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deconstructing American drones
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
Comments
You found it stunning? In what way? I would apply terms like that to, say, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, but I don't think you're refering to the film in that way.
Please expound!
I, personally, find my country's use of drones repugnant. It makes killing people more like a video game than it already is. It's cowardly.
And we dare to call others "terrorists" AND have the unmittigated hubris to look down our noses at them.
"Stunning" in this case is used in the same way cattle are stunned with an electric shock prior to slaughter: All the cuss words and all the peacenik rhetoric went out the window for me. The effect lay somewhere beyond "blasphemy" or "obscene" or even "insane."
I have a teaching with Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen up in Boulder tonight after work, but when I get home .....
Connecting the two issues is silly.
"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the end game."
How many schools or hospitals or fresh-water drinking sources do you suppose the cost of a single drone might provide? All that waging a war requires is money and ego. Waging peace requires balls.
If this country can spend billions creating technology to kill, why are there places where there is no clean drinking water. Why are children going to bed hungry? In this country?
Why aren't we spending money to make their lives better rather than to try and kill them?
I know - dead people don't need food and water, right? You can't make a video game out of building a water filtration plant, either.
If we cut the drone program today, not one penny of those funds would be transferred to a program to promote safe drinking water around the world.
Period.
It didn't happen before the drone program started. It won't happen after the drone program ends.
Even in our own country, with the water issues we have in the American southwest (including Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and southern California...not to mention Texas and Oklahoma) are we investing in desalinization plants? Mostly the answer is no.
Politically, defense dollars in this country are fairly untouchable. And it's been that way since at least 1941...and will continue to be so far beyond my life expectancy.
Further, I'm not clear why it is the American taxpayer's responsibility to solve the water issues in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. It's not that those continents don't have enough water; they don't have enough water in all the right places in their continents. Those continents are made up of sovereign nations, and I would suggest that -- for example -- the nations of South America band together and work on their water issues.
Of course, individuals and charitable groups are welcome to voluntarily donate funds to places around the world for the purpose of providing sanitary water solutions. There have been times I have.
I guess it's a lot more fun to blow shit up rather than to build something.
We are citizens of this planet. As Buddhists we're taught that every single sentient being on this planet was at various times, our father, brother, sister, friend, lover, spouse.....mother. We are the richest country in the world. We can afford to outspend most of the rest of the free world, combined, on defense. We can afford to help these people. As fellow humans, it's our duty, our responsibility, our karmic burden to help them, with our tax dollars. Let those who profit from war pay for it.
If we have no responsibility to help the people of this world, we sure as shit have no right to kill them.
Think of the children that could be fed, healed, clothed, educated and sheltered for what one frikkin drone costs.
Guess you can't make a video game out of that, either.
As a Buddhist, I urge you to do something about sanitary water sources around the world.
What makes you think I'm not helping others around the world? I also work towards helping others by supporting candidates that share my convictions. One of those is that we reign in spending and research on devices, like drones, that are only used for killing people and divert those funds to more philanthropic, altrusistic pursuit and policy.
Just one more step away from causing folks to have troubling issues with empathy and blood splatter.
If the shoe was on the other foot, wouldn't Americans be upset and angry?
DUH.
Could that have prevented the destruction of entire cities?
I don’t want to promote any type of weapon here, but if military conflict is inevitable and world-peace is an illusion; the precision of the weapons we have at our disposal is something to be happy about.
The Germans already had their equivalent of drone strikes-- it was called the V2 rocket and they rained down on English cities and elsewhere in Europe, killing thousands of civilians.
And besides, many US drone strikes have hit their targets, sure-- striking children, weddings, etc. Yes the weapon is very precise, but what is the US military aiming at?
The assumption is that with precision weapons (which only ONE side has) means that only select strategic military locations or leadership positions would be targeted. Drones have not been used thus far in this fashion. War has never been about "targeting leadership" all rhetoric of "surgical strikes" notwithstanding.
I just thought that the use of drones should be judged in the proper context; the context of armed conflict.
Compared to the destruction of say, Dresden or Hiroshima, these drone-strikes are relatively civilized.
IF I understand how they work and what they can do, I think the technology of drones can be very useful in other ways.
Sure they can be used for war and spying, but they can also be used to survey wild fires, mudslides, or floods from a safe distance. They can be used to find lost people in wilderness areas or at sea. They can be used around active volcanoes or to map out melting ice floes, etc.
There is no reason to destroy them all and send all that $$ down the tubes- just re-purpose them!
We already have satellites in orbit that are doing just that, and with much greater precision.
When the Germans blitzed London, there wasn't much precision at all. When we dropped the A-bomb there wasn't any real precision. Although not perfect by any means, the drones are more precision-minded than in past military applications.
I also would point out that AL Queda figures have often used human shields in their living situations.
All history tells us is that up till now, world peace has never happened. History cannot foretell the future.
Perhaps one day world-wide peace will break out and remain. I wouldn't bet my jockey shorts on it.
Peace in a society of apes depends on clear power relations. When the dominant ape grows weak (or when its strength is underestimated) there will be trouble.
Take it up several notches, and you're no better than those with their fingers on the buttons.
If you can't have a decent discussion on topics without resorting to thinly-veiled insults, attacks or what are supposed to pass for clever retorts (just smart-ass, really) I'll start closing threads without warning.
Apart from that one, that is.....
It's human behavior (individual and collective) that tends towards patterns. This is actually a product of karma, btw.
History is merely a record of that behavior. Someone taking notes.
I suspect that that level of precision wouldn't matter to much if a person on the receiving end of a Hellfire missile, launched from a drone, was one of your children.
The thing is, it's not the drones. They're just mindless machines. They go where they're directed and do what the controllers command. It's those people who lack moral compass, who think absolutely nothing of killing innocent people in an utterly cowardly fashion. As MaryAnne pointed out, they could be used to help extinguish forest fires, but it's a lot easier to get funding to kill indiscriminately.