Is it Time to End Drone Strikes?

[supercutebutt]

VOTE BELOW :(

(CNN) A United States military investigation into a deadly Kabul drone strike on a vehicle in August has found it killed 10 civilians and the driver and that the vehicle targeted was likely not a threat associated with ISIS-K, announced Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top general of US Central Command, at the Pentagon on Friday.

McKenzie told reporters that the strike was a "mistake" and offered an apology.

"This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport, but it was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology," he said.

McKenzie added that he is "fully responsible for this strike and this tragic outcome."

The Pentagon had maintained that at least one ISIS-K facilitator and three civilians were killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley had previously called a "righteous strike" on the compound on August 29. The investigation released Friday found that all of those killed in the residential compound were civilians.

In the lead up to the strike, drone operators surveilled the courtyard for up to 4 to 5 minutes. In that time, a male driver left the vehicle. One child was parking the vehicle and other children were present in the car and the courtyard -- as CNN had been told by the Ahmadi family.

The military based the strike on a reasonable certainty standard to launch the strike on the vehicle. Tragically, it was the wrong vehicle, a US military official familiar with the investigation told CNN earlier Friday, adding that reasonable certainty is not 100% certainty.

"We didn't take the strike because we thought we were wrong -- we took the strike because we thought we had a good target," McKenzie said.

On Friday, General Milley released a statement on the strike calling it "a horrible tragedy."

"This is a horrible tragedy of war and it's heart wrenching and we are committed to being fully transparent about this incident," he added.

No.

Yes.

[Soteris]

Well ethically you would think so but there are reasons why USA stubbornly developed and now clings to this technology. The idea that you are using millions of dollars to destroy a handful of targets, some even civilian in nature is simply not economical and only works because USA has a much larger economy to throw at the problem. So if its a waste of resources why is it used?

First of all is the problem USA has with "boots on the ground". It has had a string of very bitter conflicts such as Vietnam, Afghanistan etc.. People have become "hyper aware" of conflicts and more importantly the failures. Taking Vietnam as an example, militarily USA was doing really well and winning however the nature of the conflict made the people in the military as well as civilians feel like they were getting nowhere or that they were even losing. This caused an anti-war movement to take place which eventually resulted in USA having to withdraw from the conflict.

This has become a thorn in USA's military side and prevented them from operating at a normal capacity. They can't afford to put men or objectives at risk because they can't survive the bad reaction from society. The answer they came up with involves getting other people to fight your wars when possible and use air power or long range artillery when that is not an option.

You dont have to worry about people being upset over military losses if its an unmanned drone that is at risk. This frees up the military to be more aggressive and proactive.

So yeah. Reeling in the drone program would be best for everyone involved but its going to be hard to take away one of the few tools the US military actually can use.

[loveslongnails]

It's terrible, and it's a real issue because terrorists, ISIS, the Taliban, et al., are not above using civilians and children to hide out among, or as suicide bombers. They're playing a game of "chicken" and public opinion. What's worse than what ISIS or the Taliban do to their own people --- the USA creating collateral civilian damage while hunting us. I think it's time to get better intelligence on the ground.

[purplepoppy]

Drones may kill innocent people by mistake but so do ground troups. Over the years how many soldier's lives have been saved by sending in drones instead.

[BlacklightShade]

Seems like a good idea to end 20 years occupying Afghanistan.

[LaFerrari]

Well I think they should create weapons that minimalize civilian casualties such as the CIAs Ninja blade bomb as seene below. For what happened in Kabul, that was just unacceptable, both the drone operator and the commanders/general that authorized the attack should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and often time drone strikes do cause fatalities among civilians, and its swept under the rug.

[tartaarsaus]

Nope. Drones are in itself a very useful tool for strikes on an enemy. It’d make no sense to end them in general.


The one thing that went wrong here is that US intelligence clearly was incorrect (in hindsight) or the internal procedures within the US military were insufficient to prevent a strike based on flawed intelligence.


It’d make no sense to remove a tool when the fundamental issue is not related to that tool in itself.

[jasco]

War hurts everyone. Drone strikes however if used with the right recon can help both sides hurt less. we need to improve our information gathering and recon so that innocent civilians don’t become involved in situations like this. I think we should keep drone strikes but for bigger targets like buildings and such. For one person a sniper unit should be deployed. That’s what I think anyway.

[FilmGuy93]

The use of drones would be better if the people using them were more competent.

[exitseven]

Drones have been used effectively in other military exercises. Their use keeps Americans out of harms way. Uncle Joe and his minions have just screwed the pooch on this one. At least they admitted it. Usually the whole thing gets swept under the rug.

[supercutebutt]

Trump swept it all under the rug, including his bungling of COVID and the insurrection. But keep in mind that Biden's "minions" are the same as Trump's in many cases. Milley for example. And Mckenzie was a general during the Trump regime. The difference is that Biden is an honest president and Trump was a criminal president.

[exitseven]

He was not a criminal. If he had so much as a parking ticket Pelosi and Schumer would have had him in front of a firing squad. After spending millions of dollars of tax money they found nothing.
Come on - after all that has happened over the last 8 months can't you admit that you miss the big orange guy.

[supercutebutt]

I'll bet if two penises popped through two gloryholes, right next to each other, and one was orange and the other was white, you would suck the white peen.

[exitseven]

Oh come now.

[Guardian45]

This was a tragedy that could and should have been avoided. The Humint on this target SUCKED!

And what is probably worse here was the drone AI assessment on this target.

We CANNOT afford to have autonomous lethal kill vehicles!

[msc545]

Hell yes. They just fire away and if they kill a few kids or civilians so what - nobody can do anything about it. The best recruiting tool Isis and Al Queda have!

[Lyubyets]

They dont care the israelis intentionally shoot palestinian kids all the time

[Jerre]

One of the hazards of war is innocent people being killed. I can live with that.

[Still-alive]

Of course