The Ethics of Combat Drones

Here is a music video to start out the discussion. Below, I reference an article about a man who is being targeted by drones. Innocent people are targeted, and innocent people are casualties of collateral damage.



Home is becoming a killing field
There is a crosshair locked on my heart
With no recourse
There is no one behind the wheel
Hellfire you're wiping me out

Killed by
Drones!
Killed by
Drones!
Killed by

You rule with lies and deceit and the world is on your side
You've got the CIA, babe
And all you've done is brutalize

Drones!

War, war just moved up a gear
I don't think I can handle the truth
I'm just a pawn, and we're all expendable
Incedentally electrically erased

By your drones!
Killed by drones!
Killed by

Killed by remote control
And the world is on your side
You've got reapers and hawks babe
And now I am radicalized

Drones!
Killed by

You rule with lies and deceit
And the world is on your side
You've got the CIA babe
And all you do is brutalize

You kill by remote control
And the world is on your side
You've got reapers and hawks babe
And now I am radicalized


Editing to add second half

a reply to: darkbake

The issue of drone warfare is an interesting one. Apparently, the CIA doesn't act carefully when using its drone warfare. There are reports of the CIA taking out entire families with hellfire missiles, or even hitting the wrong vehicle, with a lot of innocent civilian casualties - some even intentional collatoral damage. Should this be allowed to continue?

How come this is allowed to happen in the Middle East? Would it happen in the U.S.? Hopefully not, but still, this shows how we think of people in the middle-east as expendable, even if they are innocent. Here is an article that is written by a middle-eastern man who is on a council working towards peace in the region. However, without boots on the ground, the spies working for the CIA think he is a terrorist and are working towards trying to kill him. He has had attempts on his life multiple times, each one killing other innocent people. Here is one example.

I am from Waziristan, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am one of the leaders of the North Waziristan Peace Committee (NWPC), which is a body of local Maliks (or community leaders) that is devoted to trying to keep the peace in our region. We are sanctioned by the Pakistan government, and our main mission is to try to prevent violence between the local Taliban and the authorities.

In January 2010, I lent my vehicle to my nephew, Salimullah, to drive to Deegan for an oil change and to have one of the tires checked. Rumours had surfaced that drones were targeting particular vehicles, and tracking particular phone signals. The sky was clear and there were drones circling overhead.

As Salimullah conversed with the mechanic, a second vehicle pulled up next to mine. There were four men inside, just local chromite miners. A missile destroyed both vehicles, killed all four men, and seriously injured Salimullah, who spent the next 31 days in hospital.

I'm on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones

a reply to: darkbake
To them, there are no innocent, all are suspect, all are expendable.
The only question to them is how much will it cost.
Good OP Darkbake.

a reply to: darkbake

Wow, I just listenes. Wow. Very nice. Man, that top riff near the middle. zoom.I heard a number of intergenerational riffs through out it. Then that heavy Led Zeff dark and scroungy. Hold the long bass and scream in with the pounding and slithering fluxuation, hold it hold it oooooooo. Yeah, nice, real nice Thanks, Im diving back in again. Bye

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Yeah the song is good! Thanks for listening I just heard it for the first time today on the radio.

Also , our President , by executive order, made it lawful to take out a US citizen anywhere in the world. No trial , no hearing , no Miranda rights.Regards human life , even American ? I think not.

a reply to: darkbake

At the end I get a sense of some great behemoth rising and howling out a scream that obliterates all consciousness around it into white noise buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, drones. What an example of the in callousness our survival wars create. Drone your mind with a generation of video games and children were ready to take the jobs they were trained for when they thought they were just playing. Sure, that's a broad generalization but still. I'm just saying.

I read the "The Future of Violence" recently by Benjamin Wittes / Gabriella Blum. Well worth a read if you are interested in this kind of thing! Fascinating and scary in equal measure. You ain't seen nothing yet....

www.goodreads.com...

a reply to: darkbake

They're a great way to kill enemies without risking too much in terms of Allied lives or property. They instil a paranoia and 24/7 anxiety amidst the enemies of the west. They lower the costs of engaging in hostilities with an enemy.

On the flipside, every civilian death is someone with a family and Muslims are big on multi-generational, tight-knitted extended families. For each innocent person who is killed, there could be scores of others who are turned against the west. That worries me because these things can last for generations as they have in Scotland, Ireland and Spain.

When is it okay to blow up a crowd? Is it better that the person pushing the button is wearing a uniform? Is it worse when that person is dressed in civilian clothes? Is a drone strike on a wedding party better or worse than a suicide bomber doing it in person?

From the point of view of some Afghani relatives, that difference might look very blurry. To some, these mistaken attacks make fantastic recruiting material and remind me of the anti-Nazi/Japanese propaganda from WW2.

We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and drones are too good a technology not to use - from a military point of view. I worry that they've created something similar to a 'Forever War' that can't be resolved. Too many grievances.

a reply to: Kandinsky

That is a good point, how is using a drone strike on a wedding any different than a suicide bomber?

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: Kandinsky

That is a good point, how is using a drone strike on a wedding any different than a suicide bomber?

I thought the West ... the good guys ... were above this sort of thing but, hey, lets just drop down to their level and revel in it.

P

a reply to: darkbake
I am glad to see I'm not the onliest one having this opinion.
Like another poster said, the people getting killed by drones all have family that will have to want revenge. It is a ever-icreasing spiral of killings causing more killings causingmore drone strikes causing more deaths causing more.... You get the picture

a reply to: darkbake

Drones are a modern instrument of war. They are no different than when the first rock, arrow or artillery shell was fired at the enemy hidden over the hill. There are few rules in warfare that are followed despite what most people want to believe. War is hell on earth.

According to one source there was more than 950,000 civilian deaths in WW1 as a direct result of military action. Thank goodness America didn't have drones then because it may have caused more right? It's a great thing people devoted to radicalized Islam don't have a drone because then my may accidentally murder a few innocent civilians in their attacks, unlike their subway bombings (among many others), that spares the innocent lives of others.

I understand it's a shame innocent people die, but this is the world we live in. I, more than anyone, wish everyone would just get along.

a reply to: pheonix358

It's like a bully in school. Eventually the parents are going to tell their kid to step up and beat his a**.