New whistleblower steps forward on drones
chelseamanning.org
chelseamanning.org
It could very well be true, intuitively I'd even say that yes drone strikes will have lower precision, I'm just saying that if this is the smoking gun - then it's not very convincing.
I think that exemplies exactly what is wrong here. The attitude that once we push a button and kill one Yemeni person, we won't feel a lot guilter if we kill 9. We are already killing, might as well "err on the side of caution" and kill more, just in case those are dangerous body guards there.
I don't know about operations procedures, but I would imagine it's standard procedure to take out any armed people in the vicinity of your target. With drones you can't really just stun them or whatever, so yeah you have to kill them. But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'. They're enemy combatants in all meanings of the concept, and 'fair game' (sorry again if that sounds callous again).
Furthermore, I think it's easy but simplistic to say 'all these soldiers are remorseless killing machines', neither for on-the-ground troops, drone operators or generals who take the high level decisions. I think all of them have thought and think much more and harder about what it means to kill a person, and the fact that most of them in some form or another assist in killing people 'by accident', than you or I do. I also think that for the vast majority of them, this is a major psychological burden, something that literally haunts them at night. Yet they do what they do despite that, and I don't think that the majority of them do it because they're sadistic subhumans who get off on the idea of making children in an already bad situation on the other side of the world orphans.
So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter what' rhetoric, we can come back to the real question: what is the effect of drone usage on warfare, and more to the point of the OP, is the implied claim that 90% of drone killings are of innocent civilians accurate? And how does that compare to more conventional tactics, e.g. airstrikes by regular bombers, mortar attacks, or 'plain' action-movie style Special Forces droppings who engage in closed quarters shootouts?
That is exactly what's happening when they act on incomplete intel, don't care to double check, (we just attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital last month). Yet we still pull the trigger.
So I think we'll find quite a few in the armed forced would and did approve those kind of actions.
> But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'.
You seem to be very sure of that. I am not.
> They're enemy combatants in all meanings of the concept, and 'fair game' (sorry again if that sounds callous again).
Now with a bit of pr gymnastics we can of course say "anyone near this person who may or may not be our target is an enemy combatant", and then we solve the problem and sleep better at night. And I think that is pretty much what's been happening. That is why I pointed out to your comment as an example of the problem.
> I think all of them have thought and think much more and harder about what it means to kill a person
Why would they? Their lives are not in danger. It is fun to do mission and pad stats. Are the people who blew up the Doctors Without Borders going to jail at least for manslaughter? Nope. So why stop?
> this is a major psychological burden, something that literally haunts them at night.
Unless there is a draft going on that I am not aware of, they got into it on their own will. Not sure what they expected? Travel, see the world? This is especially true for those signing up after the Iraq War. Still looking for WMDs I guess...
> do it because they're sadistic subhumans who get off on the idea of making children in an already bad situation on the other side of the world orphans.
Yet they keep making children o the other side of the world orphans. Do you know in Yemen what mothers tell their children will happen if they don't go to sleep on time or don't pick up their toys? They tell them "the drone will get you".
> So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter what' rhetoric,
That's not the argument here. But we can at least talk about why are even killing anyone in Yemen to start with, with drones or otherwise.
It is reasonable, however, to support drone strikes accepting the collateral damage but also insisting on a very high level of certainty, perhaps to the point of direct line of sight by someone trusted and nearby, that the target is where we think he is.
Granted this is a cherry-picked time period, this remains a damning revelation. As far as i have heard, even the most pessimistic grumbles have not suggested such numbers.
Edit: Now Chrome reports a redirect loop.
This isn't new news for most of us. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/
This might be surprising to a technologist who thinks that all information can be objective, but sometimes, when humans learn information, they are compelled by the morality that we evolved so long ago to protect one another and establish our species, not as a sequence of individuals but as cohesive units, to act based on that information, to change the world so that the information they have learned is possibly more or less true. It is not always possible to remain on the sidelines. Information can compel you to act, or at least, compel moral humans to act.
So, to many humans, this "activism" is not a blemish, but a point of pride. Try to understand why and you will grow towards humanity.
So it is good to see this happening.
I looked at a few parts from the link. Some parts I liked:
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... 75 percent of operations in the region were strikes, and noting that “kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material"...
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It looks like these drones besides being controvercial are also pretty crappy when it comes to gathering extra intelligence for other future missions.
Also interesting is this: targets seem to come from 33% CIA, 40% NSA SIGINT, 17% NSA partner (presumably other countries' intel). So a good chunk of info used to kill comes from other countries telling us who when and where, and we use that to blast away people.
One more interesting excerpt:
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Hellfire missiles—the explosives fired from drones—are not always fired at people. In fact, most drone strikes are aimed at phones. The SIM card provides a person’s location—when turned on, a phone can become a deadly proxy for the individual being hunted.
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Hmm, I remember Russians in Chechnya killed the first president of a Chechen republic that way. Intercepted his satphone signal and used that to target him.