Summations Only

I read this morning about the latest drone attack in Pakistan that killed 5 'suspected militants'.How is it possible that the world allows this? How did it become acceptable to go around executing people who we suspect to be 'militants'? If I had a drone could I send it over Washington and start executing 'suspected militants'? I am sure there would be lots of good potential targets. This site lists at least some of the known drone attacks by the US military. These are the #'s for Pakistan.

quote:

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Total Obama strikes: 282
Total US strikes since 2004: 334
Total reported killed: 2,496 — 3,202
Civilians reported killed: 482 — 832
Children reported killed: 175
Total reported injured: 1,196 — 1,318

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Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? How is this not murder?

Are you a recognized Nation State?

How would they stop it?That isn't a rhetorical question. What steps would they take?

The overly simplistic answer is: because they were killed legally.I guess that the whole thing is stupid because Pakistan seems to be ignoring the drone attacks for political reasons.
If Pakistan actively (rather than tacitly) supported these attacks then possibly these people could be arrested instead of killed.But I also think that USA has found that drones are the method that costs the fewest American lives - and so (again for political reasons) they continue the drone attacks.
Do they risk killing innocents in the hope of ending a conflict? Of course.
IMO it is morally similar to Hiroshima/Nagasaki (but on a much smaller scale).
Granted, in Japan, they knew they would kill innocents.In the Iraq war ~100,000 civilians were killed.
But only ~60,000 insurgents were killed.
And none of those insurgents had a trial.
How is this not murder? Because it was deemed to be a war.A country is allowed to decide when it is at war and with whom.
This, in turn, exempts them from certain laws: they are allowed to kill people without a trial.As usual, politics turns what would otherwise be a no-brainer (i.e. should we kill suspects?) into a moral quagmire of expediency and convenience. I think that every government that goes to war is responsible for the undeserved deaths of 1000's of innocent people - including their own soldiers.
But 'murder' is a legal term which doesn't apply. (I've had several mojitos and a smoke, so please forgive the lack of structure to my reply.)Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

Let's ignore, for now, that equating the action with the nuking of Japan already renders the drone strikes morally ambiguous. I appreciate that some or most people have already resolved the nuking question in the US's favor.I believe the drone attacks are morally distinguishable from the bombing of Hiroshima. I don't think the civilian casualties in Pakistan are intended to have any deterrent effect at all. In fact it is predictable and expcted that such strikes have the opposite result. Instead a judgment has been made that the lives of any innocent bystanders are insufficiently important to deter the use of drones in particular instances.Further, I'd also suggest that relying on an American law definition of the term murder is highly inappropriate, and that relying on an American definition of what non-US-citizens ought to be subject to arrest in Pakistan is biased even further. Murder is not morally wrong simply because it is against US law or because there is a commandment against it. Murder is mala in se, (evil in and of itself) and the evil attached to it need not be answered by whether an arrest is in ordr.So call it 'Red rum' if you must, but that still ducks the question of why there is no international outcry against the killing of civilians in drone attacks. I find this response simplistic (Panda's term) even beyond the standard applicable to other aspects of the post. Some actions taken in war are punished as war crimes and are illegal. For example, only a few people would argue that the well publicized killings by marines at Haditha did not include murders. Again, I recognize that this understanding is not universal.As a final point, I'll note that not all murders are first degree murder.

If you read my post you will see that I agree that it is morally ambiguous. They are similar for that exact reason. When they balanced the consequences, civilian casualties were considered 'acceptable'.
The main difference is the scale of the deaths. As I said (emphasis added): There are definitely war crimes - but you haven't shown that using drones is a war crime. So, who's definition should we use then? Perhaps because it is not considered to be murder by the majority of the international community?.All I see in your post is a distinction without a difference.
Could you explain why troops attacking a compound and accidentally killing civilians is not a war crime but drones attacking a compound and accidentally killing civilians is a war crime?

The balancing is different for the reasons I pointed out. Of course it is possible to discuss the balancing in more abstract terms and to insist that the reasons are the same. You are correct. I did not make that showing or claim to have done so. What I did do is indicate that the issue was worthy of discussion. But the discussion would be pointless if we could simply say, well there is a war going on as you did.ABE: The death's need not be considered murder to be determined unjust and to be avoided. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : Clarify

I did not address this in my post, but I acknowledge that you did make this point. Sorry about that.

Drones provide our government the ability to attack targets that feet on the ground could not such as targets of opportunity or behind lines/borders....ect. This may be a bad thing.....bad Intel....snap decisions....ect.Carrier based aircraft made the battleship obsolete, drones are the next step in how we fight wars.Moral objections to certain types of weapons have been around for a long time, chemical weapons after ww1, nukes after ww2....ect. Allied use of incendiary devices in ww2 to create firestorms is at least, if not more objectionable than the use of nuclear weapons.I believe it is how we use our technology and weapons that define us. Drones allow us to do things that 20years ago were unheard of. Sadly this ease of attacking our enemies has led to an increase in innocent deaths.It is not about the tools of war, it is about how we use them. Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.

Is that the case?Doesn't a directed low yield targeted strike endanger fewer innocents then any method in the past?Isn't the targeted drone strike preferable to carpet bombing, long range artillery barrage, car bombs?

I don't like what we are doing in that part of the world. Nevertheless, this does not fit the normal meaning of "murder."I am not in a position to second guess current policy. I was opposed to our invasion of Afghanistan, though I would have supported a quick raid to attack terrorist cells (and then leave). However, we are there now, like it or not. At least Obama seems to be attempting to extricate us from that situation.We are causing less civilian casualty than we did in Iraq. And, as jar suggests in Message 10, we may well be causing fewer casualties than if we had used the methods from prior eras.If the war hawks of the Republican party have their way in the next election, then the rate of innocent deaths will rise sharply.

What right does the US have to bomb a country that they are not at war with?How would the US react if the situation was reversed - a country used a drone to kill someone in the US that it felt was a criminal?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I imagine the US would take action against any individual that they deemed a threat to do that.I also imagine that the US would sanction any country that tried or seemed likely to try anything like that.Unless of course, the US wanted that person killed and then getting some other country to actually commit the act provides plausible deniability.

What is it about being a nation state that absolves it from the crime of murder. The definition of which is"The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another."So if you are a nation you just pass a law that says that it is ok? Is that all the justification that is required?

Yes.