[Vision2020] drones

[Paul Rumelhart]

Now that we seem to be done chortling over local people protesting 
something peacefully, I thought maybe we could talk about the whole 
drone program.

First of all, I can't get past the lack of due process.  There are no 
trials, not even the kind of for-show trials you'd expect to see in 
third-world tinpot dictatorships.  We are not at war with any of the 
countries in which we have been killing these people in.  There are no 
attempts I've seen to work with Yemen and Pakistan to bring these people 
in for trial.  According to a Stanford law professor I was listening to 
on NPR a little while ago, our President signs off on all the drone 
strikes of specific individuals, which account for about 2% of the drone 
strikes that happen.  The other 98% are people that they can't identify 
that appear to be terrorists doing whatever it is that terrorists do.  
There are whole communities in NW Pakistan that have drones flying 
overhead and nobody knows what sorts of behavior their remote pilots are 
looking for in order to strike, causing them to keep their kids at home 
and has led to PTSD amongst their populace.  We are in effect 
terrorizing those communities ourselves.

This whole program is just simply wrong on so many levels I can't even 
believe we as a country would entertain such an idea.  Oh, yeah, this 
"oversight" came about only because they thought that Romney was about 
to become President.  Talk about looking ahead.

As for drone technology itself, I'd rather see the use of drones for 
precision strikes rather than having to put boots on the ground, but 
only in times where we can actually legally put boots on the ground and 
give our troops that kind of assignment.

I think we're running into what I think of as the taser problem. Tasers 
were supposed to be a non-lethal weapon that would be used when all 
other choices were exhausted.  Instead of replacing the need for a cop 
to shoot someone, they replaced the need for a cop to whack someone on 
the head with their night stick.  This is the same thing.  They are so 
easy, no one we apparently think of as human dies, and the drone 
operators can turn their consoles off at the end of their shift and go 
have a nice dinner at the Olive Garden.

Any thoughts?

Paul