
Did Times Underplay Drone Program Leak? - pavornyoh
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/did-times-underplay-drone-program-leak/?ref=opinion
======
rhino369
Other new organizations hyped the fact that 90% of those killed were
"unintended targets." But that's exactly what you'd expect when targeting
officers in an insurgency. They are going to be surrounded by foot-soldiers.

It's certainly possible that among that 90% are too many civilians, but the
leaks didn't provide any evidence of that.

~~~
eanzenberg
This was my initial thought as well and why war of this nature is so
difficult. Let's say you know where a known terrorist is located. Do you send
a drone or risk US/coalition soldier lives? You decide to send a drone and
when its in range there are 20 other people around the area of the terrorist.
Are they soldiers? Officers? Technicians? Drivers? Cooks? IT/Infrastructure
engineers? Innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time? If you
don't take the known terrorist out, are you willing to wait another 6-12+
months for another chance?

Who's responsibility is it to determine and separate the supporters from the
innocent? The attacker's push is to label them enemy, while the defender would
label as innocent. It's impossibly hard to do this at a distance, so
therefore, are you willing to send troops on the ground and live with US
casualties? Or are you willing to let the terrorist go and risk increased
turmoil in the region?

Let's remember this is an extremely difficult task and job, and in the current
state of affairs, I don't think there is a right answer.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> Do you send a drone or risk US/coalition soldier lives?

Maybe you stop anything that carries the slightest risk of killing innocent
people on foreign soil of countries you are not at war with?

This supposed us vs the evil terrorist mentality is used on all levels of
force to treat other lives destroyed in the process as subpar and of little
value.

What would your argument look like if a Pakistani drone killed a wanted
murderer in your neighborhood taking down a family of five with two kids in
the process?

If you're saying we cannot sit back and not get involved in this because we
have a terrorist problem - let me remind you that we had/have Bin Laden and
the Taliban (funded in the 80's), Isis (funded anti-Assad groups), instability
in Iraq and Syria precisely thanks to US intervention in those regions.

Of course the existence of these groups is great for politicians and the
military-industrial complex, since the former get to avoid issues at home and
expand government powers and the later reap financial windfalls.

~~~
pjc50
It's pretty clear that everyone only thinks the drone program is a valid
approach "over there" in the "wild east". This is particularly clear when
considering British jihadis; there haven't yet been drone strikes in, say,
Leeds. But we've already crossed the threshold of a British national going to
Syria and then being bombed by the RAF.

Surely this cuts both ways. Terrorists over in Syria and Yemen have a very
limited capability to harm us. They can be effectively banned from planes once
they're identified. They have no long range missile capability. (There's a
problem of shortrange missiles being fired from Pakistan into Afghanistan,
though). So the whole thing resembles colonial policing: the small group of
westerners trying to balance power among the local factions for their own
political advantage.

(Anyone going to suggest that drones should have been used in Northern
Ireland? Or that when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found he should have been taken
out with an airstrike in suburban Boston? No?)

------
skybrian
I remember scanning the story about that leak and not being able to figure out
what was new about it, so I didn't share it. I guess the NYT reporters didn't
see a whole lot either?

------
crb002
It's sad Iowa Governor Branstad got rid of our Air Guard and replaced the
132nd with drone pilots. Then even advertise they are manning Reapers from the
DSM Airport/Camp Dodge at the top of the kill chain.
[http://www.132dwing.ang.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123450496](http://www.132dwing.ang.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123450496)

The US Constitution delegated Congress with the enumerated power to issue
letters of marque. This is murder.

------
littletimmy
The NYT is establishment central. Of course it underplayed it.

~~~
hugh4
The world is more complicated than "the establishment" vs "not the
establishment".

~~~
001sky
this is a banal truism. it doesn't rebut the strong ties that the obama admin
has in the nyt. google the word 'obama' on site: nyt. then ask who is kissing
all that ass to get those leaks/scoops/etc.

~~~
hugh4
Right, and if the comment had been more specific about these sorts of links
(ie that the NYT and the Obama administration are not only both "the
establishment" but the same flavour thereof) I wouldn't have thought it was
silly.

------
kyleblarson
"We droned some folks."

------
morsch
The rare exception to Betteridge's law. Note this is not me editorializing but
the article's conclusion.

