Hm. So what stops US from targeted killings in China? Russia? Europe? Only the probable retaliation?
But drones only work when you have total air supremacy. Any halfway decent airforce can protect against the huge drones America fires missiles from.
How do we know this, again? The folks who have said this are legally bound not to say anything else. So they're not particularly believable. The Snowden revelations about PetroBras hacking somewhat (but not totally, admittedly) makes me very suspicious that network penetration goes on for petty economic gain. Why wouldn't that leak into drone strikes?
As for economic gain (not sure what is meant by "petty" economic gain), that has been a large part of the source of most international conflicts over the past few hundred years anyway. So that just sounds false.
Whatever the job description, you will get people gravitating to it who enjoy that kind of work. It's not controversial that cooks enjoy cooking, and programmer enjoy programming. And it's not unusual that they stay after hours and do some extra work just for fun. Why would you think jobs that involve killing and torture be any different?
You're appealing to extremes, which is a fallacy.
> Why would you think jobs that involve killing and torture be any different?
Why don't I think an exceptional job is an exception? It seems self evident to at least consider the possibility that killing people and cooking are fundamentally different.
If America is waging some secret economic war, it's been covered up extremely well. Spying is easily covered up. It's certainly possible. But that's hard to a reason to presume it's true.
Is that so? And what do you base that idea on? [ed: I see a more charitable reading of your statement is possible - I do not believe it is for petty economic gain no. More like deciding the future of the world economy and access to/control over natural resources.]
> (...) drones only work when you have total air supremacy. Any halfway decent airforce can protect against the huge drones America fires missiles from.
Very important point. Committing war crimes with drones in Yemen is like shooting fish in a barrel. Except of course for all the dead kids.
It's perhaps more interesting what kind of precedent this sets for inevitable proxy wars across the Middle East and Africa -- when cruise missiles, drones etc fired by Chinese/Russian contractors kill US/NATO contractors.
Bujać - to my, panowie szlachta...
O, my untutored simple friend,
mate from this land, or other land!
Know that the bells for these alarums
kings strike, with girls with ample charms,
Know it’s all hogwash, lies perverted,
And when these call out: ‘Shoulder arms!’
That somewhere from the ground oil spurted,
With dollars soiling the bright colours;
That in their banks there’s something rotten,
They smelled some moneybags, it looks,
Or cooked some scheme, the oily crooks,
For higher import tax for cotton.
Drum on the pavement with your gun!
Ours the blood, the oil is theirs!
And through each capital and town
Scream out, to guard your cash blood-won:
‘Tell us another, noble sirs!’.
http://www.antoranz.net/CURIOSA/ZBIOR7/C0710/20071014-QZM020...
The main thing that "stops" people from committing acts of war is that you cannot really keep it a secret for too long, and then you will have started a war. Pakistan is different, because while we wage war against their citizens, the central government (a) is only nominally in control of those areas, and (b) is given a metric ton of money each year by NATO, and they don't hate money. If they didn't have nukes, the war against Pakistan would be much more brazen (cf. Ukraine).
Moreover, from what I can find on-line, Pakistan seems to have just over a hundred warheads, most in the few dozen kiloton range, none exceeding half a megaton. They can't do any real damage with that. Maybe blow up a few cities in the US, at which point the rest of the world would turn them into a flat sheet of glass visible from orbit, and the only good thing that would come from that for anyone would be increased albedo of Earth helping combat the global warming. There is no MAD situation with Pakistan.
From a practical point of view, the alternative would be boots on the ground fighting that would guarantee vastly more innocents killed.