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Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

nytimes.com

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Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#21

Post by mcone »

seren wrote: post #2

What I find really odd is how similar a drone strike is to a terrorist attack. A military convoy is being attacked by a remotely controlled IED, you can retaliate by sending a drone to blow up some pre-defined target. Maybe it is a fitting weapon for the twenty-first century, to put back some symmetry in asymmetric wars. The next logical step is the use of drones to perform terrorist attacks. It is easy to envision a…

I think you're getting caught up in semantics here, but you're also groping towards a critical realization: Drone strikes, by all accounts, seem to fit the definition of terrorist attacks.

Noam Chomsky certainly thinks so. He had this to say [1] in 2013:

"Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it [...] All of these operations, they are terror operations. You are generating more terrorist operations.

"People have a reaction” when they lose a loved one to an American drone strike, he added. “They don’t say, ‘Fine, I don’t care if my cousin was murdered.’ They become what we call terrorists. This is completely understood from the highest level.”

[1] http://www.mediaite.com/tv/noam-chomsky-obama-is-running-big...

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#22

Post by rbanffy »

eevilspock wrote: post #19
rbanffy wrote: post #3

Endless war is exactly what military contractors want. On an interesting digression, "War Without End" is a two-part Babylon 5 episode that won a Hugo award.

A good time to listen to or reread Eisenhower's 1961 speech warning of the Military-Industrial Complex. "Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast…

Thanks for bringing this up. I also like to highlight another part of the same speech:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#23

Post by lukifer »

seren wrote: post #2

What I find really odd is how similar a drone strike is to a terrorist attack. A military convoy is being attacked by a remotely controlled IED, you can retaliate by sending a drone to blow up some pre-defined target. Maybe it is a fitting weapon for the twenty-first century, to put back some symmetry in asymmetric wars. The next logical step is the use of drones to perform terrorist attacks. It is easy to envision a…

I wish I could remember who made this comparison (I'm guessing it was Jeremy Scahill?), but I agree with the idea that the primary hallmark of terrorism is the feeling of utter powerlessness to respond or defend yourself, making drone warfare just as terrorizing as a suicide bomber.

I remember when Maryland residents lived in constant fear of going outside for a few weeks in 2002, due to a pair of uncaught snipers [1]. If I lived in Yemen, I would feel that way 100% of the time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#24

Post by lukifer »

eevilspock wrote: post #19
rbanffy wrote: post #3

Endless war is exactly what military contractors want. On an interesting digression, "War Without End" is a two-part Babylon 5 episode that won a Hugo award.

A good time to listen to or reread Eisenhower's 1961 speech warning of the Military-Industrial Complex. "Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast…

Also relevant: "War is a Racket", by the WWI-era General Smedley Butler.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#25

Post by [deleted] »

mcone wrote: post #21
seren wrote: post #2

What I find really odd is how similar a drone strike is to a terrorist attack. A military convoy is being attacked by a remotely controlled IED, you can retaliate by sending a drone to blow up some pre-defined target. Maybe it is a fitting weapon for the twenty-first century, to put back some symmetry in asymmetric wars. The next logical step is the use of drones to perform terrorist attacks. It is easy to envision a…

I think you're getting caught up in semantics here, but you're also groping towards a critical realization: Drone strikes, by all accounts, seem to fit the definition of terrorist attacks. Noam Chomsky certainly thinks so. He had this to say [1] in 2013: "Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it [...] All of these oper…

[deleted]

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#26

Post by sitkack »

Drone wars are a new continuous flow, always on, Kanban killing process.

Probably get some sort of Office 360 interface so we can kill from home. Maybe a new version of Python called KillScript that has some Hebbian learning libraries built in. TFIDF says it is a good time to be average.

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#27

Post by eevilspock »

gvb wrote: post #18
rbanffy wrote: post #3

Endless war is exactly what military contractors want. On an interesting digression, "War Without End" is a two-part Babylon 5 episode that won a Hugo award.

Unconditional surrender is what terrorist organizations want, and they will wage war without end until they achieve it. The problem with peace is that it is symmetrical. Everybody has to agree to peace before it will happen. War is asymmetrical. It takes only one entity (including, at the limit, one person) to make a war, even if everybody else wants peace.

No, it takes two. Countering violence with violence is not always the only solution. Sometimes sustained violence in response (war) is the the way to go, sometimes it just escalates the original violence into something far worse and far harder to unwind. For example, and as the OP states, we may be generating far more "terrorists" than we are killing.

We humans often fail to see this because we are so myopic and vengeful. We suck at seeing the big picture and taking the long view.

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

That's a silly conclusion, since the US has been engaged in essentially non-stop war since at least WWII (with a developing national security state based on that permanent war footing), most of which didn't involve drones.

Drones certainly lower the political cost of war, but they aren't something that "risks" war without end, they are something developed and deployed in an environment where "war without end" was already the established reality.

Re: Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End

#30

Post by JackFr »

seren wrote: post #2

What I find really odd is how similar a drone strike is to a terrorist attack. A military convoy is being attacked by a remotely controlled IED, you can retaliate by sending a drone to blow up some pre-defined target. Maybe it is a fitting weapon for the twenty-first century, to put back some symmetry in asymmetric wars. The next logical step is the use of drones to perform terrorist attacks. It is easy to envision a…

In particular the 2008 terrorist attack at the Taj hotel in Mumbai, wherein the attackers were directed by controllers in Pakistan via cell phone and VoIP always struck me as the horrifying equivalent of a terrorist poor man's drone.
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