..especially with "signature strikes" as the one of the more common methods of determining when and where to strike.
It occurred to me that another term being used and apparently understood by the people using it had escaped me, including that fact that it had escaped me.
What exactly is a "signature strike". Turns out it is essentially a drone strike made on a "high value" target or targets or a group with known identity(ies) without that sought after targets actual verifiably known location at the time of the strike.
Like a trail that an old time hunter/tracker follows based on a whole range of signs. Patterns of past movements. Satellite and aerial surveillance footage, On the ground intelligence if possible. All gathered, processed in some fashion before the trail goes cold. Eventually the tracker develops an idea from this pattern of the targets movements not unlike the hunter/tracker would find a broken branch, or a foot/hoof/paw print or even some fresh scat. This is called the "signature" left behind by the target used to reconstruct the trail in order to mark out and map the end of the trail.
The signature strike zone.
Comparing a hunter/tracker and his/her prey to a drone operator and their high value target isn't fair though. With weaponized drone warfare there is Collateral damage. Innocents are killed.
Where these two stories part ways is not the fault of the hunter or his prey nor is the breakdown (innocents killed) in tactics used by the drone operator the fault of the the high value target. Even if the high value target is purposefully hiding amongst innocents. We already know this tactic of shielding amongst innocents is employed, so there is no justifiable excuse that absolves us in that regard - imo.
But that is not the only way innocents are killed. It is the drone operators absence in this operation that is the key flaw. He/she is never actually there for the kill shot. Neither to confirm the target before taking the shot nor afterwards. The bomb that was dropped was targeting a "signature". A cold trail leading to an incorrect end.
The true hunter is there on sight to confirm and look into the eyes of his/her intended target before taking the shot. The drone operator sitting at a console in say, Virginia or Texas, sees only a "signature". A trail end. And one that may be cold or have innocents at its end. I find a future with this scenario of modern war-making becoming commonplace, profoundly disturbing.
Since there are so many aspects to the numerous war zones and many writers covering them already, I just wanted to bring up a question not about all that's happening now, but what the world will be like in 10 or 20 years from now if weaponizing drones are allowed to proliferate as a future weapon of war. The decisions we make now though have everything to do with that future - imo
Eugene Robinson: Drone strikes against morality April 24, 2015
Drone strikes, by their nature, are bound to kill innocent civilians. It is all too easy to ignore this ugly fact — and the dubious morality of the whole enterprise — until the unfortunate victims happen to be Westerners.
Only then does "collateral damage" become big news and an occasion for public sorrow. President Obama acknowledged Thursday that a January strike in Pakistan against a suspected al-Qaeda compound killed two men who were being held as hostages by the terrorist group —Warren Weinstein, an American, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian.
"I profoundly regret what happened," Obama said. "On behalf of the United States government, I offer our deepest apologies to the families."
Obama said he took "full responsibility" for the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto. The president's demeanor in revealing the tragedy was grim.
I have no doubt that Obama's regret is sincere. Nor do I doubt that every attempt is made to avoid killing innocents, or that the president has ordered fewer drone strikes recently than in previous years. But history tells us that good-faith effort is not enough to guarantee that sound moral choices are being made.
This is, put simply, war by assassination. Drone attacks have a chillingly antiseptic nature: One minute, the targeted individuals are going about their business, nefarious or otherwise. Perhaps they notice the sound of an aircraft overhead. The drone's operator, sitting at a console that may be thousands of miles away, presses a button. Kaboom.
Dark side of drone war gets new consideration
Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Washington Post, talks with Steve Kornacki about how the accidental killing of an American hostage in a drone strike on an al Qaeda target exposes the risks and imprecision of drone operations. - April 24, 2015 (video clip)
(short ad - sorry)
Eugene Robinson brought this scenario to light| transcript (@ minute 14:35):
"President Obama looked really grim yesterday. And he's talked about how affecting these decisions are, how difficult these decisions are and I take him at his word. I think he is far sighted enough to look ahead to a world in which drone warfare proliferates. We have the best technology now. we and perhaps the Israeli's are the only ones who have weaponized drones to this extent. But other countries can figure out how to do it. There are literally scores of countries now that are flying fairly sophisticated drones, and to put a missile on it and fire it at a target..you know that's not an easy thing to do but there are lots of countries that can figure it out .
So fast forward 10, 20 years to a world where Russia is flying weaponized drones and China and Iran and North Korea and who knows who else. Imagine, and it's not hard to imagine, that the technology becomes more sophisticated. That these drones become smaller, smarter, deadlier,..that's the way technology works.
Think about that world, and I think we ought at least to consider, before we rush down this road, I think we ought to consider whether this technology should be thought of the way we thought of chemical warfare for example after the first world war. It was just decided that you know, gee we're two countries.. we don't like each other, but as much as I might hate you and you might hate me, we're just not going to do it with chemical weapons. There's a line we're not going to cross.
I wonder if we imagine the possibilities 20 or 30 years out, and where we're headed, if it isn't time to say, just wait a minute. Let's just all talk about this and see if that's where we really want to go. Because if we don't, that's where we're headed."
Definitions:
chemical warfare:
employment in war of incendiaries, poison gases and other chemical substances [...] Efforts to control chemical and biological weapons began in the late 19th cent. The Geneva Protocol of 1925, which went into force in 1928, condemned the use of chemical weapons but did not ban the development and stockpiling of chemical weapons. The United States did not ratify the protocol until 1974.
biological warfare:
employment in war of microorganisms to injure or destroy people, animals, or crops; also called germ or bacteriological warfare. Limited attempts have been made in the past to spread disease among the enemy; e.g., military leaders in the French and Indian Wars tried to spread smallpox among the Native Americans. Biological warfare has scarcely been used in modern times and was prohibited by the 1925 Geneva Convention.
Signature strikes: redirects to;
Targeted killing is the premeditated killing of an individual by a state organization or institution outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield.
[...]
..targets based solely on their intelligence "signatures" — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests.
Just to be sure, This is not an endorsement of "boots on the ground". It is the opposite. We have too many ways to make war antiseptic; removed from society already. Rachel Maddow wrote a book on it called "Drift"; a "frictionless" slide into perpetual war as the status quo.
With technological advances, drones like most everything else will get less expensive, smaller, faster, capable of longer distances, much more available, and more deadly. It's a question of whether we're going to decide if war Drones and bombing strikes based on a "signature" will be a part of our future, or enough of a menace to society, like biological and chemical weapons, that we can get our shit together enough to put a stop to it now before we as a society lose our ability to altogether.
- time got away from me on this - turning in now - thanks for stopping by
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