The American Government is out of control. They can kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason a secret committee decides.

The American public should be protesting in the streets to stop the killing of innocent civilians.

This isnt democracy, or the American way and people need to speak to their reps in all levels of government to stop this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca2ioOapKsQ

I fully support the drone program, extrajudicial assassination, and further expansion of unchecked executive power. USA#1!

Beer-delivery drone grounded by FAA

The stopping of drones needs to stop!

these complaints intensified 10 years ago... and what did the American public do? Went out and elected the same corporate-friendly oligarchs ...

this country currently deserves most everything it gets... because it continues to deem real reform candidates as "unelectable."

"crap in, crap out... it's a big club... and you ain't in it!!"

USA #1.

**** me for making a serious post in response to this poster and this thread, but man- the issue isn't HOW we kill people, it's that we kill people.

If somebody needs to die, which is not necessarily a thing I believe, but granting that if, I'm all in favor of killing them the bestest way possible, and if that's taping a 357 to my Dad's remote helicopter and shooting him in the dick, then let's do that.

Making drones the talking point in this conversation is missing the damn point. Yes, they facilitate a more consequence free form of killing, but that shouldn't be the primary objection.

It does matter in the manner of killing. Imagine have flying death over your head everyday, with possible death and destruction coming at any time.


That is a brutal way for people to have to live.

It's how people have lived for decades.

I don't have any problem with drones. Whether we should be targeting and executing people in the manner we have been? Perhaps a different story.

In my day, we threw stones at each other like decent people.

Render unto the drones the things that are the drones'.

It's like we've shifted from a conventional warfare outlook in which we prepared to take on proper states into seeing every threat as a stateless terrorist of the al qaeda ilk and thus not, for operational considerations, subject to whatever reciprocal human rights observances granted (more or less) in the past. This has been quite a hard shift apparently, obviously quickened by 911. There is no question we have gone too far. The question is have we gone too far willfully? or inadvertently, out of the institutional momentum of the hard shift?

For quite a while our national security policy had been bending toward conformity with tactics and strategy pioneered by Israel. After 911 forget it, we pretty much stole their playbook once the public and the government saw terrorism as the main threat. Israel pioneered the preemptive strike in the late 60's. Recall their preemptive bombings of suspected nuclear facilities. We adopted that, and also their favoring of targeted assassination over conventional warfare. Basically Israel found themselves facing a lot of resistance to their trying to take over the land of Arabs who lived there. They were attacked from all sides and by terrorism originating close by, to the point they had to orient themselves largely to war or other security threats. As a result of these attacks and the regional alignment against them that Israel faced, on the heels of the holocaust no less, they, out of necessity at that point, developed a guiding philosophy of peace by security (as opposed to peace by diplomacy). As we have reckoned the threats we face as more similar to what Israel faces, we naturally have adopted the philosophy of our partner to some degree. Drone technology, for example, is another Israeli gift to the world.

I guess that we think we can dominate the entire middle east in the same way Israel dominates it's sphere. This is folly of course, classic apples and oranges mistake.

Whenever people say this (and I agree its generally true) I realize I don't really have a problem with it.

That is to say - I generally prefer preemptive strikes and targeted assassinations over conventional warfare all else being equal. And that's not to say that I'm condoning all (or most) preemptive strikes / assassinations.

Its similar to the whole droning complaint. I just can't get myself worked up over a relatively large percentage of the strikes done with drones. If the alternative is to invade an area in the classical sense and kill or capture a person that way - droning seems better.

My concern is more just with the oversight and secrecy of it. How/When/Why a target is authorized to be killed is much more worrying to me than the means by which its carried out.

Kind of like the way it is to live in fear of terrorists you mean?

Only if you choose to be affected by minuscule probability. But then, you're precisely what the fear industries are angling for.

Oh snap!

I know I'm new to the scene, but could you tell me what the fear industries are angling for?

ummm... your fear?

(and everything it brings, ... from excessive insurance to faux patriotism)

Dont forget the patriot act, and the further erosion of your rights and freedom.

Um.. Ok.. I don't have insurance, and as a scot ive against your faux patriotism.

what I meant to say, Jiggs, was that I don't believe in Scottish independence despite politicians ramming it down my throat.

And I would very much like to hear a southern man shine

The doctrine of preemptive war runs in direct opposition to many of our well established legal principles. Furthermore, as practiced, it is heavily dependent on intelligence which has shown to be highly malleable (to put it nicely) in conforming to the evidence requirements of pre-developed foreign policy.

If you just take it for granted that yeah, our intelligence was good and that bad guy was actually going to do said bad thing, then yeah it sounds practical if not morally sound. The problem is it is impossible to establish these conditions pretty much ever. The results of the practice have been disastrous. I don't see how you can look up and see ISIS and think "what fine work we've been doing with our pre-crime unit let's keep this going". Or the Iraq war proper was not enough of a referendum for you? What would it take to make you dark on preemptive war?

Do you order these false dichotomies from like some super propaganda outlet or something? Were you attracted to the shiny "no muss no fuss" label? One alternative is to find someone guilty in a court or by some legitimate means before executing them along with whoever else happens to be standing around. And it's not the technology people are worked up about per say, its the slide into barbarism that comes with abandoning well established legal principles such as seen in the magna carta, our constitution, or international human rights conventions. You know that we were executing people whose names we didn't even know because they fit a relatively broad profile, right? Google signature strikes. That happened.

The secrecy is a feature, not a bug. And again, no one really cares that much about the actual machinery. Its the idea of:

killing innocent people
creating more terrorists
creating more terrorism directed at us
dissolution of even the aspiration to the rule of law