Posted on 04/16/2013 7:55:17 PM PDT by RC one
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on drones, British lawyer Ben Emmerson, recently visited Pakistan and told me: "The consequence of drone strikes has been to radicalize an entirely new generation."
The New America Foundation estimates that in Pakistan, drones have killed between 1,953 and 3,279 people since 2004 -- and that between 18% and 23% of them were not militants. The nonmilitant casualty rate was down to about 10% in 2012, the group says.
A study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that since 2004, Pakistan has had 365 drone strikes that have killed between 2,536 and 3,577 people -- including 411 to 884 civilians.
U.S. President Barack Obama has maintained the strikes are necessary for defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban, but others including Emmerson have their doubts.
He said: "Through the use of drones you may win the immediate battle you are waging against this particular faction or that particular faction ... but you are losing the war in the longer term."
Emmerson's legal insights will form the basis of his report to the U.N., expected later this year. For the United States, at least, it could make for a damning read.
Emmerson says the drone strikes are illegal under international law as they violate Pakistan's sovereignty and fly in the face of Pakistani government calls for them to desist -- and that they also legalize al Qaeda's fight against America.
He said: "If it is lawful for the U.S. to drone al Qaeda associates whereever they find them, then it is also lawful for al Qaeda to target U.S. military or infrastructure where ever (militants) find them."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Sounds like it knocked the fight out of about 4000.
How are drones different than an F-16 with a pilot? They use the same weapons.
/johnny
There's some logical, not-out-of-the-box thinking.
Suppositories.
I've already planted a Nuke Howto for Idiots out there. ;)
/johnny
Damn you!
We left them alone after we helped them beat the Russians. That got us 911. Just leaving them alone is not an option.
If I had gone out and murdered some innocent Americans, I would not expect them to spare me or anyone with me unless I was crazy and had no sense of responsibility.
Dunno
“We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators’ educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college. The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans.
The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.
Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated “masterminds” - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.
Like the view that poverty drives terrorism - a notion that countless studies have debunked - the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D.”
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/akhwaja/media/madrassa/NYTimes.htm
They're discovering blood feuds are a double-edged sword. Besides, we're not really engaging in a blood feud with them. They're being targeted because they're plotting terror attacks or in league with terrorists. The moment they stop, we stop.
It's also pretty normal to scream defiance while under attack. Japanese and German civilians did the same thing, but submitted meekly after their governments surrendered.
In practice, most Muslims appear to take their religion with a grain of salt. Think of how few suicide attackers have materialized despite the promise of a paradise filled with virgins just waiting to be deflowered. Don't get me wrong - they're bigoted troglodytes to a man, but it's clear that religious shibboleths are insufficient to overcome the universal fear of death.
4,000 what? terrorists? Doubtful. If anything, it incited 10 times as many people to become terrorists.
How are drones different than an F-16 with a pilot?
drones and F16s don't win wars. Resolve wins wars. When has killing your enemies women and children destroyed his resolve? When was the last time we won a war btw?
/johnny
I know that many terrorists are educated, especially in engineering. They are mostly Saudi, and not Taliban.
I am aware that muslims from many countries have gone to A-stan to fight the “Great Satan”. I can’t see them obtaining a nuke, let alone having a realistic platform for detonation. We have multiple countermeasures for just such an occasion.
I don’t think pin pricks are going to be any more helpful, not even an eternity of pin pricks.
I should add, I’m not downplaying the seriousness of terrorism. I just don’t believe they’ll get a nuke, nor do I believe we will nuke them.
If you bring your relatives into the field, then your relatives are acceptable collateral damage. They're angry at us not for inflicting collateral damage on them, but for defying the will of Allah, which is that we submit like the accursed infidels we are, hand over all our loot and join the long parade of slaves acquired via the jihad since the time of Muhammad.
Do you think we’re killing 9-11 terrorists still?
I lost a family because I went back to the war when 9/11 happened.
I'm still losing former brothers in arms, and men I've fed meals to, to that war.
Don't start none, won't be none.
All the Arab Street understands is force.
/johnny
I think we're plowing that soil where they originally grew from. That's good enough.
/johnny
Kill them until they stop attacking us. If that means there’s not a house cat left, I’m fine with that.
Boston could be about most anything.
Best to eschew muzzies domestically and internationally.
Terrible idea for arm them in Syria through that arms dealer Ben Gahzi.
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