If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-ground-our-fleet/282373/

by gabriel34 • 13 years ago

480 346 13 years ago

theatlantic.com

badman_ting2• 13 years ago

It's okay when we do it.

wil4214• 13 years ago

Its not illegal when we do it. We are the government. Do as we say not as we act.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

Lets be honest here, if Bush were doing this the press and every damn Democrat in Congress would be up in arms and demanding halts and immediate investigations.

so a better title would be, If Bush were President we'd ground out fleet.

saucetenuto• 13 years ago

If only. All the links I can find are behind paywalls, but do a search for "drone wedding" from 2004 to 2007, and then become sad.

Kequc• 13 years ago

Bush continually did much more heinous shit on a constant almost daily basis than just a semi-accidental strike somewhere.

So no, not really. Republicans are the ones halting congress in every single way and doing what you just suggested. It is the entire point of the party. Regressivism is extremely easy, just fight against any changes and if someone ever actually manages to change anything your platform is to change it back. Republicans and Democrats do not do the same thing, I am so tired of hearing about this.

mikeash9• 13 years ago

Really? My recollection of most of the Bush administration was that the Democrats were complete and total doormats for him. They basically laid out the red carpet for him to invade Iraq, which was far worse and far less justified than drone strikes.

badman_ting2• 13 years ago

Nahh, that's righty persectution-complex stuff.

josefresco7• 13 years ago

Weddings and funerals are actually targeted specifically because those events are two that even highly sought-after targets attend despite the dangers. Also, the subsequent funerals for those killed at the targeted wedding would then be targeted as well.

You can either agree or disagree, but if you feel the target is accurate based on your intelligence the venue doesn't really matter IMHO. Civilians will be killed no matter if it's a wedding, funeral or some other random day.

Would we have cared if bin Laden was attending a wedding?

gaius6• 13 years ago

Yes.

Have you forgotten that we are supposed to be the good guys?

josefresco7• 13 years ago

We (speaking as a US citizen) are not the good guys any more than we're the bad guys, we're just guys doing our best to protect the interests of the country as a whole. Just as one day the Japanese were the bad guys and are now one of our closest ally's, morality and the high ground change as time and circumstances change.

mattgibson• 13 years ago

If Bin Laden had been attending a wedding, then ground troops would have been sent in, who would have made sure they killed him and left unarmed civilians alone. We know this, because that's what actually happened when they found him.

The question is why is this not being done in the same way in other cases, given that random killings of civilians are perhaps the best terrorist recruitment tool ever devised.

markyc2• 13 years ago

The question is why is this not being done in the same way in other cases, given that random killings of civilians are perhaps the best terrorist recruitment tool ever devised.

perhaps you've answered your own question?

officemonkey• 13 years ago

Because a Seal team is worth the risk of capturing bin Laden. A Seal team is not worth the risk of raiding some wedding.

josefresco7• 13 years ago

That's what happened the last time we found him (we tried airstrikes before) and it wasn't because we were worried about killing civilians, it's because we needed the job done, verified, more-so than your average middle-ranking terrorist.

Also, not an easy task to fly a Navy SEAL team around the world constantly to do operations like this. Not only does it risk their lives, but sometimes it's not even possible to get there physically or in enough time.

Also, somehow the terrorist were able to recruit before the US and it's allies "retaliated" with drone strikes. Sort of a chicken-and-egg problem but it would be crazy to blame terrorism on the killing of civilians that only took place.. because of actions of the terrorists.

EliRivers• 13 years ago

Blackstone's formulation is one of the most important parts of English and American common law. At the point where it becomes acceptable and legal to knowingly murder innocent people in order to punish the guilty, all legitimacy is forfeit.

This, of course, has already happened.

josefresco7• 13 years ago

If only our enemies operated on the same "presumption of innocence" as we (the US) claim to.

stonemetal2• 13 years ago

What if we had bombed the heck out of them 20 min before\after the wedding? I understand you got to get them when you can, but it also seems like they could be a little nicer about it. They could let the wedding draw them out of hiding then start surveillance, and follow them back to their hiding place rather than start shooting immediately.

josefresco7• 13 years ago

Sounds like they kind of already did this. Most news reports I read describe the target being hit on convoys heading to a wedding, I haven't heard of many that happen at the wedding site itself. Why don't we assume that all safeguards to protect civilians were ignored when planning and executing a strike?

coldtea2• 13 years ago

Weddings and funerals are actually targeted specifically because those events are two that even highly sought-after targets attend despite the dangers.

Or that's the BS excuse they say to support their actions.

Not to mention, that's not an excuse in the first place. Only someone brainwashed by constant BS spin would accept that.

If those "suspected targets" (hit in a sovereign country which is not at war with anyone, without due process and UN approval, not given a chance to surrender, and not doing anything at that specific time) gathered at kindergardens would it be OK to hit there? How are weddings any different?

josefresco7• 13 years ago

I expected down votes so I'm cool with the negative karma. However my point was not to agree with the tactic, only to point out that it wasn't like we (the US) hit a wedding convey by accident but rather it was targeted because it's (weddings/funerals) exploited by terrorists to travel and keep their movements concealed.

For some this would make the actions worse, however I appreciate the debate as it's worth having. Should we care about our enemies traditions and cultural beliefs when waging war?

walshemj4• 13 years ago

But America isn't a failed state with a UN task force in place and it is not common practice to take large amounts of weapons to a wedding.

This is a ASB (alien space bat) type of argument as used in many a sea-lion argument "obviously Hitler could have invaded the UK" (only if the ASB's destroyed the royal navy from orbit)

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Not all that surpising. As was made clear during the Snowden leaks the USG doesn't consider human beings who aren't US citizens to have the same rights as Americans.

wil4214• 13 years ago

This is what I find the most troubling. I used to think the US was trying to still spread democracy worldwide but apparently internally they feel if you are foreign that means there arent any laws as to what we can and cant do.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

Democracy is grown (locally), not "spread" by foreign intervention. The US didn't become a democracy itself by getting invaded. If anything, it was the opposite, it threw away the external power controlling it.

ixnu• 13 years ago

What happens when a nation's revolutionary document becomes counterrevolutionary?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

iaskwhy• 13 years ago

That's something important for you to realise. The next step is to understand that the US government didn't change much lately meaning that idea you had in your mind was never true since at least the end of the second world war. Then you get to wonder how you got to believe that in the first place.

xradionut• 13 years ago

It's not all US citizens. Only well-connected, wealthy US citizens have rights. The rest of the US citizens are semi-disposable like the rest of the world.

Codhisattva5• 13 years ago

There are two Americas now; the first consists of those who perform surveillance and the second are the suspects.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

Here's something that will blow your mind. EVERY country considers its own citizens to have more rights than other countries. Otherwise we wouldn't have millions of people dying every year by preventable means. And there wouldn't be widespread despisement of refugees.

dictum2• 13 years ago

Just because other countries do something deplorable, doesn't mean the United States should do it too.

grecy2• 13 years ago

Lots of countries are passive in that they don't go out of their way to help people in other countries in the ways you suggest.

The US is active in that it's actively treating citizens of other countries as second class.

darkarmani• 13 years ago

USG doesn't consider human beings who aren't US citizens to have the same rights as Americans.

Of course? Ask Chinese citizens about their right to free speech.

wil4214• 13 years ago

I dont know which is tarnishing the American image worse the use of drones strikes or the Snowden leaks. What happens when our allies start to even say enough is enough.

knieveltech• 13 years ago

Ideally? A round of war crimes trials for the sociopaths responsible for this nightmare.

CalRobert• 13 years ago

They get droned into submission.

cyphax• 13 years ago

As someone not from the US, I despise what the NSA does (warrantless spying), but it's not even in the same league as these drone strikes. Not even close.

I don't understand why the rest of the world is OK with this. I really don't.

pmr_• 13 years ago

Exactly this. I'm not a US citizen and I can not remember the last time someone spoke about the United States as something we should emulate or as a country we should support. Political panels with topics like "Are the US still our allies?" are popping up around me and I personally wouldn't affirm that statement. There is an overall feeling of meddling in other people's affairs associated with most US actions nowadays.

Germany already has declined participating in the attack on Iraq, but still provides plenty of passive (possibly also some active, even though that would be illegal) support (logistics, allowing air bases) and most people still perceive it as the right action.

It is hard to find recent surveys on the topic and especially Transatlantic Trends seems to refuse to ask the question if Europe should continue to support US military actions further and focuses mainly on the NATO (neither drone strikes nor the Iraq War are NATO operations).

forktheif2• 13 years ago

It continues to baffle me why the fact they're drones matter in the slightest.

They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sitting in the aircraft they're flying.

Manned aircraft have killed huge groups of innocent civilians more than once, but apparently that's fine because the pilot was sitting in the aircraft.

gaius6• 13 years ago

It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.

forktheif2• 13 years ago

Millions of dead from WW2 strategic bombing, disagree with you.

Blaque• 13 years ago

Easier, and cheaper.

blisterpeanuts3• 13 years ago

It's not a question of "ease". Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial).

Some drones are operated by a division of the CIA and are out of military control, however. This is probably the most worrisome aspect of the program.

However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program. It's zero risk for American pilots, and everyone likes to read about more dead terrorists with their morning coffee. More points to whoever's in charge.

Governments like Yemen's will also support it because #1 it does their dirty work for them, and #2 they can blame an evil foreign power. Win-win.

tootie• 13 years ago

That would imply we people have trouble killing on a battlefield which would seem to be patently false.

ollysb• 13 years ago

I think the point is that the drone strikes are happening in places where the US isn't even at war. They're just bombing any place they feel like and apparently not having a pilot sitting there seems to make it ok, or something...

flavor8• 13 years ago

That's not new either. The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq throughout the 90s despite not being "at war".

zdean• 13 years ago

I would think that it matters because the drones make killing more efficient (both in terms of financial costs and life-risk to the pilot). In other words, if manned aircraft were killing huge groups of innocents on their own, it would stand to reason that drones open the floodgates to exacerbating that problem.

zacinbusiness7• 13 years ago

That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).

throwaway20484• 13 years ago

I'm glad we can argue semantics while the world burns.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

It is so annoying when the hyperbole grows to the point of ridiculousness.

You can argue about force projection all you want but the US is not trying to engage in some warfare campaign against the entire planet.

Killah9113• 13 years ago

It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat. If a pilot is in the plane you're risking an American life, not to mention a very expensive piece of equipment with numerous safety features etc.

Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying?

A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...

threeseed4• 13 years ago

Quite sure that the person who makes the decision whether to deploy air to ground weaponry isn't the one sitting in the cockpit.

wtvanhest• 13 years ago

In fairness, US owned and piloted planes are very, very, very unlikely to be shot down. There is probably more risk of a crash landing on an aircraft carrier than any of those countries shooting one down. There is essentially no American Life risk.

Someone should have seen this coming a long time ago and called them multistage-guided-missiles or some other name.

The term 'Drone' is basically used as link bait and confuses the argument... If we replace 'drone' with 'stealth bomber', is it now OK to bomb a wedding?

golergka3• 13 years ago

you've got a much itchier trigger finger now

I doubt that. It would seem that a pilot sitting in a cockpit would be a lot more trigger-happy.

Both pilots can make two types of mistake: don't recognize an enemy for what he is, or do the same thing with a civilian. If plane pilot mistakes an enemy for something else and said enemy succeeds in his efforts, the pilot will lose his place and may be his life. The drone pilot, on the other hand, will only lose the drone, which is also cheaper then a plane. But the cost of the other mistake is the same for the both of them.

So, it seems that plane pilot has actually much more reason to shoot on targets he's not sure about.

golergka3• 13 years ago

Also,

If you've played MW3

doesn't have "civilians" as a game mechanic (unlike Counter-Strike or a lot of arcade shooting games, for example), so the comparison doesn't really work.

ars_technician3• 13 years ago

Fighter pilots now have very little risk of being shot down. The only real difference is the cost like you mentioned.

PavlovsCat2• 13 years ago

At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...

But that's the thing: in my mind more human soldiers means less potential for outright slaughtering of civilians. So more drones might end up raising the body count. in the long run; not for US soldiers, but for people you'd miss just as much if you'd happen to be born as their friends.

MetaCosm2• 13 years ago

It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat.

Said about literally EVERY SINGLE change in warfare over the centuries. I am talking all the way back to armor and catapults to gunpowder based munitions, the blitzkrieg, rockets, planes, bombs, and of course nuclear weapons.

The thing is -- it is absolutely true, but it is always true, and therefore meaningless.

Lets look at the Gulf War for example -- the US lost 113 soldiers to the enemy (an addition 35 to friendly fire)... they killed "at least" 20,000 -- some estimates go as high as 35,000+(and an additional 3,500+ civilians). The asymmetry of modern warfare is nothing new, pointing to drones as some line in the sand is just, IMHO, silliness.

mcherm• 13 years ago

To be specific, the impossibility of retaliation is what differentiates drone attacks from direct human attacks. The reason it is significant is exactly what the article points out. As the article says:

Our policy persists because we put little value on the lives of foreign innocents.

Suppose, for argument's sake, that this is true: that America puts nearly no value on the lives of foreigners in the pursuit of foreign policy. Nevertheless, attacking so indiscriminately that weddings are targeted unknowingly would be unthinkable because of the tiny chance of retaliation. But with no chance of retaliation it becomes possible for depraved indifference to foreign lives to influence policy.

Now, you may not agree that American foreign policy is depraved in this fashion, but the REASON that many feel that drone strikes are morally different is because if it WAS depraved in this fashion, the use of drones would be different from the use of other military force.

kevando2• 13 years ago

This is an interesting point... I think it matters - possibly for a different reason. If you imagine from the ground: a terrorist car bomb VS a drone strike, they're virtually indistinguishable. Both are explosions without warning by the 'enemy.' It's almost a joke that people condemn terrorist acts and respond in kind.

ars_technician3• 13 years ago

Almost, but not quite. The difference would be that the US isn't killing civilians just for the sake of killing civilians to cause terror.

morsch• 13 years ago

Who says that it does matter? I think the reaction would have been very similar if a manned aircraft had bombed the wedding party. Do you have any recent instances of mass civilian casualties resulting from a "conventional" bomb strike that got ignored?

kvinnako• 13 years ago

Would you think we can apply this same argument when it happens to be an american wedding?? Hell no. drones or no drones, we will definitely have some policy changes and definitely some heads will roll.

danielweber• 13 years ago

If the United States had firebombed Denver instead of Dresden, yes, the US government would have made sure it didn't happen again.

wcummings2• 13 years ago

When we declare war on Yemen you'll be right. This is more akin to the bombings in Cambodia.

pekk2• 13 years ago

The use of manned bombers has occurred in "police actions" over and over

brudgers• 13 years ago

Right. Dead is dead. And hitting a wedding was a consequence of an ongoing policy carried over from the previous administration.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-tal...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wed...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r...

mathattack• 13 years ago

I think this is the point. Because we're not putting our own lives at risk, we're actually getting more callous about it. This seems paradoxical, but I believe it's true.

lmkg• 13 years ago

In a word, commoditization.

Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time.

Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up.

Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized.

Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.

nickff8• 13 years ago

Like, a week in service per day of flight time.

When you read hours of maintenance per flight hour, you should remember that much of the maintenance is done on parts which are being rebuilt off the airframe.

Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly.

Please provide a citation for this claim, as it is not self evident. Many claim that the increased loiter time of UAVs allow for better timing and targeting, and there has been video evidence of this. You may be correct, but you still bear the burden of evidence when you make this claim.

putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky.

This is untrue, as the USA has had B1 and B52 bombers continuously in flight over Afghanistan for weeks on end at many points in the war, to provide air support for ground forces. Most strike aircraft and bombers are also much faster than the UAVs.

MartinCron• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, people had similar debates about the morality of using manned aircraft when airplanes were first invented.

headgasket• 13 years ago

we've always been at war with terror

sethbannon• 13 years ago

The way America is conducting the war on terror is both self-defeating and morally repugnant.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

It's very easy to not agree with the way the US government handles these sort of things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles.

It might seem nationalistic to some but it reminds me of a quote from "A Few Good Men" -

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

throwaway20484• 13 years ago

saves whose lives, and why should a few of "our side" be more valuable than many of the "bad guys" (which happen to include entire families including innocent women and children)?

It should be noted as well that the entire premise of the film wasn't "the ends justify the means" but rather the exact opposite. People can do great evil while believing that every action they take is fundamentally correct and for some kind of nebulous greater good.

lbebber• 13 years ago

Eh, saves lives inside, disregards lives outside. I know it's a complicated matter, but that reasoning can't be used to justify atrocities such as this one.

pavlov• 13 years ago

It's very easy to not agree with the way the North Korean government handles many things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing it for shits and giggles. After all, they have been at war for over 60 years now. It must be obvious to any patriotic Korean that the danger posed by American imperialists who still occupy the southern half of the country is ever-present and growing. Someone must guard those walls.

weland2• 13 years ago

It's very easy to put it in terms of "Yeah, some civilian deaths are a necessary evil which we burden our conscience with. But we do it because we have to protect our civilians", but I think it's intellectually lazy.

Because the next question that should inevitably spring up is ok, ok, but why the fuck would someone in Yemen want to kill US citizens?

Once you start answering that question, the question of morality in drone strikes becomes a lot more difficult to answer.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

Feel good nothings like this that ignore both the power and profit of the defense industry are hopelessly naive.

I also don't see how blowing away teenagers in an Afghan village who have no idea what 9/11 is, is some kind of macho statement against oppression. Pretty soon, if not already, we'll be killing young people born after 9/11. Not sure if this is the big win the GOP 'defense first' voter thinks it is. Sounds like yet another failure in policy, much like the profitable war on drugs.

When we give the nation state carte blanche on both a moral and budgetary level, expect nothing but endless abuses of power. There are 150,000 Iraqi graves that wouldn't have existed if Bush was honest. Lets not forget that. If there's a global bad guy in Nicholson's speech people should defend against, its probably the US military, and I say this as a US citizen.

zzzeek• 13 years ago

you understand that Nicholson's character in that movie was intended to illustrate the hubris and dysfunction of militarism, right? Sorkin would be amazed (actually, probably not) to see that speech being used as an actual argument...the intention was the opposite.

mikeash9• 13 years ago

"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

Wait, I do? Did they pass a law or something?

Crito• 13 years ago

"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

I am very confident that I do not have to do that. How are you going to make me?

yodsanklai3• 13 years ago

"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

Maybe you shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt on those horrible things they are doing in your name.

Those numerous killing of civilians should require at least some questioning.

alexeisadeski36• 13 years ago

Not a whole lot of choice - you want the US to just let the targets run around? Send a strike team in each time? Drop a real bomb or cruise missile (even more civilian casualties - those weapons are larger)?

mikeash9• 13 years ago

What would your answer be if the "targets", instead of mysterious and scary terrorists in foreign lands, were regular boring murderers living in the US?

gsnedders• 13 years ago

You know what? Yes. I do. Arrest them, try them, when they reach US soil and pose a risk to the security of the US. Until then, they aren't your problem.

rdtsc4• 13 years ago

It is profitable.

If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.

So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about "the Great Satan". And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can't help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to.

American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they've built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much).

The bottom line, I don't even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all "mistakes". The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.

frogpelt• 13 years ago

Let me guess, you think there's a cure for cancer but the doctors are withholding it and Exxon Mobil bought the patent for a combustion engine that would achieve 100+ mpg.

Any industry that is built on addressing problems that people naturally have is going to generate lots of revenue. It has been proven that people naturally fight with each other. People fight over race, religion, sports, politics, and territory. Nations do the same thing.

If you think it would end terrorism by killing all current terrorists and if you think it would even be possible, I think you're misguided.

cscurmudgeon3• 13 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real, if you have it. (note: I am not taking sides.)

mattlutze• 13 years ago

I will continue to refuse to believe American military personnel choose to strike otherwise-collateral civilian targets.

You're talking about moral humans, here. Our soldiers/airmen/marines/sailors are not soulless automatons, nor are officers that develop strategy and provide direction. Nor would I consider their pay to be either incentive or motivation.

mseebach2• 13 years ago

Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.

You forgot the one group of people who could actually stop this, literally overnight: Politicians.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

You realize that the fiction of a coherent "Military Industrial Complex" has been debunked several times right? One by the General Accounting Office showed that military contractors actually had higher profits in peacetime than wartime because they got money for 'research' and didn't have to actually produce any product.

meowface• 13 years ago

I think you are greatly overestimating the US military's competence.

walshemj4• 13 years ago

Possibly the first but its not like the USA is using indiscriminate area bombing like they did in Vietnam or the British using poison gas pre ww2 in Iraq.

hawleyal• 13 years ago

War cannot be conducted any other way.

d235• 13 years ago

The article's premise is silly -- pure and simple. If you believe war is justified in some cases, then there will be casualties. If a wedding had been hit in Germany toward the beginning of WWII, would we say US involvement should have ceased?

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

Borat said it best: "We support your war of terror!"

Zarathust• 13 years ago

What you say is absolutely true. But another large problem here is that the targeted countries' governments are ok with those strikes for the most part. Have you noticed that those strikes only happen in poor countries with little means of retaliation?

A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There are also no strikes in Iran or Syria.

Yemen government is very complicit to those strikes and it should at be mentioned in such articles.

mcv3• 13 years ago

The fact that a foreign government is okay with killing random civilians, still doesn't mean it's okay for the US to come over and actually do it.

peterashford5• 13 years ago

Killing innocents from the air indiscriminately is pretty much terrorism by any definition of the word. The problem with this approach is that it turns moderates into people who hate you. If the someone bombed my family, I would hate them. It's pretty much human nature.

alexeisadeski36• 13 years ago

Morally repugnant? I can see the case being made even if I don't agree with it.

But self-defeating? Not sure I can even see a plausible argument for that one.

zacinbusiness7• 13 years ago

It's not about stopping terrorists, it's about sending a message.

markyc2• 13 years ago

which message is that?

"come and get us, it's getting too quiet around here and people are starting to question their leaders"?

waxjar2• 13 years ago

What would that message be? "We are barbaric so you better watch out"?

zacinbusiness7• 13 years ago

No, the message is "This is how much we treat innocent civilians who have done nothing wrong, so stop to think about how we treat people that we actually dislike."

It's nothing more than a form of terrorism, primarily against the American people.

kubiiii• 13 years ago

Which is pretty polite if you cannot attend the ceremony. Gift will follow in a couple of days (using an amazon drone).

belorn2• 13 years ago

Five of those killed were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda, but the remainder were unconnected with the militancy, Yemeni security officials said."
The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.

So 5 people were of military-age and male? Given a size of 22 people, it sound reasonable. I wonder how many were children.

dopamean4• 13 years ago

The business of considering all military-age males as combatants is really not all that surprising to me. I live in New York and here, in some neighborhoods, the police consider all minority males 14-40 (I really have no idea of the top end) to be suspected criminals worthy of a random search while simply walking down the street. This is the way we treat people. We deem one group of people to be a threat and they immediately lose their rights.

Edit: I seemed to have forgotten that it is black and hispanic males in New York who are stopped.

jellicle• 13 years ago

Not white males.

khafra2• 13 years ago

We deem one group of people to be a threat

A minority male between 14 and 40 is more likely to mug someone than a 70 year old caucasian woman; that's not something made up by racist conservatives. But if there's such a thing as rights, they must apply even to higher-threat demographics.

One interesting exercise is thinking about base rates of mugging, and likelihood ratios for mugging, and discerning your own personal "4th amendment suspension" breaking point for each percentage.

MaxGabriel• 13 years ago

The first quote is from Yemeni officials, while the second is describing the Obama administration's policies.

grecy2• 13 years ago

The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.

How fascinating.

Obviously we need to re-count the number killed during the 9/11 attacks - surely all military-age males killed were combatants - they were just fighting in a war they didn't know had started yet.

locusm• 13 years ago

I wonder if the blow back from this in 10 years will be worse than the propping up of despots and dictators for the last 50.

robobro• 13 years ago

We might pull out of other countries, but we'd pull over our own for sure then. "Well, we can't keep other countries safe... so we'll have to keep our own."

rikacomet• 13 years ago

Terrorism is a idea, it cannot be killed with bullets or drones.

The Terrorist we know today are a pretty much related to those people who were supported by American Intelligence agencies in the mid70-80s, against the soviet. The "Barbarians" among those folk were given advanced weapons, that America possessed, those weapons might be outdated, and America may have a upper hand, but that is only a matter of time. Sadly, this has became a chicken and egg problem.

The circle of REVENGE is a continuous one, you kill more people innocent or not, you sprout a new rebellion. They will eventually hurt you back, today or tomorrow. and the process will continue.. presidents, prime ministers would come and go by.

The only way to stop this is to actually STOP. Stop interference in ways like espoinage, drone strikes, killing of "Suspected" militants.. never given any right to appear before court.. everything. The root problem is the so called intelligence that does more than just collect information about "suspected" enemies.

Someone has to rise up and stop it. for both sides, perhaps it escape us humans sometimes, the very fact "those who are hurt are the ones who can forgive or take revenge." Thats about there it is to this.

Really sad to hear about that nameless bride/groom & family. May they R.I.P.

nraynaud• 13 years ago

And just to make drive a little bit the point home: there are quite a few people suspected of terrorism in the US, like one French spy who blew the rainbow warrior, quite a few people from Viña del Mar, US citizen who passed through ESMA in Bs As, probably a few assassins from the mossad etc. And if a pressure cooker is a weapon of mass destruction, I'm pretty sure a hellfire is, too.

ck2• 13 years ago

I think it is time for a world-wide ban on armed drones, period.

Just like we have international treaties for other horrible things like mustard gas.

Do all the reconnaissance you can get away with. But I don't want a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a trailer somewhere in the US, pulling a trigger to kill unquantifiable targets anywhere in the world. Or any other country doing it to anyone else for that matter.

ars_technician3• 13 years ago

Why does it matter where the operator is? How about a ban on killing unquantifiable targets?

Modern fighter pilots can be just as overworked and have about the same risk of dying from being shot at.

mikeash9• 13 years ago

I don't really understand the outrage over drones specifically. This constant bombing of foreign countries is terrible, but I don't understand why the "drones" part of it is also considered bad. Why is a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a trailer somewhere in the US worse than a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a cockpit of an F-16?

kitsune_3• 13 years ago

As mentioned in other comments in this thread:

From a political point of view, drones are much more attractive than traditional methods. You won't see the corpses of dead Americans being dragged through Mogadishu with drones. You won't see captured pilots being paraded in front of a camera with drones.

foobarqux2• 13 years ago

Cheaper, no risk to personnel, personnel don't need to leave the country and families, less public opposition in general means that drone strikes are far more likely to be used compared with conventional attacks even though logically there isn't much of an ethical difference (except for a breach of Geneva conventions by having drone operators stay in civilian areas) given that a strike occurs.

walshemj4• 13 years ago

As opposed to a wired fighter jock inbound in a fast mover who has only one pass before he bingo's and might have .5 seconds to decide if he should abort or not - having less pressure will result in better decisions.

daigoba66• 13 years ago

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the concept of banning armed droned, but I don't think the operators actually get to pick and choose the targets. I don't think the operators have much discretion at all. Those orders, especially orders to fire, likely come from a commanding officer. The same probably applies to fighter and bomber pilots too, though they may have more discretion when it comes to defending the aircraft.

altcognito• 13 years ago

No, we'd insist that every wedding have a security drone to protect that wedding from other drones. When you ground drones, then only the terrorists have drones.

senthilnayagam• 13 years ago

friends and family of the innocent killed won't be friendly with americans ever

rokhayakebe• 13 years ago

You can bet that someone in that group is already making plans for revenge, 10 years from now, when everyone has completely forgotten this incident ever happened.

jds375• 13 years ago

So true. It's hard to justify the United States calling themselves the "police of the world" when their actions are so hypocritical sometimes.

danbruc• 13 years ago

Now go and explain the difference between this incident and a terror attack without using the fact the the former has been carried out by a state while the later has been carried out by civilians.

Goladus• 13 years ago

A terror attack would have deliberately targeted the wedding convoy because it's a soft target and because of the fear it would inspire among civilian non-combatants.

belorn2• 13 years ago

It is articles like this that asks the reader to pierce media bias, and take a honest look at a conflict.

If an Qaeda militant had gone to US city and bombed a wedding where they suspected harbored US officer, how would that play out? 22 injured, 17 killed by Qaeda militants in boston. Terrorists mistakenly targeted a wedding, trying to go after 5 US officer.

If there were no propaganda in media, surely this would play out identical as this drone strike. No world leaders expressing their condemnation of the attacks, condolences, and solidarity. Military strikes kills huge groups of innocent civilians all the times in wars, so nothing to write about.

pesenti• 13 years ago

I don't understand why commenters don't actually discuss Obama's argument. He has the following options:

- Do nothing

- Use drones

- Use conventional weapons which, he argues, would have more collateral damage

- Put troops on the ground and be perceived as an invader.

So either you should argue that these are not the options or you should argue that he did not pick the right one.

scarmig• 13 years ago

You make do nothing sound like it's a bad thing.

Is it really so terrible not to bomb wedding parties?

mythealias• 13 years ago

Lets see our options are 1: do nothing, 2: involve the military through use of force. I wonder what happened to plain old diplomacy. I guess that is too slow and seems ineffective. So is training the locals to fight their war. After all they all live in dark ages and only know how to use stones and sticks to fight. But we cannot put forward these options to general public so we are left with just two.

Even then I feel that more than Obama or any other politicians or military official it is the general public to blame. The public wants democracy but does not understand that democracy does not work out of the box. One needs to get involved to make it work properly. It is a good system but needs fixes. The problem with democracy is it treats my stupidity same as your intelligence and my apathy same as your concern. And as long as people like me hold majority there is not much others can do.

michaelt• 13 years ago

He has loads of options other than that. Use some imagination.

- Employ soft power / carrots instead of sticks such as foreign aid and literacy education.

- Take actions that make people hate you less instead of more.

- Equip/arrange for the locals or neighbours to do your dirty work.

- Get a UN vote saying whatever you want to do.

- Arm the government, conditional on a transition to democracy over the course of ten years.

- Employ targeted bombings only on terrorist training camps, not on weddings.

- Convince, bribe or threaten local cultural and religious leaders to guide their followers away from whatever you want them away from.

- Divide the country along race, religious or class grounds and install a minority government that serves your interests.

- Place bounties on the heads of people you want killed and increase the payout until the free market takes care of things for you.

- Just let them take care of their own internal political issues and wait for the terrorists to reach the US or one of its allies before whacking them.

- Increase employment rates and workloads so people are too busy/tired to devote attention to trying to destroy america.

- Free bread / circuses / fast food / TV.

- Drugs in the water supply.

- Nuke the whole place as a warning to others.

- Adopt a realistic foreign policy that admits the inevitability of civilian deaths, occasional bad apples engaging in torture and executing prisoners etc. and just agree to monitor and set realistic targets regarding the number of civilian deaths etc.

- Do something low impact and ineffective and let the next president deal with it.

ape4• 13 years ago

How about subdrones. The existing drones launch small microdrones which fly down to a possible target and get a better look. Is there a bride, etc?

barrkel• 13 years ago

Killing innocent people at weddings does far more to create people who want to destroy the US than it does to reduce their numbers. Just think about it for a few seconds. Nothing short of complete genocide would be an effective actual implementation of this "justification".

FWIW, the correct response to terrorism is to do nothing militarily, and treat it as a crime problem with an intelligence aspect nationally. People in faraway lands have little capability to do the US any harm.

dragonwriter5• 13 years ago

Killing innocent people at weddings does far more to create people who want to destroy the US than it does to reduce their numbers.

Its hard to have a permanent war if you actually keep reducing the number of enemies.

bambax• 13 years ago

Doing nothing is a very good option, esp. versus sending bombs on weddings where maybe, according to "intelligence reports" (which should rather be called "reports from retards") a couple of "suspected terrorists" could be present.

Putting troops on the ground would be worse than doing nothing, but still better, less cowardly and maybe less error-prone than bombing from drones.

Using conventional weapons would actually be the worst option.

So out of (his own set of) four, he picked the 3rd worse.

squozzer• 13 years ago

I wouldn't count on it. The US govt has enough media lapdogs who would shout down any calls to ground the fleet. I predict we won't have much longer to wait before the hypothesis is tested.

rthomas6• 13 years ago

I strongly agree with this article, but is this the kind of article that belongs on HN? Is this political article really part of some new trend or otherwise noteworthy, or is it just an editorial that most of us agree with?

davidw• 13 years ago

It doesn't, according to the guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

There's nothing intellectually gratifying about this story - it's an "outrage story".

That doesn't mean it's not important, just that it's not HN material.

rayiner• 13 years ago

Does anyone believe that, if not for our lethal drone program, the United States would've sent the Air Force or ground troops to fire on this wedding party?

The premise of the article is non-sensical. If we didn't have drones, would the airforce be bombing targets in Yemen? Undoubtedly.

njharman• 13 years ago

A U.S. drone mistakenly targeted

Drones aren't autonomous. They don't target anything. Weapons officers do.

Besides being plain wrong and bad reporting, dehumanizing (attributing it on the drone) shifts responsibility and makes it seem like problem is solvable by "fixing" drone or by grounding them.

fit2rule• 13 years ago

"Let us hit you with this stick, because if we start hitting you with the bigger stick, all the other ants will come teaming out of the woodwork and then there will be a real war going on".

This kind of argument just makes me want to violently throw up. There is absolutely no honor in using a remote drone to kill people from a distance. It is among the most despicable things a human being can do to another human being.

How about we make America take a really honorable position and say this to our American military friends: you are not allowed to kill anyone unless you've attempted, directly, to communicate with them - in their language - and discussed the reasons for their hostility directly, person to person. Only after this has occurred, and all other efforts to resolve the persons aggression, is the right to kill granted.

I'm sure we'd see all those fascist US military personnel take another look at their chosen career path if they did, indeed, have to use the mighty power of American technology, to communicate and make direct peace with the targetted individuals instead of decapitate them, fill them with lead, murder their children, injure and maim their relatives, disfigure the strangers who were simply in the area, at the wrong time ..

peter303• 13 years ago

Sure. I believe it was a wedding too. Thats what the other side always says to obtain sympathy.

clarkmoody• 13 years ago

I seem to recall that the Obama Administration was going to restore America's image with the rest of the world -- the image that was presumably destroyed by W.

mikeyouse• 13 years ago

Yeah, that actually happened though;

http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=joemyx...

Codhisattva5• 13 years ago

s/American/Christian/

kyleblarson• 13 years ago

Can a Nobel peace prize be rescinded?

holograham3• 13 years ago

A great book to read on the decline of violence in the world: The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker.

The Hacker News community should like it as it focuses on the stats and facts rather than anecdotal stories the media slings.

The main thesis: Violence (in nearly every form) has been on a precipitous decline in the modern era. War deaths (and civilian causalities) are at all time lows and still declining.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...

pantalaimon4• 13 years ago

Now would you say there would be more or less violence if the US stopped killing people on foreign soil?

holograham3• 13 years ago

Loaded question for sure :)

You're asking me if the US's geopolitical and military operations currently are increasing or decreasing total violence in the world. A tremendously complex question to answer accurately.

My answer (opinion) is this: On the whole I think the US has contributed to a decline in total violence in the world. Not to say there haven't been bad decisions along the way. Advances in military tactics and foreign aid policies have been aimed to decreased violence. As for an exact figure, that is impossible to know.

How many future wars were averted when the US won the nuclear arms race? How many civilian casualties are minimized with each advance in precision bombing over the last ~75 years of military aviation? How many wars have been averted through foreign political action (aid, coups, treaties, etc)?

Obviously those are unmeasurable in each discrete instance but the book I referenced above provides some aggregate statistics which, when correlated the US's rise as a world power, show a huge decline in worldwide violence (and not just in 1st world countries).

ivanca• 13 years ago

A weeding bus was destroyed in a terrorist attack and many innocent civilians were killed!

Wait... no, it was done by the USA military so it's not terrorism, totally cool, nothing to see, carry on.

thebiglebrewski2• 13 years ago

Ok, although I fundamentally tend to disagree with much of American military policy - if there were people on that bus who had ties to Al Qaeda and american intelligence knew this...and those people were to cause further destruction if they weren't killed...then I just don't know.

I kind of imagine this like all of those movies about drug cartels where these incredibly rich families are leading semi-normal lives and then during a normal family event like a wedding, are attacked by the rival drug cartel. It sucks and looks really bad, but if you got involved in something illegal like Al Qaeda or the drug trade on a massive scale...didn't you kind of bring it on yourself?

Either way, more evidence needs to be shown for these kinds of attacks and why they are necessary?

peterkelly2• 13 years ago

They could have waited until after the wedding, when the Al Qaeda suspects were apart from the non-suspects, avoiding the risk of collateral damage. Just a thought.

thebiglebrewski2• 13 years ago

Maybe, maybe not. We don't have all the intelligence...I guess we just have to hope that was the best call given the circumstances. Not saying that I'm happy that this happened though

jl6• 13 years ago

If you are an American taxpayer, you can withdraw your support by giving away to charity all of your income above your personal tax allowance.

baddox7• 13 years ago

I don't see why the author thinks we would ground our fleet. Police routinely and deliberately kill innocent people in the US, and we don't "ground our police force."

acjohnson553• 13 years ago

We might, if the police stormed a wedding and killed over a dozen people.

baddox7• 13 years ago

I think you're being naive about what police in the US can do with very little resistance or punishment (especially internal). Remember things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

Rogerh91• 13 years ago

The day that we realize that all human beings are worthy of the same fundamental protections we take for granted, and act on this impulse, will be a great one indeed.

MattyRad• 13 years ago

Would anybody be surprised, even sympathetic, if the families of the deceased joined Al Qaeda as a direct result of this? Americans killed their friends and family on a sacred day, and nothing would be more appropriate than seeing they pay for it. Such an atrocity is almost comical when you think that the reason it occurred was to stop Al Qaeda, ends up bolstering it. It's appalling on so many levels.

acjohnson553• 13 years ago

This certainly seems to be the way it plays out in countless ethnic and sectarian conflicts. I suppose my government is just arrogant enough to believe it's always going to be faster to the drone trigger than the terrorists are at reaching their objectives. I don't think it's a sustainable approach.

yodsanklai3• 13 years ago

Concretely, at our level, what could be done to prevent those things from happening? voting doesn't seem to be working (esp. for those of us who aren't american).

The problem is that our democracies are broken. Most people aren't well informed or unconcerned, and those who are don't have enough weight to make a difference.

Maybe we could find a way to make our democracies functioning better via public discussion on the internet.

We could imagine some kind of big political forum where logical reasoning would be enforced. Critical thinking would be encouraged. Rhetoric would be banned. Facts would be checked, politician would confront the public and each other on long and deep debates. Decisions would be taken collectively...

GFischer• 13 years ago

It's a fine dream. I've read about a few politics startup attempts but they disappeared off the face of the earth quickly (though I did see some guys asking for funding recently). It would be nice if some could share their stories, where they failed and what they did well.

Some people will always have more clout than others. Even here on Hacker News you have people with (I believe deservedly) more weight than others.

swamp40• 13 years ago

The anti-American rants on here are disgusting.

Nobody's calling this a mistake except the media.

5 Al Qaeda dead, 5-10 people sitting next to an Al Qaeda member also dead.

Intelligence even pointed out which 4 cars out of the 11 car convoy contained the Al Qaeda members.

If you think there is no war going on over there, the 52 civilians slaughtered by Al Qaeda on Dec. 5 in a Sana'a hospital would disagree with you.

Check out how Al Qaeda operates here at the 56 second mark, where one of them casually lobs a grenade into a crowd of civilians during the Dec. 5 attack: http://www.guns.com/2013/12/14/graphic-cctv-footage-militant...

The US drone strike was a direct response to the Dec. 5 massacre by Al Qaeda.

peterashford5• 13 years ago

What's your talley of innocent people killed in drone strikes and as "collateral damage" by the US. Do the people affected by those atrocities have the the right to act "in direct response" against the US? If this revenge motive justifies the US, does it not also justify the terrorists?

josephlord• 13 years ago

America's new moral standard? Better than Al Qaeda.

We should be striving for much better standards if the west is to have any moral authority. Not as bad as Russia, China or Al Qaeda is not good enough.

Then there are practical issues that indiscriminate attacks are liable to create as many enemies as they kill as sons, brothers and fathers are bereaved and decide to join the fight.

[Edit: I'm British not American and I'm not saying Britain is any better but I really hate the "we aren't as bad as something really bad" as a defence for either country's actions. We should do better].

If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

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