• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups [W:165]

Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

This issue really has nothing to do with political parties. It barely has anything to do with comparing Obama and Bush.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
What real problem? That other countries exist and have different ideas than we do? That there are some people who belong to the same overall culture as some of these people who are violent against us? That these nations might not necessarily want our businesses to exploit their countries? What real problem are these attacks addressing, and how are these killings going to solve them?
Click to expand...

Some people might want it and some people might not. But their leaders and businesspeople certainly want it. Should we ignore those people and just listen to anyone who's unhappy? Moreover, why should the US prioritize the wants and needs of other nations over its wants and need, anyway? The job of a government in international relations is pretty clearly to act in the self-interest of its own people- that's why it exists.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

OldWorldOrder said:
This issue really has nothing to do with political parties. It barely has anything to do with comparing Obama and Bush.
Click to expand...

agree. but there is the similarity of both Obama and Bush that used the counterinsurgency strategy (nationbuilding)
that didn't work in Iraq ,
and Bush/Obama tried in Afganistan, while Obama greatly expanded the use of drones - not just in Afgansitan/Pakistan but also Yemen.

Yemen uses a counter terrorism strategy - kill - no nationbuilding; but it's also flawed with signature strikes, and false info "called in" from various sources.

Yemen is similar to Afganistan, in that it is a civil war - which is now similiar to Iraq -as we blew up the place along sectarian lines.

The BIG similairity is everything we touch gets worse off.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

annata said:
agree. but there is the similarity of both Obama and Bush that used the counterinsurgency strategy (nationbuilding)
that didn't work in Iraq ,
and Bush/Obama tried in Afganistan, while Obama greatly expanded the use of drones - not just in Afgansitan/Pakistan but also Yemen.

Yemen uses a counter terrorism strategy - kill - no nationbuilding; but it's also flawed with signature strikes, and false info "called in" from various sources.

Yemen is similar to Afganistan, in that it is a civil war - which is now similiar to Iraq -as we blew up the place along sectarian lines.

The BIG similairity is everything we touch gets worse off.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the post, a cut above much of the nonsense usually posted here.

I like the distinction between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism- I've found it's something a lot of people don't understand and use interchangeably. However, I disagree that it was attempted and didn't work in Iraq. I feel strongly that a huge reason why Iraq went to **** was precisely because the Bush Administration didn't understand anything about either counterinsurgency OR counterterrorism and simply focused on the traditional concepts of invasion and the deposition of Iraqi government. Of course, later Bush saw his mistake and tried to rectify it, but the genie was already out of the bottle.

I also disagree that Afghanistan got much "worse". It's been a ****ty place for over 30 years now. The US invasion didn't really change much there. The Taliban had only "won" ~5 or so years previous to the American invasion and even then the Northern Alliance ruled a third of the country, with skirmishes on their "borders". And the US "touched" Mindanao and it's better now than then.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

DVSentinel said:
Since Terrorist don't meet the legal definition of a Combatant, they are all civilians.

As to the rest, if you are hanging around with know terrorist and a drone drops a bomb on him while you are nearby, oh, should of found better friends to handout with.
Click to expand...

Wow. Just wow. So if you're innocent you deserve to die because of what your associates, family members, coworkers, or just the random guy down the street does?
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

phattonez said:
Wow. Just wow. So if you're innocent you deserve to die because of what your associates, family members, coworkers, or just the random guy down the street does?
Click to expand...
Hanging around a known terrorist suggests sympathy with terrorism at the very least.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

dnsmith said:
Hanging around a known terrorist suggests sympathy with terrorism at the very least.
Click to expand...

Walking down the same street as a terrorist suggests sympathy with terrorism? So I guess that everyone who was on the hijacked planes on 9/11 were terrorist sympathizers then by that twisted logic.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups [W:16

Is it time to stop the drone attacks?

I believe it is time to stop persistent drone attacks not attacks in general. If we are to have drones why not use them when needed, but if we use them to excess they become a problem. If we can keep them saved for tactical moments they can be more effective than they would be before. Its just like a game my friends and I played as children we would have to find and capture the enemy team or vice versa evade them. In this game we would usually send out our fastest last so we could surprise the enemy when they were already fleeing.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

phattonez said:
Wow. Just wow. So if you're innocent you deserve to die because of what your associates, family members, coworkers, or just the random guy down the street does?
Click to expand...

Any moral or other consideration for the death of "innocents" or collateral damage fall totally to the aggressors who started the conflict, in this case the terrorist. The defending side, that would be us, must do whatever is necessary to achieve victory, even it so called "innocents" get hurt on the way.

We should not only no stop killing terrorists, we should be doing more to achieve total victory.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

DVSentinel said:
Any moral or other consideration for the death of "innocents" or collateral damage fall totally to the aggressors who started the conflict, in this case the terrorist. The defending side, that would be us, must do whatever is necessary to achieve victory, even it so called "innocents" get hurt on the way.

We should not only no stop killing terrorists, we should be doing more to achieve total victory.
Click to expand...

In that case you could easily solve terrorism by blowing up the Earth. Hey, just collateral damage, right? I'm sure you'd be fine with that.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

These people that just don't care about the civilian deaths: Do you honestly think that everyone who is an associate of a member of an extremist organization knows it? Because I know for a fact that they don't.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

mak2 said:
What exactly do you consider a partisan?
Click to expand...

it's contexual. here, if you can't recognize the impact partisan politics has on the acceptance of policy, and reduce your political opponents to simple racists, you're likely analyzing things with a highly partisan lense
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
What real problem? That other countries exist and have different ideas than we do?
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you want to be dishonest and ignore the complexity of the situation, sure, you can say that. But I'm not going to take you seriously
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

OldWorldOrder said:
Some people might want it and some people might not. But their leaders and businesspeople certainly want it. Should we ignore those people and just listen to anyone who's unhappy? Moreover, why should the US prioritize the wants and needs of other nations over its wants and need, anyway? The job of a government in international relations is pretty clearly to act in the self-interest of its own people- that's why it exists.
Click to expand...

And you don't have a problem with "relations" including murder? That's what we're talking about. Whether or not the United States ought to be killing citizens of other nations. There are supposedly "real problems" that we are solving with these bombings. I'd like to know what they are, and why we think that killing will solve them.

Dr. Chuckles said:
Yeah, if you want to be dishonest and ignore the complexity of the situation, sure, you can say that. But I'm not going to take you seriously
Click to expand...

So then no. You can't articulate what problems you're talking about nor why you think bombing people will solve them. I'm not surprised.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

No, I am not. the entire schtick of the right since Obama has emerged as a canidate is only explainable by racism. The birther stuff, the FEMA trains, the lapel pin, the mindless fantasy scandals, nothing of substance, just basic hate, in fact there are literally 1000s of picese of hate emial floating around with the crystal prison and the water melon patch at the white house. I just cant think of another explinaltion . In my political beleifs I am probably much closer to the right than the left, it is jsut the right is so emberassingly hatful in its rhetoric.
Dr. Chuckles said:
it's contexual. here, if you can't recognize the impact partisan politics has on the acceptance of policy, and reduce your political opponents to simple racists, you're likely analyzing things with a highly partisan lense
Click to expand...
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
So then no. You can't articulate what problems you're talking about nor why you think bombing people will solve them. I'm not surprised.
Click to expand...

No, I was actually pointing out that you premise was laughably over simplified and didn't even raise to the level of being worth a real response.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
And you don't have a problem with "relations" including murder?
Click to expand...

No it this is how you're defining it, no.

That's what we're talking about.
Click to expand...

Well, we're talking about an armed conflict. Is that murder? Okay, if you think so, then yeah, I'm okay with it.

Whether or not the United States ought to be killing citizens of other nations.
Click to expand...

Sure, sometimes.

There are supposedly "real problems" that we are solving with these bombings. I'd like to know what they are, and why we think that killing will solve them.
Click to expand...

The problem of those people attacking the US or US interests. Those people will not. Cannot.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

mak2 said:
nothing of substance, just basic hate
Click to expand...

welcome to partisan politics ...
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

OldWorldOrder said:
The problem of those people attacking the US or US interests. Those people will not. Cannot.
Click to expand...

Who are "those people"? The specific people killed by these bombings? The point of the thread is that a lot of people who aren't attacking anything are being killed by them. How that anything besides cold blooded murder?
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
Who are "those people"? The specific people killed by these bombings?
Click to expand...

Yes.

The point of the thread is that a lot of people who aren't attacking anything are being killed by them. How that anything besides cold blooded murder?
Click to expand...

Well, because they're not being targeted, it'd only be manslaughter, for one.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Paschendale said:
Who are "those people"? The specific people killed by these bombings? The point of the thread is that a lot of people who aren't attacking anything are being killed by them. How that anything besides cold blooded murder?
Click to expand...

no, the ones targeted in those bombings, and it's called collateral damage and is accepted under the laws of war. Again, this prevents the use of human shields becoming an even greater issue
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

MadLib said:
That's a pretty good ratio, I'd say, especially when taking into account the fact that the Taliban has killed ten times that number in Pakistan.
Click to expand...


As a supporter of the drone program I'm pretty skeptical that we are that accurate with our bombings and it would be interesting to see how "militant" is being defined here

edit: it's the pakistani govt. Not exactly the paragon of disinterest or transparency here.
 
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

Dr. Chuckles said:
As a supporter of the drone program I'm pretty skeptical that we are that accurate with our bombings and it would be interesting to see how "militant" is being defined here
Click to expand...

It would be good to set parameters like that, and I wouldn't be surprised if the actual ratio was a little higher. Nonetheless, the drone program is obviously the best option we have when a large number of terrorists are hiding in countries that do not officially condone their presence. I think that it's somewhat hypocritical to argue that Yemenis and Pakistanis don't notice the heaps of civilians that terrorists have killed in their own countries, but that they do notice the proportionately much smaller number of civilians that are accidentally killed via US drone strikes. Similarly, it's unlikely that those who witness the bombings or are affected by them have no knowledge of why it's happening.

I'll add that I'm a little less supportive of US drone strikes in Yemen than in Pakistan, since the former has, since 2009, seriously attempted to crack down on al-Qaeda within its own borders while at the same time fighting a Shia insurgency in its northwestern regions. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a covert supporter of anti-American terrorists, and so no one can logically claim that we're infringing on their sovereignty.

EDIT: If anything, I'd say that the Pakistani government would overestimate the number of civilians killed by drones. Their official position is feigned shock and outrage over US strikes.
 
Last edited:
Re: Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits - human rights groups say

MadLib said:
EDIT: If anything, I'd say that the Pakistani government would overestimate the number of civilians killed by drones. Their official position is feigned shock and outrage over US strikes.
Click to expand...

I think this part bears repeating. That said- and it's VERY important to have that said- we can still be dubious about the claims of civilians vs militants. Still, it's a very good ratio and better than what consistent operations of other types would produce, while those other operations also increased the risk of coalition deaths.

MadLib said:
I think that it's somewhat hypocritical to argue that Yemenis and Pakistanis don't notice the heaps of civilians that terrorists have killed in their own countries, but that they do notice the proportionately much smaller number of civilians that are accidentally killed via US drone strikes.
Click to expand...

This, too, bears mentioning again. You can't say that American attacks somehow disengender the population to Americans while ignoring that Taliban attacks can likewise disengender the population to the Taliban, and at a much higher rate. To ignore one for the other is just pushing an agenda.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom