From your link:
Now, admittedly, I took math for the non-math major, but that seems to indicate that between 73.51 and 82.5% of the deaths were combatants. Nice tag with the "high level", though, given that most drone missions are not against top tier targets.
And this isn't even going in to their deeply flawed methodology - the same that haunted the since-disproven Lancet Survey in Iraq. As a hint to the authors, "Go ask a bunch of Pakistanis if they think drones kill too many people, and then take what they tell you at face value" sucks as a collection method.
Not that the authors likely care. I like how you identify them as "Stanford and NYU". Because they identify themselves as "Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (IHRCRC)" and "Global Justice Clinic (GJC) at NYU School of Law".
:roll:
Fine obersavtions...I did not take the time to vet that source. I think I found the originals.
Here is a news article that uses the figures I was walking about. And
Here is its source. A study conducted by the New America Foundation. I actually looked at this one's methodology and it seems sound but always tough to know. Empirical evidence and statistics are always tricky. All of it's estimates are much lower. The NAF found that since 2004 (it ends in 2010 i believe), 1,372 and 2,125 people have been killed in pakistan via our drone strikes. Of these, 1061 to 1584 were called militants, the rest being innocents. Again, the 2% kill rate comes from "high value targets" or what NATO deemed "strategically important enemy personnel".
Now to tackle your points.
(1) If I assume that all of that 73-82% are actually enemy combatants, that still means that 18 to 25% of those we kill are innocent. If that many americans were killed for any reason along these same lines, it would be national news and an absurd tragedy. What do we hear when it's pakistani's? Whispers over fox and cnn news. Even these numbers are unacceptable. We hear that these strikes are surgically accurate, yet if a surgeon told you he was successful at amputating the right limb 75%, I think you might find these odds a bit troubling if you were going under his knife, right?
(2) If you think that study and its numbers are bull**** (I'm not necessarily saying they aren't), you cannot then turn around and use those numbers to claim "hey, 73 to 82% is pretty good!" If the numbers are wrong, the numbers are wrong. Don't use the source to support your point while also denigrating it to rebuttal mine. That isn't very intellectually honest.
(3) Drone strikes should be inadmissible for the same reason that nukes should be. Any weapon that cannot be used with pinpoint accuracy (i.e. any weapon with assured collateral damage) has no place anywhere in this world. If you can't use it without killing an innocent person, don't use it.
(4) I want to go ahead and put it out there that the 2% hit rate on high value targets may not be right either. It is damn near impossible to track this stuff, and I think the state purposefully designs it to be. With that said, hopefully the source I provided is a close to right as is out there.
(5) If it is true that we have a hit rate of 73 to 82% on enemy combatants, no one knows what that means. What the US government defines as a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant" has often times proven to be paranoid at best. Take, for instance,
Brandon Raub, an ex-marine turned 9/11 truther. He was detained and forced to undergo psychiatric evals for making a facebook comment that was anti-government and "terrorist in nature". I wouldn't call myself a truther (mainly because our state does enough evil publicly [like drone strikes] for me to hate it as it is). I've seen what he wrote, and its nothing. If he's a terrorist, who else is? If it is politically or militarily advantageous to label someone as such, they will do so. As far as I can tell, our military has killed far more innicent people over the past 10-15 years than al quada ever did.
(6) As for the NYU/Standford thing...my mistake. Again, I grabbed it in haste...however, it does appear that it did come from NYU. I suppose I mistook that stanford for stanford univ.
look forward to your reply.
