[darawk]

> It doesn't matter.

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?

[Tyrek]

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.

[darawk]

> 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?

[PhasmaFelis]

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.

[darawk]

> 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?

[PhasmaFelis]

Someone looked through a drone cam at a crowd of women and children, and authorized the drone to fire.

If he didn't bother looking closely enough to identify his target, that's negligence or incompetence. (Middle Eastern women are noted for dressing distinctively.) If he didn't care, that's intentional murder, or whatever euphemism we're supposed to use in those circumstances. If he was told it was all right to fire without being able to see the target clearly, that's bad policy. If he was told it's all right to knowingly kill women and children, that's also bad policy. If the drone was authorized to fire without any human in the loop somewhere, that's really bad policy, and also bad tactics--there's no point in wasting a missile on an empty field that you expected a terrorist to be standing in.

There is no circumstance where someone wasn't lethally and unnecessarily careless with innocent lives. Whether it was due to malice or incompetence is not really relevant.

> Did they actually do a double tap strike in this instance?

Yes. You've already been linked to relevant articles in this thread. Do your own homework.

You are not going to Socratic-method anyone into admitting that, yes, it actually is okay to blow up a wedding if we think there might be a terrorist in there somewhere.

[darawk]

> Someone looked through a drone cam at a crowd of women and children, and authorized the drone to fire.

No they didn't. Cite a source for that. Don't just editorialize nonsense.

> If he didn't bother looking closely enough to identify his target, that's negligence or incompetence. (Middle Eastern women are noted for dressing distinctively.) If he didn't care, that's intentional murder, or whatever euphemism we're supposed to use in those circumstances. If he was told it was all right to fire without being able to see the target clearly, that's bad policy. If he was told it's all right to knowingly kill women and children, that's also bad policy. If the drone was authorized to fire without any human in the loop somewhere, that's really bad policy, and also bad tactics--there's no point in wasting a missile on an empty field that you expected a terrorist to be standing in.

> There is no circumstance where someone wasn't lethally and unnecessarily careless with innocent lives. Whether it was due to malice or incompetence is not really relevant.

People like to make silly statements like this, maybe for rhetorical effect. Whether or not something is attributable to malice or incompetence is always relevant. Mistakes happen in war. This may well be an instance of that. But it is not evidence that the policy is net bad. There are hundreds of these strikes. Some of them will kill civilians, but sometimes it's worth killing a few civilians to kill some unusually bad actors. We have people who's job it is to make that tradeoff. Do you have evidence that they're doing so poorly?

> Yes. You've already been linked to relevant articles in this thread. Do your own homework.

Firstly, the wedding that got bombed twice was not by drones, it was by jets. So, if the point of this thread is to discuss drones, it is irrelevant. There have been many wedding strikes, which one are you referring to?

> You are not going to Socratic-method anyone into admitting that, yes, it actually is okay to blow up a wedding if we think there might be a terrorist in there somewhere.

What, exactly, is the terrorist density of a wedding that makes it bombable? 50%? 80%? 99%? Do you know what the terrorist density of these particular weddings were?

[PhasmaFelis]

> No they didn't. Cite a source for that. Don't just editorialize nonsense.

I'm...not sure how you think attack drones work? There is always a human in the loop, at least for now. Humans pick the targets and authorize weapon release.

> Whether or not something is attributable to malice or incompetence is always relevant.

It's relevant to the discussion of how and why these things happen. It's not relevant to the question of whether or not a wrong has been committed. If you drive drunk and kill four people, you certainly didn't mean to, but you still go to prison.

> We have people who's job it is to make that tradeoff. Do you have evidence that they're doing so poorly?

Do you have evidence that they're not? They've certainly had limited success in stopping international terrorism.

We discussed earlier how extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you believe that a goal was achieved here that outweighed 50 or so innocent lives, it's on you to demonstrate that, not on me to falsify it. Do your own homework.

[darawk]

> I'm...not sure how you think attack drones work? There is always a human in the loop, at least for now. Humans pick the targets and authorize weapon release.

Many of these wedding bombings didn't involve drones, they involved jets. The drones are also using fairly low res cameras, so if we are talking about one of the instances where a drone bombed a wedding, it may or may not have been clear to the operator that that's what it was. It may also have been a targeting issue. That is all to say that we do not know that a person consciously, knowingly chose to bomb a wedding full of civilians.

> It's relevant to the discussion of how and why these things happen. It's not relevant to the question of whether or not a wrong has been committed. If you drive drunk and kill four people, you certainly didn't mean to, but you still go to prison.

It's relevant to the level of the wrong, just as it is in the car case. If you kill four people in a car on purpose that is a much more serious crime than doing so by accident. Further, if the CIA intended to do this, then we are having a very different moral discussion than if they did this accidentally.

> Do you have evidence that they're not? They've certainly had limited success in stopping international terrorism.

Are they? By what metric? There have been very few Islamic terrorist attacks on US soil. Sure, they haven't wiped out radical Islam in the entire region...but we don't really have a basis for comparison here. We cannot conclude much of anything about its efficacy.

What we do know is that there are networks of people who have organized themselves for the purpose of enacting terrorist attacks on western soil. What do you propose that we do about it, if not this?

> We discussed earlier how extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you believe that a goal was achieved here that outweighed 50 or so innocent lives, it's on you to demonstrate that, not on me to falsify it. Do your own homework.

Ok. Drone strikes have killed hundreds of high ranking members of Islamic terror networks. And it is highly likely that to the extent that civilians were harmed, most of them were probably, at the very least, sympathetic to these people to begin with.

[zaptheimpaler]

Fucking bullshit.

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.

[darawk]

I would absolutely say the same thing about people in the US, provided it was in service of an important, higher purpose, as it is here.

[discoball]

If it was your own family at a wedding? Seriously? You can tell us with honesty that you would classify the brutal murder of your own family as worthwhile because there was some resistance fighters in your country that happen to be in your area and a foreign power wanted to eradicate them with air to ground missiles? Hmm. It cannot possibly be true.

[darawk]

> If it was your own family at a wedding? Seriously? You can tell us with honesty that you would classify the brutal murder of your own family as worthwhile because there was some resistance fighters in your country that happen to be in your area and a foreign power wanted to eradicate them with air to ground missiles? Hmm. It cannot possibly be true.

I wouldn't be happy about it. But these things are inevitable consequences of war. People get shot accidentally by the police, here, in the United States. We try our best to minimize it, but it happens. It is an inevitable consequence of law enforcement. If one of my family members were accidentally killed by a cop, I would be upset. I'd want to understand the specifics of the incident, and see if perhaps the cop was being negligent in some way. But, if they were not being negligent and the situation had warranted it, and it was just an unfortunate accident, then I would not be angry with the officer, or the department.

[tomp]

well put.