<story><title>Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins</title><url>http://boingboing.net/2015/03/11/drones-and-the-rise-of-the-hig.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>knowaveragejoe</author><text>It might be a surprise to you, but it is the military who learned the most from Vietnam. It is the American public and our politicians who seem to have learned the least. The military is simply doing its job when presented with a task, whether it was spawned out of noble intentions or kneejerk reactionism.&lt;p&gt;They know that they must be careful in pursuing anything that looks vaguely like a target, because the sentiment of the population is far more important than a small victory like that. Hence the multi-billion-dollar communications and failsafes chain described in this article. This is a key concept that seems to be going over people&amp;#x27;s heads in this thread. Yes, it failed in this case and in many others. But the very fact that it &lt;i&gt;exists at all&lt;/i&gt; and is sophisticated as it is should be a clue as to the lessons learned. The military is achieving &lt;i&gt;far more&lt;/i&gt; value with &lt;i&gt;far less&lt;/i&gt; collateral damage. Contrast this with the Soviet&amp;#x27;s preferred method of waging war against the Afghani Mujahideen, which was to &lt;i&gt;kill every living thing&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;totally and utterly raze every structure&lt;/i&gt; in the direction from which they were shot at from.&lt;p&gt;So again, can you conceive a better alternative for dealing with reality as it is now? Time travel is not possible, answers like &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t invade other countries&amp;quot; are pretty worthless. Nobody wants this war(well, nobody with a soul and a modicum of compassion), but it is what it is, and as far I know, it&amp;#x27;s the best solution to minimize civilian deaths.</text></item><item><author>tessierashpool</author><text>What the US should do now in Iraq is learn some restraint, diplomacy, and humility.&lt;p&gt;In other words, we should learn the lessons everybody but the military had already learned from Vietnam.</text></item><item><author>Udik</author><text>Except that the US are the main cause for those bad guys being there in the first pace, as they waged war (with justifications that later proved worthless) against the dictator that was able to keep the area under control.&lt;p&gt;So, what the US should do now in Iraq? I have no idea. What should they do in general and in the future? Stop messing with foreign countries, destabilizing governments and waging wars with the silly idea of making the world a safer and more peaceful place. It doesn&amp;#x27;t work.</text></item><item><author>karmacondon</author><text>The links you posted reference Iraq, which was not a very nice place over the last decade. In many cases, a strong personality would emerge as a local leader. He&amp;#x27;ll usually have access to several small arms and enough money to feed and pay several dozen militia fighters. To legitimize his power he&amp;#x27;ll coordinate attacks on US personnel, usually ambushes, and make deals with people who have connections to global &amp;quot;terrorist and extremist&amp;quot; organizations who can provide him with resources to pay for more weapons and manpower. This hypothetical leader isn&amp;#x27;t beholden to the law and makes up the rules for the people in the areas that he controls based on his interpretations of religious teachings and personal views on justice and proper conduct. The government has so many problems to deal with that they aren&amp;#x27;t in a position to oppose him or restore any kind of rule of law to the people that live in his sphere of influence. As his power increases, he becomes a more useful piece on a larger chess board, controlled by leadership in Mosul, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.&lt;p&gt;To the US, the solution is clear: Kill that guy. The force of his personality is what&amp;#x27;s holding his local power structure together, and if he&amp;#x27;s dead there&amp;#x27;s a good chance that the whole thing will collapse. This will take a piece off the board for a global opponent and give the national or regional government one less problem to deal with. Given that he lives in a remote area that he knows like the back of his hand, getting close to him would be difficult. But if they can pay someone to tell them where he is at a specific time, all it takes is one drone strike to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a perfect system. Sources will frequently give false locations in order to kill their own enemies or settle personal scores. Sometimes the intelligence is out of date by only a few hours, the target leaves a house and innocent people move in to it behind him. Or the weapons just plain miss.&lt;p&gt;The question is, do you have a better plan? Because the guys at the Pentagon would really like to hear it. Ceding large swaths of a country to random strong men doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a sustainable solution. It&amp;#x27;s not good for the people in that country, it&amp;#x27;s not good for global security and it&amp;#x27;s not good for business. Civilian casualties are always regrettable and make for compelling headlines. But at some point, someone has to have an eye on the bigger picture. If there&amp;#x27;s a better course of action, then it should be taken immediately. Until then all the US government can do is to use the tools that it has available to deal with the current situation.</text></item><item><author>bjelkeman-again</author><text>It is always intriguing that people in the West are so sheltered from the fact that this has been going on for over a decade. And they then are, not surprisingly, surprised that the people at the receiving end of this and those that are from the area are very upset about it.&lt;p&gt;What if some other nation had been bombing remote villages in your country whilst attempting to target &amp;quot;terrorists and extremists&amp;quot;, but often killing civilians because of misstakes and poor intelligence?&lt;p&gt;Nice timeline for doing your research: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;Iraq&amp;#x2F;page&amp;#x2F;0,12438,793802,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Example of airstrikes killing civilians and accusations of poor intelligence preparations being the cause: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/14/iraq.usa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;2004&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;iraq.usa&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The military is simply doing its job when presented with a task&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That was presented as a defense of My Lai and was a not successful argument.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The military is achieving far more value&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re going to need to quantify this statement, because from this distance it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like much is being achieved at all. Yemen has fallen to the rebels and ISIS still hold much of northern Iraq.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;answers like &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t invade other countries&amp;quot; are pretty worthless.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not! It&amp;#x27;s a simple, clear, actionable, moral rule. It&amp;#x27;s also a core principle of international law. I&amp;#x27;m not sure why this is so much of a problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins</title><url>http://boingboing.net/2015/03/11/drones-and-the-rise-of-the-hig.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>knowaveragejoe</author><text>It might be a surprise to you, but it is the military who learned the most from Vietnam. It is the American public and our politicians who seem to have learned the least. The military is simply doing its job when presented with a task, whether it was spawned out of noble intentions or kneejerk reactionism.&lt;p&gt;They know that they must be careful in pursuing anything that looks vaguely like a target, because the sentiment of the population is far more important than a small victory like that. Hence the multi-billion-dollar communications and failsafes chain described in this article. This is a key concept that seems to be going over people&amp;#x27;s heads in this thread. Yes, it failed in this case and in many others. But the very fact that it &lt;i&gt;exists at all&lt;/i&gt; and is sophisticated as it is should be a clue as to the lessons learned. The military is achieving &lt;i&gt;far more&lt;/i&gt; value with &lt;i&gt;far less&lt;/i&gt; collateral damage. Contrast this with the Soviet&amp;#x27;s preferred method of waging war against the Afghani Mujahideen, which was to &lt;i&gt;kill every living thing&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;totally and utterly raze every structure&lt;/i&gt; in the direction from which they were shot at from.&lt;p&gt;So again, can you conceive a better alternative for dealing with reality as it is now? Time travel is not possible, answers like &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t invade other countries&amp;quot; are pretty worthless. Nobody wants this war(well, nobody with a soul and a modicum of compassion), but it is what it is, and as far I know, it&amp;#x27;s the best solution to minimize civilian deaths.</text></item><item><author>tessierashpool</author><text>What the US should do now in Iraq is learn some restraint, diplomacy, and humility.&lt;p&gt;In other words, we should learn the lessons everybody but the military had already learned from Vietnam.</text></item><item><author>Udik</author><text>Except that the US are the main cause for those bad guys being there in the first pace, as they waged war (with justifications that later proved worthless) against the dictator that was able to keep the area under control.&lt;p&gt;So, what the US should do now in Iraq? I have no idea. What should they do in general and in the future? Stop messing with foreign countries, destabilizing governments and waging wars with the silly idea of making the world a safer and more peaceful place. It doesn&amp;#x27;t work.</text></item><item><author>karmacondon</author><text>The links you posted reference Iraq, which was not a very nice place over the last decade. In many cases, a strong personality would emerge as a local leader. He&amp;#x27;ll usually have access to several small arms and enough money to feed and pay several dozen militia fighters. To legitimize his power he&amp;#x27;ll coordinate attacks on US personnel, usually ambushes, and make deals with people who have connections to global &amp;quot;terrorist and extremist&amp;quot; organizations who can provide him with resources to pay for more weapons and manpower. This hypothetical leader isn&amp;#x27;t beholden to the law and makes up the rules for the people in the areas that he controls based on his interpretations of religious teachings and personal views on justice and proper conduct. The government has so many problems to deal with that they aren&amp;#x27;t in a position to oppose him or restore any kind of rule of law to the people that live in his sphere of influence. As his power increases, he becomes a more useful piece on a larger chess board, controlled by leadership in Mosul, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.&lt;p&gt;To the US, the solution is clear: Kill that guy. The force of his personality is what&amp;#x27;s holding his local power structure together, and if he&amp;#x27;s dead there&amp;#x27;s a good chance that the whole thing will collapse. This will take a piece off the board for a global opponent and give the national or regional government one less problem to deal with. Given that he lives in a remote area that he knows like the back of his hand, getting close to him would be difficult. But if they can pay someone to tell them where he is at a specific time, all it takes is one drone strike to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a perfect system. Sources will frequently give false locations in order to kill their own enemies or settle personal scores. Sometimes the intelligence is out of date by only a few hours, the target leaves a house and innocent people move in to it behind him. Or the weapons just plain miss.&lt;p&gt;The question is, do you have a better plan? Because the guys at the Pentagon would really like to hear it. Ceding large swaths of a country to random strong men doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a sustainable solution. It&amp;#x27;s not good for the people in that country, it&amp;#x27;s not good for global security and it&amp;#x27;s not good for business. Civilian casualties are always regrettable and make for compelling headlines. But at some point, someone has to have an eye on the bigger picture. If there&amp;#x27;s a better course of action, then it should be taken immediately. Until then all the US government can do is to use the tools that it has available to deal with the current situation.</text></item><item><author>bjelkeman-again</author><text>It is always intriguing that people in the West are so sheltered from the fact that this has been going on for over a decade. And they then are, not surprisingly, surprised that the people at the receiving end of this and those that are from the area are very upset about it.&lt;p&gt;What if some other nation had been bombing remote villages in your country whilst attempting to target &amp;quot;terrorists and extremists&amp;quot;, but often killing civilians because of misstakes and poor intelligence?&lt;p&gt;Nice timeline for doing your research: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;Iraq&amp;#x2F;page&amp;#x2F;0,12438,793802,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Example of airstrikes killing civilians and accusations of poor intelligence preparations being the cause: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/14/iraq.usa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;2004&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;iraq.usa&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saiya-jin</author><text>nobody wants this war? are you kidding sir?
there is a lot to earn on every single war, these one being no exception. All companies manufacturing weapons, ammunition, subcontractors etc. Stop wars, they are out of job.&lt;p&gt;Is it utterly immoral? But yes of course.
Is it clear to most people outside of US? Not much doubt there. 
Is this going to happen again? You bet it will. Why? Just because US can.&lt;p&gt;There was not so long ago perception that US is the world police, the good guys. Well, these days, you guys are working hard to convince all the rest that China might be more suitable for this task.&lt;p&gt;Is it really hard to see how much evil is US creating in our tiny world? Did it at least once to people like you occurred, that you really, REALLY cannot well justify waging war half across the world, for laughable reasons?</text></comment>