Should the US compensate civilian casualties of drones?

[God Kefka]

wtf? How is bombing people who are mostly related to terrorists encouraging terrorism?

How is making up stuff supposed to be an argument?

Oh so now USA just bombs random people for the lolz eh?

Wow some people have such grave misconceptions...

[Vetok]

You know this is really simple; A lot of the people who have been killed are not members of these terrorist groups, because surprisingly, accidents do happen in military situations.



Come on, it's not hard. You fly a drone over a village where some intel says there may be terrorists, you see someone suspicious, fire the Hellfire and blow them to kingdom come.

Guess what? You just atomised a shepherd!

Now, if you don't even apologise to the family and offer them compensation, what do you think they're doing to do? If the choice is between sitting back and doing nothing, or someone like say, an Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula member comes up to them and offers the chance to become a suicide bomber against the murdering foreign devils and make them pay in blood for their crimes, what do you think they'll do?

Is a pay off really enough to stop this or is this new aq recruit simply going to use the money to pay for new kicks (shoes) before heading off terrorist boot camp? If they are going to be radicalized anyway isee no reason to pay, if not then perhaps this makes good policy sense. :)

Nobody said a payoff does compensate for having a loved one get blown to tiny pieces. But showing a bit of willing by at least offering it is the US holding out that olive branch. Now, unless you're someone who thinks that it's better to completely butcher thousands just to get at the bad ones, the benefit of not looking like murdering, evil crusaders should be obvious.

[L Ron Cupboard]

How is making up stuff supposed to be an argument?

Oh so now USA just bombs random people for the lolz eh?

Wow some people have such grave misconceptions...

So can you prove they are related to terrorists or not?

[God Kefka]

Oh so now USA just bombs random people for the lolz eh?

Wow some people have such grave misconceptions...

So can you prove they are related to terrorists or not?

the CIA can...

Classified... out of our hands. Gotta trust the US government

USA wouldn't bomb people just for the lolz

[Gothmogs]

So can you prove they are related to terrorists or not?

the CIA can...

Classified... out of our hands. Gotta trust the US government

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/pakistan-civilian-casualties-drone-strikes_n_3634668.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/leaked_report_shows_high_civilian_death_toll_from_cia_drone_strikes/

[L Ron Cupboard]

So can you prove they are related to terrorists or not?

the CIA can...

Oh no they don't.

[Llamalandia]

Is a pay off really enough to stop this or is this new aq recruit simply going to use the money to pay for new kicks (shoes) before heading off terrorist boot camp? If they are going to be radicalized anyway isee no reason to pay, if not then perhaps this makes good policy sense. :)

Nobody said a payoff does compensate for having a loved one get blown to tiny pieces. But showing a bit of willing by at least offering it is the US holding out that olive branch. Now, unless you're someone who thinks that it's better to completely butcher thousands just to get at the bad ones, the benefit of not looking like murdering, evil crusaders should be obvious.

Well thats the great thing bout drones, the collateral damage is orders of magnitude smaller than it would be with more conventional weaponry. That said, my question was do we really believe that the money won't be misappropriate by those who have a clear motive for revenge, its just something I'm not sure about, but it seems if the answer is yes it will prevent radicalization of victims, then sure a payout may be worth considering, if not then all we are doing is giving money to radicals to help them further their agenda against (even if we are the initial impetus for their radicalization). It's just like how we help supply the mujahadeen to fight the soviets in the 80s and are now having some of the very supplies and training we gave afghans then used against now in the war on terror. Just seems we need to consider longitudinal implications of any compensation policy and not base on knee-jerk moral reactions.

[Vetok]

You know this is really simple; A lot of the people who have been killed are not members of these terrorist groups, because surprisingly, accidents do happen in military situations.



Come on, it's not hard. You fly a drone over a village where some intel says there may be terrorists, you see someone suspicious, fire the Hellfire and blow them to kingdom come.

Guess what? You just atomised a shepherd!

Now, if you don't even apologise to the family and offer them compensation, what do you think they're doing to do? If the choice is between sitting back and doing nothing, or someone like say, an Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula member comes up to them and offers the chance to become a suicide bomber against the murdering foreign devils and make them pay in blood for their crimes, what do you think they'll do?

You are ignoring most of the successful strikes against terrorists/people aiding terrorists and overwhelmingly focusing on a few outlier accidents. You think the USA is so incompetent it is overwhelmingly bombing innocent civilians?

The drone strikes save US soldiers' lives and they are on the whole a good way to hit terrorists without advance warning.

Compensating people is stupid... this is war... civilians die. It's expensive enough for the USA without this compensation culture. We'll compensate them when the terrorists decide to compensate us for the US civilians THEY fucking kill...

Hold the fuck up here. I've never said once it's not an effective tactic. It is, overwhelmingly so. But paying out compensation to the FEW innocent victims, who you are argue are in a tiny minority, should by rights be dirt-cheap change for the United States.

The average condolence payout for a death or injury in Afghanistan is $5000. The cost of a Hellfire anti-tank guided missile is $65,000.

And no, most drone strikes are being carried out in countries where the US does not have any forces on ACTIVE OPERATIONS, so the 'saving American soldiers before terrorists lives!' sadly doesn't quite cut it.

And guess what? The US military has authorised these payments since 2005, and condolence payments do have a history in warfare throughout the ages, so no, no 'compensation culture' claim for you.

Nobody said a payoff does compensate for having a loved one get blown to tiny pieces. But showing a bit of willing by at least offering it is the US holding out that olive branch. Now, unless you're someone who thinks that it's better to completely butcher thousands just to get at the bad ones, the benefit of not looking like murdering, evil crusaders should be obvious.

Well thats the great thing bout drones, the collateral damage is orders of magnitude smaller than it would be with more conventional weaponry. That said, my question was do we really believe that the money won't be misappropriate by those who have a clear motive for revenge, its just something I'm not sure about, but it seems if the answer is yes it will prevent radicalization of victims, then sure a payout may be worth considering, if not then all we are doing is giving money to radicals to help them further their agenda against (even if we are the initial impetus for their radicalization). It's just like how we help supply the mujahadeen to fight the soviets in the 80s and are now having some of the very supplies and training we gave afghans then used against now in the war on terror. Just seems we need to consider longitudinal implications of any compensation policy and not base on knee-jerk moral reactions.

It's not just a 'moral-based' reaction. It is grounded in realpolitik. "I've inconvenienced these people. I don't want to give them a cause to join my opponents because I did something to them, so I'll fiscally compensate them as a sign of good faith." And of course you have to be careful to make sure the money doesn't go to radicals, but we could make the same argument for foreign aid payments that nearly every government arranges.

That's why you have the intelligence services keep a close eye on the victim's families just to make sure they're not going off the rails, if you know what I mean.

[Llamalandia]

How is making up stuff supposed to be an argument?

Oh so now USA just bombs random people for the lolz eh?

Wow some people have such grave misconceptions...

Yes, I believe that program is actually under the strategic office of lulz, run by general grumpy cat.

[Llamalandia]

You are ignoring most of the successful strikes against terrorists/people aiding terrorists and overwhelmingly focusing on a few outlier accidents. You think the USA is so incompetent it is overwhelmingly bombing innocent civilians?

The drone strikes save US soldiers' lives and they are on the whole a good way to hit terrorists without advance warning.

Compensating people is stupid... this is war... civilians die. It's expensive enough for the USA without this compensation culture. We'll compensate them when the terrorists decide to compensate us for the US civilians THEY fucking kill...

Hold the fuck up here. I've never said once it's not an effective tactic. It is, overwhelmingly so. But paying out compensation to the FEW innocent victims, who you are argue are in a tiny minority, should by rights be dirt-cheap change for the United States.

The average condolence payout for a death or injury in Afghanistan is $5000. The cost of a Hellfire anti-tank guided missile is $65,000.

And no, most drone strikes are being carried out in countries where the US does not have any forces on ACTIVE OPERATIONS, so the 'saving American soldiers before terrorists lives!' sadly doesn't quite cut it.

And guess what? The US military has authorised these payments since 2005, and condolence payments do have a history in warfare throughout the ages, so no, no 'compensation culture' claim for you.

I'm not sure it's fair to say most, certainly a sizable chunk are occurring outside areas with congressionally approved use of force resolutions (i.e. afghanistan) but many of those have the approval of the local govts (i.e. yemen) and frankly given that technically this is all still classified (at least the cia component) I think it's difficult to support your contention given the limited evidence available.

I will say and this may seem callous but in war it's usually the losers that pay to compensate the winners (though post ww2 reconstruction did see a lot funds go to the bad guys) and not the other way around.

Also curious to know if we compensated any victims of my lai in vietnam?

[Vetok]

Hold the fuck up here. I've never said once it's not an effective tactic. It is, overwhelmingly so. But paying out compensation to the FEW innocent victims, who you are argue are in a tiny minority, should by rights be dirt-cheap change for the United States.

The average condolence payout for a death or injury in Afghanistan is $5000. The cost of a Hellfire anti-tank guided missile is $65,000.

And no, most drone strikes are being carried out in countries where the US does not have any forces on ACTIVE OPERATIONS, so the 'saving American soldiers before terrorists lives!' sadly doesn't quite cut it.

And guess what? The US military has authorised these payments since 2005, and condolence payments do have a history in warfare throughout the ages, so no, no 'compensation culture' claim for you.

I'm not sure it's fair to say most, certainly a sizable chunk are occurring outside areas with congressionally approved use of force resolutions (i.e. afghanistan) but many of those have the approval of the local govts (i.e. yemen) and frankly given that technically this is all still classified (at least the cia component) I think it's difficult to support your contention given the limited evidence available.

I will say and this may seem callous but in war it's usually the losers that pay to compensate the winners (though post ww2 reconstruction did see a lot funds go to the bad guys) and not the other way around.

Also curious to know if we compensated any victims of my lai in vietnam?

Out of eight named countries known to have US drone attacks/overflights, only one has US soldiers actually stationed there to participate in combat operations. Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, Somalia, Libya, Iran; They might have government consent, but there are no American soldiers stationed in those countries for the purposes of conducting active combat operations. (In the case of Libya and Iran, these are just overflights, and the Iraqi drone strikes stopped in 2011.)

That still leaves four countries where there are no US forces doing anything beyond assisting the locals with training and instruction, so the 'saving American soldiers lives!' argument really doesn't hold water there.

That is true. On the other hand, if we took that to the logical conclusion, the USA would be billing the families for the cost of the ATGM's used!

As for My Lai, I have no idea. I believe some may have been offered, but I cannot be sure. I do heartily recommend Bernd Greiner's 'War Without Fronts' if you're interested in the story of US warcrimes in the Vietnam War.

Also, if you look back to the post of mine you've quoted, I edited a bit in to reply to your previous post.

[Imperializt Russia]

The argument "saving soldiers lives" presumably comes from the fact that utilising drone strikes in Pakistan means that the US doesn't need to invade. The Pakistanis won't police their own tribal areas, and the US can't put boots on the ground to do it for them.

Intermediary solution, drone attack.

[Breadknife]

Imagine how many civies would be killed if we didn't have precision drones to use and were still relying on carpet bombing the heck outta terror suspects, so at least the collateral damage is small enough to make reparations at least feasible wrt drone strikes.

I think there's an uncomfortable amount of mythology about "surgical" strikes. At least for the people who care about these things.

Prior to (and even after) laser-guided bombs and drone surveillance and the like, relatively imprecise bombing runs (and artilliary/mortar shots) were made on targets where that imprecision didn't matter too much because the 'room for error' was soaked up by: a) sending in a whole load of munitions so that you're bound to hit what you want to hit, and b) you were pretty sure that the 'misses' were going to do no more collatoral damage than you were happy to do. Note, this latter does not mean no collateral damage, but it should have been weighed up how 'valuable' the civilian population or even your own forces were, that you touched on (especially in the classic "lay down fire on our own position, goddamnit!" demand from the unit in a short-range firefight and in a whole lotta trouble already).

In many ways, people tended to understand when such tactics caused too much friendly/allied/civilian casualties. (Not necessarily like, of course...) And especially so when it came to US forces, by somewhat universal anecdotal evidence.


Now, of course, the US (and others, of course) has this fancy-schmancy system whereby they get a load of advantageous abilities that ensure greater accuracy. Their drones can hover around an area for a long time, thus they are almost always on station, not manned planes having to rush in from the sidelines on demand, assess the ground in a few short seconds (if that) and then release their weaponry. Because the drones are remotely piloted, the 'pilots' do not have to contend with the worry that they're going to be shot-down if they spend too long in the area. They can make greater use of laser-guidance than ever before to target a single warhead at a target and be pretty sure that it'll hit, rather than blanket the place with munitions. They now also should have unprecedented intelligence available to them, in that they can know that a given car is the current location of a transient and almost perpetually moving target for whom they'd have no chance of surgically striking (or otherwise) a mere decade ago.

Unfortunately, this makes the mistakes different. Before it'd be hitting a civilian target with your dumb bombs, due to unexpected wind-shear on the way down from a high-altitude bomber. Now you're hitting exactly the building you targetted, except that you'd mistaken a birthday party for a "meeting of the terrorist clans". Or the three blokes you got, out in the open, weren't people going off with spades to dig holes for IEDs, but farmers going off to do what farmers are supposed to do...

I know that (in interviews with drone 'pilots') the people at the back-office for these things have gained a lot of experience, these days. They get to know from the body-language (and knowing the area that they've been surveilling for a long time now, and what time of day it is) that those three blokes are likely to be farmers, etc... I know that there's almost certainly a whole checklist leading up to any "weapons loosed" event (which, with the benefit of no personal mortal danger, need not be abbreviated or rushed), and with such benefits I really see no problem with drones per se as being potentially less damaging to both the 'collatorals' and to the friendly men on the ground and in the air than any traditional form of warefare. Unfortunately, if you get into the mindset that it's easy to do, you do it a lot more. And if you do it a lot more, your mistakes show up a lot more.

Also "if all you have is a hammer..." syndrome. A drone on station is just so tempting to use, whereas the alternative (e.g. dropping in the SAS, who tend to be pretty good themselves at being surgical in such matters) needs prepping for and cannot be done now and of course puts at risk your own people (not that I'm sure an SAS person would mind, if it was for a good cause, but I wouldn't want to actually put words into these guys' mouths...). Add to that the tendency of over-reyling on Elint instead of Humint, that seems to have happened recently (again probably from a risk-averse strategy where it's 'safer for the guys on the ground' if there aren't so many guys on the ground), and the possibility of being spoofed by false reports...

[God Kefka]

Compensating victims will not save anyone/change anyone's mind who was retarded/insane enough to work for terrorists.

All it does it make anti-terrorist operations (what the drone strikes are for) even more expensive and restrict the USA's flexibility.

It's not in the USA's interest to raise their expenditures, and no one can force the USA to. And like I've said, the people helping terrorists or becoming terrorists or in danger of doing one of those two things are insane/retarded in the first place. No compensation money's gonna change their mind...

[Minarchist States]

Absolutely. For all civilian casualties, drone or otherwise.

And where would this compensation come from? Not my wallet or future investments, I hope.

It's not in the USA's interest to raise their expenditures, and no one can force the USA to. And like I've said, the people helping terrorists or becoming terrorists or in danger of doing one of those two things are insane/retarded in the first place. No compensation money's gonna change their mind...

Agreed 100%

[Llamalandia]

Imagine how many civies would be killed if we didn't have precision drones to use and were still relying on carpet bombing the heck outta terror suspects, so at least the collateral damage is small enough to make reparations at least feasible wrt drone strikes.

I think there's an uncomfortable amount of mythology about "surgical" strikes. At least for the people who care about these things.

Prior to (and even after) laser-guided bombs and drone surveillance and the like, relatively imprecise bombing runs (and artilliary/mortar shots) were made on targets where that imprecision didn't matter too much because the 'room for error' was soaked up by: a) sending in a whole load of munitions so that you're bound to hit what you want to hit, and b) you were pretty sure that the 'misses' were going to do no more collatoral damage than you were happy to do. Note, this latter does not mean no collateral damage, but it should have been weighed up how 'valuable' the civilian population or even your own forces were, that you touched on (especially in the classic "lay down fire on our own position, goddamnit!" demand from the unit in a short-range firefight and in a whole lotta trouble already).

In many ways, people tended to understand when such tactics caused too much friendly/allied/civilian casualties. (Not necessarily like, of course...) And especially so when it came to US forces, by somewhat universal anecdotal evidence.


Now, of course, the US (and others, of course) has this fancy-schmancy system whereby they get a load of advantageous abilities that ensure greater accuracy. Their drones can hover around an area for a long time, thus they are almost always on station, not manned planes having to rush in from the sidelines on demand, assess the ground in a few short seconds (if that) and then release their weaponry. Because the drones are remotely piloted, the 'pilots' do not have to contend with the worry that they're going to be shot-down if they spend too long in the area. They can make greater use of laser-guidance than ever before to target a single warhead at a target and be pretty sure that it'll hit, rather than blanket the place with munitions. They now also should have unprecedented intelligence available to them, in that they can know that a given car is the current location of a transient and almost perpetually moving target for whom they'd have no chance of surgically striking (or otherwise) a mere decade ago.

Unfortunately, this makes the mistakes different. Before it'd be hitting a civilian target with your dumb bombs, due to unexpected wind-shear on the way down from a high-altitude bomber. Now you're hitting exactly the building you targetted, except that you'd mistaken a birthday party for a "meeting of the terrorist clans". Or the three blokes you got, out in the open, weren't people going off with spades to dig holes for IEDs, but farmers going off to do what farmers are supposed to do...

I know that (in interviews with drone 'pilots') the people at the back-office for these things have gained a lot of experience, these days. They get to know from the body-language (and knowing the area that they've been surveilling for a long time now, and what time of day it is) that those three blokes are likely to be farmers, etc... I know that there's almost certainly a whole checklist leading up to any "weapons loosed" event (which, with the benefit of no personal mortal danger, need not be abbreviated or rushed), and with such benefits I really see no problem with drones per se as being potentially less damaging to both the 'collatorals' and to the friendly men on the ground and in the air than any traditional form of warefare. Unfortunately, if you get into the mindset that it's easy to do, you do it a lot more. And if you do it a lot more, your mistakes show up a lot more.

Also "if all you have is a hammer..." syndrome. A drone on station is just so tempting to use, whereas the alternative (e.g. dropping in the SAS, who tend to be pretty good themselves at being surgical in such matters) needs prepping for and cannot be done now and of course puts at risk your own people (not that I'm sure an SAS person would mind, if it was for a good cause, but I wouldn't want to actually put words into these guys' mouths...). Add to that the tendency of over-reyling on Elint instead of Humint, that seems to have happened recently (again probably from a risk-averse strategy where it's 'safer for the guys on the ground' if there aren't so many guys on the ground), and the possibility of being spoofed by false reports...

yes but unguided ordinance or dumb bombs when dropped on a target could also be prone to the same intelligence failure as drones so they are sort of doubly flawed vs drones wouldn't you say? It's like you plan to use a high altitude bomb strike to take out a suspected terrorist safe house, but whose to say your intel was correct in case for all you know you could still end up bombing birthday party anyway.

Yes there is the tendency to use the hammer (or perhaps nail gun at this point) on every problem, but that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes one solution really does work really well a heck of a lot of the time. That said, I have some qualms about drones, specifically potential loss of intel from droned terrorists.

[Hathradic States]

No, not unless they are American citizens.

[L Ron Cupboard]

Compensating victims will not save anyone/change anyone's mind who was retarded/insane enough to work for terrorists.

And nobody is saying that. The entire thread is about people killed or injured in drone strikes who are not legitimate targets. I am starting to doubt that you are old enough to be on NSG.

[Zottistan]

Absolutely. For all civilian casualties, drone or otherwise.

And where would this compensation come from? Not my wallet or future investments, I hope.

Taxpayer's wallet, where else?

Naturally, the amount of compensation wouldn't be immense. And if the families of the casualties weren't satisfied, then fuck 'em, they get nothing.

[God Kefka]

Compensating victims will not save anyone/change anyone's mind who was retarded/insane enough to work for terrorists.

And nobody is saying that. The entire thread is about people killed or injured in drone strikes who are not legitimate targets. I am starting to doubt that you are old enough to be on NSG.

USA should not ever compensate FOREIGNERS with US citizens' taxes.

If anything, save that money and use it to compensate our own soldiers/buy more drones.

[Breadknife]

yes but unguided ordinance or dumb bombs when dropped on a target could also be prone to the same intelligence failure as drones so they are sort of doubly flawed vs drones wouldn't you say? It's like you plan to use a high altitude bomb strike to take out a suspected terrorist safe house, but whose to say your intel was correct in case for all you know you could still end up bombing birthday party anyway.

The point is that you don't carpet-bomb, or subdue by a barage, a house. You call in your special forces or your regular ground-pounders to go in there and confront/whatever your target, and when you get your intel wrong you may have 'gone all the way' and demolition-charged the building, or perhaps your guys on the ground find the "Happy Birthday Mustaffah" banners hung up and double-check what they're doing. Even the most gung-ho men with guns (hopefully) aren't going to line up a set of 7-year-olds against a wall and riddle them with bullets, and besides they're probably on a retrieval mission (with lethal force permitted against armed guards) rather than an out-and-out assasination job.

I'm all for drones (when used properly), but you only really get one option in their (active, beyond surveillance) use, and that's to "send in the high explosive warhead". Which may actually be neater, if you find there's more value from just obliterating your target than going through the rigmarole of capturing them and having to follow due process which risks them gaining release (or just plain escaping) later on, and you aren't actually bothered about any information they have. So, yes, the hammer (or nailgun) may work wonders for the mission at hand. Except when it's misdirected, or badly-timed, and you end up with a lot of flak because of the collateral damage incurred (possibly without even taking out the intended target in the first place).

(Basically, until you've got a Terminator 'drone' able to walk in there asking "Are you Saheed Al-Connor?", with an aggression limiter applying towards all non-aggressive persons there, there's probably not going to be a best-of-both-worlds solution.)

Which is straying from the issue of compensation when things go wrong; about which I'm still as torn, for the reasons I originally posted.

edited 'cos I cna't speel.

[The Holy Therns]

Have I missed anything?

Oh, another long thread of God Kefka making utterly ridiculous assertions and abjectly refusing to source them. Nothing new, then.

[Great Kleomentia]

Of course.

[Vetok]

From the looks of it, everyone who's carried on arguing against compensating the relatively few innocent victims of the drone strikes is doing for 'NOT MAH MONIEZ, NUH-UH', and 'THOSE DAMNED FURRINERS'. If any of you could provide a reason why compensating families $5000 per corpse is more expensive than a single Hellfire missile at $65,000-$68,000, please, feel free.

[Imperializt Russia]

Air conditioning for US forces in Afghanistan a couple years ago was twenty-four billion dollars.

Suddenly, ~$15-20mn compensating the family of every drone victim, per corpse, sounds like nothing.
It's still money that has to be found somewhere, which will be difficult, but it's far from an impossibility.