I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Perhaps the inclusion of the absolutist "every drone strike... ever".
But this raises a valid concern. Is drone striking weddings really winning the hearts and minds of people, or is it just setting up the next generation of (IMO, justified) hate toward the US? [0] [1]
Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.
It absolutely matters. Intending to kill civilians and killing them accidentally are very, very different things.
> Adults are expected to understand the potential consequences of their actions. If you knowingly fire missiles into a populated area, you don't get to say "oops, I didn't mean to" when you accidentally kill a few dozen innocent civilians.
Are you alleging that they didn't understand the risks involved? Or are you alleging that they did understand the risks involved, and made a conscious decision that those risks were worth it? If the latter, do you have reason to believe that their calculation was wrong?
Well, I'm sure that intent has an impact, but the question is one of magnitude. You can't exactly solve extremism by telling them all to stop being mad at the US because the missile that killed their families 'was just a miss whoops my bad'
I take issue with your stance that the burden of evidence lies with the 'let's not shoot missiles crowd', though. While we don't have specific evidence on the specific efficacy of individual drone strikes, I'd argue that the intelligence community's track record (or what's been declassified or widely known) does not inspire the greatest confidence in their ability to make nuanced, apolitical judgment.
> I take issue with your stance that the burden of evidence lies with the 'let's not shoot missiles crowd', though. While we don't have specific evidence on the specific efficacy of individual drone strikes, I'd argue that the intelligence community's track record (or what's been declassified or widely known) does not inspire the greatest confidence in their ability to make nuanced, apolitical judgment.
Well, we've elected people (who've then appointed people) to make those judgments on our behalf. Someone has to make them. If you have evidence that they're being made poorly, then that's something worth hearing. But what is that evidence? If you don't have such evidence...then are you arguing that nobody should be making decisions like that at all, ever?
If you blow up a terrorist training camp out in the desert, and it turns out afterwards that there were a few civilian hostages or dependents on-site, that's unfortunate but arguably unavoidable.
If you bomb an outdoor wedding party with dozens of visible women and children, and then return to fire again when ambulances are on the scene, that's not an "unfortunate accident". That's deadly negligence at the very best. You're trying to twist the second example into the framework of the first.
> If you bomb an outdoor wedding party with dozens of visible women and children, and then return to fire again when ambulances are on the scene, that's not an "unfortunate accident". That's deadly negligence at the very best. You're trying to twist the second example into the framework of the first.
Is it? Do you have a sense of what went into that particular decision? Was the wedding party the target, or were they hit accidentally? Did they know it was a wedding party? Did they actually do a double tap strike in this instance?
Even the phrasing grates at me. Killing a bunch of innocent people in another country is just a "risk" to some moron with a drone. If all of a sudden that moron was piloting a drone IN THE US and blew up a church/school on accident, I guarantee you wouldn't be so comfortable abstracting away lives as "risk".
By the way, if we count all the innocent people killed by the US as "mistakes", it is certain that number would be >10x the people who died to Islamic terrorists on 9/11... so isn't the US military as much of a terrorist?
Its a sick strain of sociopathic paternalism by which you can abstract away peoples lives as long as they aren't your own countrymen.
If you're merely incompetent to use the tools available to you appropriately (instead of maliciously misusing them), I can see why people don't want to give you sharper ones anyways.
So this has now become a "We've always been at war with Islam!"? Is that kind of 1984esque discourse really helpful?
For some proper context, I really suggest reading this CS Monitor piece from back in 2001 [0].
Keen observers will quickly realize that pretty much everything written there has become reality over these past 17 years. It should also be noted that there's a certain irony to it when the "Christian Science Monitor" is peeved about your religious rhetoric being a bit too much on the extreme end.
This is something that seemingly passed by many US Americans like it never happened. But you can't declare yourself a "Christian nation" going on "crusades", hinging large parts of your popularity drive on this imagined "clash of the cultures", and then act all surprised and outraged when the opposite side also reacts with more radicalization.
Just looking at the trends for global terrorism for these past 2 decades [1], there's a very clear picture to be found there. Before 2002 countries like India, Colombia and Algeria topped the "terrorism charts".
But by 2003, as a response to the "War on Terror" started by the US, you already see Iraq and Afghanistan making their way up the list, steadily increasing in the number of attacks and fatalities until in 2005 they take the top.
Since then there's been little change, only Pakistan making their way up there some years, one might wonder why? [2]
But all three of these countries represent massive outliers and make up the vast majority of "Islamic terrorism", what do they all have in common?
9/11 was bad, no debate there. But the US's reaction to 9/11 was worse, it perfectly played into Osamas original intentions of starting a "culture clash", stigmatizing even moderate Islam in the Western world, making frustrated and discriminated moderates more likely to join his cause.
In that context, the US pretty much kicked a hornet's nest down the street and still keeps kicking it to this day. Yet many US Americans keep wondering where the angry hornets are coming from and "why they hate us so much".
> This is something that seemingly passed by many US Americans like it never happened. But you can't declare yourself a "Christian nation" going on "crusades", hinging large parts of your popularity drive on this imagined "clash of the cultures", and then act all surprised and outraged when the opposite side also reacts with more radicalization.
Hm? Which crusades are those?
> Just looking at the trends for global terrorism for these past 2 decades [1], there's a very clear picture to be found there. Before 2002 countries like India, Colombia and Algeria topped the "terrorism charts".
You mean countries that had civil wars going on in them? That seems practically tautological.
> But by 2003, as a response to the "War on Terror" started by the US, you already see Iraq and Afghanistan making their way up the list, steadily increasing in the number of attacks and fatalities until in 2005 they take the top.
You mean that terrorist attacks increased in places when they had foreign military bases in their country to target? What is that evidence of, exactly?
> But all three of these countries represent massive outliers and make up the vast majority of "Islamic terrorism", what do they all have in common?
Fundamentalist Islam and low economic development.
The Christian Science Monitor, while founded by the founder of the Church of Christ does not really represent the Church or push its doctrines. It has historically been one of the least ideological and most objective news outlets for a couple of generations.
So there may be irony in the name, but not in their practices.
What you are measuring is merely the state of chaos of the middle east post iraq war and arab spring.
If you look at the history of terrorism in Europe for instance, before the 70s it was mostly independentist mvts / de-colonisation related. 70s to early 80s was mostly far left terror attacks. Mid 80s state sponsored terrorism (Libya, Iran). 90s to now, islamist terrorism.
Islamists were blowing bombs in the metro in Paris in the 90s, and tried a 9/11 style plane attack on Paris in 1994 [1].
Islamism is a worldwide phenomenon, like communism in its time. If you go through every single muslim country from Marocco to Indonesia, the largest or second largest political party is an islamist party, or the islamists are in power, or they have been outlawed after taking too much power, or they are one of the major party to a civil war. Terrorism is a side effect of this rise in islamism, like the red brigades, RAF, etc were to communism.
So no, it’s not just a reaction to the war in Iraq.
> Terrorism is a side effect of this rise in islamism, like the red brigades, RAF, etc were to communism.
And what allowed Islamism to rise and prosper like that over these past decades?
The power vacuum created by the removal of Saddam in an illegal invasion? The resulting unleashed sectarian violence?
You can't just switch around cause and effect like that and call it a day. To quote from the 2001 article:
> Moderate Muslim opinion could also easily be swayed against America, predicted Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament in Britain, an umbrella group for Muslim organizations. "If they end up killing innocent civilians it will be very unfair," Dr. Siddiqui said. "The problems will arise if people see that justice has not been done."
Now, nearly 2 decades later, we have relentless and ML driven drone warfare [0], torture scandals [1], a US president who is not only condoning it but actively advocating for it. The blatant injustice is done out in the open to see for everybody [2], justified in haphazard "They do not have rights" ways to a point where a US president just declares a "Muslim ban", followed up with pointless legal shenanigans how "it totally isn't a Muslim ban, but a Muslim country ban!", like that's in any way better.
How can you look at all that and deny it contributed to the rise of Islamist sentiments? Don't you think it's kind of telling that you have to summon the good ol "they caught the communism" bug to still justify these US actions?
Is it really that difficult to take a step back and admit: "We've fucked up, we've been going about this the wrong way from the very beginning"? Is doubling down on this oppressive and destructive path really the only way forward from here?
No the rise of islamism is anterior to the removal of Sadam Hussein. And it happened in every muslim country, including those that were not under a secular dictatorship (Marocco, Turkey, Maldives, etc). What is true is that the topping of secular dictatorships opened the way for islamists to take power or start a civil war. But what you are saying is effectively that muslim countries should be left under a dictatorship otherwise would vote for islamist parties?
Most statements that attempt to characterize every single instance of a phenomenon are heavily flawed, regardless of what they say. Especially in complex systems, such as those involving humans.
It seems to me that your question is coming at this from the wrong angle.
Now we are getting into indefinable moral calculus. If drone strikes have a net positive impact, are they justified? If you are in a train about to run over three people but can change the direction to run over one, do you do it?
No. But we've elected and appointed people who's job it is to:
a) be aware of all the information relevant to each operation
b) make a judgment as to whether each individual operation is worthwhile
Now, i'm not saying that makes them infallible. It certainly doesn't. There's a long history of people in such positions making poor choices. But if you're implying that they are, i'd like to see some evidence. Because what I see is a lot of "civilians died, therefore it was bad", but very little consideration of the objective of the mission, and whether or not the possibility of collateral damage was justified. What we do know is that smart people in positions of power believed that it was, and i'm happy to second-guess those beliefs if given good reason, but thus far i've never seen anyone give good reason in the case of these drone strikes.
“over the past 15 years. Increased US efforts are correlated with a worsening of the overall terror situation. Statistical modeling indicates for every additional billion dollars spent and 1,000 American troops sent to fight the war on terror, the number of terror attacks worldwide increased by 19 (data available from the author). Furthermore, the model finds up to 80 percent of the variation in the number of worldwide terror attacks since 9/11 can be explained by just those two variables—US money spent and military members sent to fight the war on terror. The data for both money spent and troops deployed come from the Congressional Research Service publication, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11 by Amy Belasco. The number of terror attacks is from the Global Terrorism Database, hosted by the University of Maryland.”
“The data show countries the US invaded had 143 more terror attacks per year than countries the US did not invade. Similarly, countries in which the US conducted drone strikes were home to 395 more terror attacks per year than those where the US did not.”
Of course the countries we invade will have more terror attacks. We've put targets there for them to hit. This does not prove that US intervention causes terrorism. What it proves is that when you move their targets thousands of miles closer to them, terrorists will attack them more frequently.
I think you misread that. Drone strikes which don’t provide something for terrorists to attack cause a significantly greater increase in terrorism attacks than troops on the ground do.
But this raises a valid concern. Is drone striking weddings really winning the hearts and minds of people, or is it just setting up the next generation of (IMO, justified) hate toward the US? [0] [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airs...