Predator Drones

[DGFone]

Still, they're basically the same thing, and for the purpose of this topic, I'd say it's sorta irrelevant.

No, it's quite relevant. The domestic use of Predator drones, I can understand. After all, if NASA can use F-18s, F-15s, etc.., all combat fighters, for aeronautical research, why can't our own police and other domestic offices use surveillance drones, as long as their use is done legally? After all, isn't a drone the best thing to send into a hurricane? And perhaps we can finally send something inside a tornado by deliberately flying into it, something a human pilot will never do.

But on the other hand, if it were Reaper drones that were domestically used - drones that are specifically designed to attack and kill people, then I would be worried.

Reaper versus Predator? The two look nearly identical, but in practice, they are completely different.

[Regulus]

Well, I see what you mean, but they were designed from the same prototype.

Really, my concern with the drones has nothing to do with anything that has already been mentioned here. My concern is that they're computers. They can be programmed.

It's no secret that the American government has been hacked into by other countries. Well, actually, the government tries to pretend it's a secret, but, you know...

The problem is, all it takes is a skilled hacker, and suddenly everything we have can be used against us.

If I had to bet, I'd say WWIII won't be fought with conventional weapons at all. We're entering a new era of warfare: cyber warfare. A blackout across the United States today would cause far more destruction than a hydrogen bomb. It would send us all the way back to the dark ages (pun intended).

+9000 for civilian use of drones, though.

[Azdgari]

Call me when you find a moderate way to deal with Islam and Islamism. Maybe in utopia every life is sacred and worth as much as any other, but not in this world. Besides, that area holds nothing but violence, extremism and authoritarianism. A cancer to Earth, a black page in the history of peace, a morally dehumanizing piece of garbage.

There are two ways of acchieving peace in the middle east.
1. We kill terrorists effectively.
2. We carpetbomb the whole area.

Yes, civilians die, but there is no other way. And waiting for another way to come by equals giving the cancer more time to spread. The whole area is full of whacko's who are not only willing to kill Obama or Geert Wilders or Kurt Westergaard. No, they would love to kill you and me too. Almost everyone in there has been brainwashed to believe a bunch of violence-promoting, transparent delusions and lies.

Our culture isn't just different from one that sends deaththreats to cartoonists. It's better.
Not all of them are brainwashed, but most of them are and that is the problem.

Isn't that a bit radical?


Also, could our dropping bombs on civilians maybe have something to do with their brainwashing?

[Azdgari]

The majority do not believe that. The average Palestinian is more concerned with providing for their family than killing Americans, the same way the average German was not a genocidal Jew-hater. That's what radicalism is: a minority. And when the everyman is dragged into it, it's rarely ideological. When your family is starving and your local Al Qaeda cell offers you some money to fire pot shots at an American base, is that radical idealism or people doing what they need to?

You do realize the separation between Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Palestinian/Afghani civilians, correct?

[SlayerOfLight]

Also, could our dropping bombs on civilians maybe have something to do with their brainwashing?

Actually when they aren't showing their true color, they often tend to play the victem themselves.

[DGFone]

The majority do not believe that. The average Palestinian is more concerned with providing for their family than killing Americans, the same way the average German was not a genocidal Jew-hater. That's what radicalism is: a minority. And when the everyman is dragged into it, it's rarely ideological. When your family is starving and your local Al Qaeda cell offers you some money to fire pot shots at an American base, is that radical idealism or people doing what they need to?

You do realize the separation between Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Palestinian/Afghani civilians, correct?

Watch "The Wave", based on a real life experiment that worked. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063669/
The majority in fact does believe that. It's not a coincidence that the muslim brotherhood is taking over Egypt and Libya now. People actually vote for this nonsense. Rich, poor, everyone. The taliban does not provide homes and neither does al-qaeda. This is radical idealism, and even the moderate version of this ideology is in a westen sense radical.

Watch that movie, read the study. The average German was in fact a radical jew-hater, Hitler turned them into jew haters, and this movie shows exactly how it works. It is a reconstruction of an experiment performed on a random group of people who were slowly being converted into nazi-like creatures without even realising it.

I normally don't agree with Woeler, but from the videos I've seen, even "normal" Palestinians and Middle Easterners somehow manage to blame America and other western nations on all their problems. They don't do it as a scapegoat. They do it because the only authority around keeps telling them that all their problems are caused by us.

And using the WWII example: If the regular German was not slowly converted into a Jew hater, how can entire cities, for that matter, an entire nation,
A: allow the concentration camps to exist,
B: support these camps, and,
C: When asked about them after the war, still say "We had no idea they existed" even if the camp was half a mile down the road from your house.

Same with the case with the Middle East now: the population is slowly being turned anti-western, when they can't even care less about what we do. But as long as they get food for saying "I hate Americans!", eventually, they'll even start believing it, unfortunately.

[Azdgari]

I refuse to condone acts of violence against civilians.

And I refuse to partake in (what I see as) the hypocrisy that is condemning them for having anti-western sentiment while we openly condemn their entire culture.

[Regulus]

I refuse to condone acts of violence against civilians.

And I refuse to partake in (what I see as) the hypocrisy that is condemning them for having anti-western sentiment while we openly condemn their entire culture.

I agree 110%. Regardless of whether or not the citizens of the middle eastern countries hate us, wiping them off the map isn't the right way to deal with it. It's the easiest way, I'll give it that, but if we went to war with every country that thinks about hating us, we'd become the very idea of the oppressive superpower of a nation that we, in theory, oppose.

It just isn't right.

Also, my dad has been to Afghanistan. I probably know, better than anyone else here, what it's like over there.

[DGFone]

And we don't need to. In fact, wiping off the population is what I call "treating the symptoms versus treating the cure." We don't need to wipe civilians off the map, and we shouldn't.

But the drones that are used in Afghanistan to attack terrorist and Taliban strongholds are not the same drones that are to be used here. They might look similarly enough, and have the same parent design, but the use is completely different.

In Afghanistan, the drones are mostly used to take lives. Preferably of those that are not civilians, while the drones here are meant to save lives. Preferably of civilians.

[Regulus]

We terrorize them just as much as they terrorize us. They have every reason to want us dead.