How many people did we massacre at Abu Ghraib? I’m having trouble recalling the exact figure.
No, an Arab terrorist living in rural Yemen doesn’t get to be safe from attacks by foreign powers. Because he is targeting the citizens of those powers and their allies.
This idea that the Western imperialist powers just go around randomly raping and killing the uncivilized countries of the world belongs in the 19th century… Along with the idea of standing in line and shooting muskets at each other.
This is why I say our old concept of war is obsolete. People keep saying drone strikes happen in countries we aren’t at war with… As if that even makes a difference. The enemy we ARE at war with seeks shelter in these countries because he knows they are too weak (and probably too sympathetic) to actually expel them and defend their own borders. Saying we can’t pursue the enemy into a third country is stupid because (a) the enemy is now overwhelmingly composed of non-state actors because the idea of state-on-state violence is obsolete as a form of warfare and (b) just because the enemy moves into third country does not make him immune to our attacks. If this were true, it would have been a crime for us to fight Rommel in North Africa.
What would even be the point of blowing up random people in rural Yemen if they weren’t terrorist combatants? What would that accomplish, aside from being the exact opposite of the entire strategy we’ve pursued over the last fifteen years? I know you people have this idea that the US just throws a dart at the map and randomly murders some brown people for no reason whatsoever, but having been on the inside of this I can confirm that the US puts an extraordinary amount of effort into confirming that the person we are shooting at is, in fact, the right one.
I don’t know. I’ve read drone operators get their orders from their earpiece, presumably the yeah or nay to fire is based on some kind of intelligence. I don’t know if that intelligence is ground, satellite or other(phone taps,etc).
Drone warfare has the potential to be the most moral method of warfare ever because it gives us the capability of targeting only the people actively engaged against us. It is immoral only to the degree that the above methodology is not followed.
And killing such folks does not, in my opinion, constitute assassination because these are non-state actors we’re talking about and “command and control” types are always legitimate targets.
Okay…
When someone wants to target a specific badguy they put together what is called a “Target Packet.” Basically any Brigade, Division, or Corps echelon is going to have a targeting cell or working group whose purpose is to hash out who does and does not meet targeting criteria, and what level of attack is called for based on the threat that they pose. There is no single piece of intelligence that decides this. It can be SIGINT, HUMINT, imagery and reconnaissance, in any combination. Without going too far into things, the vast majority of bad guys have some kind of SIGINT data that definitively identifies them as an actual bad guy. Most of my experience is working with HUMINT, and it will suffice to say that they do not just take the report of any random jackass off the street. HUMINT sources as vetted to make sure that they are legit and truthful. Reports that are dubious or from questionable sources are discarded. They also do what is called “pattern of life” analysis, in which they try to map the target’s daily schedule to determine the most opportune time to attack.
Once a target has been nominated and has gone through the assessment and analysis product, the theater commander (or whoever is in charge of the program) issues a GO / NO GO authorization based on their degree of certainty that they are hitting the right guy and he risk-vs-gain involved with striking them. In Iraq and Afghanistan we had huge maps of these guys networks on the walls, and we took the time to assess not only where he fit in the enemy network but also what impact it would have in terms of political and social networks.
I can’t make a blanket statement as to what threshold of evidence is required to launch an airstrike for a number of reasons, not the least of which that it changes depending on where we are talking about. If someone is acting on a battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan, and there is actually a fight going on, the authorization to fire will likely come from a low level. If we are talking about launching an attack in somewhere like Yemen or urban Pakistan, the authority to fire will probably be reserved for a very high level.
In addition to all of this, every unit will have lawyers on staff whose entire job is to resolve questions of the necessity and proportionality when weighed against risk to civilians. I have personally witnessed times when a unit wanted an airstrike and dialed their lawyer for permission. I have also witnessed times when the lawyer was practically shouting that they should take the shot, because the criteria for use of force was clearly met, and the unit commander declined because of risk to civilians.
Furthermore, the entire reason drones are so useful for this is because they have an extremely long loiter time and carry tremendously useful packages of optics that can be used to scrutinize the target and wait for the best moment to strike. I saw a video once in which two targets were carrying rifles, and the operator could tell by thermal imaging which rifle had been fired recently.
So no, TLDR, the decision to go kill somebody is NOT being made by some nineteen year old fuckup at a computer screen without any kind of research or oversight.
Thank you Chihuahua. I find your opinion and knowledge on this issue more compelling than John Oliver’s counter argument that Pakistani children will be afraid of clear blue skies.
Chihuahua, not to diminish your specific expertise, but when it comes to my point about imperialism, you are being purposely obtuse.
If a wanted terrorist were hiding out in the middle of Berlin, Moscow, or Shanghai, would we have taken him out with a “double tap” drone strike? No, of course not.
There’s a reason this tactic is used in poor countries full of “Mud People.” Their governments are assumed to be too weak to fight back, and the dominant culture in the USA doesn’t consider the collateral damage to be real people with actual rights.
Well, it is good to know that procedures have changed since we switched from filling up Gitmo to assassinations.
So again, back to my question about Obama’s role. From your comments, I can see two theories: either Obama doesn’t know what’s going on with the drone program he’s made several policy speeches about; or Obama is actively involved and considers, say, Yemenis to be “Mud People.”
So is Obama clueless, racist, or something else?
This comparison is nonsense and you know it.
If a wanted terrorist were hiding out in a middle of Berlin, Moscow, or Shanghai, he would be arrested because these are all highly developed countries with sophisticated and extensive law enforcement capabilities. Moreover, these countries have a monopoly of force over their own territories and a population that is overwhelmingly opposed to harboring terrorists.
The countries these airstrikes occur in - places like Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen - are all countries that are extremely weak and backwards. They have extremely weak investigative bodies and institutionalized justice systems. Their police and military systems are consistently challenged by jihadist insurgencies, their borders are porous or nonexistent, and the jihadists are operating in areas that are de facto outside government control. Nigeria, for example, gets to live with Boko Haram because their government corruption leaves so little money for the police that the insurgents have better arms and ammunition than the police that are supposed to arrest them. This is a far cry from a large and well-funded metropolitan police that you find in any of the cities you’ve mentioned.
Do you know anything at all about the FATAH in Pakistan? The government of Pakistan itself can barely exercise force in these areas - the vast majority of the residents do not consider themselves part of Pakistan and actively support the insurgencies that have taken over traditionally government functions. All of this is, of course, ignoring the fact that the Pakstani government is divided between factions that oppose jihadists and an intelligence community that actively protects and finances them.
And this is the big problem with people who keep calling airstrikes “extrajudicial” or complain that terrorism is now considered a military rather than law enforcement problem. We are talking about global insurgencies that rival and sometimes exceed the power of the states they occupy.
So saying that a policeman in Yemen or Pakistan could just go arrest a terrorist insurgent, the same way we might in New York or London, betrays a profoundly ignorant understanding of the situation.
This made me laugh out loud. You are so committed to your preconceived idea that the US and all its works are evil that you can’t even admit that the situation has improved without making some kind of snark.
One of the main countries we’ve used this drone strike tactic in is Pakistan. They’ve got nuclear weapons and a modern, capable military. While they’re outmatched by the USA (just like everyone else), they’re not a country to be trifled with, and could certainly offer some effective resistance if they chose to. The reason we haven’t had a nuclear exchange with Pakistan is NOT because they’re “too weak to fight back”, but because their government approves of the drone strike program in their tribal lands.
What a completely disingenuous assertion you have here…either that, or you are so fixated on ‘Mud People’ that you simply can’t see the trees because of the straw and horseshit you are putting out.
Simply, we wouldn’t be sending missiles into Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai or any other place you are thinking of because those countries would be hunting those terrorists themselves…hard and effectively. I wouldn’t put it pat the Chinese, at least, to double tap terrorists in Shanghai THEMSELVES, if they thought they could get them, and hang the civilian causalities. Putin as well could and would do whatever he liked and whatever it took…he wouldn’t need our drones to do it. As for Berlin, the Germans would most likely be working with us, but their military is capable enough of rounding up and getting a bunch of terrorists in their own capital perfectly well without us.
Countries where the US is operating are countries that are too week to POLICE THEIR OWN TERRORIST PROBLEMS THEMSELVES…which, you know, is why the terrorists are there, operating against not just the US but multiple other countries, instead of the ridiculous ones you mentioned. You always amaze me with the stuff you come up with, thinking that you got some kind of great argument. 
The Moscow example is especially hilarious. In 2002, a group of Chechen terrorists took hostages in a theater in Moscow. The Russian government not only killed them, but it also killed 130 hostages in the process. So, yeah, Russia’s tolerance for collateral damage is pretty damned high.
But as XT points out here… Take a look at the regions that these terror insurgencies operate in: Syria, Mali, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan’s FATAH, Somali, Uganda, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chechnya. What do all of these places have in common? Weak, corrupt governments (often in a state of civil war) that can be challenged or co-opted by terrorist insurgencies. There’s a reason they place their headquarters in states where rule of law is weak or nonexistent, rather than setting up shop in downtown New York.
Maybe he’s the head of a racist organization that is determined to do racist things whether he is racist or not. Maybe he’s an indifferent dick.
Maybe he’s a political “realist” who tends to take the easy path. No, wait, obviously he’s that sort of person in general.
Look, there are strategic and tactical considerations that come into play. We can’t afford an international incident by blowing up emergency responders in the middle of Berlin, no matter who’s there. But Yemen? We don’t care.
Is that racism? Well, it’s more Realpolitik, but what it comes down to is that in some countries, like Germany, we are more afraid of acting like terrorists in a civilized country; whereas in other countries, we’re just desperate enough for some reason to get a hit in that this sort of thing sounds like a good idea.
:dubious:
What kind of an organization really has headquarters in a country in the middle of a civil war? What do they hope to accomplish? Why would an international organization want to headquarter somewhere with inconsistent security and means of communication? And how effectively can they threaten anyone else?
How often is that anyone we need to worry about?
Are we using drones on Islamic State in Libya? Or on Daesh’s main base in eastern Syria? Or on Boko Haram? There it might make sense. But those *are *quasi-state actors that hold territory.
Why are we blowing up people in Yemen? Why us? Why are we even involved? Why was al-Awlaki killed? Why was his son? I don’t get it.
You are totally ignoring the key differences that have been presented to you repeatedly in this thread. If USA identifies a terrorist living in Berlin, we don’t have to hit him with a Hellfire missile because we can fairly reliably expect that we can share that knowledge with German officials and they’ll send their police to arrest the terrorist and effectively end the danger the terrorist poses. If we identify a terrorist living in Yemen, we can’t reliably expect to share that information with Yemeni officials and have the terrorist arrested and the danger ended. It’s not because the Yemenis are “mud people” that we hate. It’s because they can’t exercise effective control and law enforcement functions over their territory, but the Germans can.
Why do we have jursidiction in Yemen?
There are parts of Yemen where no one has jurisdiction. There are parts of Yemen that are controlled by organizations labelled as “terrorist” organizations, and, by U.S. law, we can attack them. Whether this contradicts international law seems to be uncertain.
Has the legitimate Yemeni government told us to stop making drone attacks within their (internationally recognized) borders?
(Serious question; I don’t know. If the Yemeni government has said, “Stop doing this,” then I believe we must stop.)
Because they *want *inconsistent security. That is the entire point.
All of the regions that I have listed as major terrorist areas are engaged in civil war or, at the very least, major internal crises. A region that is in the middle of a major conflict does not have the police and military resources necessary to secure their borders, police the population, and fight terrorist insurgencies. In many cases these terrorists are allied with one side or another, the same way Al-Qaeda allied itself with the Taliban. In addition to the lack of security, a region in conflict will probably have large numbers of impoverished, dispossessed, and angry people who can be recruited into the terrorist group.
You might be familiar with the concept of a “monopoly of force.” The idea is that whichever organization can exercise violence with impunity in a certain area is the *de facto *government. You are probably accustomed to living in a first-world country where police and military have almost unlimited resources. This is not true in other countries. In most of these places, poverty is endemic and the government is not able to mobilize enough resources to effectively fight the terrorist insurgencies. Pakistan’s FATAH is an excellent example: It is so disconnected and so hostile to outside interference that it is, for all practical intents and purposes, an entirely separate country. This is why the Taliban and associated terror networks can operate with near-total impunity in these regions, and when the government does attempt to enter them the terrorists are able to effectively challenge the police. You don’t see that sort of thing in first-world countries, but it is the reality that the people in these countries live with.
Further, the reason terrorists seek out failing states is the exact same reason that you don’t see major terrorist headquarters or training camps inside Berlin, Moscow, New York, or Shanghai. As we’ve already explained to you, these are all countries that have highly developed and effective security forces. The population of these regions are not sympathetic to their terrorists, most people rather like the status quo, and it is in every respect a hostile environment for them to be in. Some of the places you used as examples (Moscow and Shanghai) have security forces that are vastly more intrusive and belligerent than even those in the US.
Communications and logistics are rarely a problem. Even Bin Laden had access to a satellite phone. Likewise, the lack of effective border security in these regions allows terrorist members to come and go as they please. It is much, much harder for someone to illegally enter a country like the United States or Germany, than Yemen or Libya.
Whether they hold territory or not is irrelevant to the discussion. Take the example of Osama Bin Laden: Al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan, which is one of the poorest, most underdeveloped, and most corrupt countries in the world, and has been in a state of persistent civil war since the Soviet invasion. Despite this, he was able to organize a global terrorist network that launched multiple attacks on America. Where he was located geographically had absolutely nothing to do with the question. America, in turn, exercised astonishing restraint and patience while it suffered repeated attacks from Al-Qaeda, and it did not seriously contemplate a military reaction until the September 11th attacks.
We are blowing up people in Yemen because that is where Al-Qae’da’s leadership fled. There are, and continue to be, major Al-Qae’da commanders operating in Yemen because Yemen has all the qualities I have described above. It is an extremely poor and borderline dysfunctional country with a fanatical Muslim population that is sharply divided along ethnic, tribal, and sectarian lines… The same factors that make places like Syria and Afghanistan attractive as headquarters.
Moreover, we should examine the reason they are NOT in Afghanistan: The US has very effectively dismantled Al-Qae’da in Afghanistan and has all but annihilated their presence. There are no major Al-Qae’da leaders in Afghanistan any more because they have all fled, been killed, or been captured. The Taliban and their various factions no longer have much interest in hosting Arab terrorists. They are considered a liability because (spoiler alert!) any Arab foreign fighter that shows up in Afghanistan immediately becomes a magnet for US firepower.
As for why Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son were killed: Al-Awlaki was a major Al-Qaeda terrorist leader and recruiter. He was closely involved with multiple terrorist attacks on US citizens. The government of Yemen actually tried him in absentia and considered him so dangerous that they ordered their police to capture him “dead or alive.” The reason we killed Al-Awlaki in Yemen is the same as the reason we killed Bin Laden in Pakistan: A world as densely connected as ours, the fact that they are geographically located in one region does not mean that their threat is confined to that region. In the case of Al-Awlaki, the Yemeni government was actually begging us to kill him.
FWIW, at certain points the government of Yemen actually knew where Al-Awlaki was located and demanded that Awlaki’s tribe hand him over. They refused, and the government was not able to compel them. This is precisely what I was talking about before: To a person raised in a first-world nation, it is inconceivable that a “tribe” could defy an warrant for arrest by the government. Yet this is the situation in Yemen. Their government was so weak and their nation so divided that they could not compel their own citizens to surrender a wanted fugitive. That is an excellent example of why terrorists seek out failed and failing states as their bases of operation.
So, having explained all that, I have to ask you: Is this really news to you? You ask why Al-Awlaki was killed and say you “don’t get it.” What part of this do you not “get?” Nothing I have described here is a great secret. All of this has been extensively documented and is readily available to anyone who bothers to Google it. Did you not bother researching who these people are or what they are about? If you don’t know who Al-Awlaki is, and you don’t understand why we are at war with them, then in what way are you qualified to render and opinion on the topic? It’s no small wonder that your only explanation is our alleged hatred for the “mud people” because it is increasingly clear to me that you lack a foundational understanding of what is really happening in the world.