
Airmen who surveil the Islamic State never get to look away - stablemap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-watchers-airmen-who-surveil-the-islamic-state-never-get-to-look-away/2017/07/06/d80c37de-585f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html
======
peterkelly
> The number of allowable civilian casualties can vary with the importance of
> the target.

A fascinating insight into the mindset behind a terrorist organization. The
complete devaluation of innocent human lives in order to achieve the group's
objectives.

~~~
throwanem
That is a frankly astonishing misapprehension of the case.

A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to
minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. One of the
realities of warfare is that civilian casualties can't always be entirely
avoided, and a war still be prosecuted with meaningful hope of success. But
the failure to avoid civilian casualties, however necessary, is regarded as a
failure nonetheless, and weighs heavily on those involved - perhaps you
overlooked the mention of an increased need for anti-suicide counseling after
strikes in which civilian casualties occur. One does not often find "the
complete devaluation of innocent human lives" coincident with contemplation of
suicide as a potentially proportionate response to having taken them.

A terrorist organization, such as its current adversary, has no such scruples,
and indeed will often seek to inflict as much atrocity on innocents as it can
manage. The incentives, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage, for
irregular fighters, are such that the involvement of civilians - not just as
targets, but also as human shields and as a sort of moving camouflage in which
to conceal oneself - is an utter necessity, because there's only one way for a
stand-up fight between a regular military and a guerrilla band to end. The
typical fashion in which such bands misuse innocents by default would weigh
heavily on their members as well, which is why one finds such a heavy
investment in ideology among these groups, whether it be religious as in the
current case or secular as in the case of last century's "Communist
revolutionaries". You have to have _some_ story to tell yourself that makes
your flagrant abuse of civilians seem righteous - in other words, to devalue
innocent human lives enough that you can live with the things you do to them.

To casually equate such wanton violation of every civilized standard of
conduct, with the extreme if admittedly at times imperfect care that military
forces exercise to _avoid_ behaving even remotely similarly, strikes me as
something that must be motivated either by arrant ignorance of the facts
underlying the case, or by some sort of ideologically motivated disinterest in
them. Neither seems to me terribly useful in developing an accurate
apprehension of reality.

~~~
hasenj
> A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to
> minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent.

This has only become the case officially after WWII.

And frankly I think the only reason this even matters is the media.

Civilian lives meant absolutely nothing and were considered fair target during
war.

Millions died in WWII from intentional fire bombing campaigns on urban areas
by the allied forces.

Same in the Korean war.

Same during the Vietnam war.

Civilians were purposely targeted to "demoralize the enemy" and force them to
surrender.

The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be
officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once the
objective is reached then the killing should stop.

~~~
vain
> _The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be
> officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once
> the objective is reached then the killing should stop._

What's your source for this definition?

~~~
hordeallergy
Also, haven't isil declared war, and with specific objectives?

~~~
throwanem
Which government has recognized ISIL's claim to sovereignty in those
territories it still holds, or indeed in any territory at all?

~~~
vacri
The US and Russia both have claims to sovereignty there!?

~~~
throwanem
ISIL's claim is the one under discussion, though. That's the one whose
recognition would signify in the question of whether their actions are
legitimate warfare, by the standard cited earlier in this thread. US and
Russian claims are a different question altogether.

------
d--b
Ugh, this is the most depressing piece of journalsim I've read in a long time.
The combination of actually-happening-dystopian-surveillance-based war and
ptsd-ladden office-space-like-suburban life makes me sick to my stomach.

~~~
zxcmx
Is it so different if you fire the guns yoursef?

Is the experience more "authentic" if you are in the warzone?

Are we in a world where we need artisanal, hand-fought wars?

I know exactly what you mean though :( But the problem is war itself.

Humans are humans, but we need to resist war on every level we contribute to
it, no matter how remote. This might mean not contributing to organisations we
otherwise support.

~~~
adrianN
It seems to me that sometimes the best way to resist is to fight. How would
you deal with groups like IS without killing people?

~~~
Filligree
For groups like it, the only fix would be to not create it to begin with.

That is to say, it's the usual--improve the economy, secularize the world,
prevent people from feeling desperate enough that forming such groups feels
like a good idea. Some of it is about ideals, so spread Western ones; push the
world closer to being a cultural monoculture.

It's worth doing, but in the meantime, you have to fight them when they pop
up. There'll be lash-back to any attempt at doing this, too.

~~~
adrianN
Some people don't like being secularized and might start shooting if you try
too hard.

~~~
Filligree
That's a problem, for sure. Ideally you do this slowly enough that no-one gets
very upset, but...

What do you do about a country that treats women like chattel? If you push
heavily then people on all sides get upset, but if you don't then you're
overlooking suffering. It doesn't get any less real just because it's far
away.

~~~
meric
> What do you do about a country that treats women like chattel?

What do you do about a country where greed, lust, power permeates their entire
leadership, leading to gross economic, social and emotional inequality within
the country, willingness to express unchecked interference in others, an
unsubstantiated belief in their own cultural superiority, and along with all
other manifestations of the absolute lack of modesty in all layers of society,
through all behaviours?

You try to get out of the way, as far as possible, mentally, emotionally,
socially, physically and hope they shoot themselves on the foot enough by the
time they arrive they can't muck you up.

You may have gotten far away, but it doesn't get any less real. Keep going,
for they are chasing you, hunting you down.

------
kristofferR
I'm reminded of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=w08bAwq_zro](https://youtube.com/watch?v=w08bAwq_zro)

------
golergka
I never get surprised to the ridiculous moral mechanics that drive western
commenters here and elsewhere to declare this "evil" or "terrorist". I get it,
you get squeamish at thought of killing — but when the rocket strike, although
killing innocent civilians, is net positive on innocent lives, why the hell
are you only talking about casualties and not about countless lives saved?

~~~
lb1lf
-Quick, snarky question: Would you feel as relaxed about the occasional loss of innocent life if the operations were carried out in your own neighbourhood?

~~~
golergka
Personal ethics and society ethics don't always match up and don't have to.
Society ethics should be utilitarian, optimizing general welfare from a third
person, objective point of view. Personal ethics is inherently subjective and
tied to your personal point of view.

Personally, I (and most people) support systems of societal ethics (such as
governments) because they work for me most of the time. Not necessarily
always.

~~~
mmjaa
Morals are personal. Ethics, social. There is no such thing as 'society
ethics'.

In this case, the ethics of one group allows it to destroy the civilisation of
the other group, whose ethics are not aligned well enough to the original,
more powerful group.

------
vacri
Every time I read one of these articles these days, it reminds me of Frankie
Boyle's comment:

> _American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to
> your country and kill all your people, but what's worse, I think, is that
> they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your
> people made their soldiers feel sad. _

~~~
andruby
Awch, that's painful in many ways.

------
dmix
I wonder what kind of latency they get with this feed from a drone in the
skies of Iraq to a base in Qatar to her office in the East coast of the USA.
Considering they need to respond pretty fast to what's happening and
coordinate with pilots or people on the ground.

~~~
d--b
[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21352/how-do-
dr...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21352/how-do-drones-
overcome-latency)

------
dredmorbius
"It's just data."

Information is pointers.

Some points to lives.

Some, deaths.

------
staofbur
This makes me think of Enders Game.

------
dingo_bat
Good, this is exactly how developed nations should fight wars. No need to send
in personnel.

Also, I hope somebody is taking all that video and text analysis and feeding
it into a mammoth neural network. We need to automate drone operations ASAP.

------
rdl
This seems like a perfect opportunity for automation. Describing a scene from
a video feed and what is happening is within current tech, especially with
periodic human oversight.

~~~
vesak
So now again we're devising methods of killing people that make it easier for
the killers. That's the same problem that the overseers of death camps faced
and solved.

~~~
HenryBemis
well we do have a few "Judges Dredd" on this planet, no wonder that they will
become more efficient/effective.

the solution is never the violence as it will only bring more violence. I
wonder why some humans persistently fail to understand that.. oh wait.. it's
money.

~~~
briandear
Would you rather we did nothing and all and allow things like this to continue
to happen: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-
sex...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-sex-slaves-
lamiya-aji-bashar-nadia-murad-sinjar-yazidi-genocide-sexual-violence-rape-
sakharov-a7445151.html)

There are people quick to condemn drones, still other condemn troops on the
ground, finally others who condemn providing weapons.. yet, not yet has one of
those proposed an actual, concrete solution to ending the Islamic State. This
isn't a group that responds to "talks" or "negotiation" or "diplomacy." They
are fanatics. They are rabid dogs. While many ISIS fighters weren't born
rabid, they quickly get infected. They make the Taliban seem positively
liberal. And, life under the Taliban was pretty close to hell -- especially if
you were a woman.

Have a look at this story from a former ISIS fighter as to what that group
does: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-isis-member-explains-
why-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-isis-member-explains-why-he-left-
terror-group/)

It feels that these anti-drone, anti-fighting, pacifist, appeasement types
would have us sign a Munich Agreement, condemning the people of the
"Sudetenland" to Nazi rule while proclaiming that betrayal as "peace for our
time."

Using smarter, technology assisted targeting would make it easier to stop the
pure evil of ISIS -- who, if given the opportunity, would suffocate Europe
under a veil of oppression that would make even Hitler blush.

I get it "drones," "Dick Cheney," "Bush, Bush, Bush, "NSA," "CIA," "US
Imperialism" \-- I know these are dog whistles to rile up progressives to make
them instinctively oppose anything the US does in the region.

It could be argued that defeating ISIS is one of the most progressive causes
on the planet today. Defeating an enemy that throws suspected gays from
rooftops, enslaves minority women, requires unrelenting devotion to a
government-imposed religious system, wants all Jews dead, straps bombs to
puppies, destroys historical sites, burns books -- I think I just described
almost the entire cannon of anti-progressivism possible. And yet, there is a
subset of progressives that actually suggest violence isn't the answer?

I guess if ISIS were global warming skeptics, maybe then we should try harder
to kill them?

On the other hand, if the US were to invest billions in building up the
economies of the region, perhaps providing billions to small businesses and
entrepreneurs -- then the US would be accused of economic imperialism. If the
US just stays out of the region completely, that's no different that the US
staying neutral in World War II, while China was conquered by the Japanese,
Europe and North Africa became a sea of Nazi red and millions of people, by
virtue of dubious genetic "inferiority," are shipped off to the camps.

Have we learned nothing from history? Evil, left unchecked, doesn't respond to
calm reasoning, it responds to overwhelming force.

If ISIS were in your front yard raping your sister and your mother, setting
your toddler brother on fire with gasoline while eating your pet dog for
dinner -- would you attempt to negotiate? Would non-violence really be the
answer? What if groups of heavily armed Republicans rolled into the Castro in
Toyota Hiluxes and started open firing on LGBT people?

It's easy, and quite frankly arrogant for any of us to sit in front of our
shiny computers, some of us on Aeron chairs making several thousand times more
money than the average person in ISIS territory will ever see in their
lifetime -- and talk about non-violence. It's that salon-pseudo-liberalism
that let the Nazis waltz right into Paris and sent the Jews from the Gare de
l'Est straight into the ovens.

Even Bernie Sanders supports violence when the threat is of enough
significance. In 1998, he voted for the US policy of regime change in Iraq. He
called Saddam a "brutal and illegitimate dictator" who should be removed from
office." Sanders again in 2012 voted to arm Syrian rebels against Al-Assad.
Hillary Clinton's policy proposal against ISIS featured this:

"Defeat ISIS in the Middle East by smashing its stronghold, hitting its
fighters, leaders, and infrastructure from the air, and intensifying support
for local forces who can pursue them on the ground."

Even GHANDI supported using violence in the defense of the innocent. "I would
rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she
should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own
dishonor."

This idea of absolute non-violence is naïve.

~~~
jdietrich
Show me some evidence to suggest that drone strikes are making things better
in the Middle East. Literally anything.

ISIS didn't emerge ex nihilo. There's nothing in Aleppo's water supply that
turns people into mindless killers. They formed as a direct consequence of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Syrian regime. If we've
learned anything from our history of "intervention" in the middle east, it
should be that it's incredibly easy to make matters worse through poorly-
planned military intervention. The evidence of our failures in this respect is
abundant, going back beyond the 1953 Iran coup to The Great Game and the first
Anglo-Afghan war.

Drone strikes and bombing sorties might make you feel better, but there's no
evidence whatsoever that they're actually improving the situation. It's
equally likely that the bombing campaign in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere is
just giving another generation a plausible reason to despise the western
world.

>If ISIS were in your front yard raping your sister and your mother, setting
your toddler brother on fire with gasoline while eating your pet dog for
dinner -- would you attempt to negotiate?

I'd take up arms to defend myself, and pray that nobody drops a bomb on my
house and calls my death "collateral damage".

~~~
briandear
Here's drone analysis from the liberal-leaning Brooking Institute:

[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-
case-...](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-
washingtons-weapon-of-choice/)

"Drones have turned al Qaeda’s command and training structures into a
liability, forcing the group to choose between having no leaders and risking
dead leaders."

~~~
jdietrich
It's not at all clear that removing al Qaeda's leadership is a net
improvement. A leaderless al Qaeda is potentially more chaotic and more
indiscriminately violent; a diminished al Qaeda may simply create a vacuum to
be filled by IS or some other group.

A lot of this is reminiscent of the drug war. Taking out a kingpin looks like
a victory, but it only creates short-term instability and a surge in violence.
The root causes remain unchanged.

How many people do you need to arrest to eradicate the drug trade? How many
people do you need to kill to eradicate extremist ideologies?

[https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/exploiting-disorder-al-
qa...](https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/exploiting-disorder-al-qaeda-and-
islamic-state) [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-
east/2015-02-...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-
east/2015-02-04/al-qaeda-loses-touch)

