-_- America engages in double tapping.

Jesus Christ, that is ****ing horrifying. As far as I'm concerned there is no justification for that.

 

Im fine with drones, but not that tactic. Once first responders move in to help the wounded any further bombings should be a no go.

 

I'm not fine with drones. They get more civilians killed.

 

That is crazy! Bombing funerals and first responders?

I've always said that President Obama is by far more merciless, deceptive, and brutal than President GW Bush ever was.

I would just like to know what the US would do if another country carried out air strikes and other military actions in our country. What would they call the aggressors? Terrorists?

 

They save more or of our soldiers lives. Also some targets cant be reached by ground troops because ground movement will alert the enemy and we will lose them. Im all for more precise drone strikes and minimalizing civillian casualties, but I fully support drone use.

 

Uh are you forgetting 9/11? A terrorist cell carried out an airstrike and killed 3,000 civillians. Yeah, we called those aggressors terrorists. That was an unwarranted act of war. This here is the response. It is called war. There is a difference. I dont like that children and women and innocent civillians are dying and I do not condone this double tap tactic, but until terrorists stop being cowards and hiding like rats in holes amongst civillians our hands will be getting dirty. It shouldnt be news to anyone that in war no one is innocent. Not even the US.

 

The drone warfare is necessary evil; there's nothing here but varying shades of gray.

 

Sad truth of it.

 

No I have not forgotten 9/11. I had friends that worked in the World Trade Center complex. If one of my cousins hadn't missed the train that day he would have been one of the people dead. I still remember being on the NJ Turnpike as smoke billowed from the buildings.

The point I was making was that terrorism is terrorism and evil is evil, no matter who does it. What the US government is doing there is terrorism and evil period. There is no such thing as a "necessary evil". To say that killing civilians is a necessary evil is cowardice and morally corrupt. How can the result of necessary evil acts be good? The Nazis used to drown Jews in freezing cold water to see how long their pilots would survive when they were shot down so they would know if they had time to send out a rescue party or not. What the Nazis did could be justified as a "necessary evil" of war. But the actions were still evil.

Human life has a greater meaning to us in the US. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. We as a country rally to help and are captivated when 20 miners are trapped in a mine. Tens of thousands of people die in India or Asia from floods or accidents, thousands upon thousands of people are dying from our bombs but it doesn't turn into a cataclysm of epic proportions for them. But will our actions in Pakistan and other countries make us be seen as favorable to them? Or will the Pakistanis, Asians, Arabs, and the rest of the world grow ever more bitter, angry, fostering a deep seeded hatred for America and continued threats upon us on our soil?

America is the greatest country in the world. It became a beacon of greatness through its achievements and high moral regard, despite some failings in our history. We got there not doing what was a "necessary evil" but because what we believed to be right and good.

Violence breeds violence and an eye for an eye makes us all blind.

 

I value the lives of civilians over the lives of soldiers. Soldiers know what they're getting into, are willingly putting themselves at risk, and are trained to minimize danger. That is not the case for civilians. It's not fair and it's not right to sacrifice their lives for the lives of people who's job is to put themselves at risk for the sake of civilians. Supposedly, the purpose of the military is to keep the civilian population safe. If they value their safety over that of the civilian population, what exactly is the point of it?

 

The tactic is not so much in question in and of itself so much as how it seems to hurt civilians and innocent bystanders.

Like I'm sure many people complained about roadside bombings simply on the basis that roadside bombings are bad. Well, drone strikes are basically the same tactic, just more advanced.

The main problem with roadside bombings is that the militants would regularly take little heed of bypassing civilians, not so much that they were using guerilla tactics like buried bombs (if somebody wants to argue the merits of roadside bombing in some moralistic, objective viewpoint, I think you will fail--it's a war tactic like any other and when the target is soldiers it's a viable tactic, even though the militants doing it are our enemies). It becomes a war crime when it is used indiscriminately against civilian targets or with little regard for them--and this is the same problem we're seeing with the rampant use of drone strikes.

 

I love how the left called W. a war criminal and they bow at the feet of Barry O., merciless death dealer. Hooray!

 

the first casualty of war is innocence.

 

It really is shocking how everybody in the media and politics has turned their eyes from what Obama is doing with regards to the tactics being used in war. I'm not surprised the Right isn't saying anything because you can't criticize a US President for being strong militarily. We need to be strong and thump our chests.

I am surprised that the Left hasn't made more of a bigger deal than the few small voices have against the use of generally denounced war practices.

 

That's, um, pretty f***ed up.

 

Makes sense to me. The first responders are probably the allies of those killed in the first strike (other Taiban/Al Qaeda). That makes them legitimate targets.

Just as those attending the funerals of Taliban/Al Qaeda killed are probably members of said groups so bombing their funerals is fine with me.

 

Or their parents and children. There's also that.

"Probably" doesn't cut it when people's lives are at stake.

 

Or women and children?

C'mon man. I don't care what your dumb terrorist dad did for a living, the kids deserve no punishment.

 

How do you know the drones will still attack if they see women and children? We don't know what the protocol is regarding how they target the enemy.

In any event civilians have always been killed in war from WWI through Vietnam through all the other conflicts currently going in Syria, between the Israelis and Palestinians and so on. It's always been part of war and in this case its a war started by the Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies.

As for as I'm concerned the safety our people come first and if using drones lessons the risk of American casualties than so be it.

 

We know that they do. Drone strikes have a significantly higher rate of civilian casualties than other forms of attack. The biggest flaw with drone strikes is they are much less able to distinguish between targets and civilians.

 

Bottom line: violence begets more violence.

 

Bottom line is: If you think it's okay to kill foreign civilians but that it's not okay when other people kill our civilians, then you're not coming from a place of morals or ethics, you're coming from a place of nationalism and a belief that American lives have more value than non-American loves. That, I think, is a disgusting and harmful worldview.

 

Patriotism is the virtue of the viscious.
Oscar Wilde.

 

If the choice is sending in drones, or sending in our troops.......I'm for choosing drones. I'm tired of losing my students in these damn wars.