When are we going to fucking learn? I don’t want my country bombing wedding parties in other countries. Is this supposed to make us safe? Are we not creating more terrorists by this stupid shit than are actually out there now?
Obama: Stop this policy of bombing other countries to make us feel safer. Maybe we need to just realize that we have to live with some risk of terror attacks instead of being The Evil Empire and killing random civilians in other countries. Take a look at that goddam Noble Peace Prize you won and make it fucking mean something!!
I can’t imagine anything more likely to create a terrorist than to have innocent loved ones killed in this manner. This shit cannot be making us safer.
Had the Afghanis, or whomever were the terrorists du jour, bombed Chelsea Clinton’s famed $3 million wedding, and wiped out the political/media celebrities, and Oprah, attending, that would have been a Bad Thing.
Really. Well, sort-of. Maybe. Anyway the Americans would have denounced it like fuck.
I agree. How do you sell that to America, though? Every time there’s a threat of a terrorist attack we’re ready to burn the constitution if it’ll help kill foreigners.
Think about it this way : if they *weren’t *enemy combatants, they sure would be fixing to be had they survived a random drone strike killing everybody they know or love. So really, killing them all retroactively justifies itself.
S’like Guantanamo that way : you can’t just free innocent people you’ve kidnapped, held incommunicado and tortured for years on end, they’re bound to be dangerously angry broken people !
Well, the constitution allows this, so I don’t think we can use that argument. Congress needs to repeal, or modify, the AUMF that gives the president this authority. But yes, it will be hard to sell a “softer” stance to Americans. I"ve seen poll numbers from earlier this year that show 65% of Americans support the drone attacks that we’ve been doing.
And keep in mind that it’s not just drones. Whether this is done by drones or manned aircraft isn’t much of a difference to the people being attacked. The “drone” aspect does, however, paint the picture of an Evil Empire sending robot warriors to kill foreigners. There’s also something not quite right about the drone “pilots” who wake up in their comfortable suburban homes, go to work in the morning where they kill people, and then drive home in the evening to have dinner with the spouse and kids.
*How was work today, honey?
Oh, we offed another wedding party by accident. How was your day?*
I’m surprised to see this from you, John Mace, because I feel like your usual approach is to remain agnostic in the absence of hard facts, even when the inferences are pretty clear. It seems unusual here both because the actual details of what happened in these cases are rarely clear, and because the overall picture of drone strikes is unclear.
I strongly share the intuition that drone strikes aren’t making us safer. This kind of error probably breeds more terrorism than it eliminates. But if I actually had my finger on the pen signing off on this or not, I would want to know a lot more, including what we know about the extent to which the constant threat of drone attacks have actually disrupted terrorist groups’ abilities, or dissuaded people from joining them.
I don’t think the innocent people killed by bombing should be thought about differently than the innocent people killed in any other kind of warfare. Innocent people die at checkpoints and on street patrols too (and at the hands of the terrorist groups we’re fighting, of course). The question is all cases is whether the cause is just, and if so, whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
I’m not saying we should stop going after the “bad guys”. But I think we need to find a better tool than what seems to be a sledgehammer. I’d rather see more raids like the one we carried out to get bin Laden, even if that puts American soldiers at risk.
I didn’t really intend this to be a debate, although I think it would make a good thread in GD. I saw this news article and it made me very angry. I don’t like this being done in my name.
I’ve read quite a bit of what the so-called experts say, and it seems to me that the scales are tipped pretty strongly towards “creating more problems than they solve”. European countries are at least as much in danger of terror attacks as is the US, and they haven’t set up drone attacks (or conventional ones) the way the US has.
Of course there’s something we can do about it. HAMMER your representatives in Congress and DEMAND they change the law that allows this. If it becomes politically detrimental for them to NOT do so, they’ll fucking do so. That’s how this system of Representation is supposed to work (and usually does). But it’s high time we all took a bigger role in what our government does in our name. Stop bitching about it on the Internet unless it’s to use your representative’s web form to write to them, or to send them a message on Twitter or post to their Facebook page. And for G-d’s sake, call them on the phone.
Unfortunately, I think we need some more “bitching on the internet” or whatever it takes to convince more Americans. As noted above, this program still has broad support in this country. At 65% approval, that’s a hard thing for Congress to fight.