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[Helgoland]

Well, of course, but drone strikes in general work differently - and most (though not all by a long stretch) drone strikes executed by the US indeed do work differently, at least as far as I know. So the point still stands that drone strikes signify a great reduction in use of military force, even if they need to be reigned in further. They are an improvement. Not good under any sensibe definition of the word, but an improvement.

[smjjames]

Well, he WAS trying to reduce military involvement in the Middle East (or at least get troops out of there), but then ISIS happened.

[Sheb]

Do they work differently? AFAIK, most of the results are classified, and the US just decided that any male of military age was a militant unless proven otherwise...

[NullForceOmega]

We are not 'belligerently sticking our wang in people's faces'  I wish to hell that this attitude would die.  The United States is required by NATO and U.N. treaties to act as the enforcement arm of both organizations.  While I won't claim that we haven't taken independent action (Fuck you to death W.), the vast majority of American involvement in other nations politics is caused by some European asshole waving a treaty in our face and saying "Do what you promised our American friends", and then going on their national television and denouncing us to the public as terrorists and imperialists.  If you don't even grasp that then don't make asinine comments about our military being utilized as required.

[Helgoland]

Do they work differently? AFAIK, most of the results are classified, and the US just decided that any male of military age was a militant unless proven otherwise...

Well, if you claim anything else you're either calling the US military horrifically incompetent or essentially saying they're targeting civilians on purpose. It's pretty much the same situation as with Israeli military strikes, just that the elephant of anti-semitism is not in the room.

[smjjames]

We are not 'belligerently sticking our wang in people's faces'  I wish to hell that this attitude would die.  The United States is required by NATO and U.N. treaties to act as the enforcement arm of both organizations.  While I won't claim that we haven't taken independent action (Fuck you to death W.), the vast majority of American involvement in other nations politics is caused by some European asshole waving a treaty in our face and saying "Do what you promised our American friends", and then going on their national television and denouncing us to the public as terrorists and imperialists.  If you don't even grasp that then don't make asinine comments about our military being utilized as required.

That hasn't been true for the last decade and a half. True, there's Lybia, but that was a coalition in which someone else took the lead for once, or at least took a major portion of the burden.

Despite this being the American Politics thread, I'll leave it to our European forumites to argue back at you.

[SalmonGod]

I'm just going to leave this here, in case some people didn't get this far.

“You Never Die Twice,” a new report by Jennifer Gibson of Reprieve, a British-based human rights organization, settles the question quickly by showing that some men on the White House “kill list” of terror suspects to be taken out have “'died' as many as seven times."

Gibson adds, “We found 41 names of men who seemed to have achieved the impossible. This raises a stark question. With each failed attempt to assassinate a man on the kill list, who filled the body bag in his place?” In fact, Reprieve discovered that, in going after those 41 “targets” numerous times, an estimated 1,147 people were killed in Pakistan by drones. Typical was the present leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In two strikes against “him” over the years, according to Reprieve, 76 children and 29 adults have died, but not al-Zawahiri.

Do they work differently? AFAIK, most of the results are classified, and the US just decided that any male of military age was a militant unless proven otherwise...

And this is close.  The U.S. military definition of a "militant" was adjusted a few years ago to mean (don't remember the exact verbage but I know it's very close to this) "Any male in the vicinity of a U.S. military operation at or above the age of eligilibility for military service."  Obviously for the purpose of cutting down on the number of deaths that have to be reported as civilian deaths.

[RedKing]

We are not 'belligerently sticking our wang in people's faces'  I wish to hell that this attitude would die.  The United States is required by NATO and U.N. treaties to act as the enforcement arm of both organizations.  While I won't claim that we haven't taken independent action (Fuck you to death W.), the vast majority of American involvement in other nations politics is caused by some European asshole waving a treaty in our face and saying "Do what you promised our American friends", and then going on their national television and denouncing us to the public as terrorists and imperialists.  If you don't even grasp that then don't make asinine comments about our military being utilized as required.

But I think it's a fair question whether, as the largest and most influential member of both NATO and the UN Security Council, we use those organizations are cover for US foreign policy objectives.

If the US (as a member of NATO) persuades NATO to invoke its charter to send troops (Libya, for example), it's somewhat disingenuous to hide behind the NATO Charter and say "We don't really want to send bombers to Libya, we're just honoring our agreements."

[mainiac]

Not that I'm equating drone strikes with something as indiscriminate as gas, but there are parallels.

Look I'm not saying that your construction of words to convey an abstract idea is the same as the Pinochet regime signing death squad warrants but there are parallels.

Look I'm not saying that arguing against the drone strikes in certain situations is the same as Stalin's "nonaggression" supporting Hitler invading Poland and France but there are parallels.

Look I'm not saying that you applying a strawman to what I said in order to compare Obama to Mussolini is an example of Godwin's law but there are parallels.

Obama has decided to (in the crudest terms I care to think of) murder fewer brown people as collateral damage.  He has also decided to put fewer 'muricans near the targets.  As a result more brown people get killed by the drones however fewer brown people get murdered overall.

If you look at only a subset of the sample, murders by drone, you can say that it is rising.  However if you conclude from this that propensity to murder has risen then you are doing what is known statistically as "Lying through your teeth".  While I will not say if the propensity to murder brown people is higher or lower; it is obvious that treating at a idiosyncratic subsample as representative to the whole is wrong.  I dont care to make a moral judgement as whether it is better to be murdered by drone or murdered by bullet.  I simply care to make an objective judgement that the corpses are accumulating at a slower rate.

[NullForceOmega]

I was going to ragepost like a moron, but I won't.  Yes, during the W. Bush administration our military actions were definitely being driven by unbridled capitalism, this does not however erase the 60 years prior where these actions established themselves as the US M.O.  And the various engagements we were involved in prior to W. are still almost universally the result of foreign requests for support.

Redking:  That may be valid criticism, but we have no clear method for determining cause and effect beyond the information that is made available for public consumption.  That information clearly indicates a trend of foreign powers invoking treaties to get what they want.

[Zrk2]

But this is all irrelevant to the election though, because no American candidate campaigns on foreign policy; the electorate at large just doesn't give a fuck. This would probably fit better in the ISIS thread.

[nenjin]

We are not 'belligerently sticking our wang in people's faces'  I wish to hell that this attitude would die.  The United States is required by NATO and U.N. treaties to act as the enforcement arm of both organizations.  While I won't claim that we haven't taken independent action (Fuck you to death W.), the vast majority of American involvement in other nations politics is caused by some European asshole waving a treaty in our face and saying "Do what you promised our American friends", and then going on their national television and denouncing us to the public as terrorists and imperialists.

If other NATO members were half as active as we are in attacking militants where they live, I'd be more willing to agree with you. But striking into allied nations sometimes with their permission and blessing, sometimes without, how is that not throwing our war wang in people's faces? At one point Pakistan told us we were done with drone strikes, because of all the civilian casualties among the tribes we were causing, and we pretty much went "Heh, ok" and continued doing it.

If you don't even grasp that then don't make asinine comments about our military being utilized as required.

Yes. It's not our fault, we're just doing what our alliances require. That's about as asinine a position as it gets. You can't pull the trigger/push the button and then blame someone else for making you do it. That may have contributed to the decision, but to waive the US's responsibility for it, or the actions like I just stated above, is burying your head in the sand.

Redking:  That may be valid criticism, but we have no clear method for determining cause and effect beyond the information that is made available for public consumption.  That information clearly indicates a trend of foreign powers invoking treaties to get what they want.

"We can't prove anything. So in the absence of evidence, just categorically state it's our allies fault." Way to own up to today.

But this is all irrelevant to the election though, because no American candidate campaigns on foreign policy; the electorate at large just doesn't give a fuck. This would probably fit better in the ISIS thread.

Despite the Republicans bringing Netanyahu over here, and everyone beating their chest about being friends of Israel or not, supporting attacking Iran or not, this has nothing do with American foreign policy as it relates to elections?

[NullForceOmega]

It is not in the best interest of this thread to continue with this line of discussion, I have placed the last words I have to say on this specific subject below, and will cease to derail.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Why would the other allies attack militants when they can force the US to pay for it all with blood and cash while they get to call us the aggressor?  If they call us down and then don't like what we do maybe, just maybe, THEY SHOULD STOP CALLING US.  Yep, our boots on the ground, and once they get there every other fucking nation in the gods-be-fucked world should shut the fuck up.  Once we are involved you don't get to say shit, because the people up top made a decision and everyone has to live with it.  We can prove completely that these treaties have been invoked, and we can prove that it has been the directly stated cause for our involvement in most of our so-called imperialism.  We cannot in any way prove or disprove whether or not the US has exerted pressure to have said treaties invoked, so in the light of available evidence, we are left with very few possible explanations as to the cause.

[Zrk2]

But this is all irrelevant to the election though, because no American candidate campaigns on foreign policy; the electorate at large just doesn't give a fuck. This would probably fit better in the ISIS thread.

Despite the Republicans bringing Netanyahu over here, and everyone beating their chest about being friends of Israel or not, supporting attacking Iran or not, this has nothing do with American foreign policy as it relates to elections?

It has no impact in that both parties take the same stance, excluding some semantics.

[Bauglir]

But this is all irrelevant to the election though, because no American candidate campaigns on foreign policy; the electorate at large just doesn't give a fuck. This would probably fit better in the ISIS thread.

Despite the Republicans bringing Netanyahu over here, and everyone beating their chest about being friends of Israel or not, supporting attacking Iran or not, this has nothing do with American foreign policy as it relates to elections?

It has no impact in that both parties take the same stance, excluding some semantics.

OP checking in here. Pretty much any US political discussion, or reasonable tangents thereto, is fine. The alternative this far from the election is thread death, and there's no reason to have competing US politics threads.