[Vision2020] drones

Mon Feb 11 09:50:28 PST 2013

This is a difficult issue to deal with.

I agree with those that believe that drone attacks should not occur without
meaningful due process except when emergencies occur where timing makes
such a due process review impossible.  However, such a call about such an
emergency is a judgment call and open to error.

Fact:  There are those would seek to destroy, kill, damage, etc our country
and/or its overseas assets including US citizens and close allies.

The main conflicts occur in this issue because most of us believe in the
right of self-defense, personal and national.  The CIC, and in some cases,
the CIC in accordance with congress, is the ultimate authority on the use
of force in self-defense.  The Oath of Office makes the CIC ultimately
responsible of the security of our country.

9/11 forever changed the nature of the parameters of self-defense.  Those
parameters now include seeking out and removing those agents who pose not
only a credible eminent threat but a credible future threat.  It would be a
nicer world if those agents could be removed via an open, effective justice
system.  It's not a nicer world.

Hence, removal is basically done by sequestering w/o real due process or
destruction.  Sequestering is not always  possible or practical.  Hence,
destruction is an option, and, I believe based on the conduct of several
groups of terrorists and their supporters, a necessary one.  This is not a
nice world.

Given that, what methods of destruction can or should be used.

Drones are one of those methods.  They minimize the loss of American and/or
American allies lives and also expenditures.

The downside is that they can kill innocent people whether by lack of
oversight, incorrect intelligence information, or the judgment made that
the loss of innocent lives justifies the destruction of agents/facilities
in particular cases.

The trade-off is American lives/security against that of terrorists and
innocents.  It's not a nice world

Joe will appreciate this:  This kind of trade-off has been a philosophical
issue for some time.  A criticism of Utilitarianism is that if everyone's
happiness could be maximized if only one randomly chosen person would be
subjected to an ongoing ordeal of extreme punishment and torture, we should
not give such a consent.

Obviously, there is vast disagreement on whether or not such consent should
be given.  Unfortunately, like many ethical disputes, there is no argument
on either side which is definitive; only some are more persuasive than
others to any given person.

Never-the-less, it is important to raise and to rigorously and
intelligently discuss this issue.  Perhaps we can find a way to neutralize
more baddies at he cost of less innocents.  Let us hope and work toward
that goal.  It's not a nice world.  People are trying to harm, maim. or
kill you.

My own opinion is that drone strikes are sometimes leads to the least harm
vs. a much greater harm, and hence, we ought not disallow them.  However,
their use ought be very carefully weighed, and due process applied on a
case by case basis within in carefully thought out parameters.  The problem
is that given the state of our knowledge at any given time and possible
risks involved by non-action, this might not always be possible.

I certainly do not expect agreement with this, but given the above I hope
that it generates discussions and actions which results eventually in a
nicer world.

w.

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>wrote:

> This is the trouble with wasting time on philosophical debates like gun
> control and gay marriage. There are things that all of us should rally
> around, issues that matter.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 6:10 AM, Sunil Ramalingam <
> sunilramalingam at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  I agree with you. There isn't any authority to pursue this and yet
>> people just accept it. I was debating this with a high school classmate who
>> is very far right. There are no domestic policies where he will support
>> Obama, or believe a word he says. But he's behind this policy. He doesn't
>> need proof, he says just go kiill them.
>>
>> Democrats have sanctioned this since Obama took power, and now it's a
>> bipartisan policy. Makes it clear that many protests while Bush was
>> President were political, not rooted in principle. And the only Republican
>> running for president who opposed this was Ron Paul, who was marginalized
>> for his domestic policies. There was no real analysis of what he was saying
>> about foreign policy, where we could have had an important discussion about
>> the issue.
>>
>> Underlying all this are a number of things. First, people keep saying
>> 'We're at war,' but they don't say that it's a war that apparently will go
>> on forever. Will these powers ever be restrained? Not if the executive
>> wants to hang on to the power, and the People refuse to challenge him on
>> this. Second, shouldn't we be asking 'Why do we have bases around the
>> world? Is this an Empire? Why do we have one? What does it cost us? What
>> else could we be doing with that money?'
>>
>> Sunil
>>
>> > Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:45:01 -0800
>> > From: godshatter at yahoo.com
>> > To: Vision2020 at moscow.com
>> > Subject: [Vision2020] drones
>>
>> >
>> > 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
>> >
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>
>
> =======================================================
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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