Re:Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
by gknoy on Thursday June 26, 2014 @11:14AM
(#7950054)
The trouble is, for most of the population over there, they feel like they could easily be the (mistaken/accidental) target of one of these. Living with a drone circling one's life inspires fear in both civilians and terrorists.
Re:Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
by geezer on Thursday June 26, 2014 @11:11AM
(#7950040)
So Heroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist attacks?
Re:Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
by gknoy on Thursday June 26, 2014 @11:18AM
(#7950077)
I'm not sure they qualify as that, but there are certainly people that believe that Robert McNamara was a war criminal [0]:
""" “We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”
“What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” he asked. He found the question impossible to answer. """
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?pagewan...
Re:Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
by kolinko on Thursday June 26, 2014 @11:14AM
(#7950057)
IIRC both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because it would hurt japanese military the most. Back in those days a plenty of civilians died anyway during regular bomb raids.
But yeah, to some extent is probably was a terrorist attack.
Re:Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End
by vidarh on Thursday June 26, 2014 @11:37AM
(#7950174)
That's the excuse that was given, but the regular bombings had been systematically doing precision raids during the day and indiscriminate firebombing during the night for months at that time. They were running out of significant cities to bomb well before Hiroshima, to the point where they'd started firebombing much smaller cities with no air defences or military presence to speak of as well - some of which were almost entirely obliterated.
Thus, the use of drones, against terrorists (those who would attack civilians) or enemy combatants (those who target military or infrastructure targets) is certainly not terrorism. OTOH, if drones were deliberately (and not accidentally) targeting civilian, non-military, non-infrastructure targets, that would be terrorism.
Eliminating terrorists with drones is going to minimize the number of terrorist attacks just as eliminating terrorist with sniper rifles, or bombing.
I am speaking as someone who nearly escaped a terrorist attack in Israel (Jerusalem BMW attack).