President has the right to use drones in the USA on American citizens

OK, this is an OTT reaction. The statement didn't actually achieve what the Senate wanted, but rather continued to remain ambigious- which is how the Obama adminstration have benn on the drone issue. The statement wasn't intent on given global authorisation but rather answer, ambigously, whether Obama is able to attack US citizen in US.

US won't be using the drone in UK anytime soon.

Of course not, but you don't find it bizarre that such a thing can be openly declared in a country of laws by the Attorney General before Congress??

I think it'll be more fractious than that. There have been some communities accepting the western forces, other tribes welcoming them and then the Taliban and others actively fighting against. Could see it turn into a number of smaller states. Unless someone supplants Karzai and is able to hold it together better, but I don't hold out much hope for that.

What's been achieved? Relatively little. The nationalistic angle - as far as I'm concerned - is that it took the fight to them, rather than letting them fight elsewhere. The camps and the training have been interrupted. But beyond that, not very much. Went in with the right intentions, just with fuzzy actual aims and little to no idea about the long term of it all. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but without the good intentions, what are we?

No. It is the US.

Of course not, but you don't find it bizarre that such a thing can be openly declared in a country of laws by the Attorney General before Congress??

Of course, it wouldn't in any way influence your views that you are ex-RAF, would it.

I thought this was a student forum, not a military forum.

Why not? Proportional force and all that.

And people in the military aren't allowed to have been students? Or remain on the forum to offer advice to other people wishing to join the Forces? Please don't tell me you're one of those people who assumes everyone in the Armed Forces is a secondary school drop out without any GCSEs...

Yes and just a lack of accountability. Like with this statement, the reaction hasn't focused about the use of drone outside of us, it's been focused on how dare our government have the power to even think about attacking us in our country. Americans still overtly see themselves as superior beings to other nationals.

Of course, I meant it as a reflection on the absurdity of the current situation, the main point of the thread is that the insane situation has arisen that the US Attorney can assure Congress that the US President has the legal right to target US civilians for assassination using drone strikes anywhere in the world - including in the USA! I was curious about just how far such a bizarre development could be taken.

The truth is that the security state madness, war paranoia and 'terrorist threat' psychosis have reached fever pitch and the US security establishment and authorities are using it (as here) to demolish civil liberties and democratic government.

If this was what Bin Laden had in mind (assuming he really was the mastermind of 9/11 - we still await proof beyond his own ramblings and US propaganda of that one) he is pretty much achieving his goals.

I was responding to the tone of many of the postings, which seems to be about discussing the detail of robotic warfare rather than the moral context.

There does seem to me to be a tone of "it's all fine - relax and let the experts take care of it" coming out of the military-influenced or connected people here.

I can't think of a single valid reason why we civilian students should take note of the words of military people on this. Over and over and over again during the last years, we have been systematically lied to about almost every aspect of these wars.

You may be a perfectly nice military man for all I know, you may have valid points, but it's just hard to listen, given what is transpiring. At the moment, what we see is the US resorting to remote-control killing as the 'solution' to Afghanistan, when it is no such thing. It is a vile abuse of human rights and the results will come home to roost.

I responded to your moral arguments, I clearly said that civilian casualties happen but there is a much larger, much more important goal. Small loss=large gain.

How have you been systematically lied to? The government does not need to release all their information to 'civilian students'.

There isn't just remote control killing going on, there are infantrymen out there fighting. It's not black and white you know. You think it's so easy to completely change a country that's been in fractions for a very long time, it's not so easy to do that. You need to intertwine with the population and the culture, we're doing that as well but we must get rid of the extremists. They're the ones that have started the war, we're the ones that are going to end it. The Afghan military is terrible. we're lending them a hand. Telling them to do this, and to do that.

Were our operations in the Yugoslav War destroying human rights?

Were our operations in the Gulf War destroying human rights?

Civilian casualties happen, they happen but victory is more important.

Well there is other remote killing going on in the form of IEDs.

its hard to transfer western values to out there. One of the most disturbing things I saw was a group of children leading a heard of goats through a minefield followed up by their father. One of our guys berated the father until he explained that his goats were more valuable than his children as they weren't of an age for earning an income. There's a reason they have big families out there. They don't expect them all to survive and life is cheap. However NATO service personnel always used western standards and always attempted to minimise the risks to civilians. It's just a pity the other guys didnt care about it as much.

That's what we're trying to tell her, she just doesn't listen.

I guess she'll be getting freaked out when she reads this then

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/1995/srg_str_00002-01-180604.pdf

UAVs coming to the uk soon

She's so annoying. I mean she doesn't listen to anyone, I'd hate to meet her in real life.

That'll kill her!

Shes not annoying. She just holds a different viewpoint based on bounded rationality

Apologist implies I'am somehow directly or indirectly defending the Taliban when in actual fact my aim is to demonstrate to you not only your hypocrisy but that of the West and the latter's misguided policies. In terms of human cost, Taliban atrocities have been admittedly worse but your strategy of making the Northern Alliance the good guys on the basis that they have killed less is a touch flawed. People like Dostum are still responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and indeed currently it is you who stands as an apologetic for murderers and warlords not me. Scapegoating Pakistan of course is a fairly common approach for the West which continues to try and shovel off the blame for the mess in Afghanistan on any other party it possibly can.

I'll reply in full later.

Hows this different to just shooting somebody. Predators are a great piece if kit. Incidentally you may want to read this before you start saying the yanks are pushing people around.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

it would appear that the Pakistanis let it happen.

The US has already used drones in extra-judicial killings of US citizens outside of America. If Americans have that right outside of America, why not in America too? America's judiciary system is exceptionally dangerous.