Arguably, drones are worse, because the government can engage without the political consequence of notice, transparency or risk to US soldiers. It accelerates radicalism without boots on the ground to engage the locals being bombed and the blowback risk is just as present.

and tell me if there isn't a whole lot of scary truth to the revised statement.

We are Iraq, we and our resources are one in the same as the Middle East and the Iraqi and other people.

Until we decide to stop it, GOTV, stop electing Clintons and Bushes, etc.

.

intuition began to tickle my subconscious back in mid-Sept 2001, and definitely that paranoia was triggered to exist in my every other thought by my research, as explained in my reply number eight, below.

That was "Soooooooooo long ago" .....who can remember?

As far as i can tell your are one of them PLP - Peace Loving People.

You just can't wrap your head around blowing people up for one cause or another. I bet you are even anti-nuke!

Just imagine what the world would be like if everyone was like you.

I bet you even liked John Lennon!!

IMAGINE I liked John Lennon.

I am nothing more than the grown up counter part of the little Chicago kid who used to snuggle up to my pillow, transistor radio beneath it, and listen for the WLS Ten O'Clock countdown, where the Beatles were always played in spots one two or three (And sometimes in all three top spots!).

I still get thrills thinking about how both the Beatles evolved, as well as the entire youth generation. To go from Bobby Vinton to this in ten years is amazing!

WLS faded in and out too much for me to listen to, so I often tuned in to WWL in New Orleans, which played an eclectic array of music. I don't remember ever hearing the Beatles played on that station, even though it was during the Beatles' heyday.

By the way, the Chinese/Japanese characters on Yoko's helmet mean "People's Revolution"

In New Orleans.

Looking back at Chi town radio stations, they never strayed from the commercial mark. And you would almost never know that Chicago had been the center of the Blues - except of course, once you were old enough to go out to some South side Blues bars.

Thanks fo rthe tip about the words on Yoko's hat.

"Coming to you live from the Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana". Nighttime broadcasts sponsored by T. Pitari's Fine Restaurant, which featured all sorts of exotic menu items, like "turtle soup au sherry" and hippopotamus meat. The radio broadcasts were of great comfort to a little kid who was still afraid of the dark. I would recharge my 9-volt battery every day to make sure it didn't die before I went to sleep. When the 9-volt couldn't take a change anymore, I would buy a replacement at Wal-Mart for 9 cents (one cent for every volt )

I sent off for WWL's tourist brochure back in 1967 and was instantly enchanted by the city. I finally got to visit it 12 years later.

I made a similar point a couple days ago. Astonished that the use of Drones to kill people was more acceptable than the boots on the ground.

I guess it's always easier from a great distance. Imagine instead of firebombing Dresden, we had sent in a hundred thousand troops with flamethrowers. How many of those troops would have been able to torch the civilian men, women, and children in the city. My personal belief is that a vast majority would have refused. But dropping incendiary bombs from way up high? You don't have to see the effects, or you can pretend that you didn't actually do it.

I'm reminded of the movie Flight of the Intruder. When the Intelligence guy comes up and proudly announces that a bombing run resulted in so many enemy deaths. The pilot loses his temper and shouts that he doesn't want to know that. Never tell him that sort of thing again. I imagine the Drone thing is much the same, they aren't people, they're just different colored dots on a screen, heck my game console at home has more realistic looking humans on the screen of the latest shoot em up hit. Of course, there are those in the slim minority who wouldn't mind torching a bunch of innocent civilians, or bombing a wedding party. The question I've always had is why do we accept those kinds of people in uniform?

For the Coastal Post article that resulted, I found the following statement on the official CIA website:

"One of the main problems faced by the Agency is that we still lack a way to engage America's soldiers to wage war on their fellow citizens." (I am paraphrasing, since it has been 12 and a half years since that research.)

I think the powers that be thought that endless tours of duty would harden most soldiers to be willing to wage that war on their fellow citizens. Instead, the endless tours of duty meant that within five or six years, all the volunteers for war had either become so PTSD'ed or else so out and out seriously wounded from their service, that they cannot be called up to engage in such a warfare.

When Summer of 2013, President Obama asked all of us to sign onto the war against the Syrian establishment, only 17% of us Americans supported his call to arms. People here are sick and tired of wanting war. We now no longer even want to engage in war against foreigners, so I guess drones are the one thing that the DoD and CIA can rely on. With drones, you don't need as many people to be killers, and the military personnel that are involved can do it from a very sterilized, and comforting environment. Kill a half a dozen terrorists before lunch, and eat at Taco Bell, and like you mention, they don't even have heavy duty, bloody graphics to impact their enjoyment of that lunch.

We are of like minds, I feared what I was seeing with the advent of SWAT teams 40 years ago, and wondered why so many US armed forces training camps looked like my neighborhood.

Sometimes paranoia makes sense, has a context and deserves consideration.

Yikes!

He trusts those soldiers to do their targets accurately with their young expertise on the controls here in the USA to target and target accurately since they are chosen for Gaming Accuracy...

And our President is just not able to understand when they get that "Collateral Damage" that causes him so many problems... But, then his two daughters might not be into Gaming so much...but, then again...maybe they are and he trusts their judgement as to his confidence that the young can kill more accurately than the Military he Has as "Boots on Ground" or even his own CIA OPS?

If you identify someone who could very well be the next Osama bin Laden or even the next Adolph Hitler, who advocates and carries out terrorism -- defined as the use of violence or the threat of violence for political or ideological purposes -- and you had the technology and the means to kill them with no physical risk to our personnel, what would you do?

This century, we have invaded countries and taken out governments at great loss. We make missile strikes and boots-on-the-ground extractions, with great risk to civilians and our people.

And we use drones for minimal deaths and targeted executions, with no physical risk to our personnel.

Since living peacefully and promoting our values and way of life as an alternative doesn't seem to be possible, since we never ever do it, what is our best realistic option in a violent world?

(Or at least those above the age of fifteen,) many of them see our nation as having the abilities and motivation of an Adolph Hitler, or an Osama bin Laden, regardless if we have "elected" the Democrats or the Republicans in power.

And of course, our technology is far greater than what Hitler possessed.

we are the equivalent of bin Laden or Hitler? We are the terrorists? Just depends on your perspective?

You are putting "moral" in the dilemma. In that case, it is not ambiguous, and not really a dilemma.

What about those who would argue we are obviously nothing like bin Laden and Hitler? And we are collectively responsible for the "life and liberty" of the American citizen under threat, not the rest of the world? In effect, every Democratic president we have ever had?

As the well fed, indoctrinated USA citizen that you, like the rest of us, probably happen to be.

For just a moment, imagine that you' re an Iraqi woman, living in Fallajuh in 2004.

Just what would you tell yourself about that situation? You know full well that Saddam Hussein did not have a single thing to do with the situation involving the attack on America known as Nine Eleven.

You know for certainty that back in the 1960's, Hussein had indeed been hand picked by the American CIA. That he also had been a trading partner with Mr Rumsfeld back in the 1980's.

And now your neighborhood is under siege. Your children are starving, or wounded, unless you have somehow gotten them safely out of the country.

Now if you as a present day American can make that leap, and walk inside that Iraqi woman's shoes for even ten minutes, who do you think she imagines as being pure evil - Adolph Hitler of Europe 1933 to 1945? Or the American military (and its corrupt officials such as Dick Cheney, and Rumsfeld), who have just bombed strafed, and snipered the life out of your city, and no rationale exists to help you deal with the situation?

cross-hairs you are standing.

We dropped more bombs in Iraq during the gulf war than all total bombs dropped in WWII. Fast forward to our latest Iraq war and more bombs, do you think we were really seen as liberators? Shock and awe was not designed to win friends like it was some magic show.

As for the drones? They allow cowards to be killers, plain and simple. Or to say that "I didn't do anything but push a button".

Why does anyone make excuses for such tactics? Why would anyone think that was the moral high ground?

But when you talk about perspective, do you also not remember 9/11?

Lots of people had a wakeup call, including a lot of Democrats around today. I want to know my government is doing everything possible to keep me safe from the lunatics out there.

Our president, another Democrat who seems to be pretty anti-war, uses drones to target terrorists who pose a threat. I am not privy to what he hears each day about who wants to do us harm, but if we don't invade countries or do mass-bombings or kill more of our children, drones seems to be the better choice.

I wonder how the 1% of Americans who fight these wars for us feel about drones?

In an earlier post you mentioned Osama, do you know who created and funded Osama in Afghanistan in the first place? Another of our proud achievements. Most say our man Osama masterminded 9/11, are you still proud of our creation? A wake up call? Yes it was but unfortunately many didn't understand what they should wake up to and instead we maintained the status quo and even intensified it with two wars.

After 9/11 we then did a full blown invasion of Afghanistan to take out a training camp when 10 Apache helicopters would have done the job, another proud moment for you? In what has become our longest war in history what would you say we have won?

Fresh off of that proud moment we then invaded Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11 but "had weapons of mass destruction" that they most certainly were going to use against us. Oh, and Saddam tried to kill the President's Daddy. Some of us remember that the weapons inspectors said there were no weapons. And the President's Daddy? He's still alive.

Now let's use that word perspective again. Depending upon your perspective, Iraq either had no weapons of mass destruction and we were lied to by our government, and Saddam and the inspectors were telling the truth, or there were weapons of mass destruction and our government was too incompetent to find them because Saddam was too smart for them. Which school of thought are you in?

I suppose you think the drones are winning us so many friends in Pakistan and other countries. Are all of the wedding parties we have bombed from drones happy for the free fireworks? Or doesn't it matter anyway because it could have been a gay wedding? Some targeting of terrorists that pose a threat. Do you know what a terrorist is? A terrorist is anyone that we have killed with a drone even the children, well at least the male children.

You seem to think drones save lives. It's as if the lives on our side are more valuable than the lives of innocents on the other side; just collateral damage aren't they? Not worth worrying about, it's not like mothers in those other countries love their children like we do. Compassion for people you don't even know is a waste of emotion isn't it?


Should I mention that we are now killing American citizens by drone without arrest or trial? Don't worry about his 16 year old son, he would have grown up to be a terrorist anyway. Another proud point in history.

Yup lots to be proud of, let's keep winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the world. When they start using drones in this country instead of swat teams, and don't ever doubt that they will not do it, we too will be able to admire and be proud of our drone use and not just waste it all on those foreigners. Not to mention keeping those swat team members out of harms way.

(I fear I'm treading into Bill Maher/Roger Waters territory, but they're right)

When you fight a war with the bravery of being out of range yourself you are being a coward. If you want to launch a war, send the infantry. If it becomes unpopular and not worth sending our sons and daughters to die for it, guess what, it's not worth it, period.

To sit back and rain death from above with no negative downside is wrong. It makes launching wars easy, which is something they should never be.

War is ugly, and the days when it represented a way for people to strut and prove their masculinity is over.

It's ugly, and people get killed, including people you didn't intend to kill.

But there is NO benefit to putting the life at risk of some 18 year old kid with a (perhaps misguided) sense of patriotism and a need for some money to go to college.

Waging war because you have the means to do so without getting your hands dirty is no way to fight.

Drone attacks are a technological bully's means of imposing their will.

If it's not worth sending your sons and daughters to fight and die, it's not worth fighting.

We should not be launching drones just because we can.

... if it's a fair fight, you're doing it wrong.

I reiterate. The decision to fight should be about whether it's worth the killing that needs to be done.

If the answer is yes, then it should be done in the way that is LEAST risky to out forces.

... in general, I think we've been a bit to free with them, and civilian casualties have been unacceptably high.

So, IMO, the intelligence needs better vetting.

Using that artillery two miles away is cowardly.

Using aircraft to bomb is cowardly.

Firing a missile at your enemy is cowardly.

Rather than CNN or other "major media networks" focusing on such information to fuel such a necessary debate, we have needless speculation about the Malayasian airliner.

I wish more folks would read the longer posts in a thread...but time is short for all of us these days.......

Although I would add the caveat that others have pointed out, that drone warfare is more cowardly and inconsiderate.

... but the reality of the world is that sometimes innocent people get killed in war.

And sometimes war is necessary.

And despite our rulers telling us continually that "we have to fight" this group of people or that group of people, we have not won a war since 1945. (Korea being mostly a tie.)

From the good people over at Tiny revolution.com:

The quote I found inside "The Doubter's Companion" by John Ralston Saul, president of PEN international and one of my favorite writers on earth:

The idea of unregulated warfare appeals to our foolish self-pride by suggesting that only a weakling, a coward or an incompetent could be afraid to come out from behind artificial protection in order to fight like a man. Of course only a fool rises to this kind of taunting...

History is filled with a long list of small armies and small nations who have risen to the taunts of large neighbors. The next recorded event is their destruction...

In short, the people who cry loudest...fall into two categories: those who own the goalposts and fools.
####

I agree that we should fight ONLY when it necessary. Most (but not all) U.S. military actions since 1945 have been unjustified, IMO.

The Bullies keep going...because they know calling coward get's them more bullies joining them.

When is the Coward a Patriot for holding back, biding time and taking the abuse of principles...or the Patriot a Coward for being uninformed and succumbing to authority by bullying?

The situation with Vietnam, the idea that some Viet Cong freedom fighter was going to get himself and his comrades into a canoe or small boat and row or sail their way over to the Western seaboard of the USA was equally ludicrous.

It is really easy to see that this whole "terrorism" scenario is what the Powers that Be needed, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to keep afloat their war profiteering profits and also to keep scarcity increasing. (Orwell had a lot to say about how the Powers that Be simply do not desire having more than anyone else, they also want others to be suffering from continual lack.)

who lived through it. We won't be around much longer...which is what keeps hopes alive for the MIC that they can keep using us and our taxdollars to do what they do and profit from it. I wonder if they hope and pray we will all be dead so that we won't have the memory to keep alive why our military policy is so fucked up and doing it to another generation and if they get their way...generations after.

It's a way to 'sanitize' war (for our side) so we can justify it more easily.

You know, sort of a "Johnny Terrorseed".

And the fruits of "Johnny Terrorseed" don't give a damn about which color jersey, blue or red, the "wonderful" man that ordered those strikes is wearing.

going on.

And, the well reasoned replies from others besides myself...which were just "Kicks" to the Really GOOD READS....

We don't get posts and threads like this much on DU these days...so...

:dem;

And most of the substance of the OP was gleaned from a Facebook poster someone sent me.

I am glad if I helped people unite in common opposition to senseless slaughter, and also to think about things a little bit.

which is not often these days..

Thanks for kind words...but your OP, replies and others in this thread are much more important to read than mine....and hope that folks will do so.

So much sinks off to Archives these days that requires more than "Quick Read" ......just try to keep kicked.