A depressing thread

[Elok]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/every-person-is-afraid-of-the-drones-the-strikes-effect-on-life-in-pakistan/262814/

Just thought I'd share this with you. SUMMARY: Afghan and Pakistani peasants now live in constant fear thanks to drone strikes, which routinely destroy their houses if they don't maim or kill them. The constant nervous tension is screwing up their heads, so some of them freak out at every little noise or start hallucinating. The very first drone strike took off a (noncombatant) teenage boy's legs and one of his eyes. All this to take out an endless succession of "second-in commands." Presumptively this is morally defensible somehow, I'm just not seeing the angle.

Remember, Americans: you can vote for the guy who basically invented this strategy, or for the guy who says it's too wimpy.

[Guynemer]

America, **** YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother ****ing day yeah,
America, **** YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, **** YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, **** YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

**** YEAH!

[DinoDoc]

America, **** YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother ****ing day yeah,
America, **** YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, **** YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, **** YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

**** YEAH!

Regarding the OP though, I would assume this is what happens when you turn what should have been a punitive response to Afghanistan into an absurd exercise in nation building.

[Kidlicious]

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...kistan/262814/

Just thought I'd share this with you. SUMMARY: Afghan and Pakistani peasants now live in constant fear thanks to drone strikes, which routinely destroy their houses if they don't maim or kill them. The constant nervous tension is screwing up their heads, so some of them freak out at every little noise or start hallucinating. The very first drone strike took off a (noncombatant) teenage boy's legs and one of his eyes. All this to take out an endless succession of "second-in commands." Presumptively this is morally defensible somehow, I'm just not seeing the angle.

Remember, Americans: you can vote for the guy who basically invented this strategy, or for the guy who says it's too wimpy.

Or you can not vote.

[Elok]

Way ahead of you, Kid. The Electoral College already makes that pointless.

Regarding the OP though, I would assume this is what happens when you turn what should have been a punitive response to Afghanistan into an absurd exercise in nation building.

This is what happens when you try to drag the white man's burden into the 21st century, yes. You get a long, long war the public has little stomach for, so we eliminate high costs and casualties for our side with a high-tech fix. And lots and lots of dead brown people who seldom make the news.

[Dinner]

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...kistan/262814/

Just thought I'd share this with you. SUMMARY: Afghan and Pakistani peasants now live in constant fear thanks to drone strikes, which routinely destroy their houses if they don't maim or kill them. The constant nervous tension is screwing up their heads, so some of them freak out at every little noise or start hallucinating. The very first drone strike took off a (noncombatant) teenage boy's legs and one of his eyes. All this to take out an endless succession of "second-in commands." Presumptively this is morally defensible somehow, I'm just not seeing the angle.

Remember, Americans: you can vote for the guy who basically invented this strategy, or for the guy who says it's too wimpy.

The entire area remains one of the largest producers of terrorists in the world if not the largest, they kill and maim people all the time as well so it is a two way street, and I honestly don't feel any more sorry for them than I do Germans who got bombed for supporting Nazi policies. You reap what you sow so they can come and get a hell fire missile.

BTW the missile is very aptly named.

[DaShi]

Regarding the OP though, I would assume this is what happens when you turn what should have been a punitive response to Afghanistan into an absurd exercise in nation building.

Why did you wait 10 years to say this?

[Dinner]

A General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone firing a hellfire missile. Made with pride in San Diego.

[Elok]

I am a terrible human being.

Thanks for reminding us.

[Al B. Sure!]

That's ****ed up. We're trying to help them and do the right thing. We really are. The world is so hard sometimes.

[Dinner]

Snivel, snivel, boo hoo!

Fixed that for you.

[giblets]

That's ****ed up. We're trying to help them and do the right thing. We really are. The world is so hard sometimes.

The problem is that we think we are helping the rest of the world while we barely pay any attention to what goes on in the rest of the world unless it involves the use of Twitter and Facebook. Cable news outlets love Twitter.

[loinburger]

Presumptively this is morally defensible somehow, I'm just not seeing the angle.

It's easily defensible. Almost 3000 civilians died on 9/11, which awards us nearly 3000 morality-bucks to spend. Meanwhile, according to the report linked to by your article, less than a third of that number of Pakistani civilians has died from drone strikes between 2004 and Sep 2012, so we're allowed to kill at least another 2000 civilians before we start accruing a morality debt (in the unlikely case that our dead people aren't worth more than their dead people). At the same time, approximately 2000 combatants have been killed by the drone strikes, and this has saved over five trillion innocent (American) lives by preventing all of the terrorist activity the combatants were planning.

[regexcellent]

External strikes are the only way to carry out a counter-insurgency action. Our failure in Vietnam was due to lack of willingness to engage in attacks outside of South Vietnam; attacks in Cambodia and Laos were severely restricted and President Johnson stupidly believed that the Chinese weren't completely bluffing about starting World War III over North Vietnam if we invaded.

Insurgencies survive by their ability to receive aid and build up their forces outside of the area in which their opponent is willing to attack them. Generally this is done by camping out in adjacent sympathetic countries, or where there is minimal rule of law, and by making it difficult to discern combatant from civilian.

Observe the Malayan Emergency, where British, Australian, New Zealand, and CAF troops were successful in putting down a Communist insurgency due to a lack of ability for that insurgency to resupply, rearm, and regroup in neighboring countries.

Drone attacks are our way of striking at terrorist basis outside of our legal area of authority. Better yet, they never involve any American casualties.

In my view, civilian casualties are totally the fault of the Taliban the terrorists that hide out among civilians. They're the ones putting civilians at risk by using them as human shields, just like Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Therefore, not our fault.

[Dinner]

BTW even other writers at the Atlantic believe the study in the OP is bull dung.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/targeted-killing-pro-and-con-what-to-make-of-obamas-afghan-drone-policy/262862/

And there are absolutely serious downsides to these strikes (some of which have been explored here already). But the report then makes some questionable claims based on incomplete data, and seems to argue that the drone campaign should be paused or radically altered. Those arguments are not well supported. For starters, the sample size of the study is 130 people. In a country of 175 million, that is just not representative. 130 respondents isn't representative even of the 800,000 or so people in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the region of Pakistan where most drone strikes occur. Moreover, according to the report's methodology section, there is no indication of how many respondents were actual victims of drone strikes, since among those 130 they also interviewed "current and former Pakistani government officials, representatives from five major Pakistani political parties, subject matter experts, lawyers, medical professionals, development and humanitarian workers, members of civil society, academics, and journalists."

The Living Under Drones report has some serious bias issues.

The authors did not conduct interviews in the FATA, but Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Peshawar. The direct victims they interviewed were contacted initially by the non-profit advocacy group Foundation for Fundamental Rights, which is not a neutral observer (their explicit mission is to end the use of drones in Pakistan). The report relies on a database compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which relies on media accounts for most of its data. The authors discount the utility of relying on media accounts, since media in Pakistan rely on the Pakistani government for information (reporters are not allowed independent access to the FATA). Even accepting their description of the BIJ data as the most "reliable," these data are highly suspect.
The Living Under Drones report, in other words, has some serious bias issues. But that doesn't mean it should be discarded: the section on social and political blowback from drone strikes is well documented and in line with other research. In summary, the report declares that the use of drones in Pakistan is a campaign of terror, creating severe psychological trauma among residents of the FATA and creating a pervasive environment of fear.

Just a section of it quoted there but when even other liberals can smell the study's stench of bull crap then you know it is on shakey ground.