Former US drone operator recalls dropping a missile on Afghanistan

Civilians should never be targeted. I do understand the fog of war. How is the best way to work out reducing the possibility of civilian deaths:

 

"Mr Bryant was enlisted from 2006 to 2011, working as a sensor operator, which helps direct missiles to their targets." Sensor operators don't "pull the trigger". They use the sensors. Following that incident, Mr Bryant quit the military”. I was never in, but I'm pretty sure you cant “quit” the military. When your enlistment is over you choose not to re-enlist. This read like a that show from Amazon, Jack Ryan. something tells me that this kind of fake news. I don't think the dude is 100% honest.

 

He might be too honest for your liking, even in your EMT status.

https://www.knowdrones.com/

Many of the individuals who have been drone operators for the military now experience moral injury, moral trauma. One would think an EMT could appreciate such injury, but one could be wrong in that assumption.

For a moral individual, having to murder innocents would cause such injury.

For an amoral or immoral individual, such injury would be impossible. Robots are better than some humans for indiscriminate killing because they have no soul, no empathy.

 

If you listen close, you can hear the beginnings of the cries of protest and outrage, and then suddenly cut off, and only deafening silence once the realization sinks in that it happened on Obama's watch.

 

Yea that really nice. You realize this whole thing reads like fake news right?

 

BFD. Before you sign up to be a drone operator for the US military, maybe it would be a good idea to know what you are signing up for. What the hell did he think he would be doing? We are at war with Al Qaeda. Killing civilians is sad, but it is part of war. I am so sick of the 'thank me for my service' veterans who make the rest of us look like a bunch of crying babies.

 

The mistake the military made was assigning this man to a drone crew. He was the wrong person for the job.

An armed drone is piloted by an Air Force officer, and he/she is in command of the mission. A sensor operator is an enlisted person who is a part of the crew. The decision to fire a missile is made by the pilot, the mission commander.

In the article, he says they fired a missile at a target, and before it hit, he saw a child come out of the target location, and the child was killed. That is sad and regrettable, but it was not intentional, and he did not make the decision to fire. He also speaks of a time when they launched a missile and after the explosion he watched a man die. So? Men on the ground see the enemy die too. They also see their own get wounded and killed. It's war.

Anyways, wrong guy for the job.

 

But we're not at war.

 

Civilians should be deliberately targeted, depending on circumstances. It worked wonderfully in WWII. But you shouldn't shoot up a rice farmer working a paddy just for target practice in your A1-E.

 

No?

Care to explain your reply?

 

There hasn't been a DOW from Congress since WW2.

 

No, it didn't. It worked, to some extent, to keep German war production from skyrocketing, and we were able to cripple their synthetic oil production at the end, but the morale-shattering bombing all the Air Force brass were convinced would cause Germany and Japan to give up never happened. In Germany's case, we had to literally take the capital before it was over. In Japan's case, we had wrecked their navy, leveled most of their major cities, were poised to invade their home islands, and they still wouldn't give up.

 

An AUMF is the same thing, just worded differently. The Constitution gives the power to Congress to "declare war", but it doesn't say how they do it or what wording to call it.

 

It's not the same thing.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL31133.html

 

Nowhere in that article was there even a remote suggestion of anything illegal...

It sounds like he was lacking a Warriors mentality. Not everybody in the military is cut out for the dirty world of violence. It's not easy.

What this guy didn't see was the aftermath of an IED up close. He never saw people holding their guts in or people reaching for body parts that are no longer there.

He sounds like a giant *****. One that would never survive in actual combat.

 

They are at war with you, whether you are at war with them or not.

 

I will say this about it. Survivor's guilt is a real thing. I lost 3 of my close friends in Iraq in 2004-05. One was like a father to me. In my 6 years of active duty, he was the best platoon sgt I saw. He did not deserve to be killed more than I did, but he was, not me. That is called survivor's guilt. I don't let it rule me though. I cope with it by being the best I can and honoring his sacrifice.

I don't know what the drone crew member goes through, but again, you know what you are signing up for. If you don't want to do it, then why sign up in the first place?

 

Who is "they"?

 

Same with my son. 4 deployments. His best friend was killed on the first, and many others on subsequent ones. But he is successful personally and professionally. He believes that those that they lost gave their lives for him and for all who returned, and so he lives well. And as for guilt over the enemy dead? Zero. Absolutely zero.

 

And yet war is war no matter what the legalities are.

 

No, wars are different. Napolean's invasion of Russia was much different than Germany's Eastern Front campaigns in WW1 which were much different than Germany's Eastern Front campaigns in WW2 which were much different than American Pacific campaigns. If you had to be a Russian POW, which war would you choose to be one in? WW1 or WW2? The answer's obvious, of course.

 

To the warfighters themselves, it doesn't matter what the politicians call it, whether it be a Declaration of War or an AUMF. It's still the military in combat.

 

The rest of the world.

Believe it not, there are people out there who would sacrifice their children just to cut your nuts off, shove them down your throat, and film the whole thing so that your parents can watch.

The taliban and AQ, those guys have nothing to lose. They dont own anything of value. Their lives are based solely around murder.

And you, not being a follower of islam, are target #1.

 

Saved many of our soldiers, killed their people. It was wonderful. The nukes were wonderful.

 

It wasn't the nukes. It was Russia declaring war on them.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/