Drone attack stuff ups

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Why are they making such a mess of this? I'm all for bombing bad people, but lately they are killing innocent people.
When you are trying to kill your enemy but instead you kill innocent people, this is BAD. Its particularly bad for those people and their families, but it also lends cause to your enemy, in that they can claim righteousness, and that is counterproductive to your own goals.

Is it just that the American military is incompetent? I fail to understand. Or do they actually want to sustain an assymetric war to keep themselves in business?
Whatever it is I find the killing of innocent people despicable, and unjustifiable I think the attacks should stop.

Destabilization. Create a problem so there's a problem.

Collateral damage is an unavoidable fact of war.

Smart as paint, you are. That it is.

The last Good War fought by the U.S. and its allies, WW 2, resulted in over 2 million deaths of non-combatants in air attacks. Such are the infelicities of modern warfare. A bomb doesn't know who is good and bad. It only goes where it falls or where it is aimed.

ruveyn

If all you have are hammers, then you have to make your problems look like nails.

Every war ever fought has killed innocent people.

Making war is inherent in human nature.

If you find this upsetting, then undergo a species change operation.

ruveyn

Sure, but this is not a war by any measure I can apply, it seems to be an illegal operation. It's unjust and unecessary, and won't achieve its goals.

Who won the Pacific War and who surrendered?

The air attacks wrecked both Germany and Japan. Leading to an allied victory. The air attacks achieved their goals.

ruveyn

I think you have to realize first that super-competence largely does not exist. In real life you are lucky to find regular competence.

I believe that the intent behind the drone attacks is to kill specific people with limited collateral damage as compared to an attack by conventional ground or air methods.

And that we're bad at it, but when we're bad at it, we're not nearly as big of a mess as when we're bad at conventional attacks.

That was a war of nations and was total war with 80 million killed, and the civilians killed were citizens of those nations.

This is a different situation, there are some outlaw militants who have allegiance to no state, and the 'collateral' happen to be citizens of Pakistan who often have nothing to do with the militants.

I can't see how air power will long term lead to success in an assymetric 'war' where you are creating so much collateral damage. I'd be taking a fraction of the military expenditure and distributing it amongst the tribes in ways that aid Americas cause.

[quote="nostromo"]
That was a war of nations and was total war with 80 million killed, and the civilians killed were citizens of those nations.

T/quote] dead is dead.

Attacks against civilians have their uses.

ruveyn

911?

Drone attacks might cause some collateral damage now and then but nothing like carpet bombing would.
No situation is perfect....

Apparently Osama and his Jihadis got some use out of it.

We returned the favor though. Didn't we? A bullet through the eye. Dead Osama. Good Osama.

ruveyn

True that and yeah it is wrong civilian casualties happen but that does happen in every war although its messed up it happens compared to Vietnaam and WW2 the amount of civilian casualties are way alot lower these days.

As I said earlier, in those other examples that was an actual case of war, which this is not, and the civilians killed owed allegiance to a warring party.
In this case there is no relationship other than being in the same physical region as a bunch of 'combatants'.