[Vision2020] drones

Mon Feb 11 21:33:36 PST 2013

Wayne,

You talk about self-defense as if that's the only thing going on. We have bases all over the world, we are using drones to kill people all over the world. We've occupied Afghanistan for more than ten years. We invaded and occupied Iraq to get their oil, and failed at that. Our closest allies in the Middle East are Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom have little time for dissent.  After a while self-defense doesn't have much to do with anything. 'Maintaining an empire' has a lot more to do with it than self-defense. We leave trails of bodies everywhere we go, but we're still the victims?

I'll tell you one thing 9-11 didn't change: our inability to look at ourselves and our actions. 'Credible future threat'? I no more trust Obama with that power than I did Bush or Cheney. If those are our parameters we have no meaning or principles. We have only expedience.

'It's not a nice world.  People are trying to harm, maim. or kill you.' You know who can truthfully say that? Some schmoe in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and he or she is talking about us and our drones.

Sunil

Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:50:28 -0500
From: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] drones

This is a difficult issue to deal with.

I agree with those that believe that drone attacks should not occur without meaningful due process except when emergencies occur where timing makes such a due process review impossible.  However, such a call about such an emergency is a judgment call and open to error.

Fact:  There are those would seek to destroy, kill, damage, etc our country and/or its overseas assets including US citizens and close allies.

The main conflicts occur in this issue because most of us believe in the right of self-defense, personal and national.  The CIC, and in some cases, the CIC in accordance with congress, is the ultimate authority on the use of force in self-defense.  The Oath of Office makes the CIC ultimately responsible of the security of our country.

9/11 forever changed the nature of the parameters of self-defense.  Those parameters now include seeking out and removing those agents who pose not only a credible eminent threat but a credible future threat.  It would be a nicer world if those agents could be removed via an open, effective justice system.  It's not a nicer world.

Hence, removal is basically done by sequestering w/o real due process or destruction.  Sequestering is not always  possible or practical.  Hence, destruction is an option, and, I believe based on the conduct of several groups of terrorists and their supporters, a necessary one.  This is not a nice world.

Given that, what methods of destruction can or should be used.

Drones are one of those methods.  They minimize the loss of American and/or American allies lives and also expenditures.

The downside is that they can kill innocent people whether by lack of oversight, incorrect intelligence information, or the judgment made that the loss of innocent lives justifies the destruction of agents/facilities in particular cases.

The trade-off is American lives/security against that of terrorists and innocents.  It's not a nice world

Joe will appreciate this:  This kind of trade-off has been a philosophical issue for some time.  A criticism of Utilitarianism is that if everyone's happiness could be maximized if only one randomly chosen person would be subjected to an ongoing ordeal of extreme punishment and torture, we should not give such a consent.

Obviously, there is vast disagreement on whether or not such consent should be given.  Unfortunately, like many ethical disputes, there is no argument on either side which is definitive; only some are more persuasive than others to any given person.

Never-the-less, it is important to raise and to rigorously and intelligently discuss this issue.  Perhaps we can find a way to neutralize more baddies at he cost of less innocents.  Let us hope and work toward that goal.  It's not a nice world.  People are trying to harm, maim. or kill you.

My own opinion is that drone strikes are sometimes leads to the least harm vs. a much greater harm, and hence, we ought not disallow them.  However, their use ought be very carefully weighed, and due process applied on a case by case basis within in carefully thought out parameters.  The problem is that given the state of our knowledge at any given time and possible risks involved by non-action, this might not always be possible.

I certainly do not expect agreement with this, but given the above I hope that it generates discussions and actions which results eventually in a nicer world.

w.

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com> wrote:

This is the trouble with wasting time on philosophical debates like gun control and gay marriage. There are things that all of us should rally around, issues that matter.

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 6:10 AM, Sunil Ramalingam <sunilramalingam at hotmail.com> wrote:

I agree with you. There isn't any authority to pursue this and yet people just accept it. I was debating this with a high school classmate who is very far right. There are no domestic policies where he will support Obama, or believe a word he says. But he's behind this policy. He doesn't need proof, he says just go kiill them.

Democrats have sanctioned this since Obama took power, and now it's a bipartisan policy. Makes it clear that many protests while Bush was President were political, not rooted in principle. And the only Republican running for president who opposed this was Ron Paul, who was marginalized for his domestic policies. There was no real analysis of what he was saying about foreign policy, where we could have had an important discussion about the issue.

Underlying all this are a number of things. First, people keep saying 'We're at war,' but they don't say that it's a war that apparently will go on forever. Will these powers ever be restrained? Not if the executive wants to hang on to the power, and the People refuse to challenge him on this. Second, shouldn't we be asking 'Why do we have bases around the world? Is this an Empire? Why do we have one? What does it cost us? What else could we be doing with that money?'

Sunil

> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:45:01 -0800
> From: godshatter at yahoo.com
> To: Vision2020 at moscow.com

> Subject: [Vision2020] drones
> 
> Now that we seem to be done chortling over local people protesting 
> something peacefully, I thought maybe we could talk about the whole 
> drone program.

> 
> First of all, I can't get past the lack of due process.  There are no 
> trials, not even the kind of for-show trials you'd expect to see in 
> third-world tinpot dictatorships.  We are not at war with any of the 

> countries in which we have been killing these people in.  There are no 
> attempts I've seen to work with Yemen and Pakistan to bring these people 
> in for trial.  According to a Stanford law professor I was listening to 

> on NPR a little while ago, our President signs off on all the drone 
> strikes of specific individuals, which account for about 2% of the drone 
> strikes that happen.  The other 98% are people that they can't identify 

> that appear to be terrorists doing whatever it is that terrorists do.  
> There are whole communities in NW Pakistan that have drones flying 
> overhead and nobody knows what sorts of behavior their remote pilots are 

> looking for in order to strike, causing them to keep their kids at home 
> and has led to PTSD amongst their populace.  We are in effect 
> terrorizing those communities ourselves.
> 
> This whole program is just simply wrong on so many levels I can't even 

> believe we as a country would entertain such an idea.  Oh, yeah, this 
> "oversight" came about only because they thought that Romney was about 
> to become President.  Talk about looking ahead.

> 
> As for drone technology itself, I'd rather see the use of drones for 
> precision strikes rather than having to put boots on the ground, but 
> only in times where we can actually legally put boots on the ground and 

> give our troops that kind of assignment.
> 
> I think we're running into what I think of as the taser problem. Tasers 
> were supposed to be a non-lethal weapon that would be used when all 

> other choices were exhausted.  Instead of replacing the need for a cop 

> to shoot someone, they replaced the need for a cop to whack someone on 
> the head with their night stick.  This is the same thing.  They are so 
> easy, no one we apparently think of as human dies, and the drone 

> operators can turn their consoles off at the end of their shift and go 
> have a nice dinner at the Olive Garden.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Paul
> 
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 List services made available by First Step Internet,

 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.

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          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com

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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

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