The United States love affair with Drones

A war strategy built around drone attacks is not only unethical, but will hurt US interests in the long run.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) date to the maiden flight of the now-familiar Predator drones in 1994. After 9/11 the United States became addicted to the Predator and its successor, the Reaper.
Today the Air Force and CIA have at least 7,000 UAVs in service around the world, representing the biggest and most visible presence of the US military in Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. This trend is likely to accelerate. As of March 2011 the US Air Force was training more remote drone "pilots" than those for conventional planes. Next year the Pentagon wants $5 billion just for drones.
Drones are getting smaller and more numerous. "One of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three-foot-long Raven, which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill," according to The New York Times. "There are some 4,800 Ravens in operation in the Army, although plenty get lost." More on this later.

According to the Pentagon, drones hit their targets with 95 percent accuracy. The problematic question is: who are their targets?
Thousands of people have been rubbed out by drones since 9/11.
(Press accounts document between 1,400 and 2,300 extrajudicial killings by allied forces, mostly in the Tribal Areas adjacent to Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. According to media reports cited by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 957 Pakistanis were murdered by American drones in 134 airstrikes during the year 2010 alone. Since the media only learns about a fraction of these "secret" killings, the real number must be many times higher.)

Drone attacks illegal, unethical

Since the Pakistani government does not officially acknowledge, much less authorize, such attacks, they are illegal acts of war.
Political philosopher Michael Walzer asked in 2009: "Under what code does the CIA operate? I don't know. There should be a limited, finite group of people who are targets, and that list should be publicly defensible and available. Instead, it's not being publicly defended. People are being killed, and we generally require some public justification when we go about killing people."
One would think.
Legal or not, Christine Fair of Georgetown University says the US doesn't use drone planes indiscriminately: "You have lawyers, you have targeteers, you have intelligence operatives, you actually have pilots who are manning the drones. These are not 14-year-old kids right out of basic training, playing around with a joystick," she told National Public Radio.

Are drone strikes unethical as the author of the article states

http://english.aljazeera.net/inde...71583.html

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Are drone strikes unethical as the author of the article states

If the strikes are unethical, the fact that they're carried out by drones is irrelevant.

http://english.aljazeera.net/inde...71583.html





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Are drone strikes unethical as the author of the article states

Unethical.... sure
Unfair .... sure

Basically the cowards way of fighting a war.... In the old days people man up and attacked each other and whoever was left standing wins.... These days its hide and seek fighting...

Ever since the USA developed the bomb, we been cowards in fighting wars.. Heck when you are dropping bombs ontop of people, thats pretty much a cowardly act in any regards.. Its like shooting someone in the back while they are asleep to boot.. Cowardly...

I bet you for one sec, that if we were to fight wars mono e mono, we would think twice maybe even three times before engaging in it..

Unethical.... sure
Unfair .... sure

Basically the cowards way of fighting a war.... In the old days people man up and attacked each other and whoever was left standing wins.... These days its hide and seek fighting...

Ever since the USA developed the bomb, we been cowards in fighting wars.. Heck when you are dropping bombs ontop of people, thats pretty much a cowardly act in any regards.. Its like shooting someone in the back while they are asleep to boot.. Cowardly...

I bet you for one sec, that if we were to fight wars mono e mono, we would think twice maybe even three times before engaging in it..

Basically the cowards way of fighting a war.... In the old days people man up and attacked each other and whoever was left standing wins.... These days its hide and seek fighting...

Ever since the USA developed the bomb, we been cowards in fighting wars.. Heck when you are dropping bombs ontop of people, thats pretty much a cowardly act in any regards.. Its like shooting someone in the back while they are asleep to boot.. Cowardly.

Ok then, brave man, ok if we re-institute the draft, put a rifle in your hands and send you into the hills of Afghanistan? Let me tell you about the Taliban:They don't fight fair either. War is not fair, and it is not a game of bravery.