We are still carrying on about the drone program and for the life of me I can’t see why. I’ve kind of stayed away from this because it always seemed pretty much a no-brainer, but, yes, like almost any argument, there are two sides to it. When we kill civilians we do make enemies. It seems to be, however, on any other level, a good program.
All the people judging the program tell us that it has been responsible for significantly reducing the al-Qaeda capabilities throughout the region and thereby significantly reducing their threat to America. Of course since our secretive government keeps everything including the toilet paper it uses to wipe the asses of our soldiers on the classified list, it’s a little difficult to tell what is real and what is Pentagon fantasy.
It was the drone strike that killed an American and an Italian hostage that again raised a clamor about drone attacks. There are two aspects to this particular segment of the drone narrative. The first has to do with ransoming hostages and the second has to do with the drones themselves.
Let’s start with the ransom question. The government has just issued a clarification of its present policy which is no ransom by anyone. This seemingly heartless approach was promulgated in order to take the reward out of kidnapping and thereby, hopefully, shrink the field. If your two alternatives are keeping the hostages forever or succumbing to a Seal attack that just might kill you and your entire gang, the appeal of kidnapping as a way of earning a living shrinks dramatically.
Despite this, the government has now changed its no ransom by interested parties stance. This, of course flies in the face of the current thinking that there will be more kidnap attempts if American money is available for ransom. But if the government will stand back, as it says it will, it opens up possibilities for the families of hostages to try to free their captured relatives.
The reality is, that most of the hostages are not worth the resources that our governments expend on them. For the caregivers, those who were doing charitable or health involved work when they were captured, the reality is that they probably could have done just as valuable work in some area where they weren’t presenting themselves as a target, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They were working for the good of humanity and they deserve a shot at rescue.
For the other’s, those like the three hikers who decided to test the fresh air in a war zone, forget it. These people are just too dumb to worry about. Expending our resources or worse, endangering any of our personnel for these dullards should be completely out of the question. The same goes for religious missionaries, those proselytizers in the name of various Gods, who enslave native populations or set them up for first world plunderers. Greed or religious fanaticism brought them to where they are, let it save them.
On the drone side, two facts cannot be ignored. The first is that every time we kill innocent civilians regardless of whether it’s with drones or anything else, we make more enemies and create potential terrorists. Noting pisses a Muslim off more than having a child killed by an American drone, even if it is by accident.
On the other hand, if the authorities are to be believed, the policy has been outlandishly successful. It has been responsible for keeping outfits like al-Qaeda under control. Does it have to be refined? Sure. Is it possible to make it 100% effective? Considering the logistics involved, plus the human factor, absolutely not.
The stink, about the drones killing civilians is legitimate, but there are a number of considerations that go with it. For one thing the drones are frighteningly accurate compared to normal, manned aircraft. In WWII we bombed the Nazi’s in Dresden. We killed most of the Nazis there but we also killed a couple of hundred thousand civilians. I won’t even get into what we did in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but things have changed.
If you are a civilian and you are living next door to an al-Qaeda headquarters, it’s still a good idea to move. This doesn’t seem like a difficult decision. I remember during the cold war, our government set up Nike bases all over the country. Funny thing, nobody built houses next to the Nike bases. Maybe we’re just smarter than the current Arabs.
The hostages that were killed in the latest raid were right in the building with the targeted Arab leaders. There’s not much you can do about that. The problem here wasn’t the delivery system but the intelligence. Actually that’s usually the problem.
Why drones have become such a negative technology, escapes me. The use of them keeps us from using manned planes and thereby exposing our kids to getting killed; again a no-brainer. Add the fact that drones are far more accurate than aircraft and the answer seems pretty simple. The big problem that is inching its way to the surface is the ease, with which the drones are used. There is obviously something to that, it does seem too easy, like it’s a video game and that we aren’t killing real people but maybe that’s the adjustment that man has to make to modern war and maybe in the long run it will help keep us from killing each other at all.
Then there’s the big stink about the drones killing Americans who are fighting with the terrorists. This is one that I really can’t buy. The argument goes that we are killing these American’s without due process. That might have some validity if we were killing them because they have committed treason, but that’s just not the reason. These are Americans who have deserted the country, who have joined the enemy and are trying to kill loyal Americans who are defending local governments. Now, I agree that we have no business there, but neither do they. We are killing them because they are trying to kill us. They are fighting for what we consider an enemy force, a force that is continually threatening to attack us.
This is war, screwed up as it is. In war you kill the enemy or they kill you. Who cares whether or not they are American citizens? They are fighting for a cause whose objective is to destroy basic human rights. They don’t have any rights. They abandoned those rights when they went to a foreign country to kill American kids.