Drone warfare riddled with tragic bloody errors

[Luddly Neddite]

Pilots Come Clean: Drone Warfare Is Riddled with Tragic, Bloody Errors | Alternet

Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their “pilots” remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring “face” of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any “collateral damage” or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus.

Imagine if those drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen (as well as the United States) had a human face all the time, so that we could understand what it was like to live constantly, in and out of those distant battle zones, with the specter of death. In addition to images of the "al-Qaeda" operatives who the White House wants us to believe are the sole targets of its drone campaigns, we would regularly see photos of innocent victims of drone attacks gathered by human rights groups from their relatives and neighbors. And what about the third group -- the military personnel whose lives revolve around killing fields so far away -- whose stories, in these years of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns, we’ve just about never heard?

After all, soldiers no longer set sail on ships to journey to distant battlefields for months at a time. Instead, every day, thousands of men and women sign onto their computers at desks on military bases in the continental United States and abroad where they spend hours glued to screens watching the daily lives of people often on the other side of the planet. Occasionally, they get an order from Washington to push a button and vaporize their subjects. It sounds just like -- and the comparison has been made often enough -- a video game, which can be switched off at the end of a shift, after which those pilots return home to families and everyday life.

For those who don't read Alternet because you believe its nothing but liberal articles as well as those who just want to read both sides of any given issue, this is well worth reading.

Yes, it started with Bush but it has continued with Obama. Its nothing like the wholesale carnage we saw in Iraq but still - we've got to support diplomatic efforts instead of supporting war mongers.

Obama is right not to let the right push us into another damn war.

 

[dilloduck]

Pilots Come Clean: Drone Warfare Is Riddled with Tragic, Bloody Errors | Alternet

Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their “pilots” remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring “face” of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any “collateral damage” or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus.

Imagine if those drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen (as well as the United States) had a human face all the time, so that we could understand what it was like to live constantly, in and out of those distant battle zones, with the specter of death. In addition to images of the "al-Qaeda" operatives who the White House wants us to believe are the sole targets of its drone campaigns, we would regularly see photos of innocent victims of drone attacks gathered by human rights groups from their relatives and neighbors. And what about the third group -- the military personnel whose lives revolve around killing fields so far away -- whose stories, in these years of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns, we’ve just about never heard?

After all, soldiers no longer set sail on ships to journey to distant battlefields for months at a time. Instead, every day, thousands of men and women sign onto their computers at desks on military bases in the continental United States and abroad where they spend hours glued to screens watching the daily lives of people often on the other side of the planet. Occasionally, they get an order from Washington to push a button and vaporize their subjects. It sounds just like -- and the comparison has been made often enough -- a video game, which can be switched off at the end of a shift, after which those pilots return home to families and everyday life.

For those who don't read Alternet because you believe its nothing but liberal articles as well as those who just want to read both sides of any given issue, this is well worth reading.

Yes, it started with Bush but it has continued with Obama. Its nothing like the wholesale carnage we saw in Iraq but still - we've got to support diplomatic efforts instead of supporting war mongers.

Obama is right not to let the right push us into another damn war.

Maybe it isn't like Iraq because it's an entirely different operation. Ya think ?

 

[Luddly Neddite]

"it" ?

Who are you wanting to bomb?

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Where's Code Pink? Where's Cindy Sheehan? Where are all the anti-war protests?

Oh, that's right. When a Democrat does it, it's okay.

 

[dilloduck]

Its nothing like the wholesale carnage

It's your words----what is not like Iraq ?--

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Its nothing like the wholesale carnage

It's your words----what is not like Iraq ?--

More killed by war, including Iraq, than by drones.



Our goal should be an end to killing in favor of diplomatic efforts.

IMO

 

[longly]

Its nothing like the wholesale carnage

It's your words----what is not like Iraq ?--

More killed by war, including Iraq, than by drones.



Our goal should be an end to killing in favor of diplomatic efforts.

IMO

What magic words would you use to get the Jihadist to stop fighting.

 

[whitehall]

Shit happens in warfare and collateral damage is inevitable (see Dresden and Heroshima) but when the US targets individuals for execution the rules are blurred. Who was responsible for signing the death warrant for an American citizen driving down the road in a foreign country with his son and his son's friend in the car? Some faceless bureaucrat?