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US drone strikes may break international law: UN

Seriously, some of you watch too many freaking movies and TV shows thinking that's reality.

We are engaged in a conflict, that means weapons are used. We no longer use the "Total War" tactics, and our weapons are about as accurate as science can make them.

We cause the LEAST amount of collateral damage in the HISTORY OF WAR, and yet you people want weapons that "only hit the enemies". Sorry folks, you cannot do that, and you cannot turn off friendly fire.

**** happens, people die, and there is no way around that in armed conflict. You should be PROUD at the steps we take to minimize civilian deaths, not whining because they still happen.

Some of you are so out to lunch on this issue it's not funny.
 
Kill enough little brown people and the UN comes along.

What a bunch of party poopers. Cant they tell were involved in a war against a portion of the indigenous population here?

Well yes. By killing more of the civillian population then the terroists you have made these people the enemy whether they wish to be or not.
 
Or, you could start being honest about what you read.

Your choice is clear.

I did. And you honestly aren't even making sense at this point. It's all just a bunch of angry griping totally devoid of logic or even common sense.

Par for the course with you though.
 
No, but some Pakistani civilians are harboring these terrorists perpetuating the war are they not?


j-mac

execpt in this case harbouring seams to consitute living in the same village? You have to bear in mind that in many cases these kind of groups aquire food shelter etc. using force. If you or I were a pakistani civllian neither of us would be insentivised to stick our necks out and deal with the terroists if those they,re fighting against are going to blow us up anyway. Why should pakistani civillians stick their necks out for people that are killing them en masse?
 
Do you believe it possible to kill legitimate terror targets AQ, or Taliban without collateral civilian death in war? And if so, could you point to a time in history, or any other conflict where this is been born out?

Nope, but I also don't think we should set the situation to take out a lot of innocents in our wake. While we can't completely avoid it, we should probably work to minimize it.

Who's contention? The UN's? Pakistans? The enemy themselves?

I believe Pakistan originally raised the complaint.

I don't try to, but if you think that fighting these terrorists that hide among innocents can be taken out without civilians that they hide amongst being harmed, then it is not I ignoring reality sir.

You are if you think that somehow not caring about innocent death is going to help us get to solution. There's a real problem in the ME and a lot has to do with propaganda and overall resentment. To attack the root of the problem, you have to attack that. If we continue to not care that we're taking out innocent people and maybe sometimes getting a terrorist or two; this isn't going to improve that lot. All we'll be doing is setting ourselves up for forever war, and I cannot conceive of a situation in which that is ok.

I see, so if we all just play nice and beg we will get further? is that right?

It's a little bit more than that. We can't expect the situation to change overnight, but we have to do something to get to the root problem. It may be playing nice, it may be economic stimulus (hard now that our own economy is in the crapper), it may be humanitarian aid or what have you. But until we can get people to not think of us as some form of evil empire, we'll have done nothing to get to the root of the problem. At heart is the fact that you'll never eliminate all terrorists. And by killing more and more and more, you'll only encourage more terrorists. It's a vicious circle.

Tell me how would those negotiations go? How would they look? And I never said that actions come consequence free. That is hyperbole disseminated by you, and you alone.


j-mac

It's not an easy row to hoe. And at this stage in the game, everything has been FUBARed. Our intervention in Afghanistan, the side quest off into Iraq; none of it has yielded anything positive. Just more death and destruction. We lost 3,000 in a terrorist attack, and then I'm supposed to be ok with losing over 3,000 more in the war? It doesn't sound like we netted out anything good there. We didn't make the region more stable, we didn't significantly impact terrorism, we didn't really make ourselves safer. And at this point it's hard to see if we can't change any of that.

There are bigger pictures and root dynamics and we're really going to have to get to those, understand them, and attack them to make a real difference. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure we should try to limit how many innocent people we kill.
 
Well yes. By killing more of the civillian population then the terroists you have made these people the enemy whether they wish to be or not.
Killing people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time does not make them the enemy.

It is, of course, regrettable that this happens, but that civilians die when military targets are destroyed in an unaviodable fact of war, especially when those legitimate targets deliberately endanger said civilians by hiding among them.
 
Seriously, some of you watch too many freaking movies and TV shows thinking that's reality.

We are engaged in a conflict, that means weapons are used. We no longer use the "Total War" tactics, and our weapons are about as accurate as science can make them.

We cause the LEAST amount of collateral damage in the HISTORY OF WAR, and yet you people want weapons that "only hit the enemies". Sorry folks, you cannot do that, and you cannot turn off friendly fire.

**** happens, people die, and there is no way around that in armed conflict. You should be PROUD at the steps we take to minimize civilian deaths, not whining because they still happen.

Some of you are so out to lunch on this issue it's not funny.


You're missing a key point.

If we DID have the technology to kill only the enemy, these same people would be whining that our protocols defining the "enemy" are prejudgemental and we need to arrest them and put them on trial, not kill them.

After all, if our technology could identify the enemy, why can't we take them into custody without killing them.


They don't want the US to win, period.

I'm all for killing the enemy on the spot, myself, and giving them as much chance to escape as they gave the people in the upper floors of the World Trade Center.
 
Killing people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time does not make them the enemy.

It is, of course, regrettable that this happens, but that civilians die when military targets are destroyed in an unaviodable fact of war, especially when those legitimate targets deliberately endanger said civilians by hiding among them.

I think its fair enough to say that if someone is blowing up your villages that makes them your enemy. And if civillian deaths are "regretable" then why not take a course of action that limits them? such as working with the pakistani government?
 
No, the argument is that it may be "illegal" to kill people in a combat zone with remotely operated vehichles when it's clearly legal to kill them with troops on the spot or manned aircraft or even by completely robotic cruise missiles.

You're attempting to perpetuate a distinction that has no existence.

I'm keeping the argument focused on the physical facts of the matter.

And the physical facts of the matter are that complaints and issues have been raised over the use of our drones in what we are targeting and killing. If you can't keep focused on that, maybe ritalin or something can help ya out.
 
I did. And you honestly aren't even making sense at this point. It's all just a bunch of angry griping totally devoid of logic or even common sense.

Par for the course with you though.

You did what?

You haven't addressed the argument.

Explain the moral difference between killing an enemy with a bullet from a soldier's rifle, a bullet from a cannon on an RPV, a bomb from an F-18, and a bomb delivered by Tomahawk.

We're waiting.
 
You're missing a key point.

If we DID have the technology to kill only the enemy, these same people would be whining that our protocols defining the "enemy" are prejudgemental and we need to arrest them and put them on trial, not kill them.

After all, if our technology could identify the enemy, why can't we take them into custody without killing them.


They don't want the US to win, period.

I'm all for killing the enemy on the spot, myself, and giving them as much chance to escape as they gave the people in the upper floors of the World Trade Center.

That bolded part...it's the type of hyperemotional, bull****, garbage discourse that dumbs down the real debate so that yokels and morons have a catch phrase to screech shrilly at anyone they disagree with.

First of all, the issue isn't the mode of delivery when it comes to collateral damage. The issue is choosing a form of engagement which minimizes collateral damage. Something anyone who served in our great military would be conscious and attuned to the importance of.

The issue seems to be that the unmanned drones have a higher incident rate of killing civilians and bystanders. If that is true, then the issue needs to be addressed.

You've still failed to answer an important question: what civilians started a war with us? What civilians in Pakistan flew planes into the towers?

I know you don't want to answer that question because doing so truthfully would expose just how idiotic your feigned, internet tuff guyz bloodlust for killing civilians really is.
 
I think its fair enough to say that if someone is blowing up your villages that makes them your enemy.
You thinking this does not make it so.
We destroyed entire German and Japanese cities -- did that make us the enemy of the German/Japanese people?

And if civillian deaths are "regretable" then why not take a course of action that limits them? such as working with the pakistani government?
Aside from the fact that the use of precision munitions -does- minimize civilian casualties....

False dichotomy. No reason to not do both. By hitting these targets ourselves, we ensure that they are taken out; giving the ball to the Pakistani government, while a nominally good idea, has no such assurance.
 
That bolded part...it's the type of hyperemotional, bull****, garbage discourse that dumbs down the real debate

The real debate is you're silly notion that a person killed by RPV is more valuable than a person killed by F-18.

You're refusing to discuss that. Since you must have a reason for your deliberate silliness on this matter, I chose the most flattering image of you possible.

The other possiblities for your refusal to hold intelligent discourse on this matter all refer to your probable inate ability to be rational.

First of all, the issue isn't the mode of delivery when it comes to collateral damage. The issue is choosing a form of engagement which minimizes collateral damage.

Actually, you could try reading the OP. The issue is precisely which tools should be used to accomplish the same task, an RPV or a manned aircraft.
 
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No, but some Pakistani civilians are harboring these terrorists perpetuating the war are they not?


j-mac

And which ones are harboring them? Or do you just have a "kill em all because they are sand ni**ers" attitude?
 
And the physical facts of the matter are that complaints and issues have been raised over the use of our drones in what we are targeting and killing. If you can't keep focused on that, maybe ritalin or something can help ya out.

See what I mean?

You're assigning moral values to a weapons platform instead of the actions.

Instead of complaining about the policy of killing the enemy, you're complaining about the policy of using RPV's to kill the enemy.

Your refusal to see the distinction doesn't appear to be my problem.
 
You did what?

You haven't addressed the argument.

Explain the moral difference between killing an enemy with a bullet from a soldier's rifle, a bullet from a cannon on an RPV, a bomb from an F-18, and a bomb delivered by Tomahawk.

We're waiting.

Wait. Hold your breath. Starve yourself until you get the answer you want.

I'm not answering an irrelevant question because the question you keep mindlessly repeating over and over again has zero to do with the arguments being presented.

But that's how you operate. You attempt to reframe everything around some irrelevant point that was NEVER made and then tear apart what you find convenient to attribute to the other side. Frankly, it's only exceeded in vacuous idiocy by it's shrillness.
 
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The real debate is you're silly notion that a person killed by RPV is more valuable than a person killed by F-18.

You're refusing to discuss that.

You're right. I am refusing to discuss that because it isn't the argument being made, much as you need it to be.
 
It's not all we do, but we certainly do it. The contention is that the use of unmanned drones has caused significant civilian casualty, not that the base use of them is wrong or illegal. I mean, you can ignore reality if you want. Think we're getting all the nasty terrorists and nothing more. But that sort of head in the sand attitude isn't going to fix the problem. Especially when significant civilian death leads to exacerbating the anti-American attitudes of entire groups of people. Attitudes which are used as propaganda for terrorists. But whatever. There are no negative consequences for our actions....ever. Got it.

That's right! We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings over there. :mrgreen:
 
See what I mean?

You're assigning moral values to a weapons platform instead of the actions.

Instead of complaining about the policy of killing the enemy, you're complaining about the policy of using RPV's to kill the enemy.

Your refusal to see the distinction doesn't appear to be my problem.

No, I'm not. that's your deflect. We aren't using those other weapons in our attacks on Pakistan. I'm sure if we had a bomber running out bombing civilian neighborhoods, there would still be argument and contention over the act. But currently, we use drones for that. The critique is that the drones are killing well more civilians than terrorists; so much so that they're bordering on breaking international law (which we've agreed to). Can you stay on target for one post?
 
I'm not answering an irrelevant question

Sorry, you weren't elected to judge the relevance of questions, you weren't elected at all.

The relevance is that some clod in the UN is complaining about the use of RPV's on the battlefield, as opposed to manned aircraft to achieve the same goals.

You want to discuss another issue, start another thread.
 
That's right! We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings over there. :mrgreen:

don't be stupid. If you want to comment on a post, please read it and understand it. Do not take single sentences out of context with no bearing towards the argument put forth.
 
Killing people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time does not make them the enemy.

It is, of course, regrettable that this happens, but that civilians die when military targets are destroyed in an unaviodable fact of war, especially when those legitimate targets deliberately endanger said civilians by hiding among them.

The problem is in the targeting it self. Notice the sewers we have here in America? Well in other countries those are 'underground smuggling routes'. If they have no standing army then how can we really excuse things that take out massive amounts of people (almost ever single precision drop) with a remote push of a button?
 
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