What, no Rand Paul thread?

[Ben]

[fivekatz]

One last thing from the article, that I also considered. How likely is that someone from a remote area in Yemen is going to directly harm something in the US homeland, so that his immediate execution is nescessary? Thanks much for the link Stavos.

How likely was it that someone in a remote cave in the mountains of Afghanistan was going to launch an attack that ended up killing over 3,000 people in NY and DC?

Sherman famously said that all war is hell. Of that there is no doubt. The tactic is troubling and does require a leap of faith in both the integrity of the Administration but also the intelligence community. Still it is troubling than waiting to get hit without doing anything OR using the conventional warfare technics of the Bush Administration that created over $1.5 trillion in debt to date, well over 150,000 dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, a detention/torture center in Cuba that nobody knows how to close and little if any intelligence of use.

I get the civil liberty issues and the inhumanity of the killings. But if Rand Paul is really worried about American civil liberties perhaps he should sponsor real election reform. If he is really worried about the safety and well being of Americans perhaps he could support sensible gun safety regulations or possibly stopping this race to the bottom where America is the place where no defense contractor will ever go hungry but screw the unemployed and the under privileged.

Even if the topic is worthy of debate what a terrible messenger. Rand Paul is far more Tea Party than true libertarian and far more interested in his own self fulfillment than making a real difference.

I agree that drug laws are stupid. But while I agree with Paul that government is far too intrusive, I believe it is in people's personal lives from same sex marriage to choice. He believes it is regulating the robber baron bankers and the king's of pollution for profit like his benifactors the Koch Brothers want him to.

Bless Lindsay Graham for saying where were these GOPers when 43 was the President on this occasion even though IMHO far too often he has found himself opposing Obama not on the content of his policies but rather because of party affiliation.

[Ben]

Liberals should proudly cheer on Rand Paul:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/libe..._on_rand_paul/

[Ben]

How likely was it that someone in a remote cave in the mountains of Afghanistan was going to launch an attack that ended up killing over 3,000 people in NY and DC?

Sherman famously said that all war is hell. Of that there is no doubt. The tactic is troubling and does require a leap of faith in both the integrity of the Administration but also the intelligence community. Still it is troubling than waiting to get hit without doing anything OR using the conventional warfare technics of the Bush Administration that created over $1.5 trillion in debt to date, well over 150,000 dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, a detention/torture center in Cuba that nobody knows how to close and little if any intelligence of use.

I get the civil liberty issues and the inhumanity of the killings. But if Rand Paul is really worried about American civil liberties perhaps he should sponsor real election reform. If he is really worried about the safety and well being of Americans perhaps he could support sensible gun safety regulations or possibly stopping this race to the bottom where America is the place where no defense contractor will ever go hungry but screw the unemployed and the under privileged.

Even if the topic is worthy of debate what a terrible messenger. Rand Paul is far more Tea Party than true libertarian and far more interested in his own self fulfillment than making a real difference.

I agree that drug laws are stupid. But while I agree with Paul that government is far too intrusive, I believe it is in people's personal lives from same sex marriage to choice. He believes it is regulating the robber baron bankers and the king's of pollution for profit like his benifactors the Koch Brothers want him to.

Bless Lindsay Graham for saying where were these GOPers when 43 was the President on this occasion even though IMHO far too often he has found himself opposing Obama not on the content of his policies but rather because of party affiliation.

The Koch brothers contributed to Rand Paul's campaign....
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicia...?cid=N00030836

[hippifried]

More hogwash to create more obfuscation.

The use of drone strikes is not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.

[Prospero]

The fact that the technooogy for drones now exists means that it is virtually nevitable that "hostile' regimes will develop and use them (Don't Hezbollah already have some rather primitive versions of these). So expect iran, North Kirea et all to offer us their own drones soon - and i am sure Russia and China will have the technology very soon.

[yodajazz]

How likely was it that someone in a remote cave in the mountains of Afghanistan was going to launch an attack that ended up killing over 3,000 people in NY and DC? ...

Bin Laden was never charged with having something directly to do with 9/11. He was wanted in connection with the Cole bombings, and an embassy attack. The US has had 11 1/2 years, without a major terrorist attack.

Yes drone attacks are cheaper than invading a country, but that's still ignoring cheaper alternatives such as empowering the local/national governments to deal with their own problems. Also the drone process could be, an probably is, easily subverted. All someone has to do is to plant false information, through informants/double agents. Then the wrong people get killed. The local people get further enraged, and it becomes a perfect recruitment tool for anti US groups. According to the article the ranks of anti US groups are swelling greatly in areas US drone attacks. According to the article, even funerals have been targeted. Who goes to funerals? Also there have been double strikes, attacking people attending to the dead/wounded. All you have to do is to put yourself in the place of another, to better understand.

Executing people without having to provide evidence, is a slippery slope. We don't really even know how many non-combatants have been killed. We rely on the people who have something to lose, that is leadership, to tell us the results with no independent verification. There is also the question of whether national governments, such as Yemen, exaggerate the threat to the US, in order to get assistance with regional resistance groups. Didn't the US (we) 'accidentally' attack a funeral in Pakistan, killing maybe 20 people, a couple of years ago? Nothing wins friends like killing innocent people, huh? We should not ignore the possibility that someone planted false information, as the real cause of the 'accident'.

The other issues you mention are important also, but we can't just kill people and ignore the consequences. Bombs cannot kill ideas, especially when those who hold the ideas, live with others in a greater community. So we kill the person, but his ideas are simply passed on to another. On responses to news articles, I have seen people say we should exterminate all Muslims. The thing that bothers me the most was that others were not speaking about it being wrong, or impractical to eliminate 1/5 of the world's population. The thought of genocide is now ok, with some people. Some people dont understand why the sudy of human history is so important.

[Stavros]

I read the whole thing. Wow! He makes many of the same arguments, that I have considered, but goes into more scholarly detail. He makes many interesting claims, such as saying the US is going beyond targeting leadership, to targeting ordinary foot soldiers, in some cases. They are more likely to have stronger ties to their communities, thus making anti-US backlash more likely. I noticed the deep irony, in his statement that innocent people in target area, feel "terror" about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being caught in a US drone attack. Another line that was amusing to me, came from an unnamed State Dept official, who was reported to say that, "three men, observed by surveillance, doing jumping jacks, is considered by some to be solid evidence of a 'terrorist training camp'.

I understand Obama's position of not being able to appear weak on 'terrorism'. I think a real public debate, would make him appear more reasonable, should he choose, to emphasize more strategic objectives, over drone strikes. I know that most on this forum are not as 'religious' as I claim to be. But for me, I am disappointed that religious leadership, does not speak on US drones, in terms of moral issues. Instead many look at sexual conduct as the major barometer of public morality. Killing people, in distant lands, with no names, and no accountability as to why in most cases, and not even being able to verify who and how many were killed, or injured, is damn near universally approved here.
Not even considering what those community we attack may feel, goes directly against one of the two commandments, Jesus left the world. But religious or not, a person who thinks and feels deeply about human issues, might understand there are always consequences, for the taking of human life without adequate legal framework to do so. "Blowback", is one of several terms that could be used to describe this.

One last thing from the article, that I also considered. How likely is that someone from a remote area in Yemen is going to directly harm something in the US homeland, so that his immediate execution is nescessary? Thanks much for the link Stavos.

The religious angle is an elusive one, because both George W Bush and Tony Blair made no secret of their Christian Faith, yet neither could see a contradiction in that faith and the violence that was inevitably going to result from regime change in Iraq. Blair later said, when asked, that he would accept the judgement of God rather than the British people which suggested that he didn't particularly care what we the people thought at the time or since, a stance he has maintained -his Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell noted in his diaries how often Blair prayed before during (and presumably since) the operation began in Iraq, which he believed was a matter of Good versus Evil, whereas George W Bush apparently told President Chirac of France that 'Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East'...suggesting that for him it was the 'End-times' that occupied his thoughts.

Fundamentally, the realpolitik that guides the decisions to use drones does not address the causes of the threats to the USA, be it threats to US official personnel abroad or the population within the USA itself. It is not about any difference between Republicans or Democrats or left and right as Hippifried points out, but the existential threat to the USA. But are there any realistic threats below the level of the state? Obama is caught in this trap -if he doesn't use them and something happens he takes the blame; if he does and the wrong people are killed, he still takes the blame. But not using them does not appear to be an option at the moment.

Osama bin Laden declared war on the US in 1998 and attacked US targets outside and eventually inside the US itself. On this basis his 'military campaign' has enabled the US to claim that members of al-Qaeda were/are combatants in the context of international law, hence their prosecution in military tribunals in Guantanamo -although it isn't clear if such laws apply to any group of people who declare war on the USA- in this case 'non-state actors'.

And yes, it does mean that a single man in the Yemen who issues threats and makes videos calling for attacks on his own country -the case of 'the American' Anwar al-Aulaki- must be taken seriously up to a point, because he might be recruiting 'soldiers' in secret, or even on the internet -the point of intelligence in this context would be to establish the difference between an inflammatory 'preacher' with no practical means of attacking the USA physically, and someone with deadly, and realistic intentions to cause harm. Individuals verbally attack the USA every weekend at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, in London -that doesn't make them a credible threat (and anyway MI5 tracks them).

The broader problem of the Tribal Areas of Pakistan is that the US is engaged in a conflict of confidence with the military in Pakistan on the basis that the latter only half-heartedly deal with the militants, because some of them are backed by the Pakistan military and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The fear that lawless regions can be used to train and recruit new 'soldiers' is undoutbedly part of the strategic mix, yet the fear that this was happening in Somalia was not met in reality, whereas a quite different problem, offshore piracy has become a serious issue. Indeed, the 'Islamic threat' in Somalia has receded and been replaced by Mali in this last year, athough the Yemen still gives cause for concern. But evidence does not show that lawless regions automatically provide a safe heaven for the al-Qaeda franchise -it didn't happen in Somalia, or Iraq, and it is unlikely to develop in Syria or Libya where internal politics are more pressing; and in Mali the Salafi are divided amongst themselves and loathed by most local people. The use of Drones against Boko Haram in Nigeria has become a possibility as the US increased its presence on the border in Niger at the end of February where it is claimed a 'Drone base' is being assembled. An attack on Boko Haram would be justified in a military context in the same way as attacks on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
http://www.ng.quicknews-africa.net/i...nes-in-nigeria
http://www.nairaland.com/1205592/new...ria-door-steps

I think the US has a deep anxiety about Pakistan, which is why Drones are used for the most part in the Tribal Areas, and this feeds into the problem of a resurgent Taliban -yet I cannot see any direct link between the use of Drones and the security of the USA as the politics of Bin Laden is dead. In Bin Laden's case, the attacks on the USA were tangential to his political campaign, which was to revive the Islamic Caliphate that was dissolved when the Ottoman Empire was finally laid to rest in 1923, but I am not aware that any but a few Salafi fanatics believe they can mount the revolutionary overthrow of the regimes in the Middle East and re-constitute the Caliphate, even if this is their interpretation of the 'Arab Spring'. And again, I don't know how attacking the USA advances this cause, except to say that attacking the USA for some is a badge of achievement.

But there still has to be a reason, a cause, for weapons to be used. I am not convinced that the use of Drones in the Tribal Areas, for example, has any real military purpose in the context of US security.

[yodajazz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/wo...nted=all&_r=0#

Here's a recent development. Others are claiming US drone strikes and the US is denying they were involved at all.

One important distinction in your post. I believe that Bin Laden declared war on the US military. If so, this would be in line with teachings in the Koran, that prohibits the targeting of non-combatants.

[fivekatz]

As far as this being a liberal or conservative issue, it isn't. The politicalization of the use of drones is different than legitimate concern over their use. I personal question Paul's motives regarding the topic.

The fact that he decided to use the topic of drone strikes on US soil, against US citizens who were non-combatants to filibuster an appointment by President Obama rather than question the correctness of the real drone policy may have been a dramatic way to put more light on the real policy but I personally believe it was motivated by politics and not moral outrage at assignation by drone.

Osama Bin Laden took credit for the planning and execution of 9-11 and did so quite proudly on video for all the world to see. So I think it is a straw man to suggest that he did have a lot of blood on his hands or that the extraordinary nature of the 2001 attacks did not warrant his being taken out either dead or alive.

Bin Laden also in his infamous post 9-11 pronouncements warned of more attacks on US soil against US citizens, so the whole theory that somehow Bin Laden was a holy man that would have only declared war against military targets is almost as revisionist as those who deny that the holocaust ever happened.

I understand that terrorists do what they do because the powers they oppose can not be confronted by conventional methods of warfare. But with that brings the question of how do you combat terrorist techniques when the tactics make conventions ineffective?

Cheney called it the dark side but then proceeded to use a bizarre cocktail of conventional war and occupation, combined with indefinite detention and torture. I honestly always thought he was talking about a cocktail of intelligence and as ugly as it is assignation.

The topic should be openly debated in the US and through out the world but I question Rand Paul's motives though the result is creating reasoned conversation about drones fueling the fear of the ultra extreme right in the US is never a good thing. Never forget Oklahoma City. Those people when incited can do horrible things.