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I would love for you to cite where in the Drone Papers it says that the 'unintended targets' were 'foot soldiers' instead of civilians. Of course, you can't; s
by gortok 11y ago
I would love for you to cite where in the Drone Papers it says that the 'unintended targets' were 'foot soldiers' instead of civilians.
Of course, you can't; since the military automatically classifies any "military aged males" as combatants unless it can be proved otherwise (and there's a huge conflict of interest for them both militarily and politically if they do declare they killed a non-combatant).
- rhino369 11y ago>I would love for you to cite where in the Drone Papers it says that the 'unintended targets' were 'foot soldiers' instead of civilians. I didn't imply the Drone Papers said any such thing. I said it's what you expect from a drone program. But while you are on the subject, the numbers in the Intercept piece suggest 10-20% civilians casualties in Yemn and Somalia. And it states that 70% of those occur when there is a targeting fuck up. That suggests that accurate strikes leave relatively few dead civilians.
- toyg 11y ago"When it works well, it works well". in other words: "60% of the times, it works every time".
- rhino369 11y agoHow much we screw up and hit the wrong target is a totally different question from are we killing civilians without regard for them. It's a difference between knowingly killing and accidentally killing. Legally, there is a huge difference. I'd argue morally there is too, but you can decide for yourself. That opens up a whole other debate about whether the US is reckless with the targeting. But I think it's necessary to distinguish between the two types of civilian causalities.
- cousin_it 11y agoThe accident defense is not intended to be used repeatedly...
- shirkey 11y agoLet's put this another way: if the data suggest a false positive rate of 90%, does that constitute an effective test?
- toyg 11y ago> How much we screw up and hit the wrong target is a totally different question from are we killing civilians without regard for them. No, it's not. When assessing weapon capabilities, precision and collateral damage are irremediably linked, with precision including actual chances of hitting the specified target. In this case the weapon is the "droning process" as a whole; if the process hits the wrong target too many times, its precision is low and hence the likelihood of collateral damage is high. These casualties cannot be justified as "accidental" once the weapon/process' capabilities and actual limits are clear: it would be like throwing a hand grenade in a crowd to hit a single person and then argue that other victims were "accidental" because the question of explosion radius is unrelated to effectiveness at the center of it. Drawing this sort of distinction in reality moves the debate from the main question (should we use this weapon, given its known limits?) to other, often-unanswerable ones (how many collateral casualties can be filed as "accidental" while ostensibly respecting moral and legal thresholds?) that inevitably imply the previous question can only be reasonably answered in a certain way.
- lm______ 11y ago> It's a difference between knowingly killing and accidentally killing. Legally, there is a huge difference. I'd argue morally there is too, but you can decide for yourself. I wonder if the victim's families give much of a shit about the difference in question here.
- beedogs 11y ago> That opens up a whole other debate about whether the US is reckless with the targeting. Actually, the question I've got is why the U.S. is still meddling in the Middle East full-stop.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agowho are you quoting? the military itself hires "females" as combatants. females are like males without dicks.