Drones aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. From James Durso at unz.com:
In the United States, giving aid and comfort to the enemy is a serious offense, but America’s armed drone program, while it kills a lot of bad guys, also helps generate new recruits to replace them.
In early May 2023, the Pentagon announced a drone attack killed a “senior al-Qaeda leader” in Syria. On 18 May, the same day Syria president Bashar al-Assad arrived at the Arab League meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon was forced to admit it may have killed the wrong guy. The “wrong guy” was Lotfi Hassan Misto, a 51-year-old sheep herder and father of ten who was tending his flock.
But the Pentagon wasn’t giving up so easy as it insisted: “Though we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.”
After a mistake like this, al-Assad may be excused for thinking he is on a divinely-ordained mission. He didn’t even need to wax eloquent at the Arab League meeting about American perfidy and brutality; all he had to do was read the news as it came off the wire.
Days before al-Assad’s triumphant arrival in Jeddah, the Brown University Cost of War Project announced an estimated 4.5 million people died in the post 9-11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, among others. Al-Assad and his host, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, are responsible for many of those deaths but America’s precision, high-tech drones command more attention, especially when, as is often the case, they kill the wrong guy.
Drones are a construct of the white male patriarchy. (honk!)
Just read about Hanoi Jane wanting white men locked up for climate crimes…but not Vietnamese men! (rimshot)
The video gamer lamer generation loves them some drones.
Saw one fly over on the Fourth of July last year as I was sitting on the porch with a boonie hat and it was close enough to hit.