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Drone Killed Hostages From U.S. and Italy, Drawing Obama Apology
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that President Obama has offered an emotional apology for the accidental killing of two hostages held by Al Qaeda, one of them American, in a United States government counterterrorism operation in January, saying he takes "full responsibility" for their deaths. "As president and as commander in chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations," including the one that inadvertently took the lives of the two captives, a grim-faced Obama said in a statement to reporters in the White House briefing room. The White House earlier released an extraordinary statement revealing that intelligence officials had confirmed that Warren Weinstein, an American held by Al Qaeda since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian held since 2012, died during the operation. Gunmen abducted Warren Weinstein in 2011 from his home in Lahore, Pakistan. They posed as neighbors, offered food and then pistol-whipped the American aid worker and tied up his guards, according to his daughter Alisa Weinstein.
The White House did not explain why it has taken three months to disclose the episode. Obama said that the operation was conducted after hundreds of hours of surveillance had convinced American officials that they were targeting an Al Qaeda compound where no civilians were present, and that "capturing these terrorists was not possible." The White House said the operation that killed the two hostages "was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies" but nonetheless the government is conducting a "thorough independent review" to determine what happened and how such casualties could be avoided in the future.
The White House did not explain why it has taken three months to disclose the episode. Obama said that the operation was conducted after hundreds of hours of surveillance had convinced American officials that they were targeting an Al Qaeda compound where no civilians were present, and that "capturing these terrorists was not possible." The White House said the operation that killed the two hostages "was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies" but nonetheless the government is conducting a "thorough independent review" to determine what happened and how such casualties could be avoided in the future.
So, if he's fully responsible for accidentally killing an American, he'll be prosecuted for manslaughter, right?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I am not an Obama fan but I cannot place blame on anyone here except Al Qaeda. Intelligence isn't perfect, it appears due diligence was done, but unfortunately hostages were killed. Perhaps the blame should go to the group that took perfectly innocent people hostage and held them near military commanders who they knew were being targeted.
... only because they made up new laws (or executive orders) to make it legal.
Yeah, I voted for the guy, but I am a e seriously disappointed.
Drone strikes where you just decide whatever civilians are nearby deserved to die results in unintended deaths.
Who fucking knew?
In other words, we're bumbling idiots.
Maybe your remote control warfare doesn't provide you with enough actual understanding of the situation and just deciding to bomb something without really knowing what you're doing is a bad idea?
'Collateral Damage' is military speak for "we don't actually care who we kill, but we'll pretend it's not a war crime".
If America keeps bombing Pakistan ... is it OK for Pakistan to bomb America? Because the level of "because we're special" which happens here is mind boggling.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Remove the conditional statement. Stay out of the M.E., period. Meddling has produced nothing of value for us, other than a jobs program per military and DHS.
Table-ized A.I.
If kidnapping Westerners and keeping them within 50 feet of you grants you immunity from airstrikes, that increases the incentive to kidnap westerners.
There's no winning the hostage game -- if you ignore the hostages you lose the PR war, if you play to the hostages then you encourage future kidnappings. It's a lose-lose game. The same is seen for the millions of Euro paid by various European nations as ransom -- some of that money goes right back into funding more hostage-taking missions.
There is no way to time-consistent way reconcile the interests of the current hostage in not getting bombed/beheaded with the interests of future hostages in not being kidnapped in the first instance. It's a repeating game, we cannot evaluate each iteration separately but at the same time we cannot evaluate them all together.
Roughly 99.9% of people who use the word "unconstitutional" are not constitutional lawyers nor constitutional law experts. I'll be nice and hold back telling you what they really are.
Table-ized A.I.
I've been thinking about this for a long time, especially after the rash of hostages killed by ISIS. At this point, nobody can really claim to not know the danger. I know nothing about Lo Porto but Weinstein clearly knew the dangers. So we did he stay there? I think there are several reasons why westerners put themselves in deliberate danger in places like Pakistan, Syria, etc.
1) Some people are simply mentally ill. After the first Japanese hostage was killed by ISIS, it came out that he was mentally ill. Not mentally ill enough to need to be locked away, but clearly incapable of making rational decisions regarding his own safety. People like this are simply always going to gravitate towards dangerous places because the internet makes sure that they know where the really dangerous places are.
2) Some people believe that they are special and the bad guys won't go after them because they are "helping". Most of the hostages fall into this category. Weinstein was like this. Alan Henning fell into this category and possibly the first one as well. Reports are that Henning believed to the very end that the fact that he was there to help would save his life. Sometimes these people get away with being in a dangerous location once and they think that they are simply lucky and won't ever be harmed. Henning went into Syria several times and was left alone. The second Japanese hostage executed by ISIS went to help the first one and he went because he'd been to the area before and thought he was special and the bad guys would leave him alone.
3) Some people are so overcome with their desire to help others that they can't rationally assess the danger and while they know if they are captured it's going to end very badly for them, they believe that they will simply beat the odds. Remember many years ago when Americans and Europeans volunteered to be human shields for Saddam Hussein? They were like this. A few months ago it got announced that a young American female hostage was supposedly killed in a bombing raid against ISIS. She had operated in the area previously and had to know the danger, but she believed that because nobody had yet bothered her that she could work there at no risk. She died as a result of being wrong about that.
There's some overlap between those vague 3 reasons I gave for people ignoring the real danger to be in places like Pakistan and Syria and so on, but I don't know how we can ever stop people from willingly becoming victims of their own bad decisions about personal risk.
I'm not disappointed at all. Drones are so much better than actually invading Pakistan, and reduces the number of kids that get killed in war.
I never got the hate for drones in the first place. Why would you want to launch a ground invasion instead, which means MORE kids getting killed?
Sure, if you want to kill someone, you're right. I think the argument against drones is that if you push a button and someone dies on the other side of the Earth and you didn't have to go to war to do that ... well, fast forward two years and you're just sitting there hitting that button all day long. "The quarter solution" or whatever you want to call it is still resulting in deaths and, as we can see here, we're not 100% sure whose deaths that button is causing. Even if we study the targets really really hard.
And since Pakistan refuses to own their Al Queda problem, we have to take care of it for them.
No, no we don't. You might say "Al Queda hit us now we must hunt them to the ends of the Earth" but it doesn't mean that diplomacy and sovereignty just get flushed down the toilet. Those country borders will still persist despite all your shiny new self-appointed world police officer badges. Let me see if I can explain this to you: If David Koresh had set off bombs in a Beijing subway and then drones lit up Waco like the fourth of July and most of the deaths were Branch Davidians, how would you personally feel about that? Likewise, if Al Queda is our problem and we do that, we start to get more problems. Now, that said, it's completely true that Pakistan's leadership has privately condoned these strikes while publicly lambasting the US but that's a whole different problem.
Also, we must always assume that war = killing kids. The fact that people think kids shouldn't be killed in war basically gives people more of an incentive to go to war in the first place. When Bush invaded Iraq, the public should have asked "OK, how many kids are we expected to kill?" Because all war means killing kids. There has never been a war without killing kids.
The worst people are the ones that romanticize war, by saying war is clean and happy and everyone shakes hands at the end. War is the worst, most horrible thing, and we need to make sure people understand that, or they'll continue to promote war.
Yep, think of the children -- that's why we should use drone strikes, right? Look, war means death. Death doesn't discriminate and neither does war. If you're hung up on it being okay to take a life the second that male turns 18, you're pretty much morally helpless anyway. War is bad. Drone strikes are bad. There's enough bad in there for them both to be bad. This isn't some false dichotomy where it's one or the other. It's only one or the other if you're hellbent on killing people.
News flash: you can argue against drone strikes and also be opposed to war at the same time. It does not logically follow that since you're against drone strikes, you're pro war and pro killing children. That's the most unsound and absurd flow of logic I've seen in quite some time.
My work here is dung.
Roughly 99.9% of people who use the word "unconstitutional" are not constitutional lawyers nor constitutional law experts. I'll be nice and hold back telling you what they really are.
well they're not statisticians, that's for sure!
99.9% of people do not need to be lawyers to understand the law. Lawyers are supposed to be for nuance and unintended consequences, not for basic interpretation. Never forget that the ultimate test of any law lies with a jury..
Good-bye
It's a shame the pilot was so far away from the aircraft when the warhead was released.
Had this happened in 1945 and involved people on board a B-29, I don't think anyone would be very concerned, though some of the more sensitive might have muttered, "war is hell."
Had it been fired by an F-16 or A-10 in 1995, there would be more concern but I really don't think anyone would feel "shit happens" fails to adequately address the issue. Because shit does happen, after all.
But it's 2015 and, to our horror, we learn that the pilot wasn't on board the aircraft. It was a "drone." So this is very, very serious indeed.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This is a very good thing. The world is improving that we no longer accept innocent deaths which could have been avoided.
Burning alive an entire city of civilians to destroy one factory was acceptable to our grandparents. Turning jungle villages into moonscapes was acceptable to our parents. Now we have the capability to know where, when, who, and what is going on precisely when we drop a controlled munition with accuracy measured in feet. This progress, expressed through anger when it does not go right, is not a joke to laugh at.
No one should accept people dying violently through no fault of their own merely because it is inconvenient for us to do otherwise.
Maybe the civilian casualties also deserves apologies too..
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
How many civilian casualties hidden under the newspeak term "militant" ?