaths/damage in China/Russia, would US govt sit back and let them train in US? Probably not. The line of argument is so simplistic it boggles my mind. Lets get few facts straight: a. Goal of terrorists is not to topple US government. You can't draw parallels be…

>They dare not do the same against, Russia, China or even India. Is there proof that terrorist organization leaders are operating in those countries unchecked?

Actually I gave 2 examples of India (as much it dismays as an Indian) and US where these countries have supported so called "Freedom fighters".

The reality is Pakistan or Yemen does not want terrorist on their ground more than me and you. They want them gone too. But the so called drone strikes and random killings make people angry, so there is a grass root support for terrorist organisations (at least in certain part of these countries). We are in a vicious cycle here and drones don't help.

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

#433

Post by gldalmaso »

sleepyK wrote: post #429
gnufied wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If some Chinese or Russian 'freedom' fighters decide to train militarily in US with the goal of toppling current govt of China/Russia and did actually cause deaths/damage in China/Russia, would US govt sit back and let them train in US? Probably not. The line of argument is so simplistic it boggles my mind. Lets get few facts straight: a. Goal of terrorists is not to topple US government. You can't draw parallels be…

Bravo! All human rights violations aside, what the US doesn't realize is that every new drone strike is creating new cadres for Al Qaeda and others to recruit from.

> what the US doesn't realize

Except that they do realize that (US government and military are not stupid). Everything is right on track on their book.

War on terror correlates directly to political climate for authoritarian policy Side effect of war on terror correlates directly to produce more terror More terror correlates directly to more war on terror

It's a positive feedback. They are aware.

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

#434

Post by gnufied1 »

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…

But this isn't the war we fought in Iraq or the war we fought against Japan or Nazi Germany. If US declares war against country X and I loosely identify with the objectives I will support it too.

This is war against terrorism. We are not in war with Pakistan. In fact we send them billion of dollars as aides. Then as reasonable Citizen it is my duty to ask - hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending in war against terrorism, are we anywhere close to winning it? Are we even using a winning strategy? If not, why spend american lives and money pretending world police where we should leave it to the UN?

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

#435

Post by ItendToDisagree »

ars_technician wrote: post #339
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ridiculousness is just a subjective opinion though, that's why it makes such a terrible argument. I think it's ridiculousness that McDonald's doesn't have free refills in the UK, but I doubt many UK residents feel the same way.

Good illustration of a time when a logical argument makes no sense but pointing out the ridiculousness shines light on the point!

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

#436

Post by gldalmaso »

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…

> Lots of "wrong people" get killed in all wars.

Except there's not really a war. There's just poorly-targeted killing, or let's just call it what it is, murder.

Weddings, funerals and restaurants are not war zones.

If you know are in a war zone, you can at least do your best to avoid it or flee as a war refugee. Should all citizens start fleeing all countries being targeted by drones?

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

#437

Post by ItendToDisagree »

classicsnoot wrote: post #325
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What war was Genetics (Device: Micro Arrays, PCR Machines, etc) built off of and applicable to? Or do you count that as 'medicine'? In that case you can reduce everything all the way down to cave men battling over fire. I don't disagree that war time has pushed science for the vast majority of history... But there are fields that were not created initially with offensive or defensive purposes in mind. Edit: Added dev…

My girlfriend went the BioMed route as well when i posed this question to her. Personally i would have tried business machines. The bulk of all modern medicine (western at least) owes its regimen and SOP to military medicine. Just as i have seen ligatures (tourniquet) go from a no-no to standard practice in the last 10 years, each generation has watched medical science be advanced by martial situations. Epidemiology,…

So you're going with the "Everything came from the caveman's need for fire" argument it sounds like. Unarguably true if you want to reduce that far.

I still don't think you can come up with a logical example of Genetics being a war tool (yet) though. Yes Medicine has benefited from war time progress in many ways. But Medicine is not Genetics. While Genetics may be part of medicine (squares are rectangles but rectangles are not squares). All of the things you mentioned (surgery, rehab, prosthesis, etc) were practical medical applications for the battlefield, while Genetics was not created for or applicable to such things (although it has seen more recent attempts to apply it in that fashion).

Also business machines can easily be tied to war. IBM + Nazi Germany.

Finally challenge need not come exclusively from war. For instance using my example of Genetics, the challenge of explaining how traits are passed (or any sufficiently broad challenge), and being the first one to come up with it (scooping people and stealing their work to do so: Rosalyn Franklin) can drive people as well.

I don't disagree that war pushes innovation in any way. To say such a thing would be naive and ignorant of history. But it is not the only game in town.

Edit: Clarification of sentence structure.

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

#438

Post by tripzilch »

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…

Such easy talk when the war is fought on another continent than the ones responsible for it.

That's the whole point, and drones make this divide even larger.

"We all know war is hell"--No, we don't. Because we're not actually there.

Just because they're not in the US, or US citizens, doesn't mean they're not human beings, with families and a desire to be free from danger, happy, healthy and comfortable.

How can you even begin to make such arguments from the comfort of your desk chair, about people on the other side of the world being attacked by your flying robots? Oh, how aware you must be of the shitty situation they're in!

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

#439

Post by pablovidal85 »

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 forgot to mention the simple fact that there is no problem at all to be solved there, and the US entered the war with some entirely made up pretext to test new weapons, show the rest of the world it's ground military supremacy and protect corporate interests, like it has always been.

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

#440

Post by onetwofiveten »

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…

While you are correct, please bear in mind that we are already being manipulated by politicians. The public discourse on drone strikes is dominated by those who seek to downplay the horrors of war associated with these attacks. It has worked.

Currently the public don't seem to consider drone strikes as being like other military attacks. Drone strikes aren't replacing traditional bombing campaigns. If there was a public outcry and drone strikes were stopped, the US wouldn't start dropping conventional bombs on houses in Pakistan.

This article should be more even handed, but it is important that the public understand that these new weapons are not completely clean and consequence free.

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