http://blog.psaonline.org/2010/03/01/war%e2%80%99s-brave-new-world/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:45:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://blog.psaonline.org/2010/03/01/war%e2%80%99s-brave-new-world/comment-page-1/#comment-2250906 Are Drones Effective At Killing Enemies? « Wanderingraven’s Blog Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:29:47 +0000 http://blog.psaonline.org/?p=3139#comment-2250906 [...] Drones Effective At Killing Enemies? By wandering raven David Isenberg, writing in Partnership for a New America, [...] [...] Drones Effective At Killing Enemies? By wandering raven David Isenberg, writing in Partnership for a New America, [...]

]]> http://blog.psaonline.org/2010/03/01/war%e2%80%99s-brave-new-world/comment-page-1/#comment-2247411 J.W.Mason Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:18:48 +0000 http://blog.psaonline.org/?p=3139#comment-2247411 Warring with remote controlled drones utilized by unaccountable agencies that have, in the past (and present) contravened U.S. and international law (CIA, contractors, etc) is not only unwise but a strategically flawed operations plan. In past wars, we haven’t found out about some of these extralegal and/or amoral means (assassination, torture, little or no concern for collateral damage [i.e., burning alive with napalm of infants, children, the elderly, handicapped, etc]) employed by the U.S. government (and/or Shadow representatives of such, with plausible deniability and other means of “neither confirming nor denying” atrocity) until years after the “conflict,” “police action,” or “operation” is long over. Certainly America is NOT the only nation to have been accused, rightfully, of such abuses and many nations have done far worse. But, one clear cut American example is the late CIA director William Colby’s top secret Phoenix assassination plan utilized to kill tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Indochinese communist leaders. While sometimes quite heinous villains are eliminated through such programs, the strategy to win “hearts and minds” suffers catastrophically when these programs have proven to have misfired (killed the wrong person) and/or killed the bad guys along with a sometimes surprising number of innocent civilians (i.e., collateral damage). Robotic drones with a human operator may be more accurate than other past weapons but that accuracy is still suspect. And when we do battle damage assessment or lessons learned, using these remote systems, do we actually learn truthfully how successful (killing a terrorist who has ordered many suicide attacks on innocents) or unsuccessful (missing the bad guys and butchering families of civilians in the area—and don’t give me that crap about “human shields” unless you really know what it is to be a powerless civilian peasant living in a war zone, caught between a rock and a hard place with very few options of survival particularly when you are responsible for the lives of your own infants and children in that same war zone) our “missions” actually were? Blind faith in technology, as all the punditry and major media outlets seem to view these drone strikes, is not a prescription for winning “hearts and minds.” But at least the drones save American lives, i.e., the pilots and crew of aircraft that would be otherwise flying these missions. Not necessarily. Let’s do a full analysis and accounting of how many terrorists are actually recruited from areas subject to these strikes—I mean peasant youth, not sympathetic to the terrorists, who suffer family losses to these drones or other less “surgical” U.S./NATO military action and decide to fight back as an insurgent or terrorist. The net result in this very long struggle, as our military and political leaders have framed the GWOT since 9/11, might very well come down on the side of “we’ve created more monsters than we’ve destroyed.” Meaning there may be many more 9/11 attacks coming in the future, some involving WMD. Or as Malcolm X might have framed it, (“The chickens are coming home to roost.”) when he was told of JFK’s assassination (implying that U.S. covert action and crimes ordered by Kennedy and previous presidents may have resulted in blowback, which claimed the life of JFK). The calculus of war isn’t always so neat, clean and morally antiseptic as we all (sitting in our comfy chair here in one of the richest countries on the planet) would like to believe. Technowar isn’t what it is cracked up to be. Warring with remote controlled drones utilized by unaccountable agencies that have, in the past (and present) contravened U.S. and international law (CIA, contractors, etc) is not only unwise but a strategically flawed operations plan. In past wars, we haven’t found out about some of these extralegal and/or amoral means (assassination, torture, little or no concern for collateral damage [i.e., burning alive with napalm of infants, children, the elderly, handicapped, etc]) employed by the U.S. government (and/or Shadow representatives of such, with plausible deniability and other means of “neither confirming nor denying” atrocity) until years after the “conflict,” “police action,” or “operation” is long over. Certainly America is NOT the only nation to have been accused, rightfully, of such abuses and many nations have done far worse. But, one clear cut American example is the late CIA director William Colby’s top secret Phoenix assassination plan utilized to kill tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Indochinese communist leaders. While sometimes quite heinous villains are eliminated through such programs, the strategy to win “hearts and minds” suffers catastrophically when these programs have proven to have misfired (killed the wrong person) and/or killed the bad guys along with a sometimes surprising number of innocent civilians (i.e., collateral damage). Robotic drones with a human operator may be more accurate than other past weapons but that accuracy is still suspect. And when we do battle damage assessment or lessons learned, using these remote systems, do we actually learn truthfully how successful (killing a terrorist who has ordered many suicide attacks on innocents) or unsuccessful (missing the bad guys and butchering families of civilians in the area—and don’t give me that crap about “human shields” unless you really know what it is to be a powerless civilian peasant living in a war zone, caught between a rock and a hard place with very few options of survival particularly when you are responsible for the lives of your own infants and children in that same war zone) our “missions” actually were? Blind faith in technology, as all the punditry and major media outlets seem to view these drone strikes, is not a prescription for winning “hearts and minds.” But at least the drones save American lives, i.e., the pilots and crew of aircraft that would be otherwise flying these missions. Not necessarily. Let’s do a full analysis and accounting of how many terrorists are actually recruited from areas subject to these strikes—I mean peasant youth, not sympathetic to the terrorists, who suffer family losses to these drones or other less “surgical” U.S./NATO military action and decide to fight back as an insurgent or terrorist. The net result in this very long struggle, as our military and political leaders have framed the GWOT since 9/11, might very well come down on the side of “we’ve created more monsters than we’ve destroyed.” Meaning there may be many more 9/11 attacks coming in the future, some involving WMD. Or as Malcolm X might have framed it, (“The chickens are coming home to roost.”) when he was told of JFK’s assassination (implying that U.S. covert action and crimes ordered by Kennedy and previous presidents may have resulted in blowback, which claimed the life of JFK). The calculus of war isn’t always so neat, clean and morally antiseptic as we all (sitting in our comfy chair here in one of the richest countries on the planet) would like to believe. Technowar isn’t what it is cracked up to be.

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