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> Do you send a drone or risk US/coalition soldier lives? Maybe you stop anything that carries the slightest risk of killing innocent people on foreign soil of

> Do you send a drone or risk US/coalition soldier lives? Maybe you stop anything that carries the slightest risk of killing innocent people on foreign soil of countries you are not at war with? This supposed us vs the evil terrorist mentality is used on all levels of force to treat other lives destroyed in the process as subpar and of little value. What would your argument look like if a Pakistani drone killed a wanted murderer in your neighborhood taking down a family of five with two kids in the process? If you're saying we cannot sit back and not get involved in this because we have a terrorist problem - let me remind you that we had/have Bin Laden and the Taliban (funded in the 80's), Isis (funded anti-Assad groups), instability in Iraq and Syria precisely thanks to US intervention in those regions. Of course the existence of these groups is great for politicians and the military-industrial complex, since the former get to avoid issues at home and expand government powers and the later reap financial windfalls.

pjc50 11y ago
It's pretty clear that everyone only thinks the drone program is a valid approach "over there" in the "wild east". This is particularly clear when considering British jihadis; there haven't yet been drone strikes in, say, Leeds. But we've already crossed the threshold of a British national going to Syria and then being bombed by the RAF. Surely this cuts both ways. Terrorists over in Syria and Yemen have a very limited capability to harm us. They can be effectively banned from planes once they're identified. They have no long range missile capability. (There's a problem of shortrange missiles being fired from Pakistan into Afghanistan, though). So the whole thing resembles colonial policing: the small group of westerners trying to balance power among the local factions for their own political advantage. (Anyone going to suggest that drones should have been used in Northern Ireland? Or that when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found he should have been taken out with an airstrike in suburban Boston? No?)

pjc50 11y ago

It's pretty clear that everyone only thinks the drone program is a valid approach "over there" in the "wild east". This is particularly clear when considering British jihadis; there haven't yet been drone strikes in, say, Leeds. But we've already crossed the threshold of a British national going to Syria and then being bombed by the RAF. Surely this cuts both ways. Terrorists over in Syria and Yemen have a very limited capability to harm us. They can be effectively banned from planes once they're identified. They have no long range missile capability. (There's a problem of shortrange missiles being fired from Pakistan into Afghanistan, though). So the whole thing resembles colonial policing: the small group of westerners trying to balance power among the local factions for their own political advantage. (Anyone going to suggest that drones should have been used in Northern Ireland? Or that when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found he should have been taken out with an airstrike in suburban Boston? No?)