There seem to be three unrelated objections to “drone strikes”:
[ul][li]1. Does the end justify the means? I.e., how many bad guys must we kill to justify the killing of an innocent?[/li][li] 2. What gives the U.S. a right to decide who is a bad guy? If the U.S. has the right to decide some al-Qaeda operative is “bad”, why doesn’t al-Qaeda have the right to decide some American is “bad”?[/li][li]3. It is cowardly to kill with robots; American human lives are not put at risk.[/li][/ul]
My answers are:
There’s no way to avoid this calculus, except by minimizing “collateral damage” and minimizing risk to innocents is in fact one of the advantages of drone strikes. A more practical objection is that the strikes may influence “innocents” into becoming anti-American “bad guys.”
That’s the nature of Wars on Terror. The fact that Osama bin Laden sincerely thought America was evil didn’t make it wrong for America to (selfishly?) treat him as evil and seek his death.
This objection seems bizarre. A country should seek to protect the lives of its soldiers. Does OP seek a return to some romantic conception of the “Age of Chivalry”? If the U.S. can demonstrate that it can attack an enemy without putting its own soldiers at risk, that should dissuade the enemy from attacking which, at least from America’s viewpoint, is a good thing.
That last point is troubling, I’d agree… One big problem here is that the enemy won’t wear uniforms. They masquerade as civilians, and, when they’ve planted their bombs or sniped or fired their mortars, they fade back into the civilian population around them. They, by their own tactics, are the ones putting innocents at risk.
If that tactic were permitted to succeed, every army would march with a vanguard of children and nuns, knowing that the enemy could not fire at them.
And how do drone attacks differ from any other modern weapons systems? Modern artillery fires from beyond the horizon; aircraft strike from above; battleships and bombers are more-or-less immune from harm. By the standards of a Renaissance nobleman, yes, modern war is cowardly.
If we could revert all military technology to the standards of AD 1500, would that satisfy everyone’s objections? (Won’t anyone think of the horses?)
The idea that war should be fought bravely is an absurdity. An anachronistic absurdity.
War should be fought efficiently, with precision and minimal collateral damage in proportion to the value of military objectives. Everything else is window-dressing.
Translation: they won’t act in a suicidal fashion against an enemy with huge military superiority. They are “supposed” to all put on uniforms and concentrate themselves in some place far from civilians where we can just kill them all at once without resistance.
It’s silly to demand they fight in a way that gives us all the advantages and guarantees their deaths. They won’t do it; and even if they did, they’d promptly be killed by us and be replaced by those who won’t.
That’s arguable, at best.
Except Osama bin Laden has little to do with this. Nor does the “War of Terror” have much to do with fighting “Terror”.
First; part of the objection is that “safe” aggression by drone encourages aggression. And second, it doesn’t discourage attacks because avoiding attacking America doesn’t keep us from attacking you anyway. It’s also an argument that justifies what we would call “terrorist” attacks, at least when they are directed at us.
It’s a rather ironic argument to make from the side that complains that the other side won’t put on uniforms and “bravely” fight them in the open.
Are you acknowledging that terrorist groups don’t care about civilian casualties, then? Because what he’s asking about are tactics that would reduce civilian casualties. Hiding amongst civilians guarantees greater civilian casualties (intentionally, of course). And that stuff about terrorists being civilians “for most purposes” is preposterous; you could say the exact thing about any kind of criminal. Nobody cares what they’re doing with the rest of their time.
I asked you a page or two ago to back up this claim, and you haven’t. Are you going to? After years of drone strikes, if drone strikes led to more aggression there should be evidence, and I think the evidence points in the other direction.
Which has nothing to do with what Kearsen said in the post you were responding to. And yes, terrorism actually is amorphous. What’s the solution to that? Do nothing for fear of people on the internet shouting about Orwell?
And kill everyone who followed them. You might as well just hand them pistols and ask them to shoot themselves. And some “terrorist” groups care about civilian casualties (if only for political reasons), and some don’t. And quite a few of the people we kill aren’t terrorists in the first place, except in the sense of “anyone whom America doesn’t like is automatically a terrorist who deserves death”.
By that logic we should be using drone strikes on domestic criminals as well; and if random bystanders happen to get blown up with that drug dealer, too bad.
Of course we won’t do that; it would involve killing too many white Christians.
First, you are confusing two separate issues; I was just now referring to the safety of drone strikes encouraging more aggression by drone. And I did back up my earlier claim, and (inadvertently) so have all the people who say we (still!) need to attack people in retaliation for 9-11.
No combatant in any war is entitled to sanctuary anywhere in the world.
Therefore American drone deployment is morally acquitted for who it targets,
and where they are targeted.
Furthermore, there are in all war human and structural targets located
too close to civilians for an attacker to avoid imperiling civilians. Therefore
American drone deployment is morally acquitted for injury to civilians in
the vicinity of the nightcreatures who are our targets.
I largely agree. At the same time, though, it’s also silly for them to engage in this style of warfare, and, simultaneously, complain about civilian casualties.
I don’t care if you’re hiding behind a nun and five orphans: if you shoot at me, I’m going to shoot back. Their deaths are at least as much on your conscience as mine.
They are civilians. I can’t find the link at the moment, but one of the guys that was targeted was visiting his in-laws when he was bombed. That’s not a dirty, sneaky terrorist choosing to wear babies as armour, that’s him being a person.
You think so? I’m not sure, but don’t know enough to say. I would have said the civilian deaths are not intentional by either side. We’re shooting at the enemy; the enemy is hiding in pretty much the only place he can hide. Forests and ravines and rocks don’t cut it any more, now we have IR sensing drones. Hiding in cities is just about all that’s left.
I don’t want to think that the enemy is so evil as to cause civilian deaths among his own population on purpose. Am I giving them too much moral credit?
I actually think this is the crux of the OP’s problem. He imagines a world where James Bond is real and SEAL teams are offing Al Qaeda’s lieutenants on a weekly basis and no one knows! The reason for the paucity of stories like Mahmoud Al-Manhouh is because they don’t happen. (And notice it was the Israelis who had the assets to kill Al-Manhouh, not America.)
The choice isn’t between 007 and dropping a missle on them. It’s between dropping a missle and doing absolutely nothing.
That you think the entire population of Pakistan belongs to “Al Qaeda” is no less living in a comic book than whatever you are accusing this guy of, but only one of you is using your fantastic delusions to justify mass murder.
Moreover, the Mossad isn’t remotely as effective as so many people think.
A recent book written by an Israeli Colonel on Israel’s actions in the aftermath of the Munich Massacre found that while Israel had knocked off a number of Palestinians loosely connected with Black September they’d only managed to kill just one person remotely involved in the Munich operation.
This is something that shouldn’t have been a shock to anyone familiar with the situation. In reality, all of “the bastards”(to use Golda Meir’s term) were hiding in Arab countries or behind the Iron Curtain, not palling around Western Europe.
However, both the Israelis and the Palestinians had something to gain by perpetrating the myth so the PLO turned several dead flunkies into Black September big shots and the Israelis promoted this myth of the invincible Mossad.
