Death by IronyFollow

Well, actually, more like death by predator drone. It's a bit like a game of dominoes, only with fewer casualties.

I'm rather surprised Varrus hasn't already posted this, asking the forum if they believe Obama to be a war criminal or some such. Even tories need to sleep, I suppose.

Fine by me. Not that I approve of civilians getting killed but the whole point of arms development is to kill their guys without losing yours. Can't get much safer than staying at home.

better than carpet bombing encamplments with B-52's.

Yeah, but you're not exactly going to win a war of attrition by drone. I'm having trouble seeing the strategic worth of these strikes. This one killed 9 times as many civilians as militants, none of whom were irreplaceable. Killing large numbers of civilians puts the growing anti-Taliban sentiment in the region in jeopardy - I mean, it's not like they like America at the moment, they just decided they hate the Taliban more. A few hundred casualties, maybe a few kids, and they could easily change their minds. Pakistan's army is hardly handling the situation well, either.

I figured you'd be OK with it, though, from your unconditional support for Israel. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that paulsol will be against the air strikes.

I guess it would be a matter of risk to civilians.

If we could get the same impact but less collateral damage with a more traditional type assault - that would get my vote. I don't necessarily think it's appropriate to up the risk to Pakistani civilian in order to lessen risk on our military peeps.

This is not a war against Pakistan.

Future wars will be conducted by biomechanically enhanced animal cyborgs to ensure no loss of human life. This is a certainty.

Also, ding.

Wasn't this how Eagle Eye started?

America has already made unsuccessful incursions across the Pakistani border - not because of Pakistan but because America's army got its *** kicked by a bunch of elite goat farmers. The problems are twofold: the risk of really upsetting Pakistan, and a shortage of the resources required to actually win the war. Unless Pakistan's military really cracks down on the Taliban, these air strikes aren't really going to achieve anything, except give terrorists a lousy funeral.



I read it as "drones make dirty work "dirtier' by increasing collateral damage when compared to sending in commandos albeit safer for opur soldiers"

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How about unmanned combat ships in The Wind Singer? That's how I'd like to wage war.

Edited, Jun 25th 2009 2:12am by Kavekk

Only if bombing is effective in stymying these elite goatherds, which I don't believe it is, at least not on such a small scale. I mean, maiking jello doesn't risk our troops either, but as it has little effect on dealing with the Taliban, it's not a course of action that is suggested when our soldiers get riddled with bullets. I'm not going to say that it's impossible for a drone attack to be effective, as it could conceivably kill a key Taliban figure, but these ones certainly haven't been. Alternate solutions: We could send more troops, so they can outmuscle these men and their fierce goats. However, this doesn't seem feasible. Personally, I think the solution this leads us to is "leave them alone and continue pressuring Pakistan's military to deal with them".

Obviously, risk to our own troops doesn't make the same number of deaths more acceptable. Say we have two scenarios. Scenario 1: kill 2 bad guys, 10 civilians. Scenario 2: kill 2 bad guys, 0 civlians, 1 own soldier. Which is more acceptable?

I've been going off this:



from the source in the OP.

From your article:





It's patchy. I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of days.

I agree and I'd like to think that the US military agrees. Unfortunately, you can't negate the risk to the point of being ineffective at accomplishing your goals (eliminating Taliban leadership). It would be great if, rather than firing missiles, we could surround a location with a hundred men and sort out the bad guys from the not-bad guys by hand. We don't really have that option open to us.

Again though, I'm not defending this strike which sounds like bad juju from the start (attacking a funeral?... that just rings of "this is going to go wrong"). I'm just not necessarily against the notion of drone launched strikes.