[Vision2020] drones

[Art Deco]

Sunil,

I cannot defend all the individual uses of drones.  There is without doubt
horrible consequences to innocent people.  Nor do I have nearly enough
information to analyze whether each drone attack as fits into the part of
US foreign policy that is driven in part by self-defense.

Have/are errors of judgment been/being made in the execution of that
policy?  Most likely.  Faulty and very faulty intelligence combined with
paranoiac, overzealous persons in certain positions are part of the
problem.  [We have that problem with law enforcement in our own country,
state, and county.]

What about the policy itself?  Obviously it needs judicial oversight on
matters of executing specific actions/attacks to help guard against errors
and over zealousness.

To the extent the policy forwards the goals of self-defense and other
national goals, and what these other national goals should be, and whether
the cost is lesser or greater than the benefit of the actions resulting
from the policy goals are questions that no one can answer with certainty,
it is a debate of issues which have been with us almost since the beginning
of civilization.  We can hope that rigorous debate will help create better
answers in the future.

Few people (myself included) want to see innocent people killed and
maimed;  it is a moral outrage.  Few Americans want other events of the
nature of 9/11.  Can both goals be achieved?  I don't know; I hope so.

We don't agree on this:  some drone attacks are justified given the
credibility and high probability of the threat being addressed.

We probably agree on this:  The policies driving drone should be very
carefully reviewed to see if they really forward the alleged national
goals, to see if those alleged goals are in our long term interest, to see
if those long term goals can be morally justified, and to see if their are
nicer, less destructive ways to achieve those goals.

It'd not a nice world.  Neither for us nor, as you point out, the victims
in other parts of the world of this lack of niceness.

I have no intention of trying discourage you from pursuing your point of
view, and in fact welcome it since the real issues that we are attempting
to deal with are huge life/death/quality of life issues upon which
humankind has made little progress with since the beginning of human or
near human existence.

w.




On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 1:10 AM, Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at frontier.com> wrote:

> On 2/11/2013 8:56 AM, Joe Campbell 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.
>>
> <[snip]>
>
> From WBUR Boston, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, 11 February 2013:
>
> The Obama Administration, Drone Strikes, And The Law
>
> The Obama administration’s argument on drone warfare. Even against
> Americans. We push deeper on drones, killing, and the law.
>
> It’s been a great ride for advocates of America’s booming
> kill-‘em-where-they-stand drone program. Kill lists. Targeted
> assassination. Death from the sky. No muss, no fuss. All secrecy, and then
> the public victory dance when a big al Qaeda kill is claimed, somewhere
> “over there.” Even of American citizens.
>
> Barack Obama skewered George Bush and Dick Cheney for going “extra-legal,”
> but President Obama has been the champion of drones. And “don’t ask” has
> been the policy when it comes to legal rationale.
>
> This hour, On Point: we’re asking, about American law and death by drone.
>
> http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/**02/11/drone-strikes<http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/02/11/drone-strikes>
>
>
> Ken
>
>
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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