People, Personas, and Politics 11 – Drones and ISIS
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): People, Personas, and Politics
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/03/30
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Rick Rosner: You could argue the drone deaths while terrible are less terrible than other means of war.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we take the Golden Rule, and if we apply it in that same case, we consider the perspective of the people that are receiving the drone attacks. In this instance, innocent civilians in certain countries, say, also getting killed. If it is applied to the planners in Washington, if some were to consider them terrorists for doing so, would that justify them having a drone campaign and then bombing people in DC, and having innocent American civilians killed too?
RR: Okay, there’s no equivalence there in my mind.
SDJ: Okay.
RR: ISIS is clearly one of the most despicable enemies that we’ve had since WWII. SDJ: ISIS isn’t the only recipient of it, though.
RR: It is good to have a clear enemy because you can feel that it justifies action against that enemy.
SDJ: Other than justification of a feeling. What about the norm of a trial, the norm of a proper and fair trial, for criminals rather than bombing them?
RR: Well—ISIS is our enemy in a war. It’s a small war that feels bigger because of the horribleness of their actions, and because a lot of their actions involve terror, which brings it home to us. But they’re bad! They—we—I feel we’re justified in fighting them. Given their tactics, it is tough to—like what just happened. 200 civilians were apparently killed in Mosul, and the ISIS strategy was that ISIS set up snipers on the roofs of 3 buildings.
Probably knowing that these would be tempting enough targets. In the basements of these buildings, there were a bunch of civilians probably put there on purpose by ISIS, held there. And Trump had those targets taken out, which meant that we killed 200 civilians – which is a horrible thing. And contributing factors were, ISIS probably hoped the civilians would get killed because it would make the US look really bad.
Another thing is the rules of engagement haven’t changed. Trump has apparently okayed more targets, is a little more liberal in okaying targets, than Obama. ISIS knowing this set up 20- civilians and 200 innocent people got killed. That’s a combination of ISIS being really, really evil and Trump being inexperienced and possibly having bad judgment. ISIS is—wherever ISIS goes they commit atrocities.
ISIS is a fairly small force. It depends on whose estimates you believe, but the number is around 30,000 people. Obama flew about 15,000 bombing sorties against ISIS and knocked the extent of their territory down by about 50%, which is a contributing factor to ISIS committing terror because as they lose what they want to be their Caliphate. There Islamic dominion over a chunk of the Mid-East. As they lose territory, they consider themselves free to commit acts of terror outside of their territory.
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