When they get re-elected (as Congressmen are prone to do) they've voted on their own raise. The fact that it can take up to two years to go into effect is an inconvience, nothing more.
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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Since there is an 85%+ likely hood of re-election (and that is low probability over the years) for the House and 80%+ for the Senate, Cover pretty much has it right here.
Except the one mission that we love to use the drones for to violate an allied country's sovereignty and fire hellfire missiles at buildings when we aren't sure who is actually in them, then fire another series of Hellfire Missiles at first responders and then label all males killed in the strike "militants."
So long as that is ever an acceptable mission for drones the entire program needs to be dismantled.
I was saying more that Congress' reluctance to let them close Guantanamo is the only roadblock for it happening. They had everything in place to do it before Congress passed a law saying that they weren't allowed to do so.
But that is hardly the fault of the drones, now is it? After all, the drones themselves are simply machines, requiring the input of a human operator bound by the proper chain of command. If some aspects of the program feel distasteful, then wouldn't it be the proper response be to institute stricter guidelines for mission criteria, rather than remove the entire capability from use in the fight?
Given the extensive pledges by Pakistan to combat terrorism, and the lackluster implementation of those pledges despite reportedly extensive presence and freedom of action of al-Qaida and Taliban within their borders, some things need to get done in Pakistan to improve the odds in Afghanistan. If the Pakistanis themselves are either unable or unwilling, the Coalition may be faced with an unpleasant strategic imperative. Drones represent a rather low-key, low-cost way of doing it, with the alternative methods (manned platforms) being more intrusive and costly. One can debate the wisdom of the entire Afghanistan operation, but as long as the Coalition is invested in the country, a case can be made for the necessity of dealing with enemy safe havens across the border in Pakistan.
And I assume removing that roadblock requires the co-operation of the Congress. If such co-operation cannot be gained at this point, then there seem to be few if any alternatives to Guantanamo for the time being.
If the previously cited poll is to be believed, there appears little domestic political imperative for the US administration to get rid of the facility, given that even the democratic party base does not insist upon it. Abroad, the perceptions of the public may be negative, but in the foreign policy calculations of other state actors, such human rights issues pale in comparison to other factors at play when dealing with a state with the power and influence of the United States. Other powerful nations like Russia and China are decried as having much more extensive and widely reported human rights abuses, yet the negative consequences, arising from such perceptions, to their foreign relations environment are debatable, to say the least. The actual impact of such things is very small, and the voting public in both the United States and elsewhere in the world is in the habit of forgetting things anyway. If a few international human rights organisations make a fuss, what does that really matter?
I must say that I am uncertain as to why civilian trials should be offered to all the Guantanamo inmates. Some of them may be entitled to such, and should be provided with them. But why give such trials even to the rest who can be processed through the military tribunals?
No because then the signature strikes, the double taps and the wholesale marking of militants will go on while people hem and haw and drag their feet in making acceptable guidelines.
Once those guidelines are in effect then we can start up a reasonable drone strikes can restart. But until those guidelines are viewable by all American citizens no the Drone program is unacceptable.
How is it working out for us so far?
Oh right deaths in Afghanistan are up by nearly double what they were under Bush.
It's not only a stupid policy it also doesn't work as a strategy.
http://icasualties.org/oef/
I think we're largely agreed on the stupidity of Congress's opposition to Guantanmo closin.
But I do need to address the part about the military tribunals.
They are a farce. An absolute farce. We have the military spying on the defendants and their lawyers we have CIA redacting live testimony during the trial and the judge having to go back and release the full testimony and ask the CIA to stop that. And to top it off they don't even have the veneer of legitimacy.
If we gave them Federal trials the prosecutors and judges would be experienced in prosecuting these kinds of crimes they wouldn't need to spy on the defense to gain an edge, there wouldn't be as many bizarre things happening like the CIA live redacting without the knowledge of the judge and the entire thing would have brand new legitimacy.
Dubyamn basically sums it up: There is not even a thin veneer of legitimacy about the military tribunals and their impartiality. The entire point is to use a set of lower standards against people they couldn't convict with the current amount of evidence they possess, while protecting the secrets of the alphabet soup, who are loathe to be held accountable for their actions.
Sham trials and kangaroo courts are things other countries do. We're supposed to be better than this and we used to be.
Sham trials and kangaroo courts are things other countries do. We're supposed to be better than this and we used to be.
The reasons why I don't oppose those as vehemently are two fold
1. Deaths of innocents
Seal Missions and CIA missions are targeted they know who they are going after and take steps to reduce or at least isolate casualties. If a seal or CIA mission were to bomb a house because they thought that terrorists might be there and then planted a second bomb to deal with first responders or people who went in to save those who were in the room I would oppose those strikes as well.
2.Number of strikes
There were 283 drone strikes under Obama killing a minimum of 1400 people in Pakistan alone. I don't know how many Seal or CIA raids there were in the same time period due to the covert nature of them but I doubt that the raids that happened happened or even would have happened would even be 1/10th of that number without drones.
The lack of oversight is unforgivable, the collateral damage is unacceptable and the callous nature of the strikes are beyond damning. Top to bottom the drone program as it has been used is unacceptable.
And hell I haven't even gotten into the fact that the Obama Administration has somehow justified the killing of US citizens by drone without trial in countries that are our allies. Which only makes it worse.
There are ways and means for a private citizen to voice their concerns to their elected representatives, and the civilian leadership is naturally entitled to give orders to the military. That being said, history appears to indicate that politicians micro-managing military campaigns has rarely resulted in favorable outcomes on the ground. Insisting on stricter guidelines for drone use seems reasonable, but requiring the military to subordinate strategic decisions not to normal civilian leadership review but to the approval of the general friggin' public strikes me as rather imprudent, from a military point of view. If one thinks that the political establishment never gets anything done, then imagine how things will be if every Tom Dick and Harry gets a say ("Okay, these guidelines seem acceptable." "What? No! They can do X Y and Z! Outrageous! No drone strikes until these guidelines are acceptable!").
I'd say it is probably better and certainly more efficient to leave these things to the people whose job it is to figure them out. The individual citizen can write letters to Congressmen, march in protests, and vote accordingly.
It seems you are measuring strategic success or failure by the number of friendly casualties, and claim that drone attacks are responsible for the increase in losses. I would challenge these assumptions.
Force protection always matters, of course, but that consideration has to be tempered with the needs to actually prosecute the campaign. The level of casualties we are seeing appears commesurate with the tempo of operations in Afghanistan, which for the insurgency are partly facilitated by safe training, assembly and supply areas across the border in Pakistan. The need to challenge insurgent control of these areas and to interdict their movements appears well-founded; if you wish to contest this, then I can go a bit into the conventional military rationale for this need, for regular military operations in general and counter-insurgency ops in particular. You don't want to do that with drones because of such reasons as you may have, fine, but you're going to have to do it with something. And every other method also has their drawbacks.
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/1230_Report_final.pdf
Are they, actually? I agree that the military tribunals do not fulfill the requirements of a civilian court, but then, they don't need to. The military tribunals seem to be mostly constituted accordingly and follow due process, as it applies to them. If the inmates at Guantanamo feel they have been wrongly imprisoned, then they have access to habeas review in a civilian federal court. You can of course grant the inmates more rights than they are entitled to by shipping them all to the continent and putting them on trial in civilian courts, I imagine that is your right. But the main reason I can think of why it would be in your interests to do that is perception management, not any legal necessity.
Currently the drone program is under the command of the CIA a civilian branch of government and each stirke is personally approved by President Obama a civilian so this point is rather useless. And I'm not demanding that they give me yes or no approval of all operations what I want is a set of rules governing when they can use drones and when they can't same way that our civilian government used to not allow torture.
We have the right to demand that the military upholds a certain level of acceptable behavior.
Also might be worthwhile to point out that Congress is actually demanding to have oversight of the drone program something that they haven't ever had.
Where exactly did I claim that drone strikes were increasing the casualties? I said that the drone program is not effective in protecting American forces nothing more.
And it isn't attacks hit their peak in 2010 and decreased sharply in 2011 but remained stable in 2012. These aren't the signs of a war we are winning. It's a stale mate.
Add into that our agreement to leave in 2014 the fact that the current Afghanistan government is illegitimate and only survives because we allow it and... the situation is bleak and our use of drones hasn't improved it at all.
Except the entire point of the military tribunals was to manage perception. Do you really not remember why Bush started the Military tribunals? They were instituted because the American people and international community demanded that the people in Gauntanamo get trials before we locked them up for life.
That's the reason why Bush started up the kangaroo courts. The entire point of them is to manage perception and make it appear as though America was still a land of justice an due process. They have failed utterly at this. They are a disgrace to America and should be shut down.
And they can be practically today without undue risk or costs.
Hmm?
I'm not sure that is entirely accurate.
As I understand, drone strikes are primarily conducted by three agencies: the CIA (intelligence), Joint Special Operations Command (military), and the U.S. Air Force (military). Currently, the CIA has the lead in Pakistan, the Air Force in Afghanistan, and JSOC in Somalia. Yemen is both CIA and JSOC, they are running parallel campaigns there. The upcoming operations in Mali in support of the French seem USAF. Libya was also USAF.
I assume the moratorium on drone strikes pending revision of mission guidelines that you are calling for applies to all drone operators. If so, I think my point might stand.
Am I correct in understanding that you just wish to see the guidelines, but are completely satisfied with the relevant government bodies drawing them up, approving them, implementing them, and providing oversight? But that you feel that, until all interested citizens have had the opportunity to view those guidelines (made public), drone strikes should be banned?
More transparency is good, within limits. Though I think the administration's position is that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists gives the President sufficient legal grounds to conduct operations, including drone strikes. Though I imagine Congress has the authority to revise that resolution if they feel there is an additional need for more oversight.
[1] It is possible I may have misuderstood your point. But I think you did claim that drone strikes were a failed strategy, as coalition casualties have gone up. My main point was that simply looking at friendly casualty figures is either a poor metric or a very insufficient one to evaluate the effectiveness of military strategy. Force protection is not the only priority in war. But if you agree that something needs to be done about insurgent safe areas in Pakistan, then I think we agree on the point.
[2] You won't catch me arguing for victory in Afghanistan (well, you might, but it is not a position I 100% hold IRL). As I think I previously mentioned, the wisdom of the entire Afghanistan operation can be debated, but now that you went and stayed there, you are invested in the outcome. As you've announced a date for your withdrawal, pretty much the only thing is to do what can be done to improve the odds for the Afghan government for the time after you leave. That is what the Coalition is currently doing. Too early to tell with Iraq, but there are doubts as to how well that's going to turn out for you in the end.
[3] Agree with the Afghan government. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, they continued with economic and military assistance to the Najibullah regime. With that assistance, the government actually did well enough. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and the aid was discontinued. The Afghan government fell three months later.
Disagree with your assesment of the impact of the drone strikes, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
I understand the decision to hold military tribunals rested upon the military order of November, 2001, and subsequent developments were largely the result of Supreme Court decisions. I'm sure perceptions management played a part in the affair, but after the Supreme Court stepped in, there was also a legal necessity for reform. Currently there seems to be no such legal necessity at play, but rather it is all just shield-polishing.
Woohoo! According to the Atlantic, Wisconsin is the state who will be least hardest hit by the sequester!
So the CIA only conducts most of the strikes in allied countries. Terribly sorry about my very erroneous statement.
And yes all drone strikes would stop until a reliable system can be put into place. I see no reason why JSOC should be trusted anymore than CIA to kill people in a house and then fire on the first responders.
Yes we have the right to know how the CIA or the military selects people to kill in allied countries.
If they couldn't then there would be very little point to them.
I'll tell you how it will go. Terribly.
Currently America spends more than the entire GDP of Afghanistan on the Afghani military and have been doing so for many years. With the results we see right now. Afghanistan is a failure and there is no real way of fixing the myriad of failures that we have left there.
Well enough? They were in a state of constant civil war which they were losing. Even had the soviet union not fallen they were still about to lose for good.
Disagree all you like the facts are that the increase in drone strikes hasn't produced an improvement in a single metric. Allied casualties remained the same, enemy attacks stayed the same, civilians deaths stayed the same. You show me a single metric that has improved and then you have some leg to balance your argument on.
You are wrong the argument from the Bush administration was that since they weren't combatants under the Geneva convention we were well within our rights to hold them without trial for as long as well damn well liked. The only reason why he started up the tribunals was because the American people demanded it.
GasBandit
Staff member
Bob Woodward (who was one of the reporters who helped blow the lid off Watergate, for the kids at home) makes implicit comparison of Obama to Nixon, White House makes implicit threat to Woodward. The circus is getting entertaining.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yep. Budgets never get smaller. They just get 5% increases instead of 10% increases and scream about how draconian the drastic cuts are. So better not let that aircraft carrier sail, cause we ain't got no money cuz congress lowered our increase!
What's with the snark? You got called on bad info. It happens, no big deal. So far this has been a pleasant enough and civil enough conversation. I'd prefer if we could keep it that way.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I believe the legal basis and operational impact of those guidelines would revolve more around what is being done (extrajudicial killing and collateral damage), rather than where it is being done (coutries that are 'friendly', 'neutral', or 'unfriendly'). Countries with which the US is engaged in a military conflict are a different matter, of course.
I find it quite reasonable to insist on stricter guidelines, and wanting public access to those guidelines (insofar as military and intelligence confidentiality reasons permit) seems fair enough. But to insist on a complete freeze on drone strikes, in a situation where the United States is engaged in major military operations against hostile entities, for the benefit of simply satisfying a public want for information on a matter over which they possess no say except the power of voting in elections, and a matter the proper oversight of which is the province of appropriate bodies of government... To me, that seems unnecessary, unhelpful, and even dangerous.
As the links showed, the chairmen of both the House and the Senate intelligence committees have come forward and stated that there is proper oversight of drone strikes, and assured that the procedures are adequate and collateral damage not excessive. Administration officials have presented them with the case for how these strikes are in accordance with US law. The meetings of these committees are confidential, for obvious reasons.
Apparently you don't trust those assurances, and wish to see for yourself. But those guys are the people who are supposed to oversee CIA operations (I think JCOS and USAF operations, as part of the military, might be the responsibility of the armed services committees). I must say that if the public feels they can't trust the people who are supposed to oversee the intelligence service or the military to do a proper job, then there might be bigger problems.
Perhaps, and it will be South Vietnam 1975 again. Or perhaps you can weaken Al-Qaeda and the Taleban sufficiently, and build enough local capacity, to give their operations a decent chance. In retrospect, I feel it is safe to say that staking credibility on a nation building operation in the area was a bad move. And calling in your allies to expend blood and treasure on your behalf for more than a decade in an operation which may now fail makes it a good bit worse, from the point of view of future US foreign policy. So you do what you can.
Or not, depends on your government. But currently they seem to be doing it.
On US assistance to the Afghan military, could I see your source? My info extends only up to 2010, but those figures do not seem to support your claim unless some dramatic changes have taken place - DOD Afghan Security Forces Fund USD 9.2 billion, Afghan GDP USD 19.7 billion.
Yes, well enough. Afghanistan had been in a civil war since 1978, and the Soviet departure didn't naturally change that. But the large number of weapons they left behind for the government, particularly the air assets, as well as large amounts of economic and military assistance, allowed them to do well enough in the fighting. The US gave the Afghan government three to six months after the Soviets left, and the government was still holding on three years later. They weren't exactly loosing. Not until soviet aid was cut off at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which, along with the collapse of trade with the Soviet Union, caused an economic crisis, and virtually grounded the Afghan Air Force through lack of fuel. A major government General saw the shift in the wind, and defected with his troops to the Mujahideen (many government officers and officials changed allegiances after the soviet support vanished), which spelled the end for the Najibullah regime.
If Soviet aid would have continued (in the form of Russian aid), the government would likely have held on for years. If, for some reason, US, Pakistani and Chinese aid to the Mujahideen had been cut, the government forces might have won.
Heh. Alright, I'll give you a couple.
Again at the risk of stating the obvious, the question has two parts. One, what advantages have come out of those attack missions, and two, why use drones to carry them out?
The second part is pretty simple. Drones are tools with a certain set of capabilities. I'm sure many of the strikes could have been carried out with jet aircraft, helicopter gunships, cruise missiles, Special Forces teams, or a host of other assets, all with their own good and bad points. I could well speculate why they went with drones, but I'm content to have the professionals making the choice on what is the most appropriate asset to use.
Of the first one, here are a few positives. Weakening the al-Qaeda chain of command through eliminating senior commanders, inflicting personnel losses faster than can be replaced, forcing them to consider evacuating border areas.
Much of the information was gathered from documents seized in the 2011 raid which killed Osama bin Laden. The White House has released a few of them, can be found here.
Let's look at the dates. On Sep 11th 2001, the attack on the WTC was made. On Sep 14th, the AUMF was passed in Congress, authorising President Bush to engage in military action against terrorists. Operation Enduring Freedom began on Oct 7th. On Nov 13th, the order I cited above for the establishment of military tribunals was issued by Bush. The next big thing in terms of rights and treatment for the inmates came in 2004 after the Supreme Court decisions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush, when the inmates were found to possess the right of a habeas hearing in Federal Court.
Now, as the question is about public opinion forcing Bush to abandon policies of indefinite detention and set up military tribunals, I imagine we are concerned with the timeframe between Sep 14th and Nov 13th, 2001. My googling hasn't been able to determine the role of public demands in this timeframe. If you have sources that indicate the decision to set up the tribunals was indeed due to public pressure, I'd gladly take a look at them.
That may be the first thing Rand Paul has said that I 100% agree with him on, idea and particulars.
GasBandit
Staff member
What, you mean the kind of woman who can rise high enough to be a CEO is EXACTLY like the kind of man who can? This revelation is amazing. WE MUST TELL THE PEOPLE!
I'm wondering if that op-ed is serious or just trolling. Because you'd have to be a bit dense to think that most of the visible criticism of Mayer and Sandberg is because they're women, as opposed to being rich people of privilege whose financial position allows them solutions to daily problems that other people don't have access to.
You'd also have to be a bit silly to think that the criticisms against them are in any ways equal in scope. People criticized Sandberg because her book is purportedly written from a perspective of privilege, i.e. things that are more easily done the more financially stable you are. This is a fairly mild criticism, and no one is really affected by it, since anyone can choose to buy a book and make what they will out of it.
The criticism of Mayer's decisions re: Yahoo working rules are under much greater amounts of criticism and for good reason: it expressly takes away freedoms in an industry that typically gives workers that level of freedom to boost productivity, which means that the talent that Yahoo needs to regain any kind of initiative won't go to Yahoo.
You'd also have to be a bit silly to think that the criticisms against them are in any ways equal in scope. People criticized Sandberg because her book is purportedly written from a perspective of privilege, i.e. things that are more easily done the more financially stable you are. This is a fairly mild criticism, and no one is really affected by it, since anyone can choose to buy a book and make what they will out of it.
The criticism of Mayer's decisions re: Yahoo working rules are under much greater amounts of criticism and for good reason: it expressly takes away freedoms in an industry that typically gives workers that level of freedom to boost productivity, which means that the talent that Yahoo needs to regain any kind of initiative won't go to Yahoo.
Or maybe they don't need the intranet. Who knows? If someone's genuinely not getting their work done, then get rid of them. Yahoo isn't unionized.
The point is that it's not a competitive move in that industry and some of her stated reasons are literally about how hard she works. That's great for her, but her job function is not the same as anyone else's, her financial position is not the same as anyone else's, her coming to work in her CEO office with her personal assistants is not the same as chaining someone to a cubicle, and all it's going to breed is resentment.
Most of those guns are going to cash-strapped state law enforcement agencies, that are out gunned. Our criminal organizations are armed for bear.
Actually, it seems like most of the reports on the MRAPS are wrong - they're going to the USMC, not DHS.
The report being passed around about them going to the DHS all seem to go back to a survivalist blog.
The report being passed around about them going to the DHS all seem to go back to a survivalist blog.
To be fair as is humanly possible to the survivalists, it could be that they're going to the DHS anyways, they're just being "hidden" by paperwork going to the USMC, but aside from the whole "no evidence" thing, and the realization that for the USMC that's not actually that many armored vehicles, it's not like any branch of the US government has ever been shy showing off their toys.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yet the left is perfectly happy with rich public sector women who toe the line. Or pretty much anybody else who is an apparatchik, no matter what else they do. Fact of the matter is, these aren't the "right kind" of women. And there's nothing they hate more than a minority off the reservation.
You mean, leftists prefer people who are left-wing. Shocking observation. Mind blown and all that shit.
GasBandit
Staff member
Heh, in the same way Omar Serushago preferred Hutus.
Considering it's the Right Wing that is currently trying to weed out the impure, I think that applies to them a bit more.