<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Sunil,<br><br></div>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.<br>
<br></div>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.]<br>
<br></div>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.<br><br>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.<br>
<br></div>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.<br>
<br></div>We don't agree on this: some drone attacks are justified given the credibility and high probability of the threat being addressed.<br><br></div>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.<br>
<br></div>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. <br><br>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.<br>
<br></div>w.<br><div><br><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 1:10 AM, Kenneth Marcy <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kmmos1@frontier.com" target="_blank">kmmos1@frontier.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">On 2/11/2013 8:56 AM, Joe Campbell wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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.<br>
</blockquote></div>
<[snip]><br>
<br>
>From WBUR Boston, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, 11 February 2013:<br>
<br>
The Obama Administration, Drone Strikes, And The Law<br>
<br>
The Obama administration’s argument on drone warfare. Even against Americans. We push deeper on drones, killing, and the law.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
This hour, On Point: we’re asking, about American law and death by drone.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/02/11/drone-strikes" target="_blank">http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/<u></u>02/11/drone-strikes</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Ken<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
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