Oh oh … the UN is angry at the O-team:
A United Nations investigator called Wednesday for a halt to CIA-directed drone strikes on suspected Islamic militants, warning that killings ordered far from the battlefield could lead to a “Playstation” mentality.
Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said missile strikes could be justified only when it was impossible to capture insurgents alive instead and only if they were carried out by regular U.S. armed forces operating with proper oversight and respect for the rules of war.
From the comments at Cjunk:
Arty: “Philip Alston”. I bet he can hear a bar of soap hit a shower floor in the next county. He’s really out of it as far as modern warfare goes too. It’s almost all “playstation mentality” today and has been evolving that way for a long time. You wonder if he’s ever heard of ICBM’s, cruise misiles, satelllite imaging or smart bombs. Someone should inform him that the “rules of war” have changed too. People are flying planeloads of passengers into office buildings, taking hostage entire schools full of kids, detonating bombs in markets and night clubs and cutting off hostages heads and posting the movies on the internet. All targeting civilians.
I suspect someone in the enemy camp has Ban Ki Moon’s ear and they are telling him that drone warfare is bad, that it’s not in accordance with the rules of war. They need the UN to tie the American’s hands.
Why else would the UN be concerned unless it is actually effective…oh and the other side doesnt have it so therefore that makes it dispoportionate.
All is socialism in love and war.
Posted by: Stephen at June 4, 2010 11:15 AM
Heh, always loved the left’s preoccupation with the idea of proportionate military response. Leave it to the twisted mind of a leftie to come up with a military strategy that will ensure long, drawn out conflict.
Boo-hoo!
The only thing out of sorts here is that it’s BO leading the charge. A good question is: How will the White House react to this pressure? I can now see what the urgency was in presenting BO the Nobel Peace Prize so quickly.
Pulling back on the Drone Attacks will be a difficult sell for BO considering all the boasting about the success of such attacks over the last year. At some point Americans will get the impression that the White House doesn’t have America’s interests in mind if they part from successful strategy. Time will tell.
If the White House does buckle to international pressure on this file, it will make an interesting juxtapose against GWB who adjusted to a successful strategy from one that wasn’t working vs. departing from a successful strategy to…
“missile strikes could be justified only when it was impossible to capture insurgents alive”
Egad!
We’ve nowhere to keep the blighters.
We can’t capture them alive because we can’t turn them over to the Afghan government and we’ve nowhere to put them ourselves what with Club Gitmo no longer taking new reservations.
So we can’t capture them and we can’t kill them.
Hmmmm.
I guess the UN will just have to tell the Taliban and Al Qaeda to quit, eh?
Can someone explain to me why we need the UN?
Aah what planet is the U.N. on anyway. These targeted strikes are very efffective. The suggestion by the “Special Racketeer” that it is some kinda “whack a whack-job playstation” is offensive and will result in line-ups of Infidels demanding their copy of the game.
Put these deadweight bastards into Kevlar, shove an M4 into their hands, and air-drop them right into the border zone. Yesterday if possible. We’ll see what they think of drone strikes then.
Go, go, CIA!
Guessing but close I think. The UN has about 180 countries.. about 40 are democratic.
BTW,I support the “Play Station mentality” since nobody I know had died playing PS. What a moron!
UN is worried about drone attacks? I can see that. How many terrorists are in the UN buildings? Hmmm.
Speedy
[…..Guessing but close I think. The UN has about 180 countries.. about 40 are democratic.]
OMHO about maybe 30….
That is defining “democratic” extremely loosely.
Turkey is part of NATO but then they supported the Gaza “love-boat” thingy. Eygpt? Iran? Russia?
Currently democracy is even a somewhat dubious quality in the USA even.
What would he say if a 747 hit New York again? Only its target was the UN building?
Pretty good shooting I’d say…
If you quickly hit up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start your unmanned drone will get 30 lives and unlimited Hellfire missiles.
“warning that killings ordered far from the battlefield could lead to a “Playstation” mentality.”
During the Vietnam War in the ’60s, LBJ used to sit on the crapper in D.C. and authorize the daily target lists and then… ‘Shazzam!’ “Playstation” was invented 30 years later.
Never mind the “Playstation mentality”. What is all
this about some requirement to capture insurgents
alive? Since when did that nonsense
become part of war? There is some requirement,
a weak one, not to kill combatants who surrender.
In WWII there was at least one incident in which
Japanese soldiers whose troopship had been torpedoes
were killed in the water, lest they be picked up
by a Japanese ship and taken into combat. It was
a dirty thing to have to do, but it saved American lives.
The killing was done by the famous “Wahoo”, under the command of “Mush” Morton.
“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
John Lewis says it well.
If the sort of thinking that this Philip Alston is exhibiting becomes more prevalent in the approximately 40 democratic countries, you can kiss western civilization goodbye.
Hey the “Playstation” mentality means you get to push the “REVIVE” button, and get a battlefield ‘do over’…You know like your kids games the UN doesn’t like to play for keeps.
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.”
– General George Patton Jr
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Thus the Patton school of battle suggests you better be part of the ‘bigger bastard club’.
Besides Robots don’t have mercy, they are ‘inhuman’.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Part of what Ashton is unconsciously suggesting is the primal fear of robots that Asimov expounded upon so well.
Missiles for example are technically fearless…the ultimate suicide bomber/Kamakazee….you can’t intimidate it with fire….
Even manned fighter bombers, heavy bombers and tanks all involve play-station like fire control.
Kentucky windage is not a lost art—it’s just sorta obsolete like sword play.
I always thought it somewhat ironic that the pikes that were developed to protect musketeers reloading, were the prime cause of light/heavy horse importance on the battle field.
Falkenberg, Marlbourogh, and Bonoparte made field artillery prominent….until aircraft arrived.
Regardless Ashton is pining for a culture that is gone with the wind, if it ever really existed………another Camelot.
Much like Quebecois and the Islamofascist seek a return to a time that never really happened.
As usual the UN is in la..la land….and always on the wrong side of everything…the funding for the UN…this should be stopped,,,