Topic: Recent Yemeni Drone Strike on Wedding Party of 15 is not CIA's Fault (Read 2820 times)

For the American military, the lives of the Asians are worth next to nothing. If they want to eliminate Al Qaeda, then they should round up all those Saudi and Qatari sheikhs who do the funding. But they don't have the balls to do that, do they?

It makes perfect sense when you look at who is largely responsible for their development.

And all because they just don't want to risk losing their own precious soldiers live's, but don't mind wasting the lives of civilians in the process.

I fully agree man, the drones are one of the most terrorizing and cowardly innovations ever released on mankind.

Anyone defending these drone strikes, take some time to read this study:

http://www.livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Stanford-NYU-Living-Under-Drones.pdf

Or at least the executive summary. Let me pick just one paragraph from that executive summary that addresses the point I was making earlier, the terrorizing effect:

Second, US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury. Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school. Waziris told our researchers that the strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals. In addition, families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves.

15 innocent civilians getting killed is bad. But probably nowhere near as bad as the effect those drones have on millions of innocent civilians every frigging day.

QFT

+1

You did, and should think about the implications. First of all, a yemenite doesnt distinguish between CIA, FBI, NSA, military or whatever. Its all the same to them (at to a large extend, to me too). Secondly, if they are unable to celebrate weddings or travel in groups, do anything some uniformed kid in a bunker on the other side of the planet may find suspicious, if they constantly have to live with the fear of being bombed by an invisible drone, duck for cover every time something flies over them, then they are being terrorized. I dont use that word lightly, its exactly what it is. If my country was constantly being bombed that way, innocent civilians being massacred indiscriminately, my children traumatized,  I would resist as well. And you'd call me a terrorist for resisting, Id say you are the terrorist.

That's what rampant brainwashing with nationalism and patriotism does to people, add in to that the repeated media mantra of Muslim = Terrorist and they hate out freedoms etc and you've got a recipe for hatred or at least apathy of a lot of people.

I don't think they do that on purpose. But it is true that the American military does not value human life outside the US as much as they do inside their home nation.

That's not at all what I said. Read the whole post before making a stupid TLDR post that includes quotes to create a manufactured statement.  

If you had read what I posted, I said it was the Pentagon's fault, not the CIA's. The snippet about the wedding convoy was an example of a similar convoy containing Anwar al-Awlaki that was assessed before it was destroyed.

I'm also glad that a civilian court will be involved, but since his arrest in 2003, and for about 10 years he has been illegally detained. This is a breach of habeas corpus, an important principle that ensures that one has to be convicted by evidence before one is put in jail. Besides, Guantanamo is not a jail, it is a torture chamber, and where Sheikh Mohammed after he was arrested (but before he was transferred to Gitmo) has been, nobody knows, but it was surely a horrible place not fit for human dignity and completely free from any oversight so he could have been tortured daily for years and probably has been. That is abhorrent.

If this is true (I hope it is not, but it might be), then the mot likely reason for why it is done is to create conflict in general. This conflict benefits the US military industrial complex, there might be an axis between the military industry in the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia that simply benefit from conflict.

It explains how the US backs Saudi Arabia even though the financing of a lot of terrorism comes from there, and how the US also backs Israel whose conflict with Palestine is exasperated by Saudi Arabian Wahabbist support. Saudi Arabia again benefits from more conflict and hence higher oil prices. Israel benefits from being able to fragment Palestinian society and avoid making concessions through a peace deal. The US military industry benefits by selling weapons. In addition the US government benefits by its population being afraid and hence easier to control so that they can do whatever they want.

TLDR, Its not the CIA's fault because...


You cant be serious.

I think the US government kills civilians on purpose.
They always declared eastern people as "terrorists". It wouldn't be surprising if CIA employees actually believe this.
Besides these drone attacks hit about 80% official targets. Even Americans can't be that stupid to miss that much.

You prove them wrong. When bin Laden launched the 9/11 attacks the argument was that the US was "the great Satan". And what happens afterwards? The US proves him right by showing the ugliest side of itself not seen since the Vietnam war. The civilian casualties caused by American belligerence following 9/11 can be counted in six figures. That is simply wrong.

If you want to "win" over terrorists a propaganda war is needed. The world was on Americas side directly after 9/11, people grieved over the atrocity. Now people hate the US for it's response which is much more horrible than anything Al-Qaeda could ever achieve. If instead the US had pleaded for help, and listened to other countries (as well as experts) views on what needed to be done to prevent it from happening they would have realized that it was an image problem caused by past deeds. 9/11 was a great chance for the US to transform its image into a more benevolent and pluralistic power.

Besides, if it really is so (as Bush said) that "they hate us for our freedom" (I don't believe it is so), then the answer is not to have less of it, but to bear the costs of it. And the costs of freedom is less security, meaning anyone living in a truly free society is of course at risk that someone might go postal and kill a bunch of people. But the chance of that happening is less than dying in a traffic accident or falling down from a latter.

I agree with your statement about HVT's.  I'm glad Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has languished in gitmo and will stand trial in New York.  He doesn't deserve the easy way out.

Terrorists are brainwashed to believe they are morally superior to any non-Muslim, Christian or Westerner, period. They are willing to put on a vest with explosives, walk into a crowd, and detonate it to prove the sincerity of their beliefs.  In Iraq, for example, civilians are being killed in car bombings daily by terrorists.  Police and soldiers are secondary targets there.  It's Sunni vs. Shia, an ancient religious conflict exacerbated by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.  Tell me, how do you convince those who are, quite literally, dying to be martyrs for a meaningless and irrational cause?  I won't deny that civilian kills by drone strikes serve as recruitment tools, but how many people are motivated by the possibility of being killed at any point having accomplished nothing, failing as a martyr.

In a war, everyone claims that right.  Btw, the Yemeni government allows the drones to operate, just like Pakistan.

I strongly disagree.

If you want to go into a foreign country and start killing its people. Do it face to face like a man and leave the remote control death machines at home.
No one has the right to be judge, jury and executioner.

Even HVTs deserve a fair trial. Otherwise it is murder.

One could argue that in war it is different, but war is only justified as a last resort, if it is proportional, if it has a probability of success and if it has been declared. None of these criteria the US "war" on terror fulfill.

The only way to ethically punish terrorists is to try them in a civilian and public court where they have the right to defend themselves.

In fact the only way to win against terrorists is this. By being morally superior. Disproportional responses that kill orders of magnitude more civilians is becoming a worse terrorist than the once that are supposedly to be punished. It is abominable.