*killing 14 Al-Qaeda leaders.*

Your figures are flawed csteele, for the deaths only refer to leaders,
not the many soldiers and hangers on to those leaders.

Next point, if the Taliban are silly enough to blow themselves up,
to achieve their goal of 72 virgins, well that is their problem, it
has little to do with the West.

But you can sleep easy. If you read up on what's coming with the
drone programme, they will be far more accurate, will be able
to follow many individuals at once, they will be able to target
indididuals, like never before.

Even Pakistan is now developing their own drone programme, to
deal with the Taliban and Al Queda. So they clearly must be impressed
with the results.

If all this prevents Al Queda and the Taliban from torturing
Afghans by trying to force their ideology down the peoples throats,
well that is all good news.

Dear Tom,

You said:

“The logic behind the treaty is that landmines are completely automated and kill indiscriminately. In contrast, remote control explosives, where there is a "person in the loop", are allowed by the landmines treaty. Armed UAVs similarly leave the decision to fire to a person, not a computer, removing many of the ethical and legal problems.”

Begs the question surely, solely based on the figures above about suicide bombing of military targets being far more discriminate than the drone campaign thus far in Pakistan, could we deem it a more ethical form of warfare?

I mean it is hard to imagine anyone being more 'in the loop' than a suicide bomber nor anyone less removed from the consequences of their actions.

Dear Yabby,

Fair point. I have had a quick look for more definitive figures but have not found anything yet.

However I do have a little insight into the mentality of those hunting Al Qaeda members. This is from my thread on a book written by the Australian Major General Jim Molan called ‘Running the War in Iraq’.

As Chief of Operations through 2004 he oversaw a force of 300,000 troops including 155,000 Americans.

Quote

Molan talks about his hunting, through air strikes, Umar Hadid a suspected terrorist leader. "I made a sustained effort to kill him and launched several strikes as the taskforce delivered the intelligence".

Four times Molan ordered strikes on four different houses and three times Hadid walks clear of the rubble (the first one kills his brother). It was only on the last when Molan used several 'JDAMs" that he finally succeeded. My thoughts were for the others in the buildings including one would assume families. There is no mention of collateral damage.

My question would have been how many other deaths occurred and at what point do you stop? Ten, twenty more houses?

End quote.

So I'm not uncomfortable with the figures.

There are no ethics in war. It's about killing people. What's ethical about that?
If talking fails and war is inevitable then the idea is to kill them without getting killed yourself, after all what's the point of being dead? So yes use drones -no problem

Csteele,

Considering the Pakistan military's support for the program and other information in the New york times and others, I seriously question where your information was published. Considering that the Taliban seldom admits to losing soldiers and almost without exception claiming that the lives lost were civilians.

Your comment "Fighting in Swat was particularly fierce since the Taliban threw away their insurgent tactics" actually lends credence to my position as this effectively pre dated the active use of the predators other than intelligence.

The Taliban would not be able to do this easily now.

Csteele, I put it to you that drones, especially as they improve
over time, will actually decrease collateral damage.

In WW 2, whole districts were bombed by the allies, it was purely
about tonnes of bombs dropped.

GPS guided bombs have improved things. When they were after Saddam,
they could take out a house or whatever. Yet the problem of time
still remained. Saddam could be here now, gone in 10 minutes, by
which time the bomb did no good at all, so the collateral damage
was about 100'000 Iraqis, to essentially get rid of Saddam and
his boys.

Clinton used guided missiles on bin Laden, but made the critical
mistake of informing Pakistan. By that time, Osama was gone by
2 hours.

Drones, especially with much better optics and smaller, more accurate
missiles, will virtually be able to pick out an individual and
target him there and now.

In most of these conflicts, its usually only a few idealogues that
we are after. So I grant you that collateral damage is a problem.
But drones are a way of decreasing it, rather then increasing it.