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They are no different functionally and perhaps morally (though on could argue that killing people remotely from your desk in Missouri is troubling). They are V

by TrevorJ 11y ago

They are no different functionally and perhaps morally (though on could argue that killing people remotely from your desk in Missouri is troubling). They are VERY VERY different politically and therefore in reality, however. It's been demonstrated that for whatever reason the public at large isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by drones. Maybe it's the low cost, or the fact that we don't risk American lives doing it, I'm not sure. If you looked at all the drone strikes over the last 10 years and replaced them with operations that involved american boots on the ground/f-16s/CIA wetwork etc it's very hard to imagine a scenario where that would have been acceptable to the American public. Drones also have loitering capabilities that would be much more expensive to maintain with jets. Basically, I'm of the mind that drone strikes are seen as 'easy' and low risk politically so we end up killing more people than we would if we had to weigh the risks of more traditional means before we carried out the operation.

pekk 11y ago
The public isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by a volunteer military. But nobody is proposing that we reinstate the draft, are we? And as a reminder, even the draft did not stop Vietnam - including My Lai, Agent Orange and uncountably many other atrocities. Why would eliminating drones do so? There is no drone-based explanation for why we accepted adventures like, say, Nicaragua. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not primarily enabled by drones. Maybe you can argue that drones "helped." But the real thing that feeds this is the insanely high approval ratings of a "war president" (at least at the beginning, before political objectives are clearly unwinnable) and the high electability of presidents who beat their chests about raising our military profile. Which is the fault of an irrational, undereducated, bloodthirsty electorate. I will go even further here: in my opinion, drones have not really helped make the wars more palatable at all, on the contrary, they have actually been the single best, most emotionally impactful argument anyone can think to deploy against US military policy and the Obama administration in particular. THAT is the reason we keep hearing about them, not necessarily because they are more heinous, but because the issue is perceived as a great political vulnerability and political opportunity. It sounds better to say that things are now worse than ever because of Obama's unprecedented evil than to point out that the real problem is why we are bombing at all. I don't expect focus on the drone issue to have any real fruit in terms of reducing the impact of US wars. I wonder if you even base your opinion that drone strikes are resulting in more deaths on any real data or if you made up your mind ahead of any data. And I suspect you are grossly overestimating the degree of care taken in bombing campaigns prior to the drone era. The risks to high-altitude bombers in the conditions we are using drones are not vast. The real risks are of overbombing, which is one of the objectively worst and most immoral aspects of bombing campaigns in decades past (think cluster bombs).
tsotha 11y ago
>It's been demonstrated that for whatever reason the public at large isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by drones. The public doesn't care if they're carried out by manned jets either. It's not like there's a huge risk to F-16 pilots zooming over guys with rusty AK-47s at 10,000 ft. From what I can glean the US has lost two strike aircraft (an F-15 and an F-16) in Afghanistan since 2001, neither of them to hostile action. If there's any difference politically it likely arises from the fact that you typically use at least a 250 lb bomb in a manned strike, whereas drone attacks normally involve missiles with 20 lb warheads, which you can use to blow up, say, a single car without taking out the entire block.

by TrevorJ 11y ago

pekk 11y ago

The public isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by a volunteer military. But nobody is proposing that we reinstate the draft, are we? And as a reminder, even the draft did not stop Vietnam - including My Lai, Agent Orange and uncountably many other atrocities. Why would eliminating drones do so? There is no drone-based explanation for why we accepted adventures like, say, Nicaragua. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not primarily enabled by drones. Maybe you can argue that drones "helped." But the real thing that feeds this is the insanely high approval ratings of a "war president" (at least at the beginning, before political objectives are clearly unwinnable) and the high electability of presidents who beat their chests about raising our military profile. Which is the fault of an irrational, undereducated, bloodthirsty electorate. I will go even further here: in my opinion, drones have not really helped make the wars more palatable at all, on the contrary, they have actually been the single best, most emotionally impactful argument anyone can think to deploy against US military policy and the Obama administration in particular. THAT is the reason we keep hearing about them, not necessarily because they are more heinous, but because the issue is perceived as a great political vulnerability and political opportunity. It sounds better to say that things are now worse than ever because of Obama's unprecedented evil than to point out that the real problem is why we are bombing at all. I don't expect focus on the drone issue to have any real fruit in terms of reducing the impact of US wars. I wonder if you even base your opinion that drone strikes are resulting in more deaths on any real data or if you made up your mind ahead of any data. And I suspect you are grossly overestimating the degree of care taken in bombing campaigns prior to the drone era. The risks to high-altitude bombers in the conditions we are using drones are not vast. The real risks are of overbombing, which is one of the objectively worst and most immoral aspects of bombing campaigns in decades past (think cluster bombs).

tsotha 11y ago

>It's been demonstrated that for whatever reason the public at large isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by drones. The public doesn't care if they're carried out by manned jets either. It's not like there's a huge risk to F-16 pilots zooming over guys with rusty AK-47s at 10,000 ft. From what I can glean the US has lost two strike aircraft (an F-15 and an F-16) in Afghanistan since 2001, neither of them to hostile action. If there's any difference politically it likely arises from the fact that you typically use at least a 250 lb bomb in a manned strike, whereas drone attacks normally involve missiles with 20 lb warheads, which you can use to blow up, say, a single car without taking out the entire block.