Drone policy

[Nonc Hilaire]

I find the drone attacks, and the U.S. military ME and African activity in general evil and deplorable but the drone attacks appear to be what we used to call a "workout within a race" at the horse track. Testing them and getting the personnel to use them under live conditions is the objective. The actual targets are simply a matter of convenience.

[Hans Bulvai]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

[Hoosiernorm]

"minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

The stockholders won't get hurt because they have a 10 year contract but the spare parts market is wanting.

[Nonc Hilaire]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

Pure BS, of course. Part of warfare is to cause maximum civilian casualties in an effort to have them revolt and change governments. Call it "Shock & Awe" or whatever, warfare by it's nature demands making babies bleed.

[Ibrahim]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

Pure BS, of course. Part of warfare is to cause maximum civilian casualties in an effort to have them revolt and change governments. Call it "Shock & Awe" or whatever, warfare by it's nature demands making babies bleed.

This is often said in these discussion, but clearly false for a number of reasons.

1. From a purely historical point we can cite wars that were conspicuous for their lack of civilian casualties relative to military casualties. In the First World War, Seven Years War, and Napoleonic Wars, just to give three famous examples, the goal was to destroy the opposing field army and thus force a surrender and settlement. While there were of course civilian casualties in all of those conflicts they were almost never intentional and always minimal relative to military casualties. The ratio in WW1 is particularly vast, and despite the horrors of trench life itself it was actually the most "civilized" war in European history.

2. Civilian casualties, and the subsequent alienation of the civilian population, contradicts the strategy of counterinsurgency warfare and benefits the groups that the "war on terror" is purported to be combating. It is, by definition, counterproductive. So even if it could be argued that civilian casualties have a military utility, they certainly do not in this type of warfare. If you fight this war by killing children then you fight to lose rather than win, and the lives lost are doubly senseless and indefensible.

3. The statement that civilian casualties are somehow either unavoidable or necessary is often (though not to say Nonc is doing so here) employed as a kind of lazy "biological imperative" kind of argument. Man will fight wars, and wars will kill children, and that's just human nature so no need to do anything as provincial and naive as give a lavender or try to prevent it. Let's all just sip our bocks and smile at this fallen world. It is, for those actually making said argument, complete moral abdication.

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... am/265112/

The Places Where America's Drones Are Striking, Now on Instagram

[Sparky]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

Pure BS, of course. Part of warfare is to cause maximum civilian casualties in an effort to have them revolt and change governments. Call it "Shock & Awe" or whatever, warfare by it's nature demands making babies bleed.

This is often said in these discussion, but clearly false for a number of reasons.

1. From a purely historical point we can cite wars that were conspicuous for their lack of civilian casualties relative to military casualties. In the First World War, Seven Years War, and Napoleonic Wars, just to give three famous examples, the goal was to destroy the opposing field army and thus force a surrender and settlement. While there were of course civilian casualties in all of those conflicts they were almost never intentional and always minimal relative to military casualties. The ratio in WW1 is particularly vast, and despite the horrors of trench life itself it was actually the most "civilized" war in European history.

2. Civilian casualties, and the subsequent alienation of the civilian population, contradicts the strategy of counterinsurgency warfare and benefits the groups that the "war on terror" is purported to be combating. It is, by definition, counterproductive. So even if it could be argued that civilian casualties have a military utility, they certainly do not in this type of warfare. If you fight this war by killing children then you fight to lose rather than win, and the lives lost are doubly senseless and indefensible.

3. The statement that civilian casualties are somehow either unavoidable or necessary is often (though not to say Nonc is doing so here) employed as a kind of lazy "biological imperative" kind of argument. Man will fight wars, and wars will kill children, and that's just human nature so no need to do anything as provincial and naive as give a lavender or try to prevent it. Let's all just sip our bocks and smile at this fallen world. It is, for those actually making said argument, complete moral abdication.

1/ I'm pretty sure more civilians died than combatants in the Seven Years war - and the Napoleonic war. Mass rape and slaughter when sacking towns and cities, starvation in the wake of armies living off the land, etc. were commonplace. As to WWI it certainly wasn't for want of trying, but it's difficult to pull off a Dresden with a dozen Zeppelins or a few squadrons of balsa wood biplanes farting and banging their way across the sky with their negligible payloads.

2/ There's a strategy? That said, counterinsurgency by counter terror often works. It's how the NWFP was managed as a last resort between the wars.

3/ They're pretty difficult to avoid though - especially if the people you're trying to kill live, work, train and fight amongst a civilian population. It's essentially impossible to avoid if the only practical way you have of attacking them is from the air.

[Jnalum Persicum]

.

Be ready for Iran to shoot down an American drone .. can happen any moment

question only is, what US would do if it happens ?

Iran, says :

.

Any nation that is attacked can pursue the attackers until they enter the territory or airspace of a neutral nation. However, any nation that would supply bases used for violating another nation’s sovereignty using “platforms” that are typically armed is not neutral.

Thus, International Law is clear on this:

According to “The Right of Hot Pursuit in International Law,” Second Edition, by Nicholas M. Poulantzas, any nation that has its sovereignty violated by one of three classes of forces, naval, air or ground, is free to pursue those forces and destroy them up to the time they enter proven neutral safe havens. Then other, diplomatic, methods apply.


The case that can be made to any reasonable observer is that violation of Iranian airspace did happen, that there was “hot pursuit” by fighter aircraft and that International Law would allow, not just destruction of the drone but may well allow an attack on the base where the drone is launched.

Using these same laws as Israel does in Lebanon and has on several occasions, the right has been asserted that military force can pursue any attacking force into a neutral country, seek out bases of operation and, as the law has applied to Israel on many occasions, attack and attempt to destroy these bases.

This had actually been taken as far as to justify the bombing and shelling that destroyed the city of Beirut in 1982 and 2006, bombings that included civilian areas.

A key issue is that there is no clear classification for drones. As the Raptor carries a typical weapons payload of 2,500 pounds of ordnance, it is reasonable to assume that an incursion by such a “platform” is intended as an act of war.

After all, the United States has satellites that can read a newspaper from space, see underground, identify materials and even scan individual faces and access dozens of databases, law enforcement / terrorism, passport, credit, healthcare and even social networking.

The issue is not one of a need to gather intelligence, to spy, but violation of sovereignty and more, placing known weapons platforms in violation of airspace, a credible threat.

With the history of the use of drones by the US, thousands of civilians killed by Raptor and Predator drones, Hellfire missiles fired onto funerals and weddings, innocent vehicles and, friendly fire incidents, the reporting of which are always censored, a drone entering airspace is to be accepted as a “bombing attack.”


In fact, the US has established the “right of hot pursuit” and repeatedly misconstrued the use of drones to target suspected militants for assassination using “area munitions” with an extremely high probability of “collateral damage.”

The right claimed by the US is based on the assumption that any person on earth that owns a weapon or is thought to have owned one or who may or may not have met with someone who has been critical of US policy is a “terrorist suspect” and, thus, subject to execution even if that means the destruction of an entire village in the process.

This right, by the US, according to legal opinions submitted by the same two US Attorney Generals aided by “think tank” experts with dual Israeli/American citizenry, also authorized the indeterminate arrest and detention without probable cause of any person on earth, even American citizens, authorized their torture for years and authorized any information given while under torture to be admissible though America’s highest law, the constitution specifically prohibits any acts of “cruel and unusual punishment.”
(Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution - 1787)

BACKGROUND

On November 1, 2012, an Iranian Su 25 ground attack aircraft, fired on an American drone. It was not until seven days later, after the American election that the news was announced.

In doing so, as usual, the Pentagon chose to lie to the press and use the incident as “proof” of Iran’s warlike intentions.

But then the world knows Iran is warlike; after all, the film “Argo,” a highly fictionalized Islamophobic Hollywood offering seemed to have the same writers used by the Pentagon.

The cover story told by the Pentagon is absurd. Its claim is that a Raptor drone with a top cruising speed of 220 miles per hour was attacked unsuccessfully over international waters, 16 miles offshore, in contravention of International Law. This would put the drone 4 miles outside Iranian airspace.

We will examine the issues of this and the ramifications.

The plane in pursuit, the Su 25, is a heavily armored ground attack plane with an operational top speed of around 600 miles per hour. The Su 25 is a “tank killer” not unlike the American A 10 “Warthog.”

In fact, the planes have oddly similar names; the Su is called the “Frogfoot.”

THE PLOY

The use of drones has nothing to do with inspection of nuclear energy facilities, an issue the US and Iran have preliminary agreements in place to settle diplomatically.

Drones violate sovereignty in efforts to test air defenses, look for “soft points.” They are used to gain intelligence only required if war is planned. However, the only regime that has openly stated it plans an attack on Iran is Israel and even then, the statements come from one man, Netanyahu, statements that have been repudiated by both military and intelligence officials in his own government.

Is it the Obama administration or rogue forces in the US military, in the region, that are pushing for war with Iran? Are these commanders in service of Israel? Though some have been removed, how many are still “out there?”

ROGUE MILITARY THEORY

A few weeks ago, one of the top US commanders in the region was found “unfit” and physically “removed” from an aircraft carrier that was actively approaching Iranian waters.

Admiral Gaouette is one of several high ranking US military officers in the region to be summarily dismissed. General Petraeus, CIA Director, resigned this week though the inane ramblings of the conspiratorial “pop culture press” has yet to discover ties to the increasingly heated situation in the Persian Gulf.

Are the other conspiracies being “sold” to the public to hide one far more serious? In America, a top official can be destroyed for loyalty and service as much as for acts of irresponsibility.

Petraeus could well be the victim of his own 2010 report, 82 pages, citing Israel’s destabilizing policies in the region as an impediment to US goals.

Within hours after Petraeus resigns, Israel begins shelling Syria. Is this a coincidence?

AMERICA AT WAR, ANOTHER “SECRET WAR,” ILLEGAL AS USUAL

The pre-election exercise in the Persian Gulf by three US carrier battle groups was clearly a political ploy to defuse Willard Romney’s election potential in Florida, where the Jewish vote can decide an election.

America risks war over such things.

Romney had already taken a beating there among Cuban voters when FBI officials leaked his secret visits to Cuba for “romantic trysts” along with multiple meetings with Castro.

With the election over and Netanyahu’s surrogate, Romney, a loser in a “landslide” election, with the removal of so many military and intelligence officials, and rumors indicate many more are “in the works,” is there a problem within the “chain of command” in the United States?

POLITICAL TIMING, A TIME FOR SETTLEMENT

There must be a dividing line drawn, those things done for political and electoral expediency by the Obama administration and post-election acts which should reflect real American policy.

Nothing done during an election cycle in the United States is “real.” As pointed out by columnist Kevin Barrett and others, Netanyahu’s enmity toward the reelected US president was made clear during the election. Never has a foreign leader, especially one from such a small entity, ever been so directly and illegally involved in American politics.

During the entire election, venom spewed from Tel Aviv, but so did up to one billion dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

INSTABILITY AT HOME

A reasonable analysis of what is being seen in the US is clear. America faces an insurrection driven by extremist groups within the financial community who are actively working with religious cults that have penetrated the officer corps through America’s discredited service academies.

Many American military, some retired but some actively serving, have displayed clear signs of treasonous disloyalty and the willingness to, not only overthrow the civilian government but to stage terror attacks inside the United States in concert with foreign intelligence agencies.

This is not conjecture. One such potential attack may well have happened yesterday, perhaps a “test run.” The report of this wild conspiracy theory came to me from a retired Air Force pilot who flew nuclear-armed F-111’s for a living.

He indicated that the mysterious explosions that took place in Indiana yesterday do not pass the “sniff test.” The retired Air Force colonel responds below, one with top security clearances and a career of special operations behind him.

This is his assessment:

There are two people dead and they will not release their names so far.

The damage area looks like about 4-6 500 pounders, MK-82 Low Drag hard bombs or two 2,000 pounders.

The wife also said that there is a Russian neighborhood and the Arab neighborhood earlier mentioned very near to the explosion. If the Feds release a bombshell, I will email you back. (Redacted)

Has the long warned of “drone war” inside America actually begun? One legitimate expert thinks so.

.

fasten seat belt


.

[Ibrahim]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

Pure BS, of course. Part of warfare is to cause maximum civilian casualties in an effort to have them revolt and change governments. Call it "Shock & Awe" or whatever, warfare by it's nature demands making babies bleed.

This is often said in these discussion, but clearly false for a number of reasons.

1. From a purely historical point we can cite wars that were conspicuous for their lack of civilian casualties relative to military casualties. In the First World War, Seven Years War, and Napoleonic Wars, just to give three famous examples, the goal was to destroy the opposing field army and thus force a surrender and settlement. While there were of course civilian casualties in all of those conflicts they were almost never intentional and always minimal relative to military casualties. The ratio in WW1 is particularly vast, and despite the horrors of trench life itself it was actually the most "civilized" war in European history.

2. Civilian casualties, and the subsequent alienation of the civilian population, contradicts the strategy of counterinsurgency warfare and benefits the groups that the "war on terror" is purported to be combating. It is, by definition, counterproductive. So even if it could be argued that civilian casualties have a military utility, they certainly do not in this type of warfare. If you fight this war by killing children then you fight to lose rather than win, and the lives lost are doubly senseless and indefensible.

3. The statement that civilian casualties are somehow either unavoidable or necessary is often (though not to say Nonc is doing so here) employed as a kind of lazy "biological imperative" kind of argument. Man will fight wars, and wars will kill children, and that's just human nature so no need to do anything as provincial and naive as give a lavender or try to prevent it. Let's all just sip our bocks and smile at this fallen world. It is, for those actually making said argument, complete moral abdication.

1/ I'm pretty sure more civilians died than combatants in the Seven Years war - and the Napoleonic war. Mass rape and slaughter when sacking towns and cities, starvation in the wake of armies living off the land, etc. were commonplace. As to WWI it certainly wasn't for want of trying, but it's difficult to pull off a Dresden with a dozen Zeppelins or a few squadrons of balsa wood biplanes farting and banging their way across the sky with their negligible payloads.

Are we talking about knock-on casualties rather than direct kills now? Because if so the total for the "war on terror" starts to get into the high six figures, or more depending of which counts you believe.

I'll give you technical limitations in WW1, but tech is part of it. If somebody hadn't thought of attaching a missile to a toy plane we wouldn't be having this discussion.

2/ There's a strategy? That said, counterinsurgency by counter terror often works. It's how the NWFP was managed as a last resort between the wars.

Its not working in this case. Not in Afghanistan or Waziristan, and certainly not in Yemen. Not that I would personally approve of the methodology either way, but it would be something.

3/ They're pretty difficult to avoid though - especially if the people you're trying to kill live, work, train and fight amongst a civilian population. It's essentially impossible to avoid if the only practical way you have of attacking them is from the air.

Who are these people being attacked, and on what basis/evidence? We have no idea, they are just killing who they like an assuring us that it was a valid target with unavoidable collateral damage.

[Sparky]

I never quiet understood the immoral phrase "minimal innocent casualities". What does that mean anyway??

Pure BS, of course. Part of warfare is to cause maximum civilian casualties in an effort to have them revolt and change governments. Call it "Shock & Awe" or whatever, warfare by it's nature demands making babies bleed.

This is often said in these discussion, but clearly false for a number of reasons.

1. From a purely historical point we can cite wars that were conspicuous for their lack of civilian casualties relative to military casualties. In the First World War, Seven Years War, and Napoleonic Wars, just to give three famous examples, the goal was to destroy the opposing field army and thus force a surrender and settlement. While there were of course civilian casualties in all of those conflicts they were almost never intentional and always minimal relative to military casualties. The ratio in WW1 is particularly vast, and despite the horrors of trench life itself it was actually the most "civilized" war in European history.

2. Civilian casualties, and the subsequent alienation of the civilian population, contradicts the strategy of counterinsurgency warfare and benefits the groups that the "war on terror" is purported to be combating. It is, by definition, counterproductive. So even if it could be argued that civilian casualties have a military utility, they certainly do not in this type of warfare. If you fight this war by killing children then you fight to lose rather than win, and the lives lost are doubly senseless and indefensible.

3. The statement that civilian casualties are somehow either unavoidable or necessary is often (though not to say Nonc is doing so here) employed as a kind of lazy "biological imperative" kind of argument. Man will fight wars, and wars will kill children, and that's just human nature so no need to do anything as provincial and naive as give a lavender or try to prevent it. Let's all just sip our bocks and smile at this fallen world. It is, for those actually making said argument, complete moral abdication.

1/ I'm pretty sure more civilians died than combatants in the Seven Years war - and the Napoleonic war. Mass rape and slaughter when sacking towns and cities, starvation in the wake of armies living off the land, etc. were commonplace. As to WWI it certainly wasn't for want of trying, but it's difficult to pull off a Dresden with a dozen Zeppelins or a few squadrons of balsa wood biplanes farting and banging their way across the sky with their negligible payloads.

Are we talking about knock-on casualties rather than direct kills now? Because if so the total for the "war on terror" starts to get into the high six figures, or more depending of which counts you believe.

I'll give you technical limitations in WW1, but tech is part of it. If somebody hadn't thought of attaching a missile to a toy plane we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I'm sure that's true, but I'm thinking of deliberate slaughter:
http://www.academia.edu/227604/_It_Stil ... eonic_Wars

If Boney had had drones I'm pretty sure he'd have peppered everything seen on a mule from one end of Spain to the other.

2/ There's a strategy? That said, counterinsurgency by counter terror often works. It's how the NWFP was managed as a last resort between the wars.

Its not working in this case. Not in Afghanistan or Waziristan, and certainly not in Yemen. Not that I would personally approve of the methodology either way, but it would be something.

Yeah. There would have to be a plan for it to work, wouldn't there? Instead we're treated to a series of mile-high drive-bys.

3/ They're pretty difficult to avoid though - especially if the people you're trying to kill live, work, train and fight amongst a civilian population. It's essentially impossible to avoid if the only practical way you have of attacking them is from the air.

Who are these people being attacked, and on what basis/evidence? We have no idea, they are just killing who they like an assuring us that it was a valid target with unavoidable collateral damage.

Well, there's the thing. Don't blame the drones though, man. It wouldn't make much difference if there was a guy in the plane. He'd just be looking at a little monitor in his cockpit at 30000 feet, much like the dude at drone central, at the behest of the same bosses who tell the press that they've struck a valid target.

[Ibrahim]

So I'm talking about the wrong problem or there's no problem or what?

[Sparky]

So I'm talking about the wrong problem or there's no problem or what?

There are certainly problems, all of which stem from engaging in ill conceived military action in the first place.

I'm also a little confused by your notion of "civilised" warfare. It sounds so rare and hypothetical. I can't really understand how it would work when one is, say, trying to disrupt and destroy the command and control, training and supply infrastructure of insurgents in N. Pakistan using the only practical tool available - air power.

[Ibrahim]

So I'm talking about the wrong problem or there's no problem or what?

There are certainly problems, all of which stem from engaging in ill conceived military action in the first place.

I'm also a little confused by your notion of "civilised" warfare. It sounds so rare and hypothetical.

Just so, thus the quotes. My idea of "civilized" in this context is that the fighting and killing is confined to military targets and harms civilians as little as possible or not at all.
What we need is neo-hoplite warfare. JSOC and the Taliban can each pick 500 guys, kit them out with bronze, form them into a phalanx and bash into one another in the middle of a plain somewhere. No civilians dead, no reluctant conscripts, no rapes or corpse-pissing or torture. Just manly men stabbing each other on a sunny afternoon. On CNN of course.

I can't really understand how it would work when one is, say, trying to disrupt and destroy the command and control, training and supply infrastructure of insurgents in N. Pakistan using the only practical tool available - air power.

Well the practical question becomes "is this even working?" All the evidence suggests that it is not, and the entire Central Asian campaign since 2001 has been a gigantic boom to terrorism, extremism, and the various groups we collectively call "Taliban" specifically. Same story in Yemen, where everybody in the know is begging the US to stop strengthening AQAP with their drone campaign.


So I guess for me there are two problems: murdering children with a joystick, and doing so to no real purpose. I get that the average American doesn't care about the first one, you think the second one might have some appeal.

[Hoosiernorm]

How about soccer in a mine field? It would provide enough randomness to the casualties to make it almost fair.

It would also make soccer a lot more popular here in America.

[Sparky]

So I'm talking about the wrong problem or there's no problem or what?

There are certainly problems, all of which stem from engaging in ill conceived military action in the first place.

I'm also a little confused by your notion of "civilised" warfare. It sounds so rare and hypothetical.

Just so, thus the quotes. My idea of "civilized" in this context is that the fighting and killing is confined to military targets and harms civilians as little as possible or not at all.
What we need is neo-hoplite warfare. JSOC and the Taliban can each pick 500 guys, kit them out with bronze, form them into a phalanx and bash into one another in the middle of a plain somewhere. No civilians dead, no reluctant conscripts, no rapes or corpse-pissing or torture. Just manly men stabbing each other on a sunny afternoon. On CNN of course.

Now we're talking - though it's just a matter of time before it ends in a farce with both sides hiding in wooden horses on the plain in front of a rowdy crowd, half of whom would be booing or beseeching the gods with burnt offerings whilst the other half yammer for medical assistance for the sprained wrists and fractures caused by their enormous bronze hands.

I can't really understand how it would work when one is, say, trying to disrupt and destroy the command and control, training and supply infrastructure of insurgents in N. Pakistan using the only practical tool available - air power.

Well the practical question becomes "is this even working?" All the evidence suggests that it is not, and the entire Central Asian campaign since 2001 has been a gigantic boom to terrorism, extremism, and the various groups we collectively call "Taliban" specifically. Same story in Yemen, where everybody in the know is begging the US to stop strengthening AQAP with their drone campaign.


So I guess for me there are two problems: murdering children with a joystick, and doing so to no real purpose. I get that the average American doesn't care about the first one, you think the second one might have some appeal.

Would you object if it was working?

[Ibrahim]

So I'm talking about the wrong problem or there's no problem or what?

There are certainly problems, all of which stem from engaging in ill conceived military action in the first place.

I'm also a little confused by your notion of "civilised" warfare. It sounds so rare and hypothetical.

Just so, thus the quotes. My idea of "civilized" in this context is that the fighting and killing is confined to military targets and harms civilians as little as possible or not at all.
What we need is neo-hoplite warfare. JSOC and the Taliban can each pick 500 guys, kit them out with bronze, form them into a phalanx and bash into one another in the middle of a plain somewhere. No civilians dead, no reluctant conscripts, no rapes or corpse-pissing or torture. Just manly men stabbing each other on a sunny afternoon. On CNN of course.

Now we're talking - though it's just a matter of time before it ends in a farce with both sides hiding in wooden horses on the plain in front of a rowdy crowd, half of whom would be booing or beseeching the gods with burnt offerings whilst the other half yammer for medical assistance for the sprained wrists and fractures caused by their enormous bronze hands.

I can't really understand how it would work when one is, say, trying to disrupt and destroy the command and control, training and supply infrastructure of insurgents in N. Pakistan using the only practical tool available - air power.

Well the practical question becomes "is this even working?" All the evidence suggests that it is not, and the entire Central Asian campaign since 2001 has been a gigantic boom to terrorism, extremism, and the various groups we collectively call "Taliban" specifically. Same story in Yemen, where everybody in the know is begging the US to stop strengthening AQAP with their drone campaign.


So I guess for me there are two problems: murdering children with a joystick, and doing so to no real purpose. I get that the average American doesn't care about the first one, you think the second one might have some appeal.

Would you object if it was working?

I personally would, yes. I meant that to be clear from my previous post.

[Torchwood]

The War Nerd on Obama's wars

Why he has been an effective C in C and gets no credit for it.

[Ibrahim]

The War Nerd on Obama's wars

Why he has been an effective C in C and gets no credit for it.

The "War Nerd" is aptly named. He loves war and thinks SEAL Team Six and drones are cool as all get out. Practically speaking most of what Obama is doing is pointless at best and counterproductive at worst, and the only thing he's done that I liked (assisting in the revolution in Libya) everybody else seems to think is the worst thing that ever happened in history.

So I'm not sure where anybody would get the idea that he's particularly effective or ineffective. Most of the "War Nerd's" meat head blogger tone seems to be about the partisan political divide and the need for Obama to "sell" wars better, combined with the self-defeating argument that he couldn't sell them to half the country anyway.

Plus this guy thinks Yemen is going well.

I'll never know why this durian caught on. A million blogs from soldier-sniffers sound exactly like this.

[monster_gardener]

I find the drone attacks, and the U.S. military ME and African activity in general evil and deplorable but the drone attacks appear to be what we used to call a "workout within a race" at the horse track. Testing them and getting the personnel to use them under live conditions is the objective. The actual targets are simply a matter of convenience.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Nonc.

Actually while drones do worry me, they may be the culmination of a long tradition of Ranged weapons beginning with the Rocks we Killer Apes used Against Killer Cats......

The Cats still think it unfair that we Apes and Monkey can Do Damage at a Distance instead of Coming to blows at Close Quarters with Teeth and Claws.......

They fear and resent it highly and I ain't Lion oops I mean lying........

Remembering the outrage of Don Quixote that a great Caballero/Knight could be felled at a distance by a Low Class Common Soldier with a gun or a long bow.....

For me, the long bow and later the gun were weapons that both made those of uz Down in the Black Gang useful to our Lords and Officers and Made them Mind their Manners a little.....

The difference between being an English Yeoman and a French Peasant.........

But Drones Do Worry Me.........

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/uni ... 63901.html

The U.N. wants to use drones, the French news agency Agence France-Presse reports. "The United Nations wants to use drones for the first time to monitor fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwanda has been accused of aiding rebels," says the report, quoting U.N. officials.

fAktV72_nnE

[Nonc Hilaire]

. . .

Remembering the outrage of Don Quixote that a great Caballero/Knight could be felled at a distance by a Low Class Common Soldier with a gun or a long bow.....

For me, the long bow and later the gun were weapons that both made those of uz Down in the Black Gang useful to our Lords and Officers and Made them Mind their Manners a little.....

I do see possibilities in drones removing the romantic "Warrior Ethic" claptrap. Does not make them ethical, of course, but it could be a beneficial yet unintended consequence.

[Ibrahim]

I do see possibilities in drones removing the romantic "Warrior Ethic" claptrap. Does not make them ethical, of course, but it could be a beneficial yet unintended consequence.

That technology violates traditional "warrior ethics" is certainly true, but of course we turned our backs on that problem long ago. Its a settled issue in the history of civilization, warriors are gone and we now have paid technologists/killers, be it a musket or some computerized weapons system. Drone warfare just takes it to another level beyond what missile weaponry or modern guerrilla warfare have already reached.

The point which so enraged the "war nerd" was simply one he misunderstood. Drone tactics make Westerners look weak to those people who still cling to traditional macho ethics. So e.g. some Yemeni tribesman whose death the "war nerd" thinks is so cool and hilarious was operating under the assumption that the US used drones because they were wimps and too scared to fight him man to man in the desert with rifles. I don't agree with either position.

[noddy]

nerds are cool and machos are marginalized jocks - in that context the weedy guy that uses the power of their minds and creativity to beat the nasty macho's is really no change at all, just a movement of power symbols.

plus the fact that the much of the modern west has largely moved its legacy macho needs to computer games and drones is just the same thing but with more realistic bad guy behaviours... the ai on the enemies is better.

the west wont get its beneficial insights into drones until they are flying down suburban streets and taking out the undesirables based on facial recognition and phone identities - which wont be long now, they are doing the polish and refinement to mainstream acceptable levels of failure in the middle east... which is what nonc said above i believe.

just what exactly is the acceptable ratio of swat teams shooting up the wrong house versus gangster drug dens again ?

twitch.

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world ... ok.html?hp

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

[monster_gardener]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world ... ok.html?hp

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

Thank you VERY Much for your post, HoosierNorm.

From the link:

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

How well we sometimes think we "know" each other & our enemies but may not know ourselves or forget what we do know.........

Sometimes we may be right....... Especially about our enemies.......

But Best to have a Baseline.......

That we are mostly Depraved Sinful Foolish Egotistical Chaos Monkey Killer Ape Pigs

And remember it........

And remember that the Baseline is just the Beginning......

We are very clever at finding ways to be bad........