Sterile Warfare Is Not As Sterile As You Think

We’re led to believe that drone missile technology makes war clean and safe, with fewer civilian casualties. Americans have bought this argument for they rarely question the impact that their drones are having in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. The only time a discussion came up about their use in the past couple of months was when David Petraeus cheated on his cow of a wife, though much more attention was given on the hypergamous mistress who won his heart.

The Spiegel recently ran an article about the effects of drone operation on the pilots

Bryant remembers the first time he fired a missile, killing two men instantly. As Bryant looked on, he could see a third man in mortal agony. The man’s leg was missing and he was holding his hands over the stump as his warm blood flowed onto the ground — for two long minutes. He cried on his way home, says Bryant, and he called his mother.

“I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week,” he says, sitting in his favorite coffee shop in Missoula, where the smell of cinnamon and butter wafts in the air. He spends a lot of time there, watching people and reading books by Nietzsche and Mark Twain, sometimes getting up to change seats. He can’t sit in one place for very long anymore, he says. It makes him nervous.

He looked to his girlfriend for emotional support, but that behavior was too beta for her, so she dumped him…

His girlfriend broke up with him recently. She had asked him about the burden he carries, so he told her about it. But it proved to be a hardship she could neither cope with nor share.

A female pilot learned to ignore her emotions and to just go for the kill…

“There was no time for feelings” when she was preparing for an attack, she says today. Of course, she says, she felt her heart beating faster and the adrenaline rushing through her body. But then she adhered strictly to the rules and focused on positioning the aircraft. “When the decision had been made, and they saw that this was an enemy, a hostile person, a legal target that was worthy of being destroyed, I had no problem with taking the shot.”

Many atrocities of the world have taken place from accepting the dehumanizing brainwashing that commanders use as justification for engaging against an “enemy.”

Today Meyer has two small children. She wants to show them “that mommy can get to work and do a good job.” She doesn’t want to be like the women in Afghanistan she watched — submissive and covered from head to toe. “The women there are no warriors,” she says. Meyer says that he current job as a trainer is very satisfying but that, one day, she would like to return to combat duty.

History has shown that advanced military technology does not remain solely in the hands of the elite powers. It’s just a matter of time until drones with low-yield missiles became accessible to rogue states and well-funded terrorists. Are drones the invention that brings destruction onto American soil where Japanese fire balloons failed? I believe this painful result is inevitable. Perhaps not on a grand scale of a 9/11 that takes many lives, but at some point there will be an attempt made to launch a weak drone attack that makes us experience a small fraction of what our sustained drone bombing campaigns inflict on Middle Eastern populations.

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65 thoughts on “Sterile Warfare Is Not As Sterile As You Think”

  1. Of course liberals and feminists love the idea of drones: anything to take war away from the province of men. Not that war has been glorious since the invention of the rifled musket, but the ability to destroy and kill has always historically been a profession of men.

    1. I don’t know any liberals or feminists who love the idea of drones.
      I know many conservatives who do. Liberals and Feminists are likely to feel sorry for the innocents that drones kill, and read about such things to begin with.
      Conservatives, not so much.

      1. Liberals love the idea of their alpha, massa gommiment, having the means to kill and maim others without them having to see something unpleasant on massa gommiments communication box, the Telly.
        Conservatives, at least properly understood in the American tradition, are not particularly fond of the government obtaining better ways of infringing n the rights of the people. Whether those means are flying drones to kill people with, or progressively indoctrinated female drones to stuff ballots with.

      2. Anonymous, I think you’re out of touch with reality. Most liberals I know are absolutely not happy with their government being able to kill people using drones or any other means for that matter.
        As for conservatives…in reality, they tend to be bigger on defense spending than liberals, so your argument really is faulty.

    2. So has dying. Face it. We are the disposable sex. I don’t see this girl signing up for her draft card at 18. No. She is registering to vote. Before we get to register to vote, we have to register the will to kill or be killed for the sake of Uncle Sam.
      And this chick is calling herself a warrior for pressing fucking buttons. Meanwhile the Afghan chick makes one small customary mistake and she gets an ak round in the back of the head.
      In the book Generation Kill the Marines see that all the women do all the work while the men chill all day. They say something like: “Jesus, if we would have fought the women here we would have gotten our asses kicked. Granted this was Iraq but I am guessing the women are pretty similar to the ones in Afghanistan.
      This is my bent with feminists. They bitch and complain about not having equality. Motherfucker, you have food and water and a power supply! And a fair amount of you don’t even have to pay for it. If your husband comes home and complains you still get to sit on the fucking couch and eat bon bons that he fucking paid for to add to that 15 pounds you already put on after the honeymoon.
      I would most certainly bet on an Afghan woman in a fight over some chick in the Air Force pressing fucking buttons all day.
      Roosh feel free to delete this comment if you find it too off topic.

  2. One armed drone aimed at a sold-out football stadium, or maybe a school bus. Think of the carnage.
    On a less violent but still depressing note, the U.S. government–federal, state, and local–will be using surveillance drones to keep track of unsuspecting American citizens. (If they aren’t already doing so.)

      1. U.S. drones equipped with multiple Hellfire missiles can do a fair amount of damage. Will terrorist groups have armaments like those and drones big enough to carry them? Not immediately, but one day they probably will. And who knows what a rogue state might produce?

      2. “Will terrorist groups have armaments like those and drones big enough to carry them? Not immediately, but one day they probably will.”
        And then the problem becomes, where do you base a drone like that? If it is big enough to carry a lot of ordnance, it needs an airport to take off from.
        “who knows what a rogue state might produce?”
        I find it hard to believe that a rogue state is going to bother to build drones and create the satellite communications infrastructure necessary to control them if all they want to do is make things go boom in the US. There are much cheaper and more effective ways to do that.
        A rogue state or terrorist group is much more likely to mount an IED campaign in the US than a drone campaign.

    1. What about a thousand drones aimed at a football stadium?
      Once the components that go into producing something capable of flying while carrying some weight get cheap enough, there’s no reason it limit oneself to one drone.
      This cheap replicability is where drones outshine more traditional means, like suicide bombers. If you can build one today, and cost of tech and materials go down, you can produce two tomorrow. Then four…… Until some day, you can build enough to make a difference.

  3. The guy is described as a pussy loser, and the woman is a warrior because she pushes a button that kills people. She won’t go back to combat duty, playing computer games is easier.

    1. Not only that, but ms warrioress only pushes the buttons her über alpha, mr progressive gommiment, tell her to push.

    2. She was never in combat duty b/c those positions aren’t available to women just wait. But just wait, the DOD is working on this. Hopefully we can get out of Afghanistan before that happens, though.

  4. “It’s just a matter of time until drones with low-yield missiles became accessible to rogue states and well-funded terrorists. Are drones the invention that brings destruction onto American soil where Japanese fire balloons failed?”
    Nah. Rogue states have combat aircraft, yet rogue states cannot conduct airstrikes against American soil. A drone is just a combat aircraft without a pilot in it. The drones, like any other aircraft, would have to be based somewhere close to (or within) the USA in order to strike the USA.
    You may say, well, the terrorists could base the drones in Mexico and fly them across the border just like drug smugglers do. If they could do that, and wanted to do that, they could also base manned aircraft in Mexico for such attacks. So, this threat is not a drone threat per se.

    1. You’re ignoring both cost and plausible deniability factors.
      A drone with a missile won’t cost much more than a car, and whose owner can easily be hidden. A jet, not as much.

      1. The cost of a manned aircraft that can deliver MORE firepower than any drone is MUCH LESS than the cost of a drone.

      2. Drones currently cost about $4.5mm, not including missiles and the infrastructure (ground control station, satellite links, etc) to support it. So a touch more than a car, unless you drive a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. Drones will pretty much be the LAST way for terrorists to attack, there are many, many more cost effective ways of killing people…unfortunately.

      3. Current cost for US drones have little bearing on the feasibility of drone attacks by non state actors.
        All you really need is to get the cost down on some model airplane capable of carrying a meaningful weight of ordnance into, say, central Manhattan from somewhere beyond where tight surveillance can be carried out.
        Then rely on civilian gps, google maps, Moore’s law and advances in autonomous control algorithms to be “precise enough.”
        Then continue to rely on decreasing cost of tech, and increased funding once something seem to even sorta-kinda work, to keep trial-and-erroring until you get somewhere.
        The revolutionary aspect of drones isn’t ground stations and fancy Satelite tech. But rather a cheap and semi-autonomous way of getting ordnance onto a target. As long as cost keep decreasing, it gets cheaper and cheaper to just hack away at it until something sticks.
        Anyway, it’s not as if the US is any less rogue of a state than any other, so who bloody cares.

      4. @johngalt2. Usually killing as much people as possible is useless and counterproductive. Many operations focus on sabotaging fuel and communication lines. That’s far more effective against an enemy.
        @anonymous well, at least your government still hasn’t imported foreign militiamen to snipe at protesters for starters. I might have no love for US politicians but in most cases given the alternatives I’d rather see the US wave its willy than other rouge leaders, in my region at least. That opinion could change though as its all about the lesser evil from where I’m standing

  5. private security is lobbying hard and they have already started introducing ‘unarmed’ drones for civilian and police use in parts of america. if you want to know what kind of world that’d lead to, look up the metal gear solid series

  6. “All told, drones have been used to kill more than 3,000 people designated as terrorists, including at least four U.S. citizens. In the process, according to human rights groups, they have also claimed the lives of more than 800 civilians. Obama’s drone program, in fact, amounts to the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military history; never have so few killed so many by remote control.”
    That’s actually a remarkably sterile way to wage war. This kind of ratio is almost unprecedented in the history of airpower.

    1. Sniper warfare against spear and sword wielding enemies is remarkably sterile as well. As is using Icbm’s against enemies limited to rifles. Or naval cannons and cruise missiles against similar.
      The sterility is not due to some magic property of drones, but rather to the discrepancy in military means between the pentagon and your average Pushtun villager.
      Once “they” too get drones, check back on the sterility of drone warfare.

      1. The sterility of it has everything to do with the accuracy of US missiles.
        The term is “Single Shot Kill Probability”, which is nothing new.
        We’ve long had the ability to use unmanned aircraft to attack distant targets. The Tomahawk came into service in 1983.
        There is nothing new or unprecedented about Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles.
        Why you missed my point is beyond me. If non-state actors gained the ability to deploy UCAVs as accurate as the Predator, they would be able to take out targets as accurately as we can.
        Of course civilians die. That is the result of any type of warfare. Why people now show concern I do not know. The only way to prevent civilian casualties is to prevent violence, which is a whole other discussion than “Are drones an acceptable means of waging war?”. They certainly are an acceptable way of waging war. If you’re going to go after ‘terrorist’ targets, then there are few ways that are more clean.
        Undoubtedly, I’m not using the term clean as an absolute, the cleanest war is still a terrifying, bloody experience.

      2. The sterility, as experienced by Americans, have lots more to do with control of information about the attacks than about the precision of the attacks themselves. Remember that, until the allied forces entered nazi germany, the nazis final solution was conducted in a fairly sterile fashion as well.
        You’re probably right in assessing that current multimillion predators are unusually accurate as far as targeting goes, but so are multimillion dollar sniper campaigns as compared to fifty buck ones. And precision bombing raids versus cheaper alternatives. Ditto for drone warfare.
        The us military is much bett funded than the current “enemy”. Hence not really challenged. Hence they can afford to concern themselves with secondary goals like pretending to fight in somhow more morally justifiable ways. Which they do partly by using expensive means to limit non target damage, and partly by preventing reports of such when it does occurr.
        Once realistically challenged, the added cost of the pretense of niceness will surely go out the door.

      3. I doubt that any Pashtun villager will come up with something, they can barely conceive of how their current weapons work.

  7. “Many atrocities of the world have taken place from accepting the dehumanizing brainwashing that commanders use as justification for engaging against an “enemy.” ”
    The “dehumanizing brainwashing” you are erroneously referring to is actually part of the Geneva Conventions known as the Law of Armed Conflict, a set of international laws created after WWII. Commanders are under strict scrutiny to follow and act by these laws, and THAT is what justifies their engagements, not your “dehumanizing brainwashing”. I suggest you quit armchair military strategy before you make even more of a fool of your ignorance.

    1. Of course the entirety of progressivism, of which Geneva conventions, international laws and other jumbo jumbo, like feminism, are simply subsections; is about little more than dehumanizing and brainwashing.

      1. So you’re saying that the Geneva Conventions is a facade for dehumanization and brainwashing and the world would be a better place without it?

      2. As the man said, War is hell. I think it’s a lie when people try to pretend you can install a moral referee and pass judgment immediately after the fact. There are no rules in war and anyone who says otherwise is talking from a position of strength and has an agenda. The British loved to invoke “international law” in all their imperial squabbles when they were strong and everyone else was weak.
        If history shows anything it’s that your moral imperative is to never ever lose a war on home soil. As a society do what it takes to make sure that never happens.
        Of course I’ll qualify my message that I don’t think exterminating people is moral, but with barbarians at the gate it is a bit slippery I will admit.

  8. Great post. A lot of the problems in the Middle East (and the world) today are due to some stupid interference by a Western country at some point.

    1. totally true , problem is , the typical american forgets
      lotta the problems started during colonizism and ww2
      and many other things like ex…1953 we overthrew irans government and put the shah in power(a pro western dictator) than 79 he got overthrown and got this new government
      things coulda gone better for the iranians if the brits and americans minded theri own business
      ron paul and noam chomsky are on point with this

  9. My point is not that these issues do not exist, my point is that they are nothing new.

  10. Strange as it may sound, I’ve talked to Pakistanis who weren’t that pissed off about American drones killing Taliban gangsters in the more lawless provinces, given that they know what the bigger threat to them is. Many civilians die in these countries because these people are ruthless enough to operate in populated areas and see people as being expandable. The gangsters of Hamas come to mind. That said mistakes are made quite often by drone operators.
    Alone it is doubtful as to whether they’ll be effective. They certainly have not won the war in Afghanistan.

    1. One of the problems with the main area of drone strikes is that they take place in the FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
      Many of the civilian casualties that have been blamed on drones are just as likely to be caused by militant violence, but there are few if any reliable statistics in the FATA.
      However, the best way to quit having drones be blamed is to quit using them in the first place. However as long as the powers that be want to take out militants, drones will be the most effective means of doing so.

    2. You probably talked to internationalist pseudo cosmopolitan pakistanis. In other words a wealthy elite of way less than one percent of the population. They’re onboard with the American imperial project as long as it serves their interests, which have little bearing on the interests of the common pakistani.
      I’ve had similar experiences with colombians. You get these rich fucks who talk about Bush snr and Reagan like they were deities. That violence suited their interests.

      1. @trs
        ur right
        noam chomsky calls these people “money muslims” because they benifted from the imperial powers messing with their people and country,but benefited themselves…notice the people that come from poor countrys are typical well off themselves while their fellow country men are suffing

    3. No they were middle class Pakistanis who were not that fond of the US either but feared the Pakistani military and intelligence elite even more for good reason. The latter are certainly imperialist and have been sponsoring Islamic extremists to control Afghanistan for decades. The occupation of Balochistan and the brutal oppression of the natives there also says a lot. Pakistan is currently experiencing a blowback and the monster they helped create and nurture (The Taliban movement started in Pakistan) to gain them access to Afghanistan is biting them on the arse. The CIA are certainly at fault for a lot of willing neglegence and incompetence but they are not the whole story.
      Chomsky is a cunt who shouldn’t be taken seriously. He has shilled for some very atrocious regimes.

      1. Referring to the Pakistanis as being one people and saying that all have the same interests is also inaccurate, it is as absurd as saying that Europeans are one people. There are Sindhis, Punjabis, Mohajirs, Pashtuns and Balochs for starters. Then there are the religious divides which put whole sectors of the population in danger. An identity based on Islam and opposing India has not and will never unite them and do away with deep divides in Pakistan

    4. Spiritually, we Pakistanis need to return to our pre-Islamic meditational and yogic roots. And we need to be modernized in thinking and acting.

  11. “A female pilot learned to ignore her emotions and to just go for the kill…
    “There was no time for feelings” when she was preparing for an attack, she says today. Of course, she says, she felt her heart beating faster and the adrenaline rushing through her body. But then she adhered strictly to the rules and focused on positioning the aircraft. “When the decision had been made, and they saw that this was an enemy, a hostile person, a legal target that was worthy of being destroyed, I had no problem with taking the shot.”
    Comes as no surprise a female takes this attitude. They are champion of the heartless. That, and of course the target were men so rest assured sdhe was very eager to follow through on her assignment.

  12. I was more interested in how the man and woman had reactions that were so different. I had also long suspected the kind of problem the man dealt with. Think about it. You get up in the morning and go to work. You drive a commute like many other Americans, in a car not unlike that which regular Americans are driving in. You might even hit the Starbucks on the way in. You then go and sit at your government funded video game console and play a glorified video game. There’s one caveat. The mother fuckers you kill are real. And they really die. After you put in your 8 hours, you commute home, do little league, pick up the dry cleaning, etc. I imagine that when you stop and think about your work day, it really fucks you up. Just think about how odd that sounds.
    I’m not surprised the female wasn’t bothered by what she was doing. Most women aren’t really capable of inner reflection to the extent that men are. They live in the moment and almost always take the option that feels good. And when the good feeling stops, they feel indifferent. It would be interesting to see someone look a little deeper into this. But I’m afraid the results would simply say “women make better drone pilots than men.”
    I don’t like drones. Nothing dehumanizes war and death like sterilizing it.

    1. At risk of revealing more than I should about, lets just say…no, no it doesn’t fuck you up.
      Don’t forget. We in the military volunteered for what we do. And when it comes to the Intel side of the house, you jump through some serious hoops to be apart of such operations. I can tell you with great certainty, next to NO ONE who works in Predator or Reaper ops has any problem shooting hellfires at insurgent, enemy combatants, or the unfortunate collateral damage that may occur because an enemy of the US has chosen to surround themselves with noncombatants. Many of which are entirely hostile to the US and the West before we were there and will be long after we are gone.
      Only in a society where extra ordinary measures are taken to shield the populace form the realities of the world outside our borders can you have “armchair quarterbacking” by those who never served nor have the balls to do so on the tactics of war 5000 miles away. A war I might add, that was started by people who intentionally target and kill civilians in mass.

  13. oday Meyer has two small children. She wants to show them “that mommy can get to work and do a good job.” She doesn’t want to be like the women in Afghanistan she watched — submissive and covered from head to toe. “The women there are no warriors,”
    those women are more warrior like than she is. pushin a button and killin people with a kaboom is nothin….a kid can do that….killing someone right in your face is horrific
    those women children an men are on the feild and livin an fightin through that hell, that is war
    if she was in there place, shed take her own life….i met people from these war torn countrys,they are more humble and behave more normally than anyone here

    1. She would, wouldn’t she? I’d love to hear Strong Independent Mummy’s ™ tune once she has to deal with a harsh environment and violence and death lurking around every corner on a daily basis like the ‘submissive’ Afghan women do.

      1. totally those war torn woemn are bigger fighters than any hoe here. youll know this right away when u interact with them…things arent always what they seem….feminists for ya..oy

  14. The deeper point in this article is the emotional responses of both. We have long known that women’s emotions are tied to how something makes them feel, not necessarily a true right or wrong. The woman above is responding to they are the enemy, they are (probably) men, they make women submissive (she even mentions not wanting to be submissive like the Afgani…a good hint to her feminist psyche) killing them makes me feel good so therefore it is a good act in which I have rightfully no remorse. I am a proud independent warrior woman. Sadly she doesn’t even realize she and her emotions are”submissive” to the entity who told her to kill these people.
    The man on the other hand appears to be responding to I have been given orders and I will follow them, but why is this person my enemy and why should they be killed? He is using his man endowed strength of reason to rationalize that killing people because I was ordered to do so sucks and then watching them die in agony sucks even worse.
    Even deeper he looked to the woman in his life for emotional support, women being the bastion of emotional support that they are “known” to be, and she basically told him to fuck off for using rational thought processes to come to an emotional decision. Pussy, everybody knows you should never allow rational thoughts to influence you’re emotions.
    The reactions of both women in this story is the deeper tell. As our society becomes more femininized it should come as no suprise the US is engaging in more questionable wars.

    1. Great insight.
      This reminds me of a the “Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures “. Plenty of information around, but the gist is: a group of people (male and female) is asked by an “authority figure” to press a button to inflict stress/pain (ie. electric shock) to a “victim”. After a while, 50% of the guys eventually questioned the “authority” and refused to continue. Not even one woman did the same.
      Pressing a button at the behest of an authority figure in order to inflict damage. That sounds like… every single drone attack ever. I wouldn’t be surprised if women will eventually be overrepresented in that specific niche.

  15. First of all, the use of drones kills a lot less people than any other method. We certainly hear about it more now that we have access to the internet but U.S. bombing campaigns in places like Lebanon and Serbia were much more deadly and a lot less accurate. Ironically, it was bombing in Lebanon that turned Osama Bin Laden into the man he was:
    “And as I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same, and that we had to destroy the towers in America, so that they taste what we tasted and they stop killing our women and children.” – Osama Bin Laden
    Plus, any culture that allows terrorists will suffer consequences. They have to be more committed to stopping terrorism or more people will die. Both our people and their people.
    If America were not constantly enforcing its strength as the clear world power then much more death would occur because of regional conflicts. Not saying that I know the future but this is certainly what has happened throughout the past. Heck, that’s how WWI and II started – a regional conflict in Europe b/c no clear power existed.
    By the way, here are two more Osama bin Laden quotes…they are fascinating:
    “Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. … I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.
    “This war in Iraq makes millions of dollars for big corporations, either weapons manufacturers or those working in the reconstruction, such as Halliburton and its sister companies. . . It is crystal clear who benefits from igniting the fire of this war and this bloodshed: They are the merchants of war, the bloodsuckers who run the policy of the world from behind the scenes. President Bush and his ilk, the media giants, and the U.N. . . all are a fatal danger to the world, and the Zionist lobby is their most dangerous member. God willing, we will persist in fighting them. . .

    1. I think you’re right about Pax Americana. The world would probably be a more violent place without it. But I’m really not sure that Pax Americana actually serves the interests of the common American. If various regions were left to duke out their squabbles, or pay for their own national defense in full, the immediate effect would probably be capital flight to North America. We’re the fortress of stability. I think in effect the US military serves to make the world a safe place to do business for all the world’s financial elite. Joe Blow pays taxes and serves in uniform to make it safe for Mr. Moneybags to ship jobs and equipment from his town to SE Asia.

    2. You are swallowing a lot of propaganda. Bin Laden was a rich kid who wanted to play crusader, the US is just an excuse. The ongoing jihad against the West is actually the latest phase of a centuries old war that goes back to the time of Napoleon. The Sunni Al Qaeda Mujahideen have never shied away from carrying out operations that resulted in the deaths of Muslim women and children as collateral damage let alone Western ones. They have actually killed far more Muslims than the US army and possibly also the IDF. Being irregulars they don’t have to worry about inconveniences like the Geneva Convention and rules of engagement. The people in the Twin Towers were aiding the said evil empire and were therefore a legitimate target. Stop believing every absurdity you read.

      1. I’m doing my part by trying to re-Hindu-ize my Islamic family. Our roots are yogic and meditational. Islam has taken us all away from that for centuries. I left Pakistan for India then the US. I return only to evangelize in the name of Shakti-Shiva, our pre-Islamic archetypal deities.
        OM SHANTI

      2. well Paki girl Pakeeza that varys on your ancestry
        if youre punjabi..you are south asian (indian)and indeed dhould be hindu sikh or whateva
        but kashmiris balochs pashtuns and sindis(culutrally prety indian) are in facet middle eastern….iranic to be specifice ….wiki it

      3. that sounds more like propoganda….uusa military men are just thugs
        osama is a rich kid that was trained by usa to fight russia ….but cameback an fucked em after the whole iraq deal the 1st time around,(sanctions too),l palestine not gettin a fair share(isreal blind eye) and militray occupation on their land
        if they had something against “freedom” they d attack canda sweden mexico or japan
        listen to ron pauls videos
        usa has been intervenein in middle east since WW2..before that it was the europeans(brits russians french,ottoman…italy and portugal had some pressence)

      4. You don’t know your stuff, do you? Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were the ones training the mujahideen. The shortsighted US was mainly a supplier of cash and weapons. The Palestinian issue is just an excuse and it wasn’t even the main one. East Timor was far higher on the list. Ron Paul is the last person you should be listening to if you want to learn about the region’s geopolitics. No, staying out would have still not prevented terrorism, the problem is much more complex than that.

      5. pakistan an saudi bein able to train fighters come on…there trainin must suck
        heard east timor was near the bottom
        well the prime targets are usa uk an isreal….why not other “freer” nations

  16. This makes me very upset. You talk as if you don’t support the drone strikes.
    These are terrorists being killed. Fundamentalists who want to kill you even more than they want to live.
    Darn American intellectuals. Won’t be happy until the Muslims are thoroughly fucking your country in the arse.

  17. Drones aren’t sterile, but they are efficient and they keep Americans alive. Is there collateral damage? Probably. But if it’s between a couple villagers versus an American soldier, who would you choose? Probably not the best way to win hearts and minds, either.
    As far as worrying about UBL’s boys getting their hands on one, or even building one, fat fucking chance imo.
    These guys are simple in their methods, but obviously effective. I’m worried more about Iran’s nuke program. There are a lot of military linguists learning Farsi right now. I think we are potentially looking at another Cold War, with the Israelis doing most of the dirty work. If I were a Persian nuclear engineer I would be shitting myself right now.
    The thing that worries me about the drones is that the FBI might end up using them and turning America into more of a police state than it already is. Big brother is very much real, and people are totally cool with it! People willingly put their information all over the fucking internet with no discretion at all. We don’t even really need the drones now that I think about it. Zuckerberg is already plugged into all of us.

    1. “But if it’s between a couple villagers versus an American soldier”
      I’d choose the soldier because she or he consciously chose to risk her/his life in warfare, whereas the innocent villagers did not.

  18. Liberals don’t like death? 3700 babies executed daily in the US and they have parades to “choice”
    Let’s look at the last century.
    Stalin, Mao, Hitler, pol, Castro, kim jung Il, planned parenthood. Add them up and that’s over a billion dead in the worship of leftist ideology. Nothing in human history can compare to the mountain of death leftist have brought down on society.
    Islam while being a death cult has nothing on leftists for numbers of dead bodies left in it’s wake.

  19. Rules are rules. If we’re going to use these things, there are rules of engagement, procedures for their execution and if it’s a man or woman, when the order to fire is given, that’s it. Better we’re utilizing Hellfires and LGBs than sending blood-and-guts troops after whatever bullshit targets in whatever bullshit conflict the morons that make up our “leadership” dream up this month or next.
    I got no sympathy for Islam in any case.

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