[zacinbusiness]

That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).

[threeseed]

It is so annoying when the hyperbole grows to the point of ridiculousness.

You can argue about force projection all you want but the US is not trying to engage in some warfare campaign against the entire planet.

[zacinbusiness]

I don't know that I agree 100%.

We deploy drones in places where there are perceived terrorist threats. As you can see in collateral murder, all you have to do to be perceived as a threat is to be alive. This tells me that the U.S. government is overly paranoid.

Next, we are or will soon be deploying drones right here in the U.S. That tells me that the government perceives its own citizens as a threat or as a possible threat. This is backed up by the fact that they 'accidentally' collect U.S. citizen electronic communications.

The U.S. government makes far too many "accidents" for them to all be truly accidental.

[throwaway2048]

I'm glad we can argue semantics while the world burns.

[MereInterest]

Suppose I ask you how you feel about murdering babies. Then I ask you how you feel about terminating fetuses. The way that I phrase the question is going to influence how you respond. There is a difference between "job creators", "business owners", and "fat cats", even though each of them refers to the same thing.

Words are important, and language frames every issue. "Drones" as opposed to "unmanned aircraft" or "unmanned assault aircraft" is a huge difference in perception.

[throwaway2048]

Which is exactly my point of course, "drone strikes" has a certain, extremely negative connotation. Making a big fuss how they "arnt really drones you see, its just force projection" smells a lot like "enhanced interrogation" and other attempts to euphanise atrocities behind some neat, sterile sounding language.

[zacinbusiness]

No I'm not arguing, my point is that the terminology is what makes people so comfortable with it. It's a lot easier to be angry about a pilot or a gunner accidentally killing someone than it is to get angry about a drone, because I think a lot of people believe that drones are autonomous craft that fly around without being piloted. It's in the name "drone."

I think that's why the U.S. military popularizes the term drone over "unmanned aircraft" which even then isn't true - it's a remotely manned aircraft.

[PeterisP]

Actually, the world isn't burning. Everyone should be glad if we're talking about a wedding party bombed as a single, rare incident - if the same pilots were doing proper bombardment instead of those drones, as in previous wars, then we'd have a bunch of wedding parties killed every day and they'd be invisible in the total casualty list of a major city firebombing or napalming of a few villages.

The 'world burning' today is ten times less of actual burning than in, say, US actions in Vietnam or Korea, and hundred times less than ww1/ww2 - I'm glad that the scale of suffering is shrinking so much.