U.S. counter-terror strategy of global assassination isn't working

[Capt Bringdown]

Hero worship hides the military failures of the CIA director's "global killing machine" (http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/03/petraeus_projection/)


The killing of various “al-Qaida leaders” is not heroically “turning the tide” in the war on terror, as unnamed U.S. officials are no doubt explaining to credulous columnists right now. In fact, most of the data from the drone war theater indicates that the Petraeus assassination strategy is increasing the numbers, motivation and geographic scope of America’s foes. It is making our allies are weaker. We face more potential suicide-bombers. And we have managed to increase — not decrease — the danger of nuclear materials falling into terrorist hands.

Yemen, in fact, is a useful case-study of how the Petraeus assassination strategy is creating more new anti-American enemies for every Awlaki it illegally kills. Last May, the Washington Post reported that U.S. drone and air strikes in the country have depressed the local economy, increased support for anti-U.S. groups and demonstrated “the potential for U.S. policies to have harmful, if unintended, consequences in this politically brittle nation.” Despite the air strike campaign,” reported the New York Times, “the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker.”

-more- (http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/03/petraeus_projection/)

[Capt Bringdown]

...The record shows that the Petraeus’ policy has increased the risk of Pakistani nuclear materials falling into anti-American hands.

As U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson wrote in a February 2009 cable released by Wikileaks, “our major concern has been … the chance someone working in [Pakistani government] facilities could gradually smuggle enough fissile material out to eventually make a weapon and the vulnerability of weapons in transit.”

This in a country where the drone war has made the U.S. government widely reviled. One recent poll found that 69 percent of Pakistan’s 120 million people — some of whom undoubtedly work in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities — now regard the U.S. as their “enemy.”

[boutons_deux]

The Rise of the Machines will continue rising without end

UAVs can already take off, land, and fly themselves without human intervention. Targeting is still the exclusive preserve of the human operator—but how long will this remain the case? As sensors become more powerful and diverse, the amount of data gathered by the machines is increasing exponentially, and soon the volume and velocity of information will far exceed the controller’s capacity to process it all in real time, meaning that more and more decision-making will be left to the robot.

A move is already underway toward systems that allow a single operator to handle multiple drones simultaneously, and this, too, will tend to push the technology toward greater autonomy. We are not far from the day when it will become manifest that our mechanical warriors are better at protecting the lives of our troops than any human soldier, and once that happens the pressure to let robots take the shot will be very hard to resist. Pentagon officials who have been interviewed on the subject predictably insist that the decision to kill will never be ceded to a machine. That is reassuring. Still, this is an easy thing to say at a point when robots are not yet in the position to take the initiative against the enemy on a battlefield. Soon, much sooner than most of us realize, they will be able to do just that.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_rise_of_the_machines_20110926/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling +Beneath+the+Headlines

[LnGrrrR]

I'm almost positive that the "kill decision" will be in the hands of robots in the next 20/30 years, and I'm being optimistic about that. If the military can save a buck by eliminating the human operator, they will.

[boutons_deux]

It's a scam, the more the MIC kills, the more they create more to be killed, self-sustaining GWOT without end.

[boutons_deux]

very much like the FBI fabricating/trapping terrorists so they can keep up their demands for more taxpayer funds.