In the article it is noted that:
From 2004 to 2008, Bush authorized 42 drone strikes, according to the New America Foundation. The number has more than quadrupled under President Obama—to 180 at last count.One thing about targeting killings is that there is usually a lot less "collateral damage" than when one bombs some suspected enemy training camp, or conducts an attack on it with troops charging down some hillside.
As an aside, the second photograph in the article was well designed to get attention, but seems not to have anything to do with the article. It is a photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who was caught in a South Vietnamese Air Force napalm attack. That would be the "local host nation" and not the United States. I just found it ticky-tacky.
The first "on-line comment" posted on the article is about that second photo. Besides the points made in the comment by "unclesmrgol", I would note that napalm is actually very scary, but not very good at killing people, which is why the US Air Force eliminated it as a weapon decades ago. (Full Disclosure, I was the contracting officer on a napalm R&D effort back in about 1972, which failed to produce a more effective product).
And a hat tip to a Professor at the National War College.
Regards — Cliff
1 comment:
I became first fascinated by wartime targeted killings upon learning of how the battle at the North Bridge in Concord likely turned upon the fortuitous wounding of four of the eight British officers present, and the ensuing breakdown in effective command, coupled with learning about the marksmanship of Timothy Murphy at the Battle of Bemis Heights (2nd Saratoga) taking down British General Simon Fraser, who had been, to that point, single-handed-ly managing the wavering British defenses. At the time, the Kentucky Rifle was the effective equivalent of a Predator Drone (Murphy killed Fraser at a distance of 500 yards with a 1770's firearm, and having stood on the spot, let me say that you can't help but be amazed) and Murphy's marksmanship can be argued to have turned the entire Revolutionary War.
The other part of the fascination is how, to that point in history, and still to this day as we all pause to contemplate the coldness of these Predator Drone executions, it was considered bad form to target officers on the field of battle. Ironic that we humans continue to have such moments of conscience amidst our supreme barbarity, but here we are again, 200+ years later, still contemplating the implications of having and using our ability to target and kill individual humans in a much more individual-and-murder-like than full-scale-war-like way.
My feelings are that common sense dictates that war should be prosecuted vigorously or not at all. There is less point in killing for an uncertain result than there is in pursuing a more certain one. (The rationale behind Truman's A-bomb drop, among other martial atrocities). But we must do a far better job at associating the responsibility to and for such decisions, to avoid the inescapable abuse of such power, and the corruption of our collective soul that must also necessarily ensue. Killing, as we are so fond to talk about on Sunday mornings, is wrong. How we've come to be able to rationalize it with such ruthless efficiency is a cautionary tale for all humanity.
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