The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
The Terrorist U.S.A.
milomorris:
--- Quote from: oilgun on June 04, 2013, 08:49:48 pm ---Even if that's the case, it's still 1 Iranian invasion to the USA's 48 or so. You are a rogue country.
The US military has a killer drone program and so does the CIA and so does the Special Ops group. You guys are completely out of control. No trials, no due process, it's all blatant assassinations and fuck the so-called collateral damage. If a a "kill list target" is in a building and there are 34 other people there, then 35 people get killed. These are war crimes and it's absolutely disgusting that suppposedly intelligent people are defending these atrocities.
--- End quote ---
1. Iran is a tangent in this discussion. I still don't know what it is you were trying to say with regard to that graphic, and you posted it without any explanation. Depending on one's perspective, a viewer could easily come away with the message that Iran has been lucky that it has not needed to deploy bombings to defend itself against their enemies, while the US has had to deal with aggression from a wide variety of nations. Or that Iran has lost most (or all) of its armed conflicts, while the US has won most of theirs. Or that Iran's enemies were easily neutralized without bombing, while the enemies of the US required tougher military action. There are many ways to look at the graphic.
2. Drones are a superior fighting technology. They enable the US to neutralize enemies without putting the fine men and women of our armed forces in harm's way. Drones are also great tools that we use for dangerous surveillance, and intelligence-gathering operations.
3. You have offered your own, personal, standard of what constitutes terrorism, and I have offered a rebuttal. Now you accuse the US of committing war crimes with the drones. There are standards for war crimes which are based on law. Can you map any specific drone strikes to breaches of those laws? Or is that just another one of your gut feelings, or opinions?
milomorris:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 04, 2013, 10:09:24 pm ---I'm mostly with you, Gil. Let's say the definition of terrorists is that they target random innocent people, whereas the United States targets people we consider to be guilty -- but then, oops, take down a bunch of unequivocally innocent people along with them. The supposed moral difference centers around who, specifically, is targeted. But to the loved ones of dead innocents, I'm not sure the distinction is all that comforting.
--- End quote ---
That is indeed the dilemma of collateral damage.
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 04, 2013, 10:09:24 pm ---For that matter, I'm not comfortable with killing even the suspected guilty person without benefit of due process. I realize the rules for U.S. citizens are different than those applying to a suspect who is a non-citizen and a presumed enemy of the state. Yet the moral underpinnings still apply: Due process is designed to minimize the risk of mistakes and injustices.
--- End quote ---
I guess the question the becomes: how far does due process extend? Must we capture the soldiers of every enemy with whom we engage in combat, and then bring them to trial? We have captured many enemy combatants, but there are those that are beyond the range of capture. Can we let them go on operating until they are vulnerable enough for us to capture and prosecute?
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: milomorris on June 05, 2013, 12:19:53 am ---That is indeed the dilemma of collateral damage.
--- End quote ---
A dilemma is whether to get a turkey sandwich or a ham sandwich for lunch. Here we're talking about ending the lives of men, women and children. If one side calls murdering innocent civilians "collateral damage," and the other side calls it "terrorism," I would have to say that while I wouldn't quite pick either term I'd consider the latter a lot closer to worthy of the action's gravity.
--- Quote ---I guess the question the becomes: how far does due process extend? Must we capture the soldiers of every enemy with whom we engage in combat, and then bring them to trial? We have captured many enemy combatants, but there are those that are beyond the range of capture. Can we let them go on operating until they are vulnerable enough for us to capture and prosecute?
--- End quote ---
Seems like the distance between "letting them go on operating" and "capture and prosecute" can be measured in yards. If they're "beyond the range of capture," they're probably beyond the range of fire as well. If we're close enough to kill them, we're probably close enough to capture them and send them through the legal system.
milomorris:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 05, 2013, 12:57:23 am ---Here we're talking about ending the lives of men, women and children. If one side calls murdering innocent civilians "collateral damage," and the other side calls it "terrorism," I would have to say that while I wouldn't quite pick either term I'd consider the latter a lot closer to worthy of the action's gravity.
--- End quote ---
1. Murder has very specific legal parameters that I don't think are met in cases of drone attacks gone awry, or deaths resulting from bombing strategic targets.
2. I agree with you that the situations are grave, but that does not mean that they are any closer to terrorism than civilian deaths resulting from conventional/traditional forms of warfare.
Let's say you have a town in France in 194x. The Germans have occupied this town, and are heavily armed. The Americans march into the town and engage the Germans. Both sides are shooting, firing tanks, and lobbing mortar shells at each other. During the fray, stray bullets kill a few of the townspeople as they attempt to flee. A few more are killed when a mortar falls short of the American position and slams into an inn. Even more die when an American tank fires on a church where a German machine gunner is perched in the belfry, and some townspeople are hiding in the basement.
How do we classify what happened to all the dead Frenchmen? I would classify it as collateral damage.
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 05, 2013, 12:57:23 am ---Seems like the distance between "letting them go on operating" and "capture and prosecute" can be measured in yards. If they're "beyond the range of capture," they're probably beyond the range of fire as well. If we're close enough to kill them, we're probably close enough to capture them and send them through the legal system.
--- End quote ---
The reality is that the distance is not measured in yards. It is measured in terms of how dangerous a capture operation will be. It is measured in the ability to successfully carry out a capture operation without being detected by the target ahead of time. One of the great things about drones is that it extends the range of fire significantly beyond the range of capture.
oilgun:
--- Quote from: milomorris on June 05, 2013, 12:19:53 am ---That is indeed the dilemma of collateral damage.
I guess the question then becomes: how far does due process extend? Must we capture the soldiers of every enemy with whom we engage in combat, and then bring them to trial? We have captured many enemy combatants, but there are those that are beyond the range of capture. Can we let them go on operating until they are vulnerable enough for us to capture and prosecute?
--- End quote ---
Obviously due process has been completely abandoned so I don't understand your question of how far it should extend. Bin Laden (and I'm sure many other suspects assassinated by drones) could have easily been captured. Bin Laden was basically unarmed and unprotected. But, hey, I guess Obama prefers to kill them instead of torturing them. Especially since most people that were taken hostage by the US have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
On a dark humour note, did you know that the military geeks who operate the drones from a computer somewhere in the US, actually wear flight suits while at their terminals? It's surreal.
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