This is the future of warfare and it's a good thing. Way better than back when you would firebomb an industrial city or lob cruise missiles at poorly defined targets. No boots on the ground means none of our people at risk and drones are much more precise than bombs.
The reactions in this thread demonstrate the classic uneasiness with killing a few people while being okay with killing lots of people. The people complaining about drones likely had nothing to say about Clinton lobbing cruise missiles into downtown Belgrade.
It's not a good thing. Only a handful of nations are capable of producing weaponized drones, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. This is very susceptible to abuse. The numbers here show my point exactly: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone...
> It's not a good thing. Only a handful of nations are capable of producing weaponized drones
A nation spends money on defense for precisely this reason, to produce an asymmetry in that's nation's capabilities compared to all others. It's an explicit design goal! Your argument can be applied to all new technology being developed for defense in all countries-- consequently, I don't think you'll find much support for this line of argument.
Yet another worshipper in the cult of death that has gripped America. Sorry, but your point of view is absolutely abhorrent to any educated, intelligent, modern persons' point of view.
It is not a good thing that people can drive to a strip mall in Americana, spend all day killing people in a video-game like reality, and get away with it with impunity. This is industrialized murder, and your justification is exactly the kind of point of view that must be thwarted in a just, honest, ethical society..
No it is a good thing. When you have to be violent it is always better to have the edge. (quote from a special ops friend - in close quarters wins the one with more ammunition)
What you have problem is the ease with which US deploys stuff and not the fact that there are less corpses coming home.
When violence is easy, "having to be violent" will be more and more common, until .. eventually .. you arrive at the point of view you espouse: war is okay, as long as its easy.
Violence is less common now than it has ever been in all of human history. How can you square this fact with your statement about how "having to be violent" will be more common?
Education, plain and simple, has become more and more available to the masses - but I would submit to you that there is just as much violence going on in the world as there ever has been before - just that, we're shielded from most of it in our little Western happyboxes. You don't have to look far in the last decade to discover violent atrocities being enacted on our fellow humans .. you just have to be willing to look at the truth of the situation: violence is being used by those in power in order to stay in power. This is precisely the purpose of the American drone technology, along with every single weapon ever produced in the Western world.
I put to you that the USA has become one of the most violent cultures in the world, precisely because technology has allowed ignorance and hatred to fill in where education has failed. Or, at the very least, where once we educate ourselves, we nevertheless submit to those who would use violence to maintain their power; certainly it seems that the USA is in the grips of the very groups that, were the American people better educated, would never succeed. It is the technology of death - and those who profit from it - who poison the well of human decency, who undermine all education in order to prosper from their heinous endeavours.
> The people complaining about drones likely had nothing to say about Clinton lobbing cruise missiles into downtown Belgrade.
Huh?
People 'complaining about drones' are very likely the same people that 'complained' about the other unjustified wars and bomb/missile attacks over the last 60 years. But Clinton is what you're going with here...really?
Drone warfare isn't inherently bad. The issue is that it makes warfare safer and more convenient for us, which raises the odds that we'll do it more often and use it for more questionable means.
Yes if my farther had been in his house in Birmingham in the second world war I might not be here - the Luftwaffe was going for the almost next door spitfire plant.
Almost every European has family members who can recall ww2 and the area bombing which no civilian Americans experienced.
I am not sure if the OP phrased it properly but humans relate better to specific examples. This is why a little girl covered with napalm related burns has more of an effect in the media than 50,000 deaths [1].
The reactions in this thread demonstrate the classic uneasiness with killing a few people while being okay with killing lots of people. The people complaining about drones likely had nothing to say about Clinton lobbing cruise missiles into downtown Belgrade.