Drones, Computer Viruses and Blowback

Hugh Pickens writes "Michael Crowley writes that using drones rather than soldiers to kill bad guys is appealing for many reasons, including cost, relative precision and reduction of risk to American troops. But there's plenty of evidence that drones antagonize local populations and create more enemies over the long term than we kill in the short term. The failed 2010 Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, has said that about the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, and the Washington Post has described how drone strikes may be breeding sympathy for al-Qaeda in Yemen. 'It is the politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically and it is unpopular only in other countries,' says Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence until May of 2010. 'Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.' Now there's another component to the new warfare that threatens blowback: cyberwar. Like drones, cyberweapons are relatively cheap and do their work without putting American troops in harm's way. The blowback comes when those viruses get loose and inflict unintended damage or provide templates to terrorists or enemy nations that some experts think could lead to disaster and argue that cyberweapons are like bioweapons, demanding international treaties to govern their use. 'We may indeed be at a critical moment in history, when the planet's prospects could be markedly improved by an international treaty on cyberweapons, and the cultivation of an attendant norm against cyberwar,' writes Richard Wright. 'The ideal nation to lead the world toward this goal would be the most powerful nation on earth, especially if that nation had a pretty clean record on the cyberweapons front. A few years ago, America seemed to fit that description. But it doesn't now.'"

Comments

Re:Ironic elephant in the room

[cold fjord]

Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.

You despair for the wrong reason.

Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."

I think you would be shocked to actually learn what is going on since you don't actually seem to know, or really have a good idea. This ultimately isn't about the US, it is about them - the Islamist extremists, their goals, and aspirations. Their kind was conquering and killing for hundreds of years (more like 1,000) before the US came along. Read Bin Laden's demands in his Letter to America. His first actual demand is that the United States convert to Islam. Second, he wants the Constitution replaced with Sharia law in all its glory: stone the adulterer, crush homosexuals under walls or throw them off of buildings, whip the immodest, chop off the hands of thieves, no drugs or alcohol, no interest charged on loans, and all the rest. That isn't a demand to "stop smearing shit on my face", that is the demand of a man determined to see the world under Islamic rule even if it takes 1,000 more years. This was a man who wanted to see the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, which existed until ~ 1924. Their grievances is that Islam has fallen from its former glory, and they intend to restore it. They want to retake Spain which pushed out Islamists rulers hundreds of years ago.

  What al-Qaida Really Wants

If you want to despair, then do it over the fact that this conflict could easily continue for 20, 50, or 100 more years as these flare ups of Islamist extremism do. Or Londonistan , or Eurabia

In a shrinking world, the extremists will probably never be far away.

Think about this: POVERTY, EDUCATION, AND TERRORISM

These facts should be well known by now. How is it that people keep getting this wrong eleven years after 9/11/2001?

At the The Other September 11th, the Battle of Vienna, the Islamist attackers were outside the gates trying to get in. In future battles, we will find them inside the gates, and too many of the defenders of the West ignorant and in doubt, or even ready to throw in with them.

As I wrote, you despair for the wrong reason.