Stop killing our soldiers, or we'll kill our kids!

[Sabby]

Wow... just wow. Sometimes I have to invent new ways of shaking my head just to accommodate for the levels of stupid, and considering the source, it takes a LOT to surprise me.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A Taliban commander in Pakistan’s tribal belt has banned a vaccination campaign against child polio in protest over frequent United States drone attacks there.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur said that the U.S.-funded vaccinations for tens of thousands of children would be outlawed until drone attacks stopped.

He also said the polio campaign could be a cover for CIA espionage – a reference to Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor reported to have helped American agencies identify Osama bin Laden.
A pamphlet issued in Miranshah, North Waziristan and seen by NBC News accused the U.S. of “spending billions of rupees” on anti-polio measures while causing psychological disorders “due to drone strikes and round the clock hovering of spy planes over homes and villages”.

And in case you didn't already have your palm jammed squarely into your nose...

“This situation created by U.S. drone strikes is more dangerous than the polio virus"

[Sel Nar]

Warning: Reading that article may cause brain leakage as it tries to escape the STUPID. One reccomends earplugs or not reading the STUPID due to the risk of permanent damage caused by your brain trying to pull itself out of your head via your ear canals so it can go on vacation.

[Callie Del Noire]

Words.. fail me.

Just.. so much.. fail...

[Sabre]

In lieu of advanced intelligence gathering and news, conspiracy theories prevail in these regions.

[Shjade]

Hm. It's a little more crackpot than I thought. I was thinking it might be something along the lines of, "You're going to blow up our kids anyway, why would we let you pretend to care about them first?"

[Revolverman]

A cynical US commander would likely welcome that, less bombs needed.

[Maiz]

I don't see why this is so crazy. The US has used vaccination campaigns as a cover for covert operations. The US has also killed a lot of civilians with drone attacks.  If you read interviews by survivors or people who have lost family members from drone attack you'll realize that they don't kill insurgents. They are killing kids and the elderly. Drones kill probably kill more people in that region than polio does. Why would anyone accept 'help' from a country that is killing your family?

[Callie Del Noire]

Want to bet if the spokesman's kids start suffering from polio his attitude towards the treatment will change?

[Hemingway]

While it's difficult to overstate the importance of vaccines of that kind, American drone strikes in Pakistan are also ... problematic, to say the least. Violations of Pakistan's national sovereignty are quite serious. So, while the means are misguided, I agree that the US riding roughshod over international conventions is a problem.

It poses problems, of course, beyond just being a conflict between humanitarian and US military interests, in that if the US were to give in to a tactic like that ( incidentally, it's the same tactic that's used by North Korea ), it may be used again for some other purpose.

It's ... a complicated situation.

[OldSchoolGamer]

I don't see why this is so crazy. The US has used vaccination campaigns as a cover for covert operations. The US has also killed a lot of civilians with drone attacks.  If you read interviews by survivors or people who have lost family members from drone attack you'll realize that they don't kill insurgents. They are killing kids and the elderly. Drones kill probably kill more people in that region than polio does. Why would anyone accept 'help' from a country that is killing your family?

Maybe if Islamic fighters would man up and stop hiding behind women and children, there'd be fewer civilian casualties.

[OldSchoolGamer]

While it's difficult to overstate the importance of vaccines of that kind, American drone strikes in Pakistan are also ... problematic, to say the least. Violations of Pakistan's national sovereignty are quite serious. So, while the means are misguided, I agree that the US riding roughshod over international conventions is a problem.

Sovereignty carries with it responsibilities as well as rights.

One of the key responsibilities of a sovereign state is to police its territory and prevent it from being used by criminal or insurgent groups to base themselves whilst carrying out attacks on neighbors.  Pakistan has been failing to live up to its responsibility here.  As an occupying power, the U.S. is responsible for security in Afghanistan.  The insurgents which Pakistan pretty much gives free rein to operate from its territory routinely compromise that security.  Therefore, America must attack them inside Pakistan.

Whether America should even be wasting lives and treasure trying to make the Afghan Muslims leave the Middle Ages is whole other (and legitimate) question.  But we're there, we're responsible for security, and so yes, we are justified in carrying out drone strikes.

[Maiz]

Sovereignty carries with it responsibilities as well as rights.

One of the key responsibilities of a sovereign state is to police its territory and prevent it from being used by criminal or insurgent groups to base themselves whilst carrying out attacks on neighbors.  Pakistan has been failing to live up to its responsibility here.  As an occupying power, the U.S. is responsible for security in Afghanistan.  The insurgents which Pakistan pretty much gives free rein to operate from its territory routinely compromise that security.  Therefore, America must attack them inside Pakistan.

Whether America should even be wasting lives and treasure trying to make the Afghan Muslims leave the Middle Ages is whole other (and legitimate) question.  But we're there, we're responsible for security, and so yes, we are justified in carrying out drone strikes.

Maybe if Islamic fighters would man up and stop hiding behind women and children, there'd be fewer civilian casualties.

OldSchoolGamer- killing civilians, ignoring a nation's boundaries, and bombing people will not, and will never create piece. Yemen lawyer Haykel Bafana tweeted, "Dear Obama, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda."

The fact is, the US use of drones and murder of civilians creates more enemies for the US. It makes the problem worse. There was a republic in Afghanistan, and the leaders had very progressive policies. And than the Soviets invaded, and then the US a few times, inciting increasingly extremist and religious groups who win progress by being anti-Western. The US involvement (ie killing civilians) only gives people who would not be anti-US reason to be anti-US.

[Callie Del Noire]

OldSchoolGamer- killing civilians, ignoring a nation's boundaries, and bombing people will not, and will never create piece. Yemen lawyer Haykel Bafana tweeted, "Dear Obama, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda."

The fact is, the US use of drones and murder of civilians creates more enemies for the US. It makes the problem worse. There was a republic in Afghanistan, and the leaders had very progressive policies. And than the Soviets invaded, and then the US a few times, inciting increasingly extremist and religious groups who win progress by being anti-Western. The US involvement (ie killing civilians) only gives people who would not be anti-US reason to be anti-US.

The problem (post Soviet invasion) is we (the US) foolishly decided 'job done' and went home. You pay folks like the 'proto-taliban' freedom fighters, give them training and weapons, then don't follow up with the promises to rebuild infrastructure.. this is what you get. A collection of extremist religious fringe elements who crushed their rivals for decades. If they had given up Bin Laden..we'd have happily left them alone till their rot had spread to Pakistan, taken control and nuked the Hindus to the south of them or provided Iran with material and training to make their own nukes.

The drone strikes shouldn't be run by the  CIA but by the DoD, and the rules of engagement need to be refined.

[Shjade]

Maybe if Islamic fighters would man up and stop hiding behind women and children, there'd be fewer civilian casualties.

Right, blame them for our choice of tactics. That's totally fair.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Right, blame them for our choice of tactics. That's totally fair.

When these people threw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, they gave up all rights to "fair."

[Callie Del Noire]

When these people threw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, they gave up all rights to "fair."

We cannot use their actions to justify giving up our own ethical outlook.

And the way they fight? It's the way they have fought.. forever. Do you honestly think they could have turned aside the Russians (twice), England, and even Alexander the Great without a hit and run outlook?

[Hemingway]

Sovereignty carries with it responsibilities as well as rights.

One of the key responsibilities of a sovereign state is to police its territory and prevent it from being used by criminal or insurgent groups to base themselves whilst carrying out attacks on neighbors.  Pakistan has been failing to live up to its responsibility here.  As an occupying power, the U.S. is responsible for security in Afghanistan.  The insurgents which Pakistan pretty much gives free rein to operate from its territory routinely compromise that security.  Therefore, America must attack them inside Pakistan.

That may well be the case, and it certainly seems to be the stance of the UN - of which, may I remind you, both the US and Pakistan are members. But the US is not the arbiter of matters of other countries' sovereignty. It isn't up to the US to decide what the conditions of sovereignty are, and which countries are to be stripped of their sovereignty. The only body that could possibly do that with any sort of legitimacy is the UN - and even that's highly dubious, as that effectively exempts the permanent members of the Security Council from such considerations.

If, then, Pakistan was seen to violate their basic responsibilities, the right way of going about it would be to take it to the UN. But the drone strikes in Pakistan don't have UN support, and in fact the UN is concerned about them.

This, I think, raises a question ( a purely academic one, I'm sure ): If it turns out that US drone attacks in Pakistan are in violation of international law, what does that imply for US sovereignty? Would the US hand over members of the CIA to Pakistan - and, if not, would Pakistan be justified in carrying out attacks in the US to get to them? I'm tempted to answer my own questions with an "of course not", but given the history of the US and the CIA in certain countries around the world, I'm not convinced that wouldn't be exactly what would happen, had the roles only been reversed.

The bottom line is that this entire question is far, far more nuanced than it may seem at first glance, and the US is not a paragon of shining virtue without a blemish to its name.

[Shjade]

When these people threw acid in the faces of schoolgirls, they gave up all rights to "fair."

Which is worse: throwing acid in the faces of some schoolgirls, or dropping bombs on schoolgirls, their families, and every family that lives on their block?

You can't make them out to be the bad guy; we're just as bad.

Besides, the whole point is that we're blowing up people who weren't throwing acid at anybody. When did they give up their rights to "fair?"

[Callie Del Noire]

That may well be the case, and it certainly seems to be the stance of the UN - of which, may I remind you, both the US and Pakistan are members. But the US is not the arbiter of matters of other countries' sovereignty. It isn't up to the US to decide what the conditions of sovereignty are, and which countries are to be stripped of their sovereignty. The only body that could possibly do that with any sort of legitimacy is the UN - and even that's highly dubious, as that effectively exempts the permanent members of the Security Council from such considerations.

If, then, Pakistan was seen to violate their basic responsibilities, the right way of going about it would be to take it to the UN. But the drone strikes in Pakistan don't have UN support, and in fact the UN is concerned about them.

This, I think, raises a question ( a purely academic one, I'm sure ): If it turns out that US drone attacks in Pakistan are in violation of international law, what does that imply for US sovereignty? Would the US hand over members of the CIA to Pakistan - and, if not, would Pakistan be justified in carrying out attacks in the US to get to them? I'm tempted to answer my own questions with an "of course not", but given the history of the US and the CIA in certain countries around the world, I'm not convinced that wouldn't be exactly what would happen, had the roles only been reversed.

The bottom line is that this entire question is far, far more nuanced than it may seem at first glance, and the US is not a paragon of shining virtue without a blemish to its name.

Hence my argument that the DoD should be doing these strikes, with better defined RoE.

The CIA and accountability aren't always in the same area code, and while the DoD has on occasion been just as bad, there is a history of accountability and less invisibility to judicial inquiry that would require them to be held more accountable to the legal system.

For example, had the technology been available in the Vietnam war era, we'd have done strikes on military targets in 'untoubleable' regions like Laos and Cambodia I'm sure.. but it would have been done by DoD personel.

[OldSchoolGamer]

If, then, Pakistan was seen to violate their basic responsibilities, the right way of going about it would be to take it to the UN. But the drone strikes in Pakistan don't have UN support, and in fact the UN is concerned about them.

Yes, that worked so well for the Syrian people. 

The UN is a toothless entity vis-a-vis human rights as long as Russia and China are members. 

The bottom line is that this entire question is far, far more nuanced than it may seem at first glance, and the US is not a paragon of shining virtue without a blemish to its name.

True.  But "it is what it is," and until the Muslim world decides to invest more energy in self-development and social progress as it does trying to destroy Israel, this is par for the course.

If I had been in charge, the operation in Afghanistan would have been far more limited...and when we had the Taliban top brass and bin Laden holed up in that cave-complex, I'd have dropped a bunker-busting tactical nuke on it, declared victory, and ended the operation.  That would have sent a clear message to the Muslim world that we're not going to ask you to leave the 12th century, but if you make a mess in America, we'll come sort you hard and fast.  Much more effective than "nation-building."

[Callie Del Noire]

Yes, that worked so well for the Syrian people. 

The UN is a toothless entity vis-a-vis human rights as long as Russia and China are members. 

True.  But "it is what it is," and until the Muslim world decides to invest more energy in self-development and social progress as it does trying to destroy Israel, this is par for the course.

Well considering we don't even try to work with the UN our allies, it will never change now will it. We did our part in making the UN a money sink with no teeth by pointedly never letting things OUR allies and agendas disliked from going through. Again, the UN is what we helped make it. Toothless, corrupt and without even a clear definition of what terrorism is.

If I had been in charge, the operation in Afghanistan would have been far more limited...and when we had the Taliban top brass and bin Laden holed up in that cave-complex, I'd have dropped a bunker-busting tactical nuke on it, declared victory, and ended the operation.  That would have sent a clear message to the Muslim world that we're not going to ask you to leave the 12th century, but if you make a mess in America, we'll come sort you hard and fast.  Much more effective than "nation-building."

And a decade and a half from now when our lack of putting something in place leaves us with something that makes the Taliban look tame and they detonate a dirty bomb in memory of 'martyrs lost to American aggression' because we didn't support moderates in the Arab world. What then?

Lets eliminate our actions in the gulf and look at other historical events..

World War 1 vs War War II in Europe.

The end of World War 1 ended with HUGE reparations being thrown on the Germans and their allies. The French literally marched into some factories and took machinery to collect what they were owed. The means of production. They GUTTED the industrial systems in areas. They literally and figuratively looted the country. Leaving massive debt, joblessness and resurgence of historical hatred between them and the French.

All of which left the way open for Adolf Hitler to come in and leverage his way in.

Post WWII Europe. .the Allies (aside from the Soviet Union) REBUILT the countries. Do you think Western Europe or Japan would have been half as likely to be in the fiscal shape they are currently in if we hadn't done our part to help out? Compare the way we helped the sections of Europe we were in control of compared to the ones the Soviets were in control of.

Some of the reasons Western Europe is still in fairly good shape is because we REBUILT infrastructure. When you're hungry, jobless and worried about your kids, and the folks in power aren't doing anything..the opposition is looking damn good. Had we made a concerted effort to rebuild the old Afgan government after the withdrawal of the Soviets.. do you think the Taliban would have been so heavily rooted today?

Our problem is we have become shortsighted adn stupid. Destroy a regions infrastructure and do you honestly think if we don't make an effort to help them recover after the end of the war is done that they won't try to retaliate a decade or two down the line.

[Hemingway]

While I was trying to collect my thoughts and figure out what to write, Callie said more or less everything I wanted to say.

The only thing I'd like to add concerns this:

True.  But "it is what it is," and until the Muslim world decides to invest more energy in self-development and social progress as it does trying to destroy Israel, this is par for the course.

This is such a good illustration of precisely why a violent, jingoistic approach won't solve anything. Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian lands. Do you know what conditions are like there? Its a perfectly vicious circle of oppression, violence, repression, and more violence.

[Callie Del Noire]

While I was trying to collect my thoughts and figure out what to write, Callie said more or less everything I wanted to say.

The only thing I'd like to add concerns this:

This is such a good illustration of precisely why a violent, jingoistic approach won't solve anything. Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian lands. Do you know what conditions are like there? Its a perfectly vicious circle of oppression, violence, repression, and more violence.

Yeah.. Ironically it's the ISRAELI government (and the more extreme parties) who continue to go on refuting their own peace agreements. Do you think if they hadn't been spending the last 20 years in denial and ignoring their own agreements that Hamas might not have been so influential today?

They (the Israeli political extremists) put Hamas in control. And their continued ignoring of their own treaties and laws..well Hamas can honestly say that the Israelis don't intend to give anything up when they go on building settlements on Palestinian land.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Some of the reasons Western Europe is still in fairly good shape is because we REBUILT infrastructure. When you're hungry, jobless and worried about your kids, and the folks in power aren't doing anything..the opposition is looking damn good. Had we made a concerted effort to rebuild the old Afgan government after the withdrawal of the Soviets.. do you think the Taliban would have been so heavily rooted today?

Our problem is we have become shortsighted adn stupid. Destroy a regions infrastructure and do you honestly think if we don't make an effort to help them recover after the end of the war is done that they won't try to retaliate a decade or two down the line.

Except we didn't have hordes of aggrieved locals blowing up everything we rebuilt.  Western Europeans recognized the value of schools, power plants, roads, factories, and so forth.  Not so the Afghan Muslims.  In fact, if anything, they resent these things because these accoutrements of civilization remind them of distant lands where women are not property and murder-death-kill fanatics aren't in charge.

Nation-building only works if the people you are building the nation for do in fact recognize the value of nations and civil society.

[Callie Del Noire]

Except we didn't have hordes of aggrieved locals blowing up everything we rebuilt.  Western Europeans recognized the value of schools, power plants, roads, factories, and so forth.  Not so the Afghan Muslims.  In fact, if anything, they resent these things because these accoutrements of civilization remind them of distant lands where women are not property and murder-death-kill fanatics aren't in charge.

Nation-building only works if the people you are building the nation for do in fact recognize the value of nations and civil society.

You know what..had we done it THIRTY YEARS ago.. we wouldn't have had folks burning down the buildings.. because they expected us to keep our word then. We've repeatedly and constantly proved ourselves a fair weather friend from Ronnie Regan on. Had we done it then.. gosh.. think of how Al Qaeda would have been afterwards.

By the time Bin Laden hopped up and got kicked out of his home country, Afganistan would have been fairly stable and most likely not been open to welcoming to him. Odds were Syria or Yemen would have been his home away from home or possibly even Somalia.

Instead, we left them hanging in a country devestated by war and broke our promises to men who have a long long long tradition of living by their words.. so when folks like Bin Laden showed up with his chunk of daddy's money.. he got a lot of support from folks who were perfectly willing to back his play.

Fun note.. fixing problems like the Taliban.. take a generation. You can't fix them in time for the next election cycle.

[Hemingway]

Except we didn't have hordes of aggrieved locals blowing up everything we rebuilt.  Western Europeans recognized the value of schools, power plants, roads, factories, and so forth.  Not so the Afghan Muslims.  In fact, if anything, they resent these things because these accoutrements of civilization remind them of distant lands where women are not property and murder-death-kill fanatics aren't in charge.

Nation-building only works if the people you are building the nation for do in fact recognize the value of nations and civil society.

If you're going to make sweeping statements about the entire population of a country, please provide some sort of source for your statements. Otherwise, saying things like "Not so the Afghan Muslims" is just racist nonsense.

You have now gone from making claims essentially about American exceptionalism, to claiming basically that Afghanistan is a backward country of fanatics who won't learn except through violence.

[Shjade]

You have now gone from making claims essentially about American exceptionalism, to claiming basically that Afghanistan is a backward country of fanatics who won't learn except through violence.

Technically I think he's saying they won't learn even through violence. Which is worse.

[OldSchoolGamer]

If you're going to make sweeping statements about the entire population of a country, please provide some sort of source for your statements. Otherwise, saying things like "Not so the Afghan Muslims" is just racist nonsense.

You have now gone from making claims essentially about American exceptionalism, to claiming basically that Afghanistan is a backward country of fanatics who won't learn except through violence.

No different from Europe during much of the Medieval period.

How much luck do you think we would have had trying to "civilize" the bickering, quarreling, bloodthirsty warlords that popped up in Western Europe in the 6th and 7th centuries, after the Roman Empire went kaput?  Or even in the 12th century when the ultra-superstitious Catholic Church ran things and people were afraid to take baths or open their windows at night for fear evil spirits would carry them off?  We'd have been branded heretics or witches and burned at the stake.  Europe had to go through that to get to the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment and Reformation, and then through how many wars and convulsions to get to where it is today?

Islam is where Christianity was back then.  They're going to have to sort through the same mess of theological crap that Europe/Christianity had to.  No one can do it for them.  We can't force them to regard women as human beings, or to believe there are better ways to resolve political disputes than jihad and war, or to recognize the value of scientific inquiry and the limitations of religious dogma.  We can't bomb them into separating mosque from statehouse and court. 

[Maiz]

Except we didn't have hordes of aggrieved locals blowing up everything we rebuilt.  Western Europeans recognized the value of schools, power plants, roads, factories, and so forth.  Not so the Afghan Muslims.  In fact, if anything, they resent these things because these accoutrements of civilization remind them of distant lands where women are not property and murder-death-kill fanatics aren't in charge.

Nation-building only works if the people you are building the nation for do in fact recognize the value of nations and civil society.

Okay. a lot of places in the middle east were modernising and had quite a lot of human rights

and then Europe came and colonized. And then the US came and ousted out government while arming and training rightist groups who became extremists.

Also, please try not to blanket entire regions of the world and entire religions as backwards. You'll find that if you actually look and listen to people in these areas and of that faith that they are not backwards or all the same.

But following your logic, I could say that America is full of violent people who love guns more than rights, where if you aren't white or aren't rich then you have limited access to resources, that men of color are regularly imprisoned, that 25% (quite possibly more) women are raped, that American men beat their wives, where young girls are subjected to skewed beauty ideals and develop various eating disorders, and that the americcan military allows rape to happen, and bombs helpless civilians.

Who is backwards?

[Callie Del Noire]

Islam is where Christianity was back then.  They're going to have to sort through the same mess of theological crap that Europe/Christianity had to.  No one can do it for them.  We can't force them to regard women as human beings, or to believe there are better ways to resolve political disputes than jihad and war, or to recognize the value of scientific inquiry and the limitations of religious dogma.  We can't bomb them into separating mosque from statehouse and court.

No but we can work on backing moderating elements. The Turks, Egyptians, and Lebonese were successful moderate states back in the day..and we left them to rot. And to a large extent still do. We don't build strong moderate governments in the middle east because they aren't always going to beholden to us. They are politically and financially stable and our moral conservatives don't want that.

And FYI.. prior to Euro-colonialism Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and most of the arabian med nations were stable, and moderate. The English, French, German, Dutch, ect destroyed them and left nothing stable when they withdrew.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Okay. a lot of places in the middle east were modernising and had quite a lot of human rights

and then Europe came and colonized. And then the US came and ousted out government while arming and training rightist groups who became extremists.

Also, please try not to blanket entire regions of the world and entire religions as backwards. You'll find that if you actually look and listen to people in these areas and of that faith that they are not backwards or all the same.

Except that some areas seem to do better than others all-around.  Germany was reduced to rubble, Japan was atom-bombed, yet these people came back strong.  Yet much of the Muslim world claims it can't progress because Jews own 2% of the Middle East.

But following your logic, I could say that America is full of violent people who love guns more than rights, where if you aren't white or aren't rich then you have limited access to resources, that men of color are regularly imprisoned, that 25% (quite possibly more) women are raped, that American men beat their wives, where young girls are subjected to skewed beauty ideals and develop various eating disorders, and that the americcan military allows rape to happen, and bombs helpless civilians.

Who is backwards?

Well then, if America is truly this bad, all the more reason we should let these people sort their own affairs.  Apparently some people's moral calculus holds that, for women, being allowed to choose ones own clothing and make ones own choices in life is functionally equivalent to being forced to walk around in a beekeeper outfit and stoned to death if unfortunate enough to be raped.

Any way you slice it, I'm not going to say things that make the politically-correct crowd happy.  The bottom line is that some cultures lead to better outcomes than others.  And offering aid and singing kumbaya is not going to enable these people to advance.  They have to decide advancement is something they want.  Or not.  If they think bowing to a giant black cube five times a day and beating their wives is what makes life grand, who are we to tell them otherwise?  Maybe to these Afghans, the total subjugation of women and the burning of all books except the Koran is the penultimate achievement of humans on Earth and no further "progress" is possible or even desirable.  And as you just said, we have problems of our own, no?  So as long as they don't shelter people who hijack our airliners and fly them into buildings, I say let's save lives and tax dollars and live and let live.

But to circle back to the original topic--whether wise or no (I'll go with the latter)--we are involved in Afghanistan, and responsible for its security.  And Pakistan is responsible for policing its territory.  The best outcome to this would be for Pakistan to dismantle the militant camps and bring the militants to justice.  Then we wouldn't have to launch airstrikes in Pakistan.  But that's not happening, in large part because the rulers of Pakistan and the militants all bow to the same big black cube five times a day.  So it's either invade Pakistan too, or drone strikes.  I think drone strikes, imperfect as they are, are better than the first alternative.

[Maiz]

Except that some areas seem to do better than others all-around.  Germany was reduced to rubble, Japan was atom-bombed, yet these people came back strong.  Yet much of the Muslim world claims it can't progress because Jews own 2% of the Middle East.

Well then, if America is truly this bad, all the more reason we should let these people sort their own affairs.  Apparently some people's moral calculus holds that, for women, being allowed to choose ones own clothing and make ones own choices in life is functionally equivalent to being forced to walk around in a beekeeper outfit and stoned to death if unfortunate enough to be raped.

Any way you slice it, I'm not going to say things that make the politically-correct crowd happy.  The bottom line is that some cultures lead to better outcomes than others.  And offering aid and singing kumbaya is not going to enable these people to advance.  They have to decide advancement is something they want.  Or not.  If they think bowing to a giant black cube five times a day and beating their wives is what makes life grand, who are we to tell them otherwise?  Maybe to these Afghans, the total subjugation of women and the burning of all books except the Koran is the penultimate achievement of humans on Earth and no further "progress" is possible or even desirable.  And as you just said, we have problems of our own, no?  So as long as they don't shelter people who hijack our airliners and fly them into buildings, I say let's save lives and tax dollars and live and let live.

But to circle back to the original topic--whether wise or no (I'll go with the latter)--we are involved in Afghanistan, and responsible for its security.  And Pakistan is responsible for policing its territory.  The best outcome to this would be for Pakistan to dismantle the militant camps and bring the militants to justice.  Then we wouldn't have to launch airstrikes in Pakistan.  But that's not happening, in large part because the rulers of Pakistan and the militants all bow to the same big black cube five times a day.  So it's either invade Pakistan too, or drone strikes.  I think drone strikes, imperfect as they are, are better than the first alternative.

Have you ever talked to a person who is Muslim or living in Pakistan or anywhere else? Because your posts continue to show to me that you haven't. Your way of thinking is dangerous and it's circular. Nothing will ever change but sadly people who think like you are in power.

[OldSchoolGamer]

No but we can work on backing moderating elements. The Turks, Egyptians, and Lebonese were successful moderate states back in the day..and we left them to rot. And to a large extent still do. We don't build strong moderate governments in the middle east because they aren't always going to beholden to us. They are politically and financially stable and our moral conservatives don't want that.

Exactly how did we "leave them to rot?" 

Societies choose to advance or decline, for the most part.  The Turks had Attaturk, who pioneered the secularization of Turkey and helped pull that country into something at least resembling the modern era.  In the case of Egypt, you could argue that America supported Mubarak long after he became an ossified dictator--and there's certainly truth to that.  But you have to consider what the alternative is...as we're seeing now, the Egyptians voted in a Muslim fanatic whose platform involves unwinding the past couple centuries of social progress there.  So if not Mubarak, then who?  The politically correct perspective is that if not for America the world would be faeries and unicorns, but reality just doesn't jive with that.  Democracy doesn't always work, especially when the underlying society follows the Koran, which calls for rulership by jihad and warlord.

It wasn't that we left these countries to rot, but rather that their underlying religious and culture systems were not compatible with liberal industrial democracy.  Which is not our fault...and, at the end of the day, isn't really theirs either, any more than we can blame the people in 16th century Europe for not granting women's suffrage.

[Callie Del Noire]

Have you ever talked to a person who is Muslim or living in Pakistan or anywhere else? Because your posts continue to show to me that you haven't. Your way of thinking is dangerous and it's circular. Nothing will ever change but sadly people who think like you are in power.

I have. Three of my friends in A-school were muslims. One was Croatian, another was Liberian (Family fled there from Somalia in the 60s) and the last was English-Pakistani. I've dealt with Kuwaiti, Suads, Dubai, Iranian, Iraqi and Afgan while I was in the gulf in both professional and public venues.

Most fo the folks I dealt with want to live, thrive, raise their families in a safe environment and control their own life. You know.. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Thing is, by and large, they weren't the ones we were supporting and backing for the last 50 years, nor were they the ones that the Brits/French/Dutch/Germans backed for the century before.

Because these people want one thing we take for granted. Self-determination and control of their country. So we've backed tyrants, psychos and despots and have painted an image of bloody history behind us.

The building of the Iraqi governement is a start.. but thanks to the out now nutjobs on both sides of the party divide we've left them without support and a cadre of foes that want to feast on their country. If Syria wasn't having problems of their own, I'm sure they'd still be slipping weapons across the border to insurgents.

The instability of Syria is dire, with the insurgents flocking there to get another country under their control, the natives fighting for self determination and the establishment fighting for it's life with a profound desire do it over any number of bodies.

[Maiz]

I have. Three of my friends in A-school were muslims. One was Croatian, another was Liberian (Family fled there from Somalia in the 60s) and the last was English-Pakistani. I've dealt with Kuwaiti, Suads, Dubai, Iranian, Iraqi and Afgan while I was in the gulf in both professional and public venues.

Most fo the folks I dealt with want to live, thrive, raise their families in a safe environment and control their own life. You know.. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Thing is, by and large, they weren't the ones we were supporting and backing for the last 50 years, nor were they the ones that the Brits/French/Dutch/Germans backed for the century before.

Because these people want one thing we take for granted. Self-determination and control of their country. So we've backed tyrants, psychos and despots and have painted an image of bloody history behind us.

The building of the Iraqi governement is a start.. but thanks to the out now nutjobs on both sides of the party divide we've left them without support and a cadre of foes that want to feast on their country. If Syria wasn't having problems of their own, I'm sure they'd still be slipping weapons across the border to insurgents.

The instability of Syria is dire, with the insurgents flocking there to get another country under their control, the natives fighting for self determination and the establishment fighting for it's life with a profound desire do it over any number of bodies.

Yes. I think that people in the US are too quick to write people off  that we ignore that we had a large hand in how the current state is today. But the use of drones, the ousting of governments, and ignoring national boundaries will just cause more of the same to happen.

[Callie Del Noire]

Exactly how did we "leave them to rot?" 

Societies choose to advance or decline, for the most part.  The Turks had Attaturk, who pioneered the secularization of Turkey and helped pull that country into something at least resembling the modern era.  In the case of Egypt, you could argue that America supported Mubarak long after he became an ossified dictator--and there's certainly truth to that.  But you have to consider what the alternative is...as we're seeing now, the Egyptians voted in a Muslim fanatic whose platform involves unwinding the past couple centuries of social progress there.  So if not Mubarak, then who?  The politically correct perspective is that if not for America the world would be faeries and unicorns, but reality just doesn't jive with that.  Democracy doesn't always work, especially when the underlying society follows the Koran, which calls for rulership by jihad and warlord.

It wasn't that we left these countries to rot, but rather that their underlying religious and culture systems were not compatible with liberal industrial democracy.  Which is not our fault...and, at the end of the day, isn't really theirs either, any more than we can blame the people in 16th century Europe for not granting women's suffrage.

Might I introduce you to the speech and actions of men like Maajid Nawaz.

http://www.ted.com/talks/maajid_nawaz_a_global_culture_to_fight_extremism.html

Look at the actions of post WW2 America. We supported strong militant anti-communist governments. It didn't matter if they gassed their own people (Saddam Hussein), torture (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran) and more.

When we have promised to restore republic rule, what happened. We get Ronnie Reagan declaring 'Battle won' and conveniently forgetting promises made. When an organization that is more democratic and modern comes up..what happens. The leaders get shot, often with weapons our money bought.

Things go on a cycle, the difference is the extreme clerics who are on the other side.. remember and learn from it. They haven't forgotten their grandfathers were hung in the streets by their turbans..

These aren't primitive thinkers.  They recall the consequences of failure and are fully committed to defending their positions. And we lack the intel to know who to back, who is moderate, and who is in danger.

We've turtled up. .I don't see that changing till another 9/11.

The enemy doesn't fear us..

We let our leaders use FEAR to shape policy to garner more and more control.

We FEAR.

And so long as we FEAR..and sneer at the fact that these men we oppose are a generation or so out of the 16th century and thus beneath us.. we'll never be able to think clearly on how to help them into the 21st global community.

Fun note.. the Japanese went forward through THREE CENTURIES of industrial development between the arrival of Perry and his heavy handed gunship diplomacy and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Had the Japanese been a bit more savvy in their tactics.. we'd have lost the pacific war.

They could have drawn a line in the Pacific.. said 'this is yours' and 'this is ours' and left the Axis powers to hang.

Don't assume just because someone has a cultural outlook different from yours that they can't comprohend how to handle us. Bin Laden did it for nearly 3 decades.

[Sabre]

No different from Europe during much of the Medieval period.

How much luck do you think we would have had trying to "civilize" the bickering, quarreling, bloodthirsty warlords that popped up in Western Europe in the 6th and 7th centuries, after the Roman Empire went kaput?  Or even in the 12th century when the ultra-superstitious Catholic Church ran things and people were afraid to take baths or open their windows at night for fear evil spirits would carry them off?  We'd have been branded heretics or witches and burned at the stake.  Europe had to go through that to get to the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment and Reformation, and then through how many wars and convulsions to get to where it is today?

Islam is where Christianity was back then.  They're going to have to sort through the same mess of theological crap that Europe/Christianity had to.  No one can do it for them.  We can't force them to regard women as human beings, or to believe there are better ways to resolve political disputes than jihad and war, or to recognize the value of scientific inquiry and the limitations of religious dogma.  We can't bomb them into separating mosque from statehouse and court.

The Catholic Church wasn't superstitious, and denounced the very idea of witches existing, in fact, as superstition.  The Church also had next to no power to run much of anything in the 12th century.  The 11th century was basically 100 years of Church reformers thinking they might be able to run things better and everyone else around them convincing them they could not.  If we were to go back and try and get bickering nobles to stop fighting each other for no real reason, we'd be labeled priests instead of heretics, since that's what the Church was all about for the longest time.  It is the Reformation itself in fact that sparked the witch craze and greater power of the Church - but especially Protestant Churches - in government affairs.

Islam is not back in the 12th century.  If we had to force ourselves into a false comparison at all, it'd be closer to the 18th and 19th century.  They regard women as human beings, just not as men.  The current neurosis regarding patriarchal role in the Middle East has less in common with Medieval mores and far closer to upper class Victorian England.  They developed other ways to resolve political disputes by the 14th century like everyone else, and developed it further by the 17th century parallel if slightly lagged with Europe.  There was already value to be found in scientific inquiry from the 8th century, and the limitations of dogma were already evident to them by the 9th.  The Saudis themselves, fanatical and dogmatic more than any other at the time, immediately sought to acquire economic deals with Roosevelt to set up oil production, develop infrastructure and academies of science, and modernize their army.  The fanatics that did want to fight like they always had done were actually corralled up and shot up after that.

The mosque was never state or court as well.  Except for a few Ismaili Shi'a experiments and some heresies in Morocco the 'mosque' was always separate from the apparatus of state.  Religious scholars that signed on with governments were there to act as propaganda and public affairs officials since all the states of the Middle East except for the Sharifs in the Hedjaz and the late development of the Morroccan and Ottoman dynasties into stable, legitimate dynasties were military despots and dictators usually of foreign ethnic backgrounds.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:

But you have to consider what the alternative is...as we're seeing now, the Egyptians voted in a Muslim fanatic whose platform involves unwinding the past couple centuries of social progress there.

This is actually wrong.  There are some Salafis that want a regressed society, but Islamists and Islamism is a political movement that is forward thinking.  When Khomeini established his rule in Iran for instance, it wasn't a return to anything any cleric at the time recognized.  He had to write a defense of his vision which most of the scholarship in Qoms still doesn't actually buy, and is a lot closer in theory to Plato's Republic than anything in Shi'a theology.  We need to understand that movements like the Muslim Brothers are a completely modern phenomenon, and to say they wish to return to the Medieval Age would be the same as stating the Nazis wanted to bring Germany back to the age of Germanic pagan tribes and Teutonic knights.  The things they espouse are modernized answers to modern social problems and worries in modern Muslim societies.  In a way it's like Zionism was for Jews, a form of religious nationalism that glorifies a romantic past but can and will ignore theology developed since then so long as it suits their vision.


Back to the Tale of Drones and Polio, there isn't anything religious or cultural at work here.  Due to a lack of professional media, word-of-mouth conspiracy theories form faster than maggots on a corpse.  It is believed that the U.S. uses aid workers as spies, likely because of the role one spy played in finding Bin Laden, and so believes the U.S. is using this intelligence gained from these secret agent-doctors to launch drone strikes against leadership in the Taliban.  Thus the logic is so long as drone strikes are still being carried out, UN relief workers sent to treat polio and other diseases in the region will not be welcome in case they are there to gather intelligence on the side.  It's not actually an ultimatum.  There's no overt threat being made, no demands, and no promise of a return to normalcy if a condition is met.  This isn't comparable to a situation in Africa where many locals actually distrust doctors and modern medicine - there's no belief that polio vaccines don't work or that they're 'of the devil' or something like that.  It's pure blacklisting of what they believe to be a compromised organization that until now was considered neutral like journalists.

It wasn't that we left these countries to rot, but rather that their underlying religious and culture systems were not compatible with liberal industrial democracy.

If true, at all, then the majority of Muslim nations after colonialism ended would have been traditional tribal federations.  Instead they were all with the exception of the Gulf States liberal democracies with developing capitalist industries, middle classes, and popularly demanded and legislated women's suffrage rights.  And when they gave up on democracy, they didn't revert to anything traditional at all but instead accepted a series of national socialist military dictatorships - another completely western ideology.  Even Iran under the ayatollah was adopted as a republic with a constitution setting laws for an elected parliament, continued the right of women to vote, and guaranteed religious minorities seats in parliament and (on paper at least) equal citizenship with no restriction on right to hold office or be levied with a poll tax.

And many of the early leaders and politicians that handled the transition from colony to independent state were religious scholars themselves extolling the new civic culture and nationalist movements.  A culture incompatible with modern political theory would not have bought into it the systems for more than a decade at best.  Instead we've had three generations pass.  The Middle East actually took off running with the idea - they just didn't get to develop stable civic institutions before the military despots began overthrowing everyone and suppressing healthy civic culture for decades in the name of perpetual war with Israel/Iran/India/Western colonial powers.

[Lord of Shadows]

Drones shouldn't be an allowed weapon anyway with luck the technology will be banned as a weapon platform while we still have the chance.

[Lord of Shadows]

Well then, if America is truly this bad, all the more reason we should let these people sort their own affairs.  Apparently some people's moral calculus holds that, for women, being allowed to choose ones own clothing and make ones own choices in life is functionally equivalent to being forced to walk around in a beekeeper outfit and stoned to death if unfortunate enough to be raped.

I don't think this will be an issue for much longer, US will not be able to sway as much power as they have done in the 1900s for so much longer the economy itself will see to that. I am more afraid and worried what US is teaching the countries that are to take over what is ok to do before you go.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Drones shouldn't be an allowed weapon anyway with luck the technology will be banned as a weapon platform while we still have the chance.

Perhaps...but it ain't gonna happen.  Alfred Nobel thought high explosives would make warfare so horrible they would be outlawed and the world would sue for peace.

[Zakharra]

Drones shouldn't be an allowed weapon anyway with luck the technology will be banned as a weapon platform while we still have the chance.

It'll never happen.

[Callie Del Noire]

Drones shouldn't be an allowed weapon anyway with luck the technology will be banned as a weapon platform while we still have the chance.

Sadly.. once the Genie is out of the bottle... you have a hell of a time putting it back in.

I would worry about the ease of making 2nd/3rd tier drones using off the shelf components.. Iran gets mocked a LOT about some of their claims but it doesn't take a lot of technical innovation to make an unmanned drone..

[Oniya]

Sadly.. once the Genie is out of the bottle... you have a hell of a time putting it back in.

I would worry about the ease of making 2nd/3rd tier drones using off the shelf components.. Iran gets mocked a LOT about some of their claims but it doesn't take a lot of technical innovation to make an unmanned drone..

Second that:  I can go out and (with my minimal electronic knowledge) get an RC copter and fit it with either a wireless camera or some impact-snaps.  Presto:  Primitive spy drone or 'thing that goes "bang".'  Not much damage in the latter case, but someone with actual military access can do better.

The first 'bombers' were people dropping ordinance out of the side of balloons and biplanes.  The first aerial observers were guys looking out the sides of the same vehicles, and radioing back what they saw.

[Callie Del Noire]

Second that:  I can go out and (with my minimal electronic knowledge) get an RC copter and fit it with either a wireless camera or some impact-snaps.  Presto:  Primitive spy drone or 'thing that goes "bang".'  Not much damage in the latter case, but someone with actual military access can do better.

The first 'bombers' were people dropping ordinance out of the side of balloons and biplanes.  The first aerial observers were guys looking out the sides of the same vehicles, and radioing back what they saw.

Actually, I am thinking more like what a college engineering student does for a masters project. My brother built an RC drone that was big enough that they had to use a van to transport it and build it on site.

With a good machine shop, some off the shelf cell components and things like you pointed out (web cams) you could cobble together a primitive drone that could hit a target like a building. (maybe not the white house or such.. but you could put a hurting on a refinery easily enough.)

[Oniya]

Exactly what I was thinking, to be honest.  What I was putting out there was that I could do that much for a lark in an afternoon with the contents of a Toys 'R' Us, a Swiss Army knife and duct tape.  I'm sure we've all seen the robotic competitions they have at the high schools - a bit better equipment, more time and research, and some sort of goal.  Then, think of what someone with actual skills, access to moderate equipment and malicious intent can do. 

[Sabre]

Black Market Shopping with Pakistani Gun Runners - VICE Travel

Drones built in a cave with a box of scraps will be something to see.

[Callie Del Noire]

Black Market Shopping with Pakistani Gun Runners - VICE Travel

Drones built in a cave with a box of scraps will be something to see.

More like built with parts from radio shack and such. It's not something your average kitter can do.. BUT there are mechanical engineers who could do it. Give them access to a machine shop and the frame/airfoil is easy

[Oniya]

Next week, on Junkyard Wars...

[Shjade]

Drones built in a cave with a box of scraps will be something to see.

Obligatory.

Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave...with a box of scraps