The drone mentality

Salon.com ^ | 11-5-11 | By Glenn Greenwald

[Driftwood1]

In a New York Times Op-Ed, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama’s wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:

[Driftwood1]

This tragedy repeats itself over and over. After I linked to this Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter — by writing that “every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression” — I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism. As Jonathan Schwarz observed after the U.S. unveiled the dastardly Iranian plot to hire a failed used car salesman to kill America’s close friend, the Saudi Ambassador: “I’d bet the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. has closer ‘ties’ to Al Qaeda than 90% of the people we’ve killed with drones.”

[Admin Moderator]

Please correctly attribute the article to the proper author.

[Jeff Chandler]

Welcome to FreeRepublic.

[BerryDingle]

Drones are Obama’s new toy. It’s the only way his czars could get him to stop burning ants with his magnifying glass.

[abigkahuna]

Was the young Tariq was actually a card carrying member of some terrorist organization? I really have to re-think our governments actions here. On what basis do we decide to kill someone. Yeah, yeah. collateral damage and all of that, but really, just because we have the toy drones to play with from ten thousand miles away, do we really have to let loose with rockets everyday?

I am not wanting to sound like some sort of marxist peace-nik, but, at what point does all of this create some sort of blow-back?

War needs to be reserved for not only defense, but, in certain cases, to protect interests. What was our interest in Libya? What is our interest in Yemen, or Africa? Oil? Okay—fine, blood for oil. But I don’t see any relief at the pump—so that argument is shot to hell.

Quite frankly, I am getting pretty sick of the whole thing. Maybe we should look at Switzerland as a model of sticking to ourselves and let the rest of the world enter into whatever OWS tantrum they want.

I suppose I could make certain exceptions for certain cases. If we, as a nation want to support certain allies through defense treaties, then we should, robustly.

I am wandering too much here. But frankly, does being a conservative mean that I have to support every government killing action overseas, or can I protest rail against that? Who is a terrorist? Was it Tariq and everyother 16 year old that happens to live in the “wildlands” of Pakistan?

It gets to a point that we will be no better than others in history that decide that adolescents need to be killed, before they too, grow to be fighters. Am I making any sense here?

[Lysandru]

Much of this is lefty-drivel. But the essential moral point remains.

The escalation of the "drone war" is incredibly ironic. I have been giving it a lot of thought over the past week or two.

Remember all the Democratic claims that the overly militaristic approach of the Bush Adminstration was backfiring by creating resentment abroad? Remember the debates about treating terrorism like criminal activity?

And while the use of drones minimizes the risk to our personnel-- the people on the ground know who to blame, don't they? The "blowback" is real.

I am not saying that I necessarily oppose the drone war-- but we have to stop pretending that there aren't consequences to waging it.

And yes, I do believe that the widespread use of drones is making our policy makers trigger happy. Can we all remember how Clinton loved "cruise missile diplomacy?"

Politicians who don't realize that they can't engaged in endless deficit spending aren't likely to consider the unintended consequences of sending swarms of killer robots out to smite the bad guys whereever they might be...

At least the author is intellectually consistent.

[The_Media_never_lie]

The West seems to lack the willpower to deal with the Islamists. We seem to want to handle them with the legal system

[Calusa]

Among the group was Tariq Aziz, a quiet 16-year-old, who had come after he received a phone call from a lawyer in Islamabad offering him an opportunity to learn basic photography to help document these strikes. . . .

Who's zooming who? I don't care for our Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 'Predator in Chief'but I am happy to report that great strides have been made in the clinical treatment for knee jerk liberalism. Kumbaya,lo.

[gusty]

We don’t have the stones to deal with the jihad problem. A decade of bellyaching over Gitmo, waterboarding, killing Awlaki, drones, etc, etc. In the late 19th Century, the British had it right in how to deal with these people. When one of the tribes in the Northwest Frontier, the same people we are fighting now, acted up, they would march into their territory and lay waste to it. The Brits would burn their crops, destroy their villages, just lay waste to the whole area. Very quickly the Pashtun tribe surrendered and behaved themselves. I am against drones though, because we should be using B-52’s instead.

[The_Media_never_lie]

You nailed it. Was is not for pantywaistes.

We are engaged in the War on Testestosterone, with horrific effects.

[The_Media_never_lie]

War is not for the panty waists.