"This program has been expanded to Yemen, Somalia,
Pakistan"
We cannot state that we are a moral/ethical nation of laws with a justice system and routinely deny others a day in court because they are not living in this country. Last I checked, Congress has not declared war in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan, so what are we doing conducting a war there. Exterminating someone without trial from the skies is not a police action.
Before you get too angry, consider that this experience is common of soldiers in war, not many of whom would after combat use terms like warrior.
Indeed, most of the people I hear glorifying war and the military in general have never seen combat. Most of the people I know who have seen combat, don't like to talk about it at all.
Re:Confessions of a Drone Warrior
by stockliasteroid on Saturday October 26, 2013 @11:34PM
(#6620650)
And pretty much all of the people who vehemently condemn anyone who has ever been in combat (and in a sense being a drone operator qualifies, it carries many of the same moral issues) equally have no experience with combat either. Why does't that make their viewpoint equally invalid? They have no more experience with it than the armchair GI Joe's... As you say, most who have experienced combat directly (my wife's uncle is an ex-Delta Force operator, no joke) don't talk about it.
This one guy (part of the largest group ever inducted as drone pilots) killed 1,626 people, and that figure won't include the civilians near the targets, who were often at home or travelling with their families. The real figure is probably 2-3 times that.
“We’re gonna shoot and collapse the building. They’ve gotten intel that the guy is inside.”...Bryant stared at the screen, frozen. “There’s this giant flash, and all of a sudden there’s no person there.” He looked over at the pilot and asked, “Did that look like a child to you?” They typed a chat message to their screener, an intelligence observer who was watching the shot from “somewhere in the world”—maybe Bagram, maybe the Pentagon, Bryant had no idea—asking if a child had just run directly into the path of their shot. “And he says, ‘Per the review, it’s a dog.’ ”Bryant and the pilot replayed the shot, recorded on eight-millimeter tape. They watched it over and over, the figure darting around the corner. Bryant was certain it wasn’t a dog.
What I find most troubling about this is that:
This program has been expanded to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan already, and the same legal justification given for killing in Pakistan with no trial or even proper investigation could be given for a drone killing in Idaho. There is no limit to this war in time or space.
Even if you are on a battlefield, killing of non-uniformed and unarmed combatants is illegal under the Geneva conventions - you're supposed to avoid civilian casualties - clearly targeting houses and markets etc doesn't do that.
People who have not been positively identified as combattants and are away from any battlefield are killed without trial, without counsel, without charges and without official remorse if there was a mistake or they were innocent.
The distance created by the drone and the lack of risk to US personnel gives a very real risk that substantial abuse of this method of killing will occur. What if the US withdraws from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq, but continues to kill from a distance? What if they expand the war to other countries and don't tell anyone (JSOC is in 100 countries)? All this has been done without even declaring war.
This drone pilot deserves to be recognised for at least having the courage to speak up about what he was asked to do, about the mistakes made.
The book Dirty Wars is definitely worth reading if you are interested in finding out more about US drone programs.
http://dirtywars.org/