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The Drone War
There are plenty of human casualties in the Afghan conflict -- though few among Americans -- but the fight seems especially significant in terms of technology and military conflict.
The Predator spy plane and other unmanned drones and gunships (along with satellites, thermal imaging devices, X-ray scanners, etc.) not only search for the enemy, but fire guided missiles, drop powerful oxygen-sucking hyperbaric bombs, and guide bomb strikes from afar. There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict. The most staggering statistic out of Afghanistan might be that the first American combat casualty died nearly three months into the "war."
Before Afghanistan, conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without substantial numbers of ground troops. Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice. Both Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq and the Kosovo conflicts involved the growing used of so-called "smart" laser-guided weaponry, deployed with varying degrees of reliability. But those conflicts also involved either the use of enormous numbers of soldiers on the ground and were controversial in terms of the bomb's precision and effectiveness.
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight. Early reports suggest the civilian casualties may be lower than in any other large-scale military operation in modern history. Although dangerous and complex for the military on the scene, it's hard to imagine a conflict more remote to the majority of Americans, asked to go about their business as usual.
Orwell's "Drone Wars" come very much to mind here. So does Sir Arthur Clarke's machine warfare and AI military stories. A handful of human soldiers guide and direct the increasingly sophisticated technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks with stunningly few U.S. military casualties and American civilian casualties beyond September 11 and the anthrax attacks. The Taliban and their terrorist friends seem to have been totally unprepared for this variety of war, such a stark contrast to the Soviet's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan just a decade ago.
It seems only a matter of time before other countries developed their own surrogate weaponry, and the idea of the high-tech Drone War -- machines warring with one another -- moves to the next level.
Winston Churchill repeatedly asked his countrymen for brutal sacrifices in World War II. In the new kind of American war, political leaders ask citizens only to keep shopping and traveling.
Military historians like John Keegan have recently argued that the devastating toll of warfare in the 20th Century makes conventional conflicts increasingly less likely. Once a means of expanding territory and amassing wealth, the brutish wars of the 20th Century have rendered both objectives hard to attain. Even before Drone Wars, artillery and aerial warfare along with nuclear weapons suggested that wars can't really be won in the conventional sense any longer; even the victors will suffer unacceptable losses. But drone warfare radically alters the equation. Technologically advanced civilian populations -- just as Orwell foresaw -- can send their technological surrogates off to battle one another while humans stay home to wait for the outcome.
A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery? War has recently seemed so terrible that civilized societies view it as a last resort. But American history is crammed with technological innovations that are neither discussed nor much thought out. Drone Wars might not appear so terrible. They might even become irresistible.
Quick Google Search uncovered it (shoulda did that before posting. Too late, though).
"If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how -- or why -- he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people -- 'older and wiser heads,' as they say -- supply the control. Which is as it should be." [Heinlein 1959:63, emphasis and ellipses in original]
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The U.S. had learned that lesson long before Vietnam. Prior to the invasion of Normandy During WWII no American reporters were permitted to photograph U.S. casualties. During the invasion that ban was lifted but the reports were still censored "for security reasons."
During Desert Storm the army worked to hide Iraqi casualties as well as American ones. CNN reports at the time keep relatively quiet on that subject. Probably because most Americans wouldn't have supported that "use of force" if they had been confronted with the killing involved. It's difficult to "keep the moral high ground" when you are killing people.
How about Blacks? Demographics indicate they are still an obvious underclass in the US.
Now compare that to how many times people have used violent force to gain their freedom.
Fiction:
Spiders, Part 1: A group of Afghan women have had it up to here with the Taliban...
Spiders, Part 2: US civilians take part in the hunt for OBL and document history by means of massively-distributed, networked, robots, called "spiders", which are airdropped en masse around the countryside.
(I'm still looking forward to Part 3...)
Non-fiction:
Omnicam - a 360-degree camera. One application of which is to mount in a system like...
LOTS: Lehigh Omnidirectional Tracking System, a system whereby autonomous cameras can be dropped around hell's half-acre and human operators alerted when something "interesting" happens.
Sounds a lot like "Spiders", come to think of it. I wonder if this is where the artist got the idea for the strip?
how many times in history have a people won their independence through peaceful means?
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the list goes on and on.
-Tom Duff
I spent a great deal of time in Saudi during Desert Storm - from approximately the start until the end - and I know firsthand that the myth you are trying to spread is false.
To clarify (for the conspiracy junkies and the paranoid): THERE WERE NO SECRET CASUALTIES DURING DESERT STORM.
The US learned from Cambodia (and too many other egregious examples to list) that Americans don't like their government to lie to them. In this age, there is no reason for anyone to be "out of the loop" except for reasons of deliberate obtuseness, or having been seduced by too many episodes of the X-Files.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I believe this is also the case in Australia and New Zealand.
While it hans't (ever?) happened, the Queen can still veto legislation in Canada through her official representative who must assent to all new legislation.
The BLU-82 Commando Vault (also known as the Daisy Cutter) is a 15,000 lb. thermobaric bomb, not "hyperbaric" as he calls it (although I suppose it makes sense in the way he uses it). And they certainly aren't dropped from unmanned planes. They are pushed out on skids from the back of Special Operations C-130s (or perhaps AC-130s).
For more on the Daisy Cutter and other thermobaric weapons, check the following links:
Also notable: The bomb used in the beginning of Outbreak (1995) was a fuel air explosive similar to the Daisy Cutter.
-- null
Actually, I'd say that five thousand years of warfare have demonstrated that war is often an extremely effective course of action. Just a handful off the top of my head - William the Conqueror's conquest of England won him the crown, the Russian expansions of the 18th and 19th centuries, pretty much every single war fought by the Romans, Alexander the Great, the list continues....
The whole premise of Mutually Assured Destruction is to make a full-scale war futile - a distinct departure from prior forms of warfare.
- Ed Pichon
I shall not cheese. Cheese is the mindkiller. Cheese is the little death that brings total obliteration.
"Battles by machines"- The classic image of drone wars (as other have pointed out)is machine on machine. There is -no- military power on the planet facing US "drones", even if you would apply that word to UAVs (I, and the military, would not). ...ground troops."- And the examples he sites weren't won. Kosovo is an ongoing police action and people here on slashdot still argue that we should lift the sanctions that were the negotiated end to Desert Storm. And just like Desert storm Enduring freeom -does- have "tremendous numbers" of ground soldiers, just not US ones (a strategy that could yet come back to haunt us).
...Americans," No, read your history. Ike/Nixon lied about body counts (all of the time) and toward the end of Vietnam started getting reporters away from the frontline. This is old hat, and it may be necessary if we accept winning a war as a US goal.
"conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without
"...a very different kind of fight. Early reports suggest..."- "Early reports" means -rumors-. This is a theater of war, information sources are rare or nonexistent. Basing a perspective on "early reports" is silly. "...hard to imagine a conflict more remote to
"technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks with stunningly few U.S. military casualties"- Balderdash. Really, I understand we're all here because we share a fasination with technology but let's still try at to keep a -little- perspective. Our technology, including to a minor degree the spectacularly impressive though hardly drone like UAVs, has helped the militia fighters on the ground win this. But it is those militia, the same infighting badly organized peasants that held the Russian bear at bay for years, that did the early work on the ground (90% of the work on the ground mostly likely) and took the casualties for us. THEY are the ones that did this, not some low bandwidth flying camera platform with two tiny missiles under its wings.
"It seems only a matter of time before other countries developed their own surrogate weaponry, and the idea of the high-tech Drone War -- machines warring with one another -- moves to the next level." Huh? Since when did machine on machine war become "the next level" of Drone War?? That IS drone war, and we aren't there yet. Our cool, tiny little Unmanned planes aren't drones, and to the very limited degree that they can "fight", they're doing it against (backwords and poorly armed) humans, not drones. That is not a "drone war".
"...suggested that wars can't really be won in the conventional sense any longer; even the victors will suffer unacceptable losses." Oh, read a few more of Mr. Keegans books. -Every- war is followed by a small vocal group declaring it to horrific to ever happen again (every one). But remember the Japanese militaries distribution of punji sticks to civilians on the home island (with directions on poisoning them). Remember the fire bombing, the total annihaltion of all life, in Dresden and the ZERO effect that had on the Nazi war machine. Sorry to say it, but War isn't going to end because weapons become more effective. How did this idea of "Drone War" enter the public mind? Popular fiction like Star Wars... and it isn't called "To terrible to contemplate Wars in the Stars so lets hang out with Darth and sing Coombiaya" (no sp, sorry).
"A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea."- Seems to me it's a John Katz idea, even the stylized "war" in star wars shows sacrifice when humans die in waves of damage emanating from the warring drones (wich are after all only proxy humans). There is no war without sacrifice. The US taxpayer will feel the bite of those 4 million dollar cruise missiles (that we're running out of). The Afghani warlords feel it in the blood of their dying comrades.
"Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery?" Because the machinery, just like B52s and B2s, is used to destroy the infrastructure that allows the construction of the machinery. Just like the US bombed the Ruhr Valley in WWII to end German war production (and a damn good plan it was), just like we cluster bombed the runway at Kandahar international airport and went after Al Quaidas communication network. People die when that happens, war -is- horrible, that's why countries don't wage war that isn't critical to their percieved self interest. Thanks for asking ; ) BK425 All of this is my opinion.
A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery?
My response to that quote and the rest of the article: what in the hell are you thinking?
A war without sacrifice isn't a war. Your argument for drone warfare is basically the same argument for sport-warfare. Instead of killing each other, why don't we just play a good old game of soccer to settle the conflict? Drones "killing" drones is basically the same thing, except it's like taking your countries to an episode of BattleBots. What happens when one drone army destroys another drone army? The drone army attacks the drone production facilities, then the human army, and then goes after the civilians (unless you surrender.) People will always die in wars, that's the whole point. You fight the war until you realize you can't win because you DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE LEFT to do so.
Oh well, I had a really good argument but I'm sitting here in such disbelief that this actually got posted on Slashdot that I forgot what else I was going to say.
PS - Afghanistan has not been a drone war. There are pilots dropping most of the bombs, and navy seamen firing most of the cruise missiles. Yes, automated machines have been used, but they are nothing without our planes, ships, troops, and most importantly the Northern Alliance soldiers.
~ now you know
>
> But they didn't really have the chance. The Americans were like (nearly) unseen aliens, sending precise destruction down from the skies. They mostly didn't see an American to shoot at.
>
> So, what message does that send? [...]
"Choose your battles wisely."
(Or, in the vernacular, "Don't mess with Texas" ;-)
> I'm concerned that the war against terrorism will convince many people that terrorism is the only way left to them to wage war against us.
But they already concluded that, a long time ago, which is why they've conspired to bomb the USS Cole, the US army barracks, and fly airliners into the WTC, Pentagon, and other targets. They've believed it for years, and lack of a commensurate response has taught them that terrorism can be "gotten away with" indefinitely.
Our "message" for the past 20-30 years has been one of "Annoy us, and we'll fart in your general direction", and has been interpreted as "try again, and make it bigger, and maybe then we'll notice!")
The message we're sending now is different:
"If you have a beef with us, and don't use diplomacy to address that beef, you will be exterminated, and your beef will go unaddressed. Your followers will also be exterminated, and be unable to carry on the cause. The only way to live long enough to have your grievance aired is to negotiate with us."
I believe the IRA saw the writing on the wall and clued in. Arafat appears to be somewhat clue-resistant at this point. Some of Arafat's followers obviously haven't figured it out, and are going to have to learn the hard way.
There's historical precedent (granted, we lost Vietnam) but "bombing them back to the stone age" often results in bringing them to the negotiating table.
The goal is to make the cost of terrorism so high that it, too, ceases to be an option for those who oppose us.
The masses are occupied watching Survivor. They could care less about the politics of the Middle East. Chomsky could go on for hours about this.
The Afghan "villages" we bombed were a case of enemy propaganda. When information indicates that we have an Al Qaida ammo dump, or Al Qaida gunmen hiding out in buildings, we bomb it. If it was a village harboring the gunmen, then they've been warned, and should consider themselves combatants, not civillians.
You say that the eyewitnesses are "credible" and "neutral" - well, how do you know that? up to 60% of the current Northern Alliance forces are "tribal forces" that switched sides when they saw which direction the wind is blowing. We've seen high-level Taliban ministers released from captivity by the Afghan government, rather than handed over to the US. Obviously there are some elements to the new government, as well as their fighters, who harbor secret loyalties to the Taliban. So of course there are going to be apparent civillians who will gladly set up in front of a CNN camera and claim wild stories about the US's evil bombing of unarmed innocent civillians. Propaganda is the only effective weapon that the Taliban and Al Qaida have left. It was really their only weapon to begin with. Don't you think that the WTC wasn't selected for it's propaganda value? They want to paint us as the criminals, they want this war characterized as "Faith versus Atheism" (their words) and that it's "Crusader hatred" out to wipe out Islam.
And the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was *not* an accident. Depending on what you may believe.
I'm not saying that "smart weapons" and modern automated warfare is flawless. Of course there are instances where bombs don't detonate, and years later, explode when a farmer tills the field. There are lg bombs that go off course when intermittent cloud cover interrupts the guiding laser beam. GPS-guided bombs are actually known to be rather innacurate, and nobody's claiming they are accurate. Plus, you can't tell from 70,000 feet whether a target on the ground is a good guy, or a bad guy, or a civillian. Especially when the bad guys wear civillian clothing, and hide amongst civillian buildings. I think that none of that means that the war-effort is immoral. You have a choice. Either DON'T prosecute the war, or prosecute it as carefully as possible. Right now, I think it's being done as carefully as possible. Are our soldiers' lives more valuable to us than their civillians? Damn straight! Their civillians don't protect us. Our soldiers do. Some of those civillians danced and partied on September 11th. If any innocents get killed, they really ought to be blaming the people who brought the bombing on them - their own precious Taliban and the religious leaders who wanted to war with the west in the name of their own religious glory.
If some right-wing Christian nut from the US goes to Baghdad and blows up an apartment building, and Bush decides to shelter him instead of turning him over to the Iraqi government, I'd be pissed at Bush if it started a war. Especially if my home and family got bombed because of it. I certainly wouldn't blame the Iraqis for defending themselves.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Congress had a bill up for debate to declare war. It died without passing. Instead, specifically and with a clear understanding of the difference, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the President to use armed forces against a particular enemy and passed funding bills. It's not the same in the eyes of the Congress, and it's not the same in my eyes. Your point would have been valid if that previous bill hadn't come up. Of interest we also have two bills up basically offering to pay any bounty hunters that want to go kill Osama bin Laden for us.
Here is what passed:
S.J.Res.23
One Hundred Seventh Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE FIRST SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Wednesday, the third day of January, two thousand and one
Joint Resolution
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.
There are two more bills that seems to be stuck in committee:
H.R. 3074 --Air Piracy Reprisal and Capture Act of 2001 will update federal statutes to recognize acts of piracy beyond the high seas by including the skies; update punishment for piracy to allow death penalty.
H.R. 3076 -- September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001 will grant President Bush the authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal to capture, alive or dead, Osama bin Laden and the others responsible for the September 11 attacks.
It will give President Bush the option, if he chooses, but does not require the use of this weapon of war.
Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.
It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.
But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .
It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .
Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .
But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.
And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.
But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?
Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.
Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.
And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.
And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.
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