Noam Chomsky: Obama's drone campaign most extreme terrorism in recent history

[Dreknar20]

that support our droning in foreign countries platform!)

that's the reason why. "Foreign"
American interests > Foreign interests
American lives > Foreign lives

- - - Updated - - -

it's very different from actual ground forces passing through.

Not really.
People and their buildings are destroyed/killed all the time in ground warfare.

[Nadiru]

Please go and google terror, it has nothing to do with "grandiose displays of destruction" but the use of terror to further goals. And that is exactly what drones are doing right now.

Drones are scary as fuck, but that isn't what's put on display when a drone strike is initiated. Drone strikes are more accurately described as a tool of violence to further goals, the terror is incidental and frankly counter-productive to American goals. If the US wanted to conduct a campaign of terror on the Middle East, there have been myriad opportunities prior to the current drone-heavy doctrine, and the US is more than capable of committing to that sort of campaign.

[Dreknar20]

but the use of terror to further goals

Or the use of military force to further goals? What makes you so sure terror is the main thing? Terror is the byproduct of any weapon.

[Deleted]

Its funny to see how people try and downplay the impact drone use has... Its a precision strike, or terror is not its goal so its not terrorism or roughly translated: its my country doing it, so its not terrorism..
But the reality is that people there live in constant fear of losing their lives just because they where at the wrong place at the wrong time. And these wrong places are not the bad neighborhoods but rather the market, a cab that some "alleged terrorist" is using. Yes, im saying alleged because you know, they did not get a trail or anything. They are executed, if they are lucky its just them, if unlucky their whole family.
The difference with "normal military" actions is that in Afghanistan for instance there are soldiers running around that occupy everything. They are trying their best to stabilize the region. They do not go around shooting up a market full of people just to get one guy. But with the drones that does happen, the people have no warning no nothing, they walk from their homes and all of a sudden death comes soaring out of the sky. Imagine having to live like that, to be in constant fear of you life where ever you go. would you not be pissed off at the people doing this to you? Would you not stand up and rebel?
Its time to realize that the problem is not that there are terrorist, but rather, what makes people become terrorist. If you keep on bashing a certain group of people for a long period of time, sooner or later they will lash out. And if those people had drones they would send them to us as well. But not having drones they will resort to other forms of the same shit, we call them terrorist. All in all, the war on terrorism is just terrorism with a bigger budget.

- - - Updated - - -

Or the use of military force to further goals? What makes you so sure terror is the main thing? Terror is the byproduct of any weapon.

So terror has to be the main thing for it to be terrorism? So if someone where to blow up a building in the US just to get to one guy its just murder? Because you know, we only wanted to kill that one guy... Yes, terror is a by product of every weapon, its just that most normal weapons are not pointed at you day and night, drones are. This means that their fear is constant, how would you react to knowing that if some fucktard walks to close to you is reason enough to get bombed? Just because something is a byproduct doesn't make it any less real.

[Polyxo]

I think that the problem is the way that drone strikes are used. The first and foremost part of that are 'signature strikes'. These are are strikes conducted against people that match the demographic data on potential targets. They don't know who they're blowing up, they don't know if they're bad or not. They just look kind of like they might be a bad guy, so they kill them. The second problem is the willingness to accept 'direct' collateral damage. When target accuacy, and blast radius is much more of a certainty than it ever was, collateral damage is much less acceptable. We should be looking at civilians killed not as regrettable mistakes, and more as innocent people that we chose to kill along with a target.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The mainstream liberal media in the US worked extremely hard to destroy President Bush's poll numbers by reporting daily body counts coming out of Iraq. Every day it was on the front page, x number of US soldiers died. The moment Obama took office, these reports stopped. Anyone who is media savvy knows that soldier death counts are a HIGHLY effective means of turning public opinion.

The media had found a fulcrum to control a president, and that needed to end.

After THAT experience, its unsurprising that US Presidents will seek every avenue to conduct soldierless war.

The litmus test is: will the US public be LESS upset by drone warfare than by US soldiers dying in battle? If the answer is YES, then this is a full go.

I can see future debates about drone warfare, where some will argue that because x% of the public disapproves of drones in combat, that we should scrap the program. However, they aren't seeing the big picture. The calculation to scrap the program will NEVER be a straight-up x% of public disapproves. It will be public disapproval of the drone program vs public disapproval of US soldiers getting killed. And the reason that calculation exists is because the media will wield body counts as a weapon against a president.

OBVIOUSLY, the media will be utterly against any drone program, simply for the fact that a drone program takes away a power it has over a president. So the media will attempt to gin up as much hate as it can against drone warfare and try to make it immoral. However, they may not succeed.

Fox news was very pro-Bush and even they were reporting on the death tolls. Even they're not reporting on the US soldier death tolls under Obama. Wanna know why? Because Obama has pulled a massive number of troops out of the Middle East and soldier death tolls have dropped significantly. During the Bush years nearly 1000 US soldiers died every year. 2009 (when Obama took office and Bush policy was still in place) that number was still just under 1000, but every year after the numbers dropped continuously as Obama pulled more and more soldiers out of the middle east.

By 2010 the US soldier death toll was ~500.
In 2011 it was ~450.
2012 saw ~300
2013 ~100
2014? 58 US soldier deaths.

Numbers taken from Iraq and Afghanistan, the primary conflict areas.

It seems your own conclusions were wrong. The media is no longer concentrating on the body count because Obama has made it insignificant. The big hate-fodder now is drones.

- - - Updated - - -

people always trying to be cute with itsy tiny dronestrikes, just nuke that place and forget about it

Sure. I mean, mass genocide has had extreme world approval in the past, right?

[oxymoronic]

Please go and google terror, it has nothing to do with "grandiose displays of destruction" but the use of terror to further goals. And that is exactly what drones are doing right now.

wouldnt all military equipment fall under that then? what wouldnt? helicopters sure do, jets? yep them too. tanks?> yep instruments of terror.

- - - Updated - - -

The big hate-fodder now is drones.

not that i care too much, but george w bush started the withdrawal. why you giving obama the credit?

[Rennadrel]

I never said it was a good thing. It's murder when civilians die by any means.

Tell that to ISIS and Al Queda.

[ati87]

It is a precision strike on a specific enemy target. We can start there. Acts of terrorism tend to be grandiose displays of destruction to get attention for a cause and aren't backed by a nation or easily identifiable force.

Not going to talk about your definition of terror and the lack of understanding what state terror means....

Just going to say that a few mobs at a wedding is probably just as ''grandiose display of violence'' as any random bombing...

[Rennadrel]

Better than open war inside Pakistan.

Pretty much. One has to wonder how much prejudice the drone operators can carry though, they have to be at the controls and the trigger is up to them. If they hit a target because the intelligence suggests there is an enemy needing to be taken out, other casualties are collateral damage and it is still a lot less costly then having troops on the ground trying to do the same mission.

- - - Updated - - -

wouldnt all military equipment fall under that then? what wouldnt? helicopters sure do, jets? yep them too. tanks?> yep instruments of terror.

- - - Updated - - -


not that i care too much, but george w bush started the withdrawal. why you giving obama the credit?

Bush also started the war.

[Osmeric]

The drone campaign isn't terrorism, it's exterminationism. The goal isn't to terrorize the opposing side, the goal is to eliminate their leadership.

Terrorism kills a small fraction of a side for psychological effect. Warfare goes in and kills and kills until they cannot fight. It's a step up from terrorism.

[Deleted]

Something that I have been looking for recently, yet have been unable to find, is a comparison of the collateral damage of the old way of bombing(dumb bombs and laser strikes) vs. the drone attacks. I find it extremely hard to believe that we now have more collateral damage than we did in the gulf wars, or the first time around in Iraq. Not only that but I imagine that US casualties are far less as well.

Let me be clear, I am completely against the use of any of these bombs, I believe it is counter productive and only creates more terrorism, I just find it odd that these people shouting the loudest about the drone strikes were some of the biggest proponents of the Iraq and Gulf wars, where civilian casualities were much higher.

It leads me to believe that it has nothing to do with the methods of war but rather who is in charge while they are being carried out. It isn't Reagan, Bush Sr., or Bush Jr., or even Clinton, who most republicans I talk to seem to say was a good president and who dropped way more bombs than Obama. There is more to this campaign against Obama than meets the eye.