Haven't we been told this is not a "war" but a humanitarian mission? There can't be a living, breathing person who ever believed that piece of propaganda for a moment. Now that the Amerikan attention span has turned to something else , like buying cheap, Chinese crap for Easter, the Bush 3 administration can slink out of the closet and finally say out loud what we knew to begin with "...the war has evolved".

How much evil can these sick SOBs perpetrate on the world before the people wake up and run them out of town. Who would Jesus bomb?

Death from above. Reminds me of seeing the Terminator/Skynet as a young lad for the first time. Life does imitate art.

Isn't "War Crime" redundant? Just as "Civil War" is an oxymoron?

In a world where some privileged individuals can't even get their teeth cleaned without Novocaine, death is dispensed by remote control, slicing up human beings, dubbed "the enemy" from thousands of feet aloft and thousands of miles away, without even the benefit of anesthesia, as a way to "solve" problems.

I remember seeing parodies of John Lennon's song at the start of the Iraq war on bumper stickers saying, "Give War a Chance". Well, is a decade enough of a chance? Does this one have a better chance? Is this any way for a Nobel Peace Prize winner to behave?

Save the Humans.

Sounds like Libyans may yet succeed in overthrowing their dictator and joining hands with the fledgling democracies on their east and west borders. Bravo!

btw, the false equivalence of Libya and Afghanistan is tiresome. In Libya, 80-90% favor the U.N./NATO intervention. In Afghanistan, those numbers are reversed.

There is a syntax which is increasingly leaving me offended, is the "we" in which everybody is included when talking about US war. I do understand that there is a government which is pursuing an illegal war. I mean a sentence like
"Gates' announcement signals that they will now be deployed beyond Pakistan, to Libya and any other place where we need to kill people without risking American lives." Who is this "we" that need to kill people? All American people? is this?

Muslims in Pakistan, not to mention Muslims in countries not allied with us, have been outraged by drone warfare. Whatever the military gains, the use of drones has damaged the remnants of U.S. credibility as a force for good in the world.

The introduction of drones in Lybia occurred in part to try to reverse this. Tunisia and Egypt opened some doors, basically non-violently. The U.S. took the opportunity to walk through those open doors in Lybia, which is an entirely different kind of conflict, with drones. The unspoken hope is that because many Muslims and Arabs oppose Muammar Qaddafi, the use of drones will be legitimized.

Every innovation in warfare provides a new test of the moral integrity of those who possess it. Back when drones first got into the national spotlight – say around the time of the “60 Minutes” story – no thought was given to the morality of use of these weapons. As Saletan’s article demonstrates, that continues to be the case. Only in places like CD do we have any real discussion of the morality, and at that, mostly by means of unfocused denunciation.

The real enemy, of course, is war. As long as we can justify attacking and killing human beings, and causing "collateral damage," in warfare, we've forfeited some of our humanity, regardless of what weapons we use. But there are international standards even though war remains acceptable internationally. Should the use of drones be banned the way chemical and nuclear weapons have been? That’s probably not feasible. Should it be prohibited to deliver missiles, bullets, or bombs, by drone? Maybe, in certain circumstances.

Is it acceptable to kill people or destroy infrastructure by rockets seeming to appear out of nowhere? Is it morally acceptable for people to sit in rooms thousands of miles from the scene of murderous destruction and cause such destruction the way kids play computer games? Would people targeted by such attacks be entitled to consider them terrorism? Would that really help us in the "war on terror"?

Should we limit use of drones to destruction of infrastructure found by rigorous investigation to be havens for the enemy? Should each attack be preceded by a warning that at some time, the attack will occur? Should removal of non-combatants before a drone attack be a high priority? Should assassinations be prohibited? (There seems to be an unspoken agreement that Qaddafi shouldn’t be assassinated by drone.)

These are very serious questions that should have been the subject of extensive national discussion long before Gates and Cartwright appeared before reporters. And the reporters should have raised these questions, both then and long before. But we all know the MSM is feckless.

The U.N., NATO, and other international bodies should have a role in determining the use parameters of these weapons, as is the case with atomic weapons and biological and chemical agents. But the U.S. must not wait for international opinion to develop. It's more than obvious that the drones have worsened world-wide hatred toward the U.S. This makes action to forbid improper use of the weapons mandatory.

The very idea of legitimate use of weapons like this is abhorrent. However, we should be realistic in expecting that the best practical result is strict control of their use.

William Saletin, the Slate author wrote the paragraph below --

To kill the bad guys without killing innocent bystanders, we need vehicles that can get close enough to our targets—and inspect them long enough—to be sure that what we're looking at is the bad guys. And then we have to hit them with weapons precise enough to avoid collateral damage. Drones have proved they can do this. Even critics concede that in Pakistan, the drones' civilian casualty rate has declined from 25 percent to 5 percent.

There are no quotation marks around this piece of pure idiocy. I suspect he was just plagiarizing the Pentagon Press Release he was using as the basis for this article and lost track of the difference between himself as a journalist and the Pentagon as a source. That happens a lot these days., The level of intelligence of journalists is getting pretty damn low. Normally journalists try to do a little research and not just re-word what is given to them by the Pentagon. Had Saletin done a little looking, he might have found the following --

"In April, The News, a newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, published figures provided by Pakistani officials indicating that 687 civilians have been killed along with 14 al Qaeda leaders in some 60 drone strikes since January 2008—just over 50 civilians killed for every al Qaeda leader. A paper published this week by the influential pro-military Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) criticising the Obama administration’s use of drone attacks in Pakistan says U.S. officials “vehemently dispute” the Pakistani figures but offers no further data on the programme." Harper's Magazine.

"To put it another way, Mir’s report suggested that 98.14% of fatalities associated with the Predator strikes were civilians. On February 1 of this year, Mir added that in January 2010 alone 123 Pakistani civilians had been killed in ten errant CIA drone strikes, while only three al-Qaeda targets had been eliminated (The News, February 1). These shocking statistics were picked up and widely reported in the Western press (New York Times, May 16). Along similar lines another Pakistani daily, Dawn, reported in January 2010 that “of the 44 Predator strikes carried out by U.S. drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent lives. For each al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by the American drones, 140 civilian Pakistanis also had to die” (Dawn [Karachi], January 2). Such reports have reinforced the notion that drone strikes are not only inaccurate, but seem to kill innocent civilians in wildly disproportionate numbers." Free Republic.

the US is phasing out its standing army.
drone operators are seated.