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A comment on What I Learned from Executing Two Men. Parent comment

Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by 3pt14159 on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:13AM (#12530727)
I'm pretty peaceful, but surgical, targeted drone strikes against combatants that are currently a threat against civilians isn't exactly going to keep me up at night.

Edit:

Yikes, the downvote brigade is swift. Here is what I'm saying: Compared to traditional war. Where we lose tens of thousands of people or more on both sides, targeted drone strikes are a net positive. I'm not for perpetual war in the middle east, but realistically speaking we can't just pull out everywhere and targeted drone strikes are better than conventional responses.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by cyberferret on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:18AM (#12530763)
Does that mean you are 100% confident that these drone strikes are ONLY killing bad guys that deserve it? How many collateral deaths of innocent men, women and children do you consider OK before it begins to infringe on your peaceful sleep?
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by 3pt14159 on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:49AM (#12530983)
We don't live in a Utopia. I don't need to be 100% confident that drone strikes are ONLY killing 100% bad guys. Tens of millions of people died in WW2. The answer to stoping drone strikes is increasing diplomacy in the Middle East - not burying our head in the sand and banning drones from doing drone strikes against enemy combatants.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by dforrestwilson1 on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:55AM (#12531035)
This is an easy thing to say when it isn't your country being bombed by foreign powers.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by wildmusings on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:22AM (#12530794)
The Taliban keep women and children at their militant camps. We cannot stop fighting a war, cannot cripple our effectiveness, simply because the enemy has decided to put the innocent in harms way. The US military goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties, but at some point you must do what must be done.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by megalodon on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:36AM (#12530895)
Ever wondered why they exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by 3pt14159 on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:51AM (#12531000)
This is not the point. The point is not why they exist, or why we are at war. The point is that drones are better that stealth bombers. They are more targeted. Less civilians die.

I agree, we should fix our diplomacy and hopefully we'll live in a world without drones one day. But in the mean time, fixing our prisons is more important.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by dingaling on Monday September 19, 2016 @01:14PM (#12532972)
> They are more targeted. Less civilians die.

Even "more targeted" would be sending in operatives to only kill those directly identified as combatants; no collateral damage at all to civilians, double-tap to the head and job done. Mossad used .22 pistols from point-blank distance for this purpose as their bullets posed no danger of exiting the skull and injuring bystanders.

But the USA doesn't do that, at least not for run-of-the-mill bad-guys, apparently because they consider the life of a soldier-citizen more valuable that a non-citizen.

That's what causes such distaste. One guy controlling a drone from Nevada is considered more important than some human-shield hostages in Pakistan.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by wildmusings on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:47PM (#12533712)
Our people are and should be our priority. The duty of America is first and foremost to the American people. There is no duty to unnecessarily endanger your own people to avoid collateral damage, particularly when the enemy has chosen to bring non-combatants into their camps.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by berdario on Monday September 19, 2016 @05:08PM (#12534728)
The problem is that these strikes aren't targeted very well

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-am-on-the-us-kill-list...

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone...

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by coldtea on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:21AM (#12530787)
Yeah, and screw due process, rules of war, international treaties or even collateral victims.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by fixxer on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:35AM (#12530891)
Unfortunately, the opposition said that long before we did. Not saying I'm happy with our decisions regarding how to wage a war like this, but I can at least understand how we got to this place.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by coldtea on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:59AM (#12531060)
>Unfortunately, the opposition said that long before we did.

That no more an excuse than "we were following orders" has been.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by fixxer on Monday September 19, 2016 @09:14AM (#12531147)
Nonsense. My statement relates to the realities of fighting a "war" against an ideology rather than a nation state, to which all those niceties (Geneva convention) were designed to accommodate. The system we have for fighting traditional wars does not apply to the shit we're dealing with. Bombs in Chelsea? Asshat stabbing spree in Minnesota? Geneva convention _that_.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by coldtea on Monday September 19, 2016 @10:10AM (#12531558)
And my statement relates to the reality that the war is one-sided (a huge country or countries vs some fanatic goat herders with guns), and less about results and more about ensuring a continuous presence and state of affairs. Besides, it has killed much more innocent in foreign places that people or even soldiers have been killed on the "under defence" side. It's mostly oil, strategic interests, business as usual -- that were handed over a nice pretext that Bush took away and run with it.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by fixxer on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:17PM (#12533456)
If you had included Obama's continuation plus expansion of Bush era foreign policies, I might have taken your statement seriously.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by belorn on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:37AM (#12530897)
Wonder how well one would sleep having drones flying above ones head, with say 99% accuracy in targeting and evidence based missions (both which I suspect has much higher failure rates than 1%).

That is to say, how peaceful is it to put Damocles swords over people? Maybe it is similar mine laying which was also promoted as a form of peacekeeping, done by neutral countries during world war 2. Surgical, targeted activity, against combatants that are currently a threat against civilians. Just don't mind how it effected fishermen when 1% of those mines got loose and started to drift.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by jiiam on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:21AM (#12530790)
Even in the case that the target of drone strikes were threats, often times these attacks lead to a number of civilian casualties that, I think, could be in no way justified.
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by walshemj on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:24AM (#12530816)
As compared to the Blitz on Coventry or the Fire storms at Dresden?

Or for example my fathers house being bombed in ww2 - they lived close to the biggest spitfire plant in the UK.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by jiiam on Monday September 19, 2016 @09:45AM (#12531381)
I don't think I have the expertise to make the comparison to the historical events you cited, but I believe that, regardless of whether we consider those justified or not (I admit that I tend to say no, but would gladly listen to arguments made by expert supporting the opposite view, and in fact I am eager to). Another case we can talk about was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here the number of civilians killed is so outrageous that I don't know if there is any sensible way of condoning it.

An attempt to give an analysis would be asking: what was the good reason to do it? I think that the answer to that question in the case of the drone strikes is not satisfactory.

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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by ska on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:20AM (#12530778)
What about the rest of the drone strikes?
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by dforrestwilson1 on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:15AM (#12530739)
What civilians are they a threat against exactly?
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Re:What I Learned from Executing Two Men by themartorana on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:22AM (#12530797)
At least 160 children through 2011. It's been a lot more time since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_US_dr...

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