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Harvard Study Suggests Drone Strikes Can Disrupt Terror Groups
An anonymous reader writes "Can drone strikes rid the world of terror groups? Many have argued that drones/UAVs seem to be a logical weapon of war: ground troops are not needed and strikes can be specifically targeted against terror-cell leaders (so-called 'decapitation strikes). Others have argued that such attacks only fuel more anger towards the United States and the West while also trampling on nations like Pakistan's sovereign rights and territory. Two recent studies published by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government suggest 'On the basis of comprehensive analyses of data on multiple terrorist and insurgent organizations, these studies conclude that killing or capturing terrorist leaders can reduce the effectiveness of terrorist groups or even cause terrorist organizations to disintegrate.' It seems then drones and UAVs will be a weapon of war for a long time to come."
...it's when we miss that we cause problems.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
That a tactical nuke can disrupt a picnic... this is news?
FTA
these studies conclude that killing or capturing terrorist leaders can reduce the effectiveness of terrorist groups or even cause terrorist organizations to disintegrate
The studies conclude that killing the leaders of terrorist groups hurts the groups.
UAVs are one tool available, as are Special Forces, and traditional military force. I suppose the conclusion of the headline is correct though, UAVs are an effective weapon. Who knew?
...Ask yourself, then answer: who is the real terrorist?
The man fighting to keep his family and his livelihood against corporate interests?
Or the man who wages war from a bombproof office, nine thousand miles away, that he might steal that which does not belong to him?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
They grow-up desiring to get revenge on the Americans for killing their parents (who were just innocent bystanders). The cycle of hate never stops.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Nice. It's just that these things don't have much to do with each other and not much more with the study's topics. A terrorist organization "disintegrating" does not mean there won't be another one.
I can't help the feeling that any study about actual politics -especially the more questionable part of it- that will be presented to the public will be in favor of the status quo.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Killing people in an organization usually makes the organization weaker. So, too, does the expenditure of resources. These are the premises on which war is based. Whether it is done with swords, machine guns, bioweapons, nukes, or drones.
The choice of weapon may alter the truth of that premise by altering the willingness of people to fund, to assist, to kill for, or to die for those organizations. It will also alter the cost per kill.
As a tool, drones obviously help to kill people. The question is whether they are cost-effective and what the psychological consequences are.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Let's review the distinction between terrorist and enemy combatant (although some of us may have lost sight of it):
Terrorist: member of a small group of persons who wish to cause outsize havoc in the dim hope of changing larger groups of persons
Enemy combatant: member of a large group of persons who can and do cause havoc in a rather reasonable hope of changing similarly sized groups of persons
Now, if it's not obvious already, let's realize that large groups necessarily start off small.
Not only are they here to stay, they are in their infancy. Robotic warfare is coming in a major way. Boston Dynamics type research is going to bring us fully realized robot combat soldiers in multitutdes of forms. Bipedal. Quadrupeds. Quadrocopters. Fully expect all of these deployed in my lifetime. Likely the next 10 years.
They are also very effective in normal building demolition.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Look, the way we took down bin Laden was the RIGHT way to do it and it was the way it should have been done from the very beginning... if you have an enemy, decapitate him. But instead we treated (and treat) entire populations as if they were the enemy, which really only serves to make US the enemy instead. So I'm torn... on the one hand, if drones can do this, then good... on the other, what happens when our relatively lack of accountability in using them takes a darker turn? What happens when a peacenik (as suggested by Goering at the nuremburg trials) is denounced at a traitor and subject to 'droning,' too? Who decides who is a terrorist?
...then skynet became sentient, then we had to send a terminator back and then...ah hell, you know the rest.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
The more effective drones turn out to be, the bigger the chance that terrorist will start using them too.
Anyway seems you don't need expensive or fancy stuff, just a reasonable range remote aircraft with an IED attached to it?
In the end there will still be more people suffering and dying only fueling the fight..
Stupid people and their wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplined_Minds
"Disciplined Minds is a book by physicist Jeff Schmidt published in 2000. The book describes how professionals are made; the methods of professional and graduate schools that turn eager entering students into disciplined managerial and intellectual workers that correctly perceive and apply the employer's doctrine and outlook. Schmidt uses the examples of law, medicine, and physics, and describes methods that students and professional workers can use to preserve their personalities and independent thought."
See also:
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest
Those links explain in part how can such "smart" people totally ignore the potential for "blowback" from the violent actions they endorse (actions which include the slaughter of endless innocents, the violation of national sovereignty and probably international law, the setting of an example of ironic misuse of advanced technology that could otherwise bring material abundance to the entire world, and so on)... These links help show why these academics are willfully blind to the idea that they are endorsing polices that may be creating 100 new terrorist for every one they think they might have killed.
Never forget what one of our greatest Marine Major Generals said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
"War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare."
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were *supposed* to be expensive quagmires so somebody's buddies coudl get lucrative "defense" contracts. These conflicts were *supposed* to drive up oil prices so somebody's buddies would see the value of their domestic oil holdings increase. And so on...
See also:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/killer-drone-attacks-ille_b_1623065.html
"Christof Heyns, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, expressed grave concern about the targeted killings, saying they may constitute war crimes. He called on the Obama administration to explain how its drone strikes comport with international law, specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals, and whether the State in which the killing takes place has given consent. Heyns further asked for specification of the procedural safeguards in place, if any, to ensure in advance of drone killings that they comply with international law. He also wanted to know what measures the U.S. government takes after any such killing to ensure that its legal and factual analysis was accurate and, if not, the remedial measures it would take, including justice and reparations for victims and their families. Although Heyns' predecessor made similar requests, Heyns said the United States has not provided a satisfactory response.
Heyns also called on the U.S. government to make public the number of civilians collaterally killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties. Once again, Heyns said the United States has not satisfactor
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Imagine what would happen if the US government or law enforcement agencies started making drone kills within our own borders, saying "we only target terrorists and drug lords; so sorry if we occasionally hit a church gathering or a country club".
After pausing to consider how that would make you feel, imagine how we're making people in other countries feel.
The problem with the Western Powers is that they're always wrapping themselves in the banner of moral "rights". If we exploit the natives and some of them react violently, we have a "right" to respond with overwhelming force. After all, "they started it".
But this focus on presumed (and self-declared) rights is utterly incompatible with actually addressing the cause of the problem.
If we want peace with the Muslim world, we need to go home and quit treating them like subjects who are illegally camped on "our" oil supply.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
because thy were the rulers at the time
terrorists seek political change from the status quo. the taliban was the status quo
so it accurate to call the taliban a brutal regime, but not terrorists. yes, terror was a tool they used: public executions, but that is not the traditional definition of terrorism: it's a not a surprise attack on innocents from a group not in power
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199112--02.htm ... ..."
"There are two ways to approach the study of terrorism. One may adopt a literal approach, taking the topic seriously, or a propagandistic approach, construing the concept of terrorism as a weapon to be exploited in the service of some system of power. In each case it is clear how to proceed. Pursuing the literal approach, we begin by determining what constitutes terrorism. We then seek instances of the phenomenon -- concentrating on the major examples, if we are serious -- and try to determine causes and remedies. The propagandistic approach dictates a different course. We begin with the thesis that terrorism is the responsibility of some officially designated enemy. We then designate terrorist acts as "terrorist" just in the cases where they can be attributed (whether plausibly or not) to the required source; otherwise they are to be ignored, suppressed, or termed "retaliation" or "self-defence."
It comes as no surprise that the propagandistic approach is adopted by governments generally, and by their instruments in totalitarian states. More interesting is the fact that the same is largely true of the media and scholarship in the Western industrial democracies, as has been documented in extensive detail.1 "We must recognize," Michael Stohl observes, "that by convention -- and it must be emphasized only by convention -- great power use and the threat of the use of force is normally described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism," though it commonly involves "the threat and often the use of violence for what would be described as terroristic purposes were it not great powers who were pursuing the very same tactic."2 Only one qualification must be added: the term "great powers" must be restricted to favored states; in the Western conventions under discussion, the Soviet Union is granted no such rhetorical license, and indeed can be charged and convicted on the flimsiest of evidence.
The message is clear: no one has the right of self-defense against US terrorist attack. The US is a terrorist state by right. That is unchallengeable doctrine.
And:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200205--02.htm
"The condemnations of terrorism are sound, but leave some questions unanswered. The first is: What do we mean by "terrorism"? Second: What is the proper response to the crime? Whatever the answer, it must at least satisfy a moral truism: If we propose some principle that is to be applied to antagonists, then we must agree -- in fact, strenuously insist -- that the principle apply to us as well. Those who do not rise even to this minimal level of integrity plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of right and wrong, good and evil."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This more to do with network theory. There is next to no value in killing minions. They are easily replaceable and can be promoted as martyrs. Leaders on the other hand take time to train and create a network of trust. The minions in fact are what lead to the leaders. So the minions are invaluable source of information against these terrorist groups. They are not quite as bright and they are the means the leaders interface with the real world. The more they obfuscate this link, the harder it is to do their job. Anti terrorists agencies are getting better at decifering these obfuscations and terrorist groups are becoming less effective. All they have is suicide bombing. I use the term terrorism liberally but you can insert freedom fighter.
...is with better ideas: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html ..."
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
killing or capturing terrorist leaders can reduce the effectiveness of terrorist groups or even cause terrorist organizations to disintegrate
And all this time the US military were just doing it for the lols. How serendipitous.
Many have argued that drones/UAVs seem to be a logical weapon of war: ground troops are not needed and strikes can be specifically targeted against terror-cell leaders (so-called 'decapitation strikes). Others have argued that such attacks only fuel more anger towards the United States and the West
Hopefully some other "others" realise that it's not a binary choice and that drone strikes can in fact do both at the same time.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
don't read or listen to Bin Laden, or those closest to him have written and said. Just Keep On Believing...
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/faa-has-authorized-106-government-entities-fly-domestic-drones
"Since Jan. 1 of this year, according to congressional testimony presented Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, the Federal Aviation Administration has authorized 106 federal, state and local government “entities” to fly “unmanned aircraft systems,” also known as drones, within U.S. airspace."
So, if I've got this right, the study suggests that if you blow people up, they are less inclined to join terror organizations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Who paid for this "study"?
Dog is my co-pilot.
I just want to ask one very stupid question: name one human activity which drone strikes do not disrupt?
Drones are a comprehensive response to the scenario.
What else would one do if the state sponsored elements (called non-state actors by the Pakistan government) attack NATO interests and find sanctuary in the NWFP?
Each time intelligence about the presence of terrorists or their sympathizers was shared with the ISI, the target disappeared. Most likely to the ISI safe houses or even the houses of serving defense officers.
The abbottabad operation was a success basically as not a word was shared with the Pakistan side. In fact, deception was used very well to make them not look at the flight as going in that direction. Radars were incapacitated too.
The fountainhead of terrorist attacks all over the world is not the place where soldiers can be put on the ground. Technology is available and is being used effectively.
As far as Pakistan's sovereign rights and territory is concerned, bases used for launching attacks are given to the US forces under agreements signed. In fact, Pakistan plays on both sides as per situation.
For an organized movement to be effective it takes leadership. There need to be people who are willing to plan, organize and command actions. These leaders need charisma to convince others to join them and follow orders. It takes intelligence to plan the actions. It take courage to carry them out. Very few people have these attributes in enough abundance to convince other to follow them when the possibility of death is very high. Drone strikes work in three ways. First it they eliminate the current leaders so that the organization must look to less qualified people to lead. As the quality of leadership goes down the organization is easier to infiltrate and dismantle. Secondly, it may dawn on the people around the leaders that being near them and supporting them may not be the safest option. They may tell the leaders to go away from their homes and decrease support. Third, intelligent people who may become terrorist leader may look at their life expectancy as a terrorist leader and think of alternate means of getting their message across. Perhaps there is another solution that does not involve putting their own head in the noose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRMV7zi4h_k
But maybe US vice-president Joe Biden would agree about the founder of Wikileaks?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/19/assange-high-tech-terrorist-biden
"Asked if he saw Assange as closer to a hi-tech terrorist than the whistleblower who released the Pentagon papers in the 1970s, which disclosed the lie on which US involvement in Vietnam was based, Biden replied: "I would argue it is closer to being a hi-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers. But, look, this guy has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world."
See my other posts citing Chomsky on the double-think and double-standard in defining a "terrorist", which basically comes down to a terorist being defined as anyone whom somebody influential in the USA government does not like. And that apparently includes US citizens: ... The lawsuit says: "The U.S. practice of 'targeted killing' has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including many hundreds of civilian bystanders. While some targeted killings have been carried out in the context of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many have taken place outside the context of armed conflict, in countries including Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Sudan, and the Philippines." "These killings rely on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts. ... The killings violated fundamental rights afforded to all U.S. citizens, including the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law," the lawsuit says."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/drone-attacks-lawsuit/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/18/families-us-citizens-killed-in-yemen-drone-strikes-file-lawsuit/
"The wrongful death lawsuit, filed Wednesday, claims that the killings of U.S. citizens al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and operative Samir Khan were unconstitutional. Khan was the publisher of the terror magazine Inspire.
And see also:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/05/29/analysis-how-obama-changed-definition-of-civilian-in-secret-drone-wars/
"As the Bureau's own data on Pakistan makes clear, the very first covert drone strikes of the Obama presidency, just three days after he took office, resulted in civilian deaths in Pakistan. As many as 19 civilians â" including four children â" died in two error-filled attacks. Until now it had been thought that Obama was initially unaware of the civilian deaths. Bob Woodward has reported that the president was only told by CIA chief Michael Hayden that the strikes had missed their High Value Target but had killed 'five al Qaeda militants.' Now Newsweek correspondent Daniel Klaidman reveals that Obama knew about the civilian deaths within hours. He reports an anonymous participant at a subsequent meeting with the President: 'You could tell from his body language that he was not a happy man.' Obama is described aggressively questioning the tactics used. Until now it had been thought that President Obama was initially unaware of the civilian deaths. Yet despite the errors, the president ultimately chose to keep in place the CIA's controversial policy of using 'signature strikes' against unknown militants. That tactic has just been extended to Yemen. On another notorious occasion, the article reveals that US officials were aware at the earliest stage that civilians -- including 'dozens of women and children' -- had died in Obama's first ordered strike
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It's all fun and games until the U.S.(or any other country) starts turning these on their own citizens.
I can see it now:
Wanna protest? Kaboom! Protestors? What protestors? They were militants and a danger to society.
I fear the day when drones become a replacement for due process. It will happen..
people were also seen demonstrating how a paint can above your door also disrupts terror networks especially when the paint is bright pink....
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
in the Treaty of Tripoly > and aggressively promoted secular America as an alternative to Christian Europe. When the world energy shifted from coal to oil, America was well positioned to get preferential treatment from the Arabs. American oil companies getting better deals than Dutch and Brit companies owes much to this ground laid by foresighted American diplomats
After World War II, Europe did not really want the displaced Jews to come back, and Jews also did not really want to go back to their homes in lands liberated from Nazi occupation. Half of them ended up in USA and the rest in a newly created Israel. That is the start of bad blood between the Arabs and the Americans. Still most Muslim tribes and nations were engaged in internecine warfare and they never unified to fight off the Americans or the Europeans.
In what can only be described as monumental lack of foresight, Reagan authorized CIA to arm the Muslim terrorists, teach Pakistanis how to fight proxy war using non uniformed combatants, to fight off the Russians in Afghanistan. Communism and central planning never had the ideological fervor or support among the Russians. That regime was ripe for collapse. But the Muslims are motivated by ideology and they have strong affinity. Like Prometheus bringing fire from the Gods, CIA taught the Muslims to unify, collect money, recruit volunteers and taught Pakistan to use them effective.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In some of the intelligence pulled from his hideout, were a number of letters to his cronies about how to avoid drone strikes. Just the fact that he felt he needed to warn them seems to indicate that the strikes were effective.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Well, ignoring the obvious job security worries for mainstream economists stepping out of line, maybe the issue is more "religious" at this point?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/
"A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar.
Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of deja vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies."
And:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html?pagewanted=all
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""
These are people who essentially deny that economic alternatives exists (or are viable, which is the same thing); contrast that with:
"The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization" By Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dictionary_of_Alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC
How many millions of people have been harmed by the essentially "religious" market fundamentalism of so many mainstream economists, who turn a blind eye to externalities, systemic risks, and wealth concentration? (To be clear, it is also a weird sort of market fundamentalism in the USA mixed with protectionism for favored already "worthy" wealthy groups.)
See also:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue21/Stanford21.htm
"I am an economist. It is seventeen days since I last uttered the phrase "supply and demand." But the demon still lurks untamed, within me. Economics is an addiction. Every other addiction has a Twelve Step program, laced with tough love and blunt self-honesty. Why not a Twelve Step program for economists? God knows, we have done enough damage with our arrogant, drunken prescriptions. Here's how each and every economist can face up to their inner demons, and make their own small contribution to setting things right.
Step 1: Admit you have a problem. Like they say at the AA meetings, this is half the solution
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You nuke me, I nuke you.
You attack with a conventional army I respond in kind.
You use guerrilla warfare, I use special ops.
Use terrorism? Right back at you with drones - you never know when it will strike.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
War is all about deceptions and omissions. You always want the enemy to think you are not where they think you are and be really confused about your strengths and weaknesses. In other words the lie and the hidden truths are in themselves hostile actions. When a nation such as Pakistan, lies, deceives, offers refuge to enemies their claim on immunity or sovereignty becomes null and void. That is why WikiLeaks is so important to us and the entire world. When ambassadors and officials meet and actually loath each other but act like they wish to cooperate it is everybody's business. The use of unmanned devices to seek and kill real enemies is a wonderful thing. It saves our soldiers' lives and bodies and may prove enormously important in the economic ability to sustain and prevail in conflicts. For those that moan and whine what is the difference in being taken out by a drone or a human sniper over a mile away? Who in their right mind thinks we are required to capture an enemy and justify by trial and formal proceedings eliminating them. If a terrorist has hostages within the US our swat teams do not even know the name of the terrorist or what nation or group they represent or whether they are US citizens. If able we kill them. Can you imagine that lunatic in the theater in Colorado shooting people and the cops waiting until he runs out of bullets so they can interview him and check his citizen status?
In Algeria the French started killing rebels, then anyone they pulled off the street that looked like they might be a rebel. They racked up a huge body count much larger than their initial, probably accurate, estimate of members of the rebellion. Instead of reducing the rebellion they were inflaming it.
In the end the entire operation backfired to the extent that military personal involved in the executions and torture decided that the French President had betrayed them, and they were good at assassinations, so why not try to kill him off too? The attempt failed and the attempted assassins were arrested, but how's that for an example of "what could possibly go wrong" when you have state sanctioned death squads in a modern democratic state?
...shall die by the drone
Who doubts that sudden death from the sky "disrupts" terrorists and demoralizes them along with confounding their operations? Come on. Drones are as close to targeting specific, otherwise unreachable bad guys as we're able to get for now and as such they are a innocence-sparing, humane form of warfare. Anyone who seriously has an issue with the drone program needs to think through what alternatives there are to stopping very bad people very far away from doing very bad things.
Killing the most important nodes in a network is going to weaken the network. The trick is knowing which ones matter, and where to find them. The lesson from this isn't going to be "more drones", it's going to be "more electronic spying".
Big surprise that Obama gets academic "justification" for his drone war against the people. I wonder how much spook funding these "researchers" got, eh? I guess it doesn't take much dross to convince a few eggheads that the ultimate in warfare COWARDICE is somehow justified.
The USA President and Vice President and their Staffs leveraging 'Assets' from the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury and Internal Revenue and Central Intelligence Agency represent the most potent terrorist organization on Earth today and a threat to all humans on planet Earth.
And a Mr. Putz kills 12 and wounds many others in an act of 'Electoral Collage Envy Anger'.
So the headlines tomorrow will read, 'Half-Breed Nigger Boy Obama Sheds a Tear [Not] for White Honkeys Fucked Up By Years of Marijuana Abuse and Masturbation in Aurora Colorado Shit Hole'.
Obama wants to wrap himself all around this [Federal $$$$$ to Aurora] in Spades. .... Like we did not see this train wreak coming. ... Uh Oh!
LoL :D
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If somehow, somewhat, the unthinkable happens and innocent civilians get badly harmed, they can always put the blame on software bugs, and avoid all the blame the troops had got so far for their "misbehavings". AND will get another excuse for getting funds for cyberwar, you know, we got hacked so that drone hit the wrong place, better be safe and strip privacy to most internet users.
Where are "terrorist commanders" supposed to live? They need to eat, drink, find shelter - so they go to somewhere with shops and houses. Even if they had the ability to set up some vast military camp in the wilderness (which I doubt), it would be extremely stupid to do so, as they would be bombed into oblivion within days.
I agree with the rest of your post, though.
"Kill Decision" by Daniel Suarez is about the possibility that drones will be developed as more of an autonomous vehicle. And humans won't be required to authorize the strike.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Has the US actually WON either in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan? I would think the effectiveness of drones is kind of "iffy" if the US is not strategically winning.
If I recall correctly the use of drones caused Pakistan to cut the US supply lines to Afghanistan (and probably much much worse); that is a major strategic failure in return for the targeted killing of a few hundred alleged terrorists and the civilians in their immediate surroundings. Drones in Yemen basically cause the allied government control of the country. After 10 years, a frigging decade, the most sophisticated, well equipped and trained army in the world can't master 10,000 illiterate tribesmen with 40 year old (or older) small arms, and will probably let the country go back the Taliban.
I wonder if the study took into account that dropping bombs onto wedding parties radicalizes a whole generation to despise us as the cowardly evil power that hides half a planet away and drops bombs from remote control airplanes on their families.
-- QED
The Blitz disrupted England pretty heavily, but it didn't win the war for Germany did it? In fact it just taught the Brits just how important it was that they defeat the Nazis.
-- QED
So I don't get the point.
Yeah. Maybe they can interfere with terrorist cell(?) activities.
Who the fuck wouldn't worry about being bombed whenever?
If knowing drones may be over your head bombing at any time isn't terror I don't know what is.
(Posting AC because I moderated elsewhere in this thread)
I'm just curious - why did you post AC? Your post seems not unreasonable, nor trollish, simply a statement of what you did wrt cpu6502's posts, and your conclusions thereafter. Why not post under your signin?
(OT - does anyone else perceive an increase in the prevalence of AC posts recently? Seems like any even slightly controversial SlashDot topic skews the responses to AC.)
.. and also who do we know who's the bigger terrorist? Or whatever they are used against people who "deserved it"?
In the civilized world we don't have death penalty so I guess no-one deserves it by that account. (English isn't my native language.)
Do we seriously need a Harvard study to convince people that robot airplanes can kill and or disrupt terrorists? Sorry, this strategically created study to make people feel good about drones roaming over the US skies one day hopefully won't fool too many people.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
The actual paper is worth a read. This has nothing to do with drones. It's about taking out leaders, and what effect that has.
Assassination of political leaders by an external power has historically been a losing strategy. A new political leader soon takes power, and is generally more hostile to the external power. (When the new leader set up the assassination of the old one, that's a coup d'etat, which is a different situation.) The point of the paper is that terrorist groups tend to be held together by a charismatic leader, and killing that leader, more often than not, kills the group.
The older the group, the less likely this is to work. For a group that's only a few years old, it usually works; for one more than 20 years old, it rarely does. The half-life of terrorist groups is 15 years; half of them collapse in that time, and the survival rate of such groups follows a classic decay curve.
It doesn't work for drug and crime lords, because drug cartels are economic organizations. The organization and profit motive remain. Eliminating a leader just leaves a power vacuum at the top, which is quickly filled.
Interestingly, assassination of religious leaders is highly effective. "Although religious groups appear to be 80 percent less likely to end than nationalist groups based on ideology alone, they were almost five times as likely to end than nationalist groups after experiencing leadership decapitation." The conventional wisdom is that it is very difficult to take down a religion, short of outright extermination of all followers.. That may not be the case.
Yes, drones can interfere with organized terrorist groups.
But the collateral damage and bad target identification and people's general dislike for foreign invaders are still making lots of enemies for the US, just as Obama's failure to fix Gitmo is continuing Bush's best source of new enemies.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
After, all everyone they kill is a terrorist, or would be if they had lived long enough. Who says so - drone suppliers and users, so it must be true.
...and everybody, government and terrorists alike, will be happily interested in the Harvard study.
Myopic bullshit. Applying a favorite 'drone strike' solution to a narrowly defined problem. A study performed by people who would see their own academic objectivity dissolve into jelly-brained whining IF they happened to be in a country subject to random drone strikes. People just don't realize that Terror-tit-for-Terror-tat is an endless cycle. People just don't realize that operating with different systems of morality within and outside a country's borders, invites the terrorists in -- to commit acts of terror, not seek opportunity. People just don't realize that all this terror-from-the-sky escalation will ultimately (and inexorably) lead to nuclear conflict.
1. STATE: we have no choice but to compromise our principles and become sow terror upon the world.
2. PEOPLE: ah, ok
3. STATE: this brain-damaged course of action is just not working, we are reaping terror. who'da thunk it
4. PEOPLE: ah, ok
5. STATE: we have no choice but to kill 'em all [NUKE]
6. PEOPLE: ah, ok
7. STATE: and their children attending Harvard, and their children's children
8. PEOPLE: ah, ok
How does a drone CAPTURE someone?
FTA "these studies conclude that killing or capturing terrorist leaders can reduce the effectiveness of terrorist groups "
.. not long and they will be afraid of drones targeted against random civillians within the us.
Or what do you think where this will lead to?
Still thinking this is a good idea?
Here's a thought:
How about not setting up "Very Bad People" for the purpose of knocking them down (for fun and profit)?
Or.., do you think that all this violence somehow creates itself from original thinking? Honestly, I'd say most of the violence today is in the form of False Flag events or fallout from False Flag events. Anybody who has done any research into these problems will come across all the indicators of behind the scenes skull-duggery.
Even this latest Batman shooting thing is full of weird stuff. -Accomplices in the audience who let the guy in, the guy not fitting the profile at all, not having the funds but mountains of hardware, surrendering rather than playing through. It screams of mind programming and heavy training and material assists shadow agencies. Mind programming is easy: this is known. If you are a letter-soup agency with a specific population-herding goal in mind, then of course you're going to use these kinds of tactics. Only the ignorant believe the official lone-nut story line and accept authoritarian pre-fab solutions.
The solution is not Drones or more oppression, but rather looking at the problem which is the dark agencies themselves and the way they came into existence. "The Secret Team" by Fletcher Prouty details twenty-some years of his employment within the CIA and extended community throughout the sixties and seventies. If you want to understand how this kind of operation is put together and why it is put together, then this is the book for you.
The world as it stands, is a vast mind-game theater. Accepting the manipulation sight unseen and only focusing on the conveniently supplied solutions (Drones and TSA, etc.) is the epitome of a dumb-ass rat going for the cheese.
The whole world is a set-up which wants me to rah-rah the authoritarians. Sorry. Just because I'm being boxed in by the mind-control division doesn't mean I have to play along.
Supporting drones = Ignorant, gullible, uni-dimensional thinking.
I was thaught that everyone has the right to be processed before being shot down to death, even if he/she's a terrorist. Actually, being Italian, we were thaught of this in 1945 by the same Americans that are throwing bombs from drones right now. Considered this, why american special forces cannot just abduct and torture people like they were doing in the last 10 years, without risking to raze an entire city by accident?
Of course the US `foreignpolicy` is still to be the policeman of the world although the empire is crumbling and they still ignore that they cause the evils themselves for the greater part.
And then they need Harvard to confirm that a dron is a usefull tool.
As would be a B-52, team of commando's, mini-nuke, etc.
So it all looks pretty insulting towards someone with some amount of intelligence.
"In addition, the latter paragraph brings up an important nuance which holds throughout the Conventions. Groups or countries which don't observe the Geneva Conventions and any civilian populations associated with them aren't (aside from a very limited extent) protected by the Geneva Conventions. For example, even if it were illegal to assassinate leaders of observant groups to the Conventions, Al Qaeda isn't one such group and hence, wouldn't enjoy that particular protection of the Conventions."
the bolded part is wrong. Groups which are national of a country having signed the convention are protected by it. Any other consideration, like making up a new term like illegal combatant, is actually an attempt to ignore the convention for nationals from countries which signed the convention. Furethermore a lot applies only in case of conflict. Since the US has a new made-up-term of war on a word (war on drug, war on terror) there isn't per see a conflict or war, and thus any killing falls under the perview of normal justice (not military one) which make it even more perverse that the US military is killing nilly willy nationals from other country, sometimes without even the other country authorisation, and often with collateral damage (read : casualty of people having nothing to do with the target).
The bottom line is that the US is making something which is morally and ethically wrong, and potentially irrespectful of international laws.
The world needs to understand that America IS war. We have been for along time. Until the extreme level of corruption of the American Government and other world antagonists are gutted out it will always be like this. Adapt or die.
This argument only works with rational actors. If the individual thinks they're going to "heaven" and there will be "virgins" there for them and so forth, then their perception of "what is best" isn't even remotely what you think it should be, rationally.
Their entire culture is toxic; from the misallocation of females, leaving many young men, full of hormones and empty of hope... to the "education" provided by memorizing the bullshit Q'ran... to the false promises and exhortations of religious leaders, guiding those same frustrated and hopeless young men right down the path of violence.
This can't be solved by picking off leaders. Either we eradicate the Muslim superstition, or we will never see this problem solved. That's not the end of it, either. When the Christians swing around to their next violent cycle, we're going to have to face the same choices: either eliminate the superstition, or suffer with the myth-driven violence these dogma-based deceptions naturally produce (as in the crusades, witch-burnings, inquisitions, pogroms, blood libel, etc.)
The US has no intention of actually removing this threat. It's being used to increase government power and reduce individual liberty, and it's doing an excellent job. Mark my words: We will never do anything that has even the most remote chance of solving this problem.
"It seems then drones and UAVs will be a weapon of war for a longtime to come."
Oh, GI. Me drone you longtime.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
UAVs are the wearpons of cowards...
Unmanned the flash game. Experience the thrill of flying an unmanned drone for a living. unmanned.molleindustria.org
Master of the completely obvious.
Lets get this over with... Fuck Off