[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]

Wow I'm sure the remaining family members feel a lot better knowing the drone operator didn't CONSCIOUSLY choose to massacre their entire family, its just that their camera was low res...

How about if your camera is so low res or your drones are too shitty to avoid killing innocent people, you stop fucking using drones?

I have 0 doubt you would find it ridiculous to use the same drones on US soil because of the risk but hey as long as its not your family/friends, its just a "risk" right?

[darawk]

> I have 0 doubt you would find it ridiculous to use the same drones on US soil because of the risk but hey as long as its not your family/friends, its just a "risk" right?

I would not find it ridiculous at all. So, I guess your argument kind of falls apart then.

[zaptheimpaler]

Great well heres [1] some data. Between 2001-2015, 48 have died to domestic terrorism vs 26 to foreign born terrorists. Hope to see you lobbying for drone strikes and military patrols in the US and your hometown soon.

1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us...

[darawk]

People like to cite things like this, but we both know these stats are silly and meaningless.

First of all, you cropped the start at 2001. Presumably after September 11th, 2001, because a whole lot more than 26 people died there. Second, Islamic terrorism is not just about attacks that happen inside the US. The difference between Islamic terrorism and most other forms of domestic terrorism, is that Islamic terrorism represents a global, organized threat to liberal democracies, in general. Islamic terror attacks have happened through western and eastern Europe, China, Canada, they are positively endemic in Africa, and they continue to plague many other places.

No doubt about it, there are real and serious domestic terror threats inside the United States, and it is important that our law enforcement agencies work to stop them. But in the regions of the world where we're employing drone strikes, substantial fractions of the population are involved in these organizations. In some cases, such as Afghanistan, the recognized government of the country (the Taliban) consisted of these people. There are no similarly large sections of the US population to target for drone strikes. That doesn't mean there aren't domestic terrorists here, there are, and many of them are not Islamic. The reason drones don't work here though is that they don't have the critical mass to organize - they're lone wolves. Drones simply aren't an effective tool in that context.