The intelligence for drone strikes are based on patterns, such as a party of men carrying guns or a group of unknown people plotting something. And so these strikes routinely -- and sometimes deliberately -- target wedding parties [4], funerals, and rescue workers [5], and children [6].
Add to this the psychological trauma of constantly living under the threat of drones [7], it is no wonder citizens of countries where these programs are carried out hold somewhat of a grudge against the US [8]. You can call it signature strike, or whatever you want, the fact is that bombs do not know the difference between combatants and women/children/civilians. They kill indiscriminately. So forgive me if I don't see the "advantage" of using drones over boots on the ground or see how they are "better".
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/ind...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
[3] http://www.vn-agentorange.org/edmaterials/cost_of_vn_war.htm...
[4] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57448041/afghanistan-off...
[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drone...
[6] http://tribune.com.pk/story/229844/the-day-69-children-died/
[7] http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stan...
[8] http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion...
I think you're confused. The relevant paragraph in your link says the collateral damage -- both civilians and unknowns -- is 2% at the moment.
The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply
since 2008. The number of civilians, plus "unknowns,"
those individuals whose precise status could not be
determined from media reports, reported killed by drones
in Pakistan during Obama's tenure in office were 11% of
fatalities. So far in 2012 it is close to 2%. Under
President Bush it was 33%.
Conversely, the percentage of militants killed has been
rising over the life of the drone program. The number of
militants reported killed by drone strikes is 89% of the
fatalities under Obama compared to 67% under Bush.
The statistics, taken together, say they're using drones more in regular combat than they used to, and getting better at confirming that the kills are accurate. That's great news, isn't it?
There is a later paragraph that claims only 2% of drone strikes kill leaders. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49
militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at
least two credible news sources. While this represents a
significant blow to the militant chain of command, these
49 deaths account for only 2% of all drone-related
fatalities.
No, but I reject the categorization of "military-age males in a strike zone" [1] as regular soldiers.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in...
And anyway, disagreeing with the categorization of combatants is a separate question. They claim, at least, that they hit who they intended to hit 98% of the time. I still say that's pretty good!
This article says its 50 civilians killed for every targeted militant. I suppose you can try to play around with the words of what is and is not a militant, if that helps you sleep at night, but it shouldn't.
What it boils down to is this, we shouldn't even be over there. We're making it a lot easier for terrorist organizations to recruit new members, because we are doing all the pitching for them.
In this country where kids now get to be kids until they're 25, all first world problems, and you still have a bunch of angst filled teenagers who daydream about blowing up their schools with pipe bombs.. and they have absolutely no reason to feel like this other than hormones making them bat excrement crazy.
So imagine what goes through the hormone crazed teenagers mind in one of these countries who grew up without their parents because they we're killed by our military, and one day some guy offers them a chance to get back at the people who took everything from them. It's not a tough sale.. I mean look at how easy our military recruits people just barely out of high school, all they have to offer them is college money and they're ready to kill whoever their officer points to.
This just makes it all the more ridiculous and infuriating when someone is so nonchalant about innocent people getting killed, because it isn't even accomplishing the intended goal. What it does accomplish, is further justification for our military to start more wars to protect us from new generations of terrorists.
If true, that's horrific, and I'll be the first to criticize it. But I'm going to need to see some methodology on that before I believe you.
In particular, given that the above link established that 2% of drone kills were on media-confirmed terrorist leaders, that means your article is claiming all the other kills, all 3000+, have been on innocent civilians.
I find that a rather unlikely level of incompetence.
I believe government is the only place where that level of incompetence is common.
The problem with the 2% figure is that 2% of even 3,000 would only be 60 innocent people killed, but 160+ children have been killed.. so if someone is saying its only 2%, how do 5% of these deaths turn out to be children?
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us-drone-stri...
The military is denying that the number of children killed is that high.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-reported-drone-strike-casua...
If our government would share their data with the organizations that did these investigations, maybe it would show they were wrong, but I doubt it.
We know the precise number of military causalities, we even know the precise number of police officers injured or killed, our government is meticulous about reporting on those, but try and find out how many U.S citizens are killed annually by police and you won't get anywhere.
If they won't accurately report how many of us are killed by police, what are the chances that they are keeping track of foreign civilian casualties any more accurately?
Ha! No. No, even clerks at the DMV get things right a whole lot more often than that. ;) And coming from drone operators and intelligence officers? That's completely unbelievable to me. Those guys are professionals.
Quite the opposite, I've seen plenty of footage of the systems in operation, and I find a collateral damage rate of 2% or lower completely believable. With a drone, you can be watching your target for tens of minutes, making sure he's really the guy you want.
Maybe you haven't seen it from a drone camera? It looks like this: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20...
The problem with the 2% figure is that 2% of even 3,000 would only be 60 innocent people killed, but 160+ children have been killed..
Well, it's 2% "so far in 2012". I think they said it was 11% over the life of the program, and that it's gotten much better over time. So even if the numbers are accurate, that still works out.
The CIA says it isn't that high, though, and I'm inclined to trust them on that. They do have cameras on the target when they take the shot and all. And I don't know about you, but it's a bit too paranoid for me to believe they're making figures up out of whole cloth.
Why not share the data with news organizations? The camera footage almost certainly contains classified information about system capabilities and tactics. From their perspective, keeping systems effective is 100000% more important than looking good in the media. Especially since you look bad in the media anyway, even if you give them all the data (just ask scientists).
try and find out how many U.S citizens are killed annually by police and you won't get anywhere.
What, like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce...
I put "us citizens killed annually by police" into google and it was the first link.
What are the chances that they are keeping track of foreign civilian casualties?
Pretty good. They care deeply about the effectiveness of their systems.
Would you support drone attacks to kill mass murderers that happen to reside in your neighborhood?
I think the level of collateral damage is too high for normal law enforcement. Police don't normally need to leave craters. ;)
If we were talking about warfare, though -- foreign spies, terrorists? Especially if my city/state were protecting them? Hell yes, bring it on.
You're a wolf in a Dove's clothing.
Ha! I'd never thought about the political connotations of the name until this moment--it means other things to me. It's not my intent to mislead; I'm nowhere close to dove territory, politically speaking.
Maybe you can tell. ;)
Can Obama kill you and then claim you are a militant leader?
That would be pretty difficult. It's not as though he operates with no oversight. Nor is it as though he doesn't have political opponents who would be all over that sort of scandal.
Percentage may or may not be the best way to assess effectiveness (reduction in casualties). Another measure could be collateral, or even total casualties, per highly valued target. After all a strategy in war is to take out the leadership making engagement with grunts and or civilians less necessary.
That is a very broad statement. Would it apply to enemies using Chemical, Biological or Nuclear weapons?
> people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily
I don't think that you intend to, but it seems like you are counting only friendly casualties as people casualties.
> asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe
Which would probably be all foes but one, if popular media is to be trusted with statistics. There is no country that spends asuch as US and that has been the case for a long long time I believe. So all foes are backward and hence a war, if the technology is the criteria of fairness, is going to be extremely unfair to them.
Not unless nuclear were reclassified as "reasonable". They also violate 'minimizing'.
>There is no country that spends asuch as US and that has been the case for a long long time I believe.
Yes but that's true irrespective of technology. I think UAVs allow for better targeting and hence smaller impact on civilians.
>I don't think that you intend to, but it seems like you are counting only friendly casualties as people casualties.
Unless we're discussing things theoretically, an entity waging war is beholden to its constituency, that translates into valuing ourselves over the other. None the less I meant in an overall sense so long as there isn't undue duress on the friendlies.
If the targets on your screen were real people, would you not take the situation seriously?
Or, let's put it another way. Bombers don't interface with targets personally; they're on the screen. Fighter pilots, too, for the most part. Artillery? Definitely. How about SAM operators? All they see is radar blips. Cruise missiles? ICBMs? People have to operate and launch those. How about an AWACS doing command and control? Their screens look like Starcraft with crappy graphics.
Do any of these people see themselves as gamers rather than soldiers? I don't know any who do.
The gravity of the situation comes from knowing that you're really involved in combat. Not from how good the graphics are.
This experiment hasn't been done, to my knowledge, but how do you think milgram would have gone if they had begun the experiment by explaining the difference between ethical and unethical orders, and telling people they could be prosecuted for following the unethical ones?
Most normal people haven't thought that through, and are unprepared to make that kind of decision. But soldiers have. Like a doctor professionally worries about malpractice, a soldier spends his entire career thinking that through.
What Milgram measured was how inexperienced people react to a new ethical situation. If he had tested people who were familiar with the context--fellow scientists--I very much suspect the results would be different. That's true in many fields. You might be able to intimidate a junior engineer into including a substandard part in a safety-critical area, but a senior engineer will refuse. And then he'll quit. It's not that he has more character; he has more experience.
Soldiers have a lot of experience. If you order them to hurt people immorally, their reactions are more like the senior engineer than the junior one: measures of character, not measures of how quickly they can think about a new situation.
There have always been soldiers who said, at the eventual trial, that they were "just following orders". I think they're generally inexperienced, but I'm sure there are cowards who think that way at the end of a career, too. I'm sure the prevalence depends on culture and training, but that does show that the effect Milgram measured is present.
I do have some evidence that it isn't dominant, though. Historically speaking, conquering armies have behaved in conquered countries pretty much as they pleased--sometimes very badly. But to get a soldier to kill his own countrymen, it has generally been necessary to threaten him or his family with death -- mere orders have not been enough. The soldier has a limit on what he'll do for authority, and he'll quit sooner than Milgram's subjects did.
It takes courage to make a high stakes moral decision correctly; I won't claim that everyone has it. I don't know what the rate is, and I expect it varies widely by culture and training. But I do think that in order to measure it, you need to test professionals. Extrapolating from amateurs isn't good enough. Perhaps a repeat Milgram would be a start: test all the same subjects again a week later, after they've had plenty of time to think about the experience.
Milgram proves too much. It should prove those soldiers callous as well, and they are not. Heck, it should prove any soldier callous, and they certainly are not. As I explained above, soldiers have training the subjects in milgram didn't.
I think drones reduce both and as such are a good thing, if one is going to be at war. Recall how in VN the VC suffered 2million casualties? Lots of that was due to collateral damage. Or in Afghanistan how the Russians decimated the enemy? That's traditional warfare.
The issue with remoteness and 'coldness' is an attempt to make this approach less palatable (appeal to some kind of war ethics?) on the other hand, if we were sending personnel on foot (a la vietnam) and people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily, people would feel aggrieved too (naturally).
Therefore I think what people should protest is 'war' not just a 'kind of war' because, to be honest, this new kind of war, if there needs to be one (and that's debatable of course), has its advantages over traditional (and that's becoming less traditional) warfare. It's less bloody and incurs less collateral damage is more targeted and effective.
So I think psychologically perhaps UAVs seem asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe but realistically, they are at a huge disadvantage in traditional warfare anyway.
As weird as it sounds, I think UAVs are more effective and antiseptic than traditional warfare and thus 'better' as compared to boots on the ground.