I'm kind of over the whole "Look, we killed someone far, far, far away for dubious reasons with NEW technology" articles. These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.
They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries, my home country of Bangladesh is a more dangerous place today then when we left 30 years ago. (And it was under a military dictatorship then!) Unsurprisingly, we take harsh measures to crack down on fundamentalism, including banning Islamist parties and executing terrorists: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48154781 (noting that British-Bangladeshi teenager who left to join ISIS would be executed if she went back to Bangladesh). And it’s not just in Bangladesh or Pakistan—while America has been fortunate to be spared from a major terrorist attack since 9/11, our European allies deal with them routinely. To a great extent, the United States is subsidizing the cost of fighting terrorism for all of these countries. After all, in Syria, which is the subject of the article, we got dragged into the conflict by our middle eastern allies.
Now, it’s fair to say that none of this is America’s problem. And I probably agree with you. But there is a risk we wake up 30 years from now and huge swaths of the world have been taken over by fundamentalist ideologies that are very hostile to us. We should think a bit about what that world would look like and whether it’s desirable.
Americans take for granted that we live in a world shaped by American norms. 160 constitutions around the world are based directly or indirectly in our own. (Bangladesh’s constitution begins with “we the people” just like the United States’.) The Star Trek version of the future (“America in Space”) comes about because of our willingness to invest in the security and economic and social development of the world. And maybe we’ve done enough, and maybe it’s time to let others lead. I’m pretty sympathetic to the arguments that it’s time to turn our focus inward, and we’re doing more harm than good. But the analysis is much bigger than whether certain specific people are attacking US soil at this very moment.
Yeah, the headline seems to imply it’s some new ‘big bad’ where the article just slowly exposes that it’s a non-explosive missile. Killing fewer people by not combusting the surrounding area sounds like an improvement.
I've pretty much only seen articles like these take a 'warcrimes, but even worse because technology is NEW' stance, which is honestly just as bad but at least gets the harm in it.
We have to fight them over there otherwise the alternative is armed radical militias in our streets (something that we definitely do not have anywhere in America at the moment) /s
While we can debate the level to which America needs to get involved, are you forgetting 911 or any of the other terrorist attacks? It honestly feels downright insulting to the victims of terrorism that you would imply these extremist groups do not threaten your freedom.
The article specifically references that these devices used on members of aal-Qaida; the group responsible for 911.
That same argument could have been used to justify staying out of WW2. Even if Hitler was guaranteed to stay out of US affairs post-war, the fact remains that joining sooner would have resulted in millions of Europeans keeping their lives.
Same here. Prematurely joining conflicts now allows us to save scores of lives abroad (at least in theory).
> These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.
As a counterargument, you can't know that. It seems like this argument could be restated as "I don't trust the US government to dispassionately determine who is a threat and even if they were a threat I am not in favor of killing people as a response." Which seems fair but the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes.
Pretty naive to not understand the concept of allowing these terrorists to operate abroad allows them to more easily coordinate and carry-out attacks in the US, but especially in Europe.
Firstly there's the vengeance aspect. Al Qaeda did 9/11, along with many other terror attacks against the US.
Hurras al-din has also given support to ISIS, who destabilized a good chunk of the middle east. It's a bad look since a lot of Americans died to effect regime change in Iraq. If Iraq ends up turning into a full-blown theocracy, it makes our efforts there seem even more wasteful.
According to the Russians, he was trying to gather supplies to make illegal chemical weapons but definitely take that with a grain of salt.
Supposedly this helps US goals in Syria, but TBH I'm not really sure what the US goals are. I suspect that both our current and previous president would have a hard time articulating goals that are consistent with their actions in Syria
1 - Because Russia is there and apart from a brief period of time at beginning of 90's in the rest three quarters of century US and Russia (Soviet or not) went to war with each other by proxies. Syria is just the latest proxy in that wrestling.
2 - Probably maintaining/honing the skills. "If you don't use it you lose it" it's a very old and very actual saying.
I got hit very hard by this one at beginning of my programming career. Went home for vacation after my 1st year at Uni and when came back 3 months later I got very surprised to find I lost my speed typing ability. Had to start from beginning and was very frustrating. Never let my guard down after that.
The world is grey, Jack. - Clear and Present Danger
Was WWII a more acceptable war because one side was clearly more morally reprehensible? Even then, it seems to often be a difference in degree, not in kind. Please do not take this as an excuse or lessening of severity for any group.
tl;dr this is a gruesome but targeted missile that doesn't explode and thus reducing collateral damage.
Overall a good thing.
Overall wars are terrible and so are "police actions" that we often do.
So my opinion is still that we need to figure out how to combat misinformation, propaganda, and radicalism rather than figuring out better/more efficient ways to kill each other. But that requires going after both social media companies, and stabilizing governments by providing spreading of wealth in poor countries, and relief to natural disasters.
I wouldn't be so sure. The ultimate issue here is the casual use of cold blooded extrajudicial assassination via drone. Anything which makes the decision to do that easier is a net negative. The whole reason we got to the point of regularly doing this over the last 20 years is because the technological means to do so have become commoditized and extremely "hands off". Colatteral damage is not what we should be worried about, but whether the act is even just in the first place. These are not battlefield commanders engaged in tactical decision making against our front line troops we're killing. They are strategic level beaureaucrats. The argument that this is just warfare doesn't apply. And if those people we were targeting had the means to do this to our own military officials driving down the street in Washington, we'd be hauling them into war crime tribunals.
How long until the US is subject to this kind of targeted assassination? It doesn't seem that this tech is so inaccessible to state actors with billions to invest. There are sufficient such enemies. Is the Secret Service really confident that it can protect its charges from this kind of attack?
I think they'll find that a drone missile can also be a boomerang.
EDIT: The objections to this scenario are taking it more literally than I was. I was thinking of a few dozen launched together from a yacht or freighter or enemy safe house in a nearby suburb. That's a lot easier than reproducing the US global operation.
There was a similar sequence near the beginning of Olympus has Fallen.
A state actor with billions of dollars to invest would just use a regular missile. But not against another state actor with billions of dollars to invest into anti-air defense. The only reason why these are used in places like Syria or Yemen is because there's nobody there with the capacity to reliably shoot down drones and/or warplanes.
I mean, I don't know if this would be the tech leap that does it. This is spending millions of dollars to stab someone from a chair a continent away. I think we were probably at the "this is going to backfire" moment with the first round of drones. I doubt that this ability to now ostensibly limit civilian casualties weighs heavily on those who would perform an attack such as you're imaging.
Let's analyze what it would take to make your scenario work: some state actor is going to fly a drone or aircraft with the range to reach the US (launched from where?), past any radars and other sensors that the continental US has without being detected (and then fly back out even), drop a specialized munition that leaves large, analyzable debris behind, and somehow not be identified to face reprisal. That is exceedingly unlikely.
> until the US is subject to this kind of targeted assassination?
I suppose this depends on one's definition of "this kind."
The R9X is deployed from a massive drone platform. Using it on our homeland requires air superiority around the target. That's not, in the near term, a significant risk.
> Is the Secret Service really confident that it can protect its charges from this kind of attack?
Yes. Our military is pretty confident that it can handle any form of missile/flying object trying to reach US soil before its an issue, which is part of why we feel pretty much zero repercussions for being terrible.
It's interesting how public has forgotten that ISIS is no longer any different from your usual terrorist organization with cellular structure, which is actively eradicated by both Syrian government and Kurds. So what mandate US forces have in Syria for their military activity? Not only they occupy some strategic land (Al-Tanf), but also actively kill military forces of the internationally recognized government (you can call it a dictatorship, evil to the core, etc., but it does not change the fact) inside Syrian borders without declaring a war on it.
I guess like depleted uranium bullets is a useful way to re-purpose a byproduct of nuclear weapons production, flinging blades at an enemy is a good way to re-purpose decommissioned servers. I can only imagine the military uses for all the severed cable ties.
x86_64Ubuntu|5 years ago
rayiner|5 years ago
Now, it’s fair to say that none of this is America’s problem. And I probably agree with you. But there is a risk we wake up 30 years from now and huge swaths of the world have been taken over by fundamentalist ideologies that are very hostile to us. We should think a bit about what that world would look like and whether it’s desirable.
Americans take for granted that we live in a world shaped by American norms. 160 constitutions around the world are based directly or indirectly in our own. (Bangladesh’s constitution begins with “we the people” just like the United States’.) The Star Trek version of the future (“America in Space”) comes about because of our willingness to invest in the security and economic and social development of the world. And maybe we’ve done enough, and maybe it’s time to let others lead. I’m pretty sympathetic to the arguments that it’s time to turn our focus inward, and we’re doing more harm than good. But the analysis is much bigger than whether certain specific people are attacking US soil at this very moment.
t413|5 years ago
ravi-delia|5 years ago
spamizbad|5 years ago
formercoder|5 years ago
dfsegoat|5 years ago
Rest assured, there are people who wake up every single day plotting how they can kill Americans or Westerners, or training to do so.
This may be the West / USA's fault - but it's where we find ourselves, regardless.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St...
Nightshaxx|5 years ago
The article specifically references that these devices used on members of aal-Qaida; the group responsible for 911.
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
mhh__|5 years ago
metadatabad|5 years ago
[deleted]
jimbob45|5 years ago
Same here. Prematurely joining conflicts now allows us to save scores of lives abroad (at least in theory).
dagav|5 years ago
jeanvalmarc|5 years ago
As a counterargument, you can't know that. It seems like this argument could be restated as "I don't trust the US government to dispassionately determine who is a threat and even if they were a threat I am not in favor of killing people as a response." Which seems fair but the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes.
throw51319|5 years ago
ahupp|5 years ago
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31409/everything-we-kn...
nimish|5 years ago
What are we gaining from doing this?
Rebelgecko|5 years ago
Hurras al-din has also given support to ISIS, who destabilized a good chunk of the middle east. It's a bad look since a lot of Americans died to effect regime change in Iraq. If Iraq ends up turning into a full-blown theocracy, it makes our efforts there seem even more wasteful.
According to the Russians, he was trying to gather supplies to make illegal chemical weapons but definitely take that with a grain of salt.
Supposedly this helps US goals in Syria, but TBH I'm not really sure what the US goals are. I suspect that both our current and previous president would have a hard time articulating goals that are consistent with their actions in Syria
vsareto|5 years ago
unnouinceput|5 years ago
2 - Probably maintaining/honing the skills. "If you don't use it you lose it" it's a very old and very actual saying.
I got hit very hard by this one at beginning of my programming career. Went home for vacation after my 1st year at Uni and when came back 3 months later I got very surprised to find I lost my speed typing ability. Had to start from beginning and was very frustrating. Never let my guard down after that.
csours|5 years ago
The world is grey, Jack. - Clear and Present Danger
Was WWII a more acceptable war because one side was clearly more morally reprehensible? Even then, it seems to often be a difference in degree, not in kind. Please do not take this as an excuse or lessening of severity for any group.
Simulacra|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
zalkota|5 years ago
TheDesolate0|5 years ago
[deleted]
Justsignedup|5 years ago
Overall a good thing.
Overall wars are terrible and so are "police actions" that we often do.
So my opinion is still that we need to figure out how to combat misinformation, propaganda, and radicalism rather than figuring out better/more efficient ways to kill each other. But that requires going after both social media companies, and stabilizing governments by providing spreading of wealth in poor countries, and relief to natural disasters.
aphextron|5 years ago
I wouldn't be so sure. The ultimate issue here is the casual use of cold blooded extrajudicial assassination via drone. Anything which makes the decision to do that easier is a net negative. The whole reason we got to the point of regularly doing this over the last 20 years is because the technological means to do so have become commoditized and extremely "hands off". Colatteral damage is not what we should be worried about, but whether the act is even just in the first place. These are not battlefield commanders engaged in tactical decision making against our front line troops we're killing. They are strategic level beaureaucrats. The argument that this is just warfare doesn't apply. And if those people we were targeting had the means to do this to our own military officials driving down the street in Washington, we'd be hauling them into war crime tribunals.
hirundo|5 years ago
I think they'll find that a drone missile can also be a boomerang.
EDIT: The objections to this scenario are taking it more literally than I was. I was thinking of a few dozen launched together from a yacht or freighter or enemy safe house in a nearby suburb. That's a lot easier than reproducing the US global operation.
There was a similar sequence near the beginning of Olympus has Fallen.
int_19h|5 years ago
Pfhreak|5 years ago
SketchySeaBeast|5 years ago
throwaway0a5e|5 years ago
ThrowawayR2|5 years ago
JumpCrisscross|5 years ago
I suppose this depends on one's definition of "this kind."
The R9X is deployed from a massive drone platform. Using it on our homeland requires air superiority around the target. That's not, in the near term, a significant risk.
Koshkin|5 years ago
Technically almost impossible. The US have bases overseas, its enemies don't have anything within or close to the US borders.
mkane848|5 years ago
Yes. Our military is pretty confident that it can handle any form of missile/flying object trying to reach US soil before its an issue, which is part of why we feel pretty much zero repercussions for being terrible.
fuoqi|5 years ago
But luckily for the public in his utter unprofessionalism Trump was pretty honest about it: https://www.newsweek.com/syria-trump-stealing-oil-us-confirm...
duxup|5 years ago
Who operates where and does what has always been more fluid than just 'well they're internationally recognized'.
bregma|5 years ago
yters|5 years ago
why not take them out overseas first? they've declared war so are lawful combatants