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I'd like to know more about the 'feeling on the ground' about Al Qaeda and other such organizations operating in Yemen. Do people feel that America is overstating the degree to which 'terrorist' organizations are present in Yemen? And if the drone strikes are both immoral and ineffective (creating more terrorists than they kill), what would be a better way for the US to deal with Al Qaeda in Yemen?
I can easily imagine the anger of people who fall victim to such violence, especially such inhuman violence, but what is the better alternative when a group like Al Queda seems to have no problem with violence itself? If the Americans just stopped and disappeared, would Yemen suddenly be better off? Are things better in Iraq now that the Americans aren't killing anyone there anymore?

When I read through these posts, I am constantly troubled by the almost concrete 'feel' of what to me are the abstractions (as if they were real pieces on a real game board: the America-token, the Yemen-token, here's a "restraint"-card and there's a "better off in short term"-card, the dice-rolls for "bad choices" or " the feeling on the ground")--compared to the very abstract 'feel' of what I consider to be the reality: the two soldiers sitting in upholstered Recaro seats for twelve hour shifts, ten days at a time, holding their joysticks in front of a bank of monitors, sweating in the darkness of a windowless multi-mode container in the Nevada desert, flying these drones over little villages in Yemen, firing missiles into their houses, their cars, into crowds,saying things like "Poo-yeah, got another one!" then giving a high-five to their partner, leaving thousands of real people dead or dying over the last few years. This real war game, being played with 'live' and usually fleeing subjects, feels more abstract somehow. How did this happen? Why does "America" seem more real than that dead child or that drone pilot in the container?
To me it feels like the USA is mainly using countries like Yemen to beef-up and practice its new military strategy and tactics, perfecting the techniques of remote-control warfare, and maybe occasionally killing a few "bad guys" to justify all the target practice. I agree with the first poster on this one: it's a self-justifying circuit now: one day someone's going deliver some serious payback, so I guess the USA had best continue with their target practice. (It's strange how the USA has become the 'Dark Star' of the 'Star Wars' universe...with their little drones flying around chasing the rebels on the desert planet...).
Apologize in advance for the ramble,
T.

Quote from Peter Clay on November 16, 2013, 17:15
Todd, that's exactly it: the coolness of these arguments (the ones that suggest the Yemenis are better off putting up with the constant anxiety of drone sorties and the steadily rising body count of innocent civilians, since things could be worse if America didn't suppress the bad guys there) seems grossly inadequate, especially next to the adolescent (and cowardly) heat of the drone program itself. There's something fundamentally appalling about the way the United States is using drone strikes. The American military couldreduce civilian casualties in Yemen by using actual soldiers on the ground and by more patiently cultivating alliances. But it won't, because it fears the deeper commitment (and American military losses) that would be involved. This is immoral, and Yemenis have every right to be appalled.

I don't need to be reminded of the horrors of such violence, but I was glad to be reminded of the special horror of such impersonal violence, and I'm happy to accept that such strikes may often do more harm than good.
But do you feel, Peter, that having American soldiers on the ground, as in Baghdad, blowing things up, raiding houses, shooting people before their neighbors' eyes, doing all the things that soldier talks of in that moving video (in the "Have patience with us: The Iraqi Prime Minister`s plea to Americans" thread in the Middle East News forum), would actually be less offensive to the Yemenis? Or would they, in this case, do everything much better than they did in Baghdad?
Or should America just get out of Yemen altogether, and leave Al Qaeda alone?
And as for the alternative, what sort of "cultivating alliances" do you mean exactly? And how long and how well would that process have to go on before it started really working in this case?
I know very little about the details of Yemen (obviously), but it seems like a kind of post-Iraq model case for American intervention, and so I welcome your model response.

What an interesting way of looking at this, Todd, thanks!
I never thought of the effect on America. And not just on its soldiers but on its people, whose soldiers stand for them, and not just in battle.
And I imagine that that effect will 'loop' back to Yemen (and other similar places) somehow.
I imagine myself as an American, picturing those bombs being dropped on unsuspecting Yemenis by some sweaty kid on energy drinks in a mobile home in Nevada, and something goes dead inside me.
It's like a violent symbol of everything that's wrong about America in the world today. You can't do that and stay human for long.

Disney Apocalypse: the veil of Disney becomes so tattered in its attempt to sufficiently cover all this new and prickly ground that the Americans themselves simply pull it away (or it gets pulled from their own faces first) and they 'wake' (or 'go home') and clearly see that if world domination is still important, they've got about a five to ten year window to deliver a series of tactical nuclear first strikes to reset the stage.

I have been reading with great interest the Pew Report on attitudes to America--thank you, Sharon!
Consider this survey of global attitudes to the drone strikes: http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/07/18/chapter-1-attitudes-toward-the-united-states/ (scroll down near the bottom).
Worldwide condemnation. Especially in areas where America continues to have the greatest trouble (like the Middle East).
Look at the numbers, America, and ask yourself this question: Does the possible benefit I gain from possibly killing a few terrorists here or there, outweigh the certain disapproval, and often violent hatred, of so many people, in so many countries around the world?
How many innocent American (and other) lives are you certainly exposing to greater danger because of these horrible, and horribly symbolic, attacks?
What is the cumulative, organic effect of so much hatred, over months and years; the death of innocents, the mourning and lamentation; the birth and upbringing of innocents in homes and communities burning with hatred of you?
Are you sure that the possible benefits of possibly killing a few terrorists here and there outweigh the certain harm you are doing by planting seeds of hatred every day, all around the world?
Are these attacks not the most vivid and destructive symbol of everything that is going wrong with America in the world? As Yuuichi noted in the Pew Report survey on American beliefs, America is increasingly isolated from the real world and increasingly trusting in its (increasingly inhuman) military force--precisely the fatal logic illustrated in these drone attacks.
Yet, at the same time, it is increasingly closed in and threatened by the forces it has itself unleashed.
This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid old-world tyrants like Hitler or Saddam, not liberal new-world democracies like America pretends to be.

Setting aside the callousness of the post above, I would agree that the American military experience with drones does, indeed, seem to be a kind of testing ground for technologies that will soon make their way to the 'homeland.'

Six states chosen as drone testing sites; California among losers

By Richard Simon and W.J. Hennigan
December 30, 2013, 9:46 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- After a fierce nationwide competition that offers potentially big economic benefits for the winners, six sites were selected Monday for testing of how drones can be more widely used in U.S. airspace.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced the selection of sites in Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia. California, vying to become the Silicon Valley of robotic aircraft, was among the losers in the 24-state competition.

"These test sites will give us valuable information about how best to ensure the safe introduction of this advanced technology into our nation’s skies,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a statement.
In 2012, Congress directed the FAA to draw up rules for incorporating the remotely piloted aircraft in U.S. airspace by 2015.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta has estimated that 7,500 small drones could be aloft within five years.
The remotely piloted aircraft could be used for activities such as spotting wildfires, helping police track criminal suspects, scouting film locations and inspecting pipelines.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-us-drone-testing-sites-20131230,0,5172767.story#axzz2ozBJ01my

And agree with the last post. The problem with drone strikes is that the margin of error that is allowed is far too great. I think that these discrepancies in numbers come from the fact that different sources cite targets differently. Some civilians are collateral damage, which I believe should be unacceptable from the get-go, whereas others could be "other militants". These would be the people who behave like a potential terrorist might, but are never proven to be the actual enemy, yet they are killed. All in all I feel that drones are the next welcome step in the evolution of warfare, as they do not put lives of the soldiers in danger, however they should be made more precise and the policy behind them should be more severe. Only confirmed terrorists, located in countries where it is legal for the States to use military tactics should be targeted and the acceptable number of civilian casualties must be zero.

Nowadays it has become too easy too kill by those that are not directly involved in it and by this I mean the government of the United States. While invading countries with drones they completely disregard the human factor. Drones are indeed cheeper airplanes than jet fighters but the lives, of those who control them and those who are affected by a strike, do not come cheap. Drone pilots although they seem not to be affected by the situation they very much are in the midst of it. They see every single thing they do although they are far away from the battlefield. We must not forget that not only the plains but also the bombs have cameras so that the pilot would guide it to wherever he has to. All this resulting scenes that the drone pilot takes part in by seeing the devastation that the bomb made and with the ability to do nothing more than watch. All this results later in PTSD, since pilots after their shift is over return to their everyday life. Thus switching from violent, sad, disturbing scenes on days of strikes to kissing their wife and playing with their children. Now, on the other side of the camera and bombs are the innocent people that get killed in these strikes and that nobody really knows the real number of how many of them died. Sources that report the numbers cannot get them right because in countries like Syria the custom is that they have to burry their dead before sundown. Therefore the government should be more considerate of such factors and not attack without any consideration of the surroundings and people involved in it, or to attack in countries that they are not officially at war with.

In my opinion, drones do more harm than good because of collateral damage that is caused by drones in the middle east. In recent news, France bombed Syria trying to target "ISIS", and unfortunate circumstances were the outcome to many Syrian civilians who  were caught in the crossfire. In my opinion drones do not pose accurate threats to whom the real targets should be, rather are used to kill innocent lives. Drone strikes in Afghanistan,Pakistan,Yemen and Somalia have accumulated to thousands of lives being taken, through targeted certain terrorists in these countries. Mentioning these countries is just scratching the surface to the real problems to come. Therefore, other alternative methods to targeting terrorist groups should be used to minimize the risk of casualties.

The cons outweigh the benefits of using Drones, and I believe this type of technology, within the right hands can be used to help countries by sending food and aid to people in need rather than how it is being used now. As A_Oblak mentioned the "margin of error" is way too lenient and high, thus making drones an ineffective method of tactics. The problem is not the tool per se, but the way it is manipulated and used to the governments agenda. 

The future does not look positive, as the US will most likely have an increased budget in aircraft spending throughout the decade, and it will most likely be the leaders spending finances on Drones and other aerial technology.

Well to begin with, Drone warfare represents an evolution of American warfare many do not realize. T.S. Eliot would decry this growth as now a problem of "seeing the eyes but not the tears" Under the rhetoric of the 'war on terror' the United States has set itself up for an endless war. With the growth of asymmetrical conflict such a terrorism, the United States has modified it's combat techniques in combat labeled at "networked warfare", in which JSOC and other elite groups essentially work like a terrorist group in acts of counter insurgency. Jeremy Scahil's documentary Dirty Wars explores this new terrain, here is a link of him speaking about US actions in Yemen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91trwzvxRA. Drone warfare is hardly accurate and do nothing more than shore up terrorist support in parts of the world that have been destablized by US actions in the first place. I will speak at length about this in another post. But I highly recommend everyone take a look at the "Drone Papers": https://theintercept.com/drone-papers to get a better picture as what is actually going on.