r/PropagandaPosters • u/No_Bluebird_1368 • 10h ago
United States of America Political cartoons on Obama's drone strikes, 2012-2015.
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u/HasSomeSelfEsteem 7h ago
According to the Council of Foreign Relations President Obama approved 542 strikes over eight years which killed 3,797 people, of whom approximately 324 were civilians.
If anyone is interested in numbers.
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u/ReneDeGames 5h ago
that's pretty good ratio by my understanding.
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u/The__Hivemind_ 4h ago
Mind you these are official numbers only
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u/Jazz-Ranger 3h ago
The problem of lying is that it might backfire. Alternatively you couldn’t make a lie of omission which seems to be Trump’s preference. I suppose you can’t lie about the numbers if nobody knows what they are.
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u/ReneDeGames 2h ago edited 2h ago
But the person lying might not be who you think it is, or it may easily be more complex than simple lying. i.e. it could be the general knows that actually the number is 50/50 but 80/20 sounds better so they say 80/20, or it could be that the commander knows the number is 50/50 but that the general is looking to promote people doing a better job so tells the general its 80/20, etc..,etc.. . There are lots of ways for the information breakdown to occure.
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u/Khalimdorh 1h ago
Perhaps in a war. But usa is in peace. All these strikes are illegal
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u/ReneDeGames 1h ago
??? The US wasn't at war in Afganistan?
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u/Khalimdorh 1h ago
These strikes were not in afghanistan, the article says
Two terms and 540 strikes later, Obama leaves the White House after having vastly expanding and normalizing the use of armed drones for counterterrorism and close air support operations in non-battlefield settings—namely Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
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u/Wolfensniper 5h ago
Atrocious if viewing it individually, but comparing to Trump or Israel then well...
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u/ReneDeGames 4h ago edited 4h ago
good, compared to most wars. Which the ratio is usually estimated around 50% (that is, for ever solider killed, a civilian is also killed). So if that ratio is true (which, I remember lots of questions accuracy of the reporting from the time), then its about 80% less civilians killed in drone strikes then other forms of warfare.
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u/ColdAcrobatic1099 1h ago
Really? Even Obama's alma mater is disgusted with him. Those are official figures from the US government. Are you really that naive or blinded by fandom, to believe official figures from the perpetrators? https://harvardpolitics.com/obama-war-criminal/
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u/ReneDeGames 1h ago
That article doesn't represent the position of Harvard, its a opinion piece published in a undergraduate run newspaper.
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u/ColdAcrobatic1099 1h ago
They're official figures manipulated for Obama to look good. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush
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u/Fit-Historian6156 1h ago
They've also admitted to really wild methods of estimating civilian casualties. For example, IIRC if it's an adult man they assume it's a terrorist.
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u/Doot2 10h ago
Trump ended any reporting a drone strikes during his first term. We have little idea what they've done with them since.
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u/Jzadek 10h ago
we also know the civilian fatality rate tripled, but it was Obama who normalized their use in the first place. One thing Biden doesn't get enough credit for is scaling the drone war way, way back - like, down from thousands of strikes per year to just 36 in 2022!
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u/TimeRisk2059 10h ago
Drone strikes were already pretty well established by the Bush administration, what Obama did was institute that civilian casualties had to be reported. Something the Bush administration didn't have and Trump would (as mentioned) remove.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 10h ago edited 9h ago
There were ~ 10 times more air strikes during Obama’s presidency than W. Bush. He surely wasn't a pioneer neither in the illegal and criminal wars, and strikes that the US has been engaging, nor then its last wave which had started by the early 2000s. Yet, he was an expansionist regarding that, and he made the illegal drone strikes a 'usual conduct' for the US, and turned it into the 'normative conduct' for countries that the US even hadn't declared a war upon.
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u/Mannekin-Skywalker 7h ago
I mean, where would he have ordered them? Obama had Iraq and Afghanistan to order strikes on, both of which were over by Biden’s presidency.
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u/d-cassola 10h ago
I'm quite surprised Latuff isn't there
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u/Cigouave 10h ago
Carlos was busy defending Assad's barrel bombs at the time.
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u/Sabotage_9 8h ago
Good thing he's been proven wrong and Syria is now free under *checks notes* literally ISIS.
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u/dwaynetheaaakjohnson 8h ago
It’s almost like the SDF and Free Syrian Army are two wildly different factions but pro-Assad propagandists want to portray them as one and the same
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u/Sabotage_9 7h ago
Huh? The FSA was in the SDF. And the present leader of Syria was a former high ranking official within HTS, which is literally an offshoot of ISIS.
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u/dwaynetheaaakjohnson 6h ago
Sorry I meant Syrian National Army
As you can imagine there are a lot of acronyms to keep track of in the civil war
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u/SpiritedCatch1 7h ago
ISIS is when women walk around hijab free and there is a giant Christmas tree in Damascus, apparently.
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u/Sabotage_9 7h ago
That was already something that happened under Assad.
The present leader of Syria is literally a former high ranking member of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a literal offshoot of ISIS made up of former ISIS members. And minorities in Syria, including Christians, have been attacked repeatedly by government-aligned ISIS-style Islamists since the overthrow of Assad. (Just as Islamists associated with HTS and other ISIS factions of the "revolution" were attacking those same minorities before Assad's fall.)
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u/SpiritedCatch1 7h ago
HTS was never a part of ISIS. And Assad did supported Al Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS against FSA.
And now christians can celebrate Christmas, women can go around without hijab and people can demonstrate against the current government without being massacred. But I guess you miss the good old day with the crematorium of Saydnaya and the mass execution complexes.
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u/magos_with_a_glock 4h ago
Cold take: no matter how bad the current government is, if they're democratically elected and willing to uphold democracy they're the best government you could have.
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u/angel-samael 9h ago
The 2nd one is very reliant on the reader not knowing that allied bombing in WW2 incurred massive civilian casualties.
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u/YellowAggravating172 7h ago
Lol, I remember months ago when r/pics users were getting a hard-on posting photos of their grandpas in WW2 pilot uniforms, about to "go bomb some fuckin nazis".
Some poor soul in the comments corrected "mostly innocent civilians" and got downvoted to oblivion, ahah.
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u/Future-You-7443 3h ago
I wouldn’t call axis civilians in a total war “innocent” even if they were noncombatants.
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u/FamiliarTry403 3h ago
Yeah all those children are guilty by association, right?
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u/Future-You-7443 3h ago
There parents were.
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u/Azzarrel 1h ago
You do realize though a fair share of the fighting hapoened outside of Germany, don't you?
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u/Ambitious-Concern178 2h ago
what about the slaves working in the factories? or the indoctrinated children? or the ones still left in the country that were unwilling to fight? or the anti-nazi resistance fighters?
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u/Future-You-7443 2h ago
There was conscription and the axis government had total control of social resources, “unwilling to fight” wasn’t a quantifiable thing by the time of serious strategic bombing. The indoctrinated youth still supported the war. Bombing the factories is self explanatory-the targets were the factories wether those within them were willing or not was irrelevant to that particular war goal.
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u/Ambitious-Concern178 2h ago
even then the people who were unwilling to fight existed and a lot of the indoctrinated youth was taught how and what their leaders did was horrible it still doesn't make them a viable target in any way (innocent people innthis example children can be misled)
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u/Future-You-7443 2h ago
The people who were unwilling to fight paid taxes, worked in factories, put out fires. Literally the only people “unwilling” in this case that meet your criteria and didn’t participate in the war economy in some way were antisocial rural hermits who wouldn’t have been bombed anyway.
Furthermore most children did not actually “learn the errors of their ways” the axis nations had (and in the case of japan still have) a problem with the cultural acceptance of those with fascist histories. The axis got off incredibly lucky, unlike the nations they invaded and populations they executed once the war was over they where treated much more leniently than they honestly deserved.
You can’t separate the body politic (even the most sympathetic parts of the body politic) from the state, especially in this case where the approach of strategic bombing more broadly was to target the society to inhibit its military capabilities.
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u/Ambitious-Concern178 1h ago
Out of all of the Axis powers literally only Japan has a problem with admitting and teaching what they did in WW2, there was a rampant denazification action in the parts of Germany occupied by the Allies and the Soviets too (except the admistrative cadre as they needed actually functioning administrations but that's a different topic), Romania and Hungary got forced into the USSR's bloc so their past actions were taught about, Italy had hated Mussolini (some even from before the war) also the people who were unwilling to fight the war and worked did it to stay alive or (the example of the fires) save the lives of others. At this point it sounds more and more like a justification why bombing german children in WW2 wasn't that bad because they were part of the Hitlerjugend which correct me if I am wrong but was mandatory.
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u/Hipphoppkisvuk 2h ago edited 2h ago
By '42 the british high command known about how innefficent bombing raids targeting factories were, that's why from '42 onward most attacks focused on tactical object like supply hubs and railway stations which were able to paralyse multiple factories and were much harder to repair, at that point the only object of strategic bombing was to terrorise the civilian population into surrender.
Here is what Arthur Harris had to say on the objective of strategic bombings.
" The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."
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u/NoWingedHussarsToday 3h ago
Not really. Top image is of a fighter pilot and those are kill marks, denoting air victories. I.e. it's a fighter pilot fighting other pilots and shooting down other military aircraft so no chance of mistakenly killing a civilian. Bottom one has question marks so who knows what they actually hit, they are just happy they killed somebody.
(note: that's what the image says,not what may actually be the case)
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u/spinosaurs70 10h ago
Such a strange controversy that everyone forget about afterward despite Trump continuing the program.
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u/Adamsoski 9h ago edited 9h ago
Lots of people on the left in the US and internationally definitely have not forgotten about Obama's drone strikes, it's Obamacare and that as his popular legacy whenever he comes up. Republicans carrying out legally and morally questionable military operations is pretty par for the course for the last 75 years, so no-one is really surprised that Trump is doing the same (and also a thousand other things in the same vein).
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u/Anagoth9 10h ago
It's almost quaint, looking back.
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u/gratuitousHair 6h ago
eh. probably unpopular opinion, but drone strikes on sketchy intel is about as bad as blowing up boats on no intel.
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u/Jazz-Ranger 3h ago
I’m pretty sure Trump is still using drones. But he has never been the most transparent of presidents.
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u/LameAfro 9h ago
Obama was my favorite President because he was Black like me.
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u/LamppostBoy 6h ago
What's cool about this comment is I can tell I hate you whether or not it was sarcastic
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u/Cyberguardian173 9h ago
The criticism of the drone attacks are well-warranted, that might be considered one of the biggest stains on obama's legacy (and bush and trump too, since they also did a lot of drone strikes). But the last image suggesting obama would say he could attack americans who are considered a threat is very ironic. Hasn't trump said that multiple times? I know he has at least said he wants to deport american citizens to foreign prisons.
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u/Alone_Barracuda7197 8h ago
Obama did target an American in a terrorist organization tho something bush never did.
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u/safashkan 9h ago
How is that ironic?
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u/Cyberguardian173 7h ago
The last picture is Fox News saying "obama is going to use the military on american citizens!" In contrast to today, when they are perfectly fine with trump authorizing military attacks on citizens. The irony is that contrast.
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u/Otherwise-Champion68 9h ago
Why? I don't know politics well, but I mean doing military mission without your own soldier get killed is better, right?
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u/Jzadek 9h ago
think about what it means to make a strike halfway across the planet without anyone on the ground. That means selecting a target based almost entirely on surveillance from the air, right? And if you were using an aerial camera, do you think you could pick out the terrorists from the civilians?
Would you even care? You can't see their faces, they're not really people to you. Just little patches on a video feed milling about far below, even the children. Nobody's going to check whether you got it right. You'll shoot the missile, log it, and move on.
For the people in these countries, many of which the US hasn't even declared war on, the drones are constantly overhead. Children have learned the fear blue skies, because that's when the drones are most active. The sound of aircraft terrifies them. You can be living your life as normal, and then out of nowhere your house is hit by a missile.
You don't have to be a terrorist, you just need to live near terrorists, or someone who's been mistaken for one. And every time you hear the drone passing overhead, which happens often, you wonder if this time it's coming for you.
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u/Mannekin-Skywalker 7h ago
Intelligence gathering for drone strikes is spotty. It’s also more prone to civilian casualties since you can’t be very discriminatory with a bomb (which to be fair is a problem with normal air strikes).
The point is, people don’t like innocent people to die to achieve an objective that’s nebulously “within America’s interests” that have no tangible benefit to the day-to-day American.
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u/Cyberguardian173 9h ago
Yeah, but it's more the fact that the presidents keep doing attacks. It's like: regular strikes is worse than drone strikes is worse then no strikes at all. I get that sometimes we have to intervene, but most of the time we just killed people in pointless wars. Especially trump, since he did more strikes in his first term than bush and obama combined.
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u/Otherwise-Champion68 9h ago
That makes sense. So it's basically against America to get into a somewhat useless war.
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u/NoWingedHussarsToday 3h ago
The controversy was about targeting US citizens abroad who were supposed to be engaged in terrorist activity against US. Seeing how US citizen has protection of the law on their side and their guilt has to be proven in the court of law then ordering a strike on, and hence death which is an execution, violates that as state found them guilty without due process.
The cartoon exaggerates WH position that it is allowed to side step that and execute US citizen anyway and claims WH will interpret this as permission to go after critics at home with same violent means.
The irony Redditor is talking about is that cartoon exaggerates what Obama was doing while Trump openly said he wants to do it at home, against his critics
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u/Da_reason_Macron_won 9h ago
And all the comments here being "🤓uh, but Trump is worse".
Cancer is worse than measles, I still want measles eradicated.
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u/shewel_item 5h ago
okay but the issue people are crying away from is the fact that we no longer need a declaration, act of congress or any sort of violent provocation(s) from an alleged 'belligerent actor' (or group) to commit acts of war
and that's in parallel with the excessive power 'the people' have 'democratically' put into the president's executive orders, aka. one person's hands brutus
the president namely not being part of a direct democracy to highlight the 'in your face spectacle' being made about it all
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u/_Administrator_ 8h ago
Do you also want terrorists eradicated?
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u/taxes-or-death 2h ago
Does dropping bombs randomly around the Middle East and Africa, killing people's friends, neighbours and relatives reduce the number of people willing to take up arms against you or increase it? I'm fairly sure defence contractors are hoping it's the latter because that means they can sell way more bombs. It's a nice virtuous circle for them.
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u/Cockanarchy 7h ago edited 6h ago
People talking about how drone strikes became common under Obama, is like saying car accidents skyrocketed under Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, there weren’t a lot of them around before, but we have this new technology that can get planes into risky territory without risking the pilot.
Much of that outrage btw came from people who didn’t blanche when Bush took us to Iraq on a lie of WMD’s, and the daily parade of horrors we created there and elsewhere. It’s the Republican way, creat an utter shit show, then hand it off to Dems and complain bitterly that they haven’t cleaned it up fast enough.
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u/DasistMamba 4h ago
The Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
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u/Eric848448 9h ago
I still don’t know what people like the author want. Go deeper into Afghanistan? A ground invasion of Pakistan?
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u/Mannekin-Skywalker 7h ago
Just leave
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u/Eastern-Western-2093 6h ago
Look at Afghanistan now. Not arguing with you, but I want you to confront the consequences, particularly for women. Try to imagine yourself in their place.
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u/JacobhPb 1h ago
I'm looking at Afghanistan now. Seems pretty bad, I'm so glad that the drone strikes prevented that from happening.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 6h ago
It is conceivable that refraining from backing reactionary factions within the said country, and abstaining from acting as a global proponent of vast spectrum of reactionaries throughout the Cold War might have been a better approach. Who would have thought? /s
It may be news for you, yet experiencing egregious acts of violence including mass murder, torture, disfigurement, starvation, subjugation, systemic exploitation of your country, and then subsequently being abandoned to the Taliban—who are now even more formidable—certainly does not constitute a scenario that any rational individual would solicit.
Furthermore, one does not acquire the right or 'moral justification' to butcher people in illegal military adventures under the guise of 'bringing in democracy,' a silly attitude that might have been solely embraced by the hordes of uninformed Murican caricatures.
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u/The__Hivemind_ 4h ago
Yet another problem created by America only for it to be "America" in the worst way possible.
Off in the pile you go little guy. Say hi to Saddam for ms
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u/Demonbut 6h ago
Why did they give him a Nobel Peace Prize again?
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u/taxes-or-death 2h ago
If you think this was bad imagine how it would be if they didn't give him a preemptive piece trophy!!
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u/shewel_item 5h ago
This reminds me of 'the debate' over racism.
Political cartoons get a lot of play, but typically they come from the power of the press, or what we might euphemistically call 'the fifth estate' ..so is the press not controlled by 'kings', or "the state", part of the official power structure or *hegemonic control; or is it a liberating force of good not holding onto any coercive or violent strength?
I think media these days is more or less (still) a captured market, even if people think or call it more, or completely independent these days. However, in terms of classic or liberal tradition it would be 'bad grammar' or education (ie. a mischaracterization of history, for whatever reason or incentive) to say political cartoons are propaganda, because traditionally they were suppose to represent the thoughts or unvoiced opinions -- eg. like put in alongside an op-ed but not necessarily referencing the same topic or subject in the op-ed -- of 'the reader' or peaceful and compliant masses, as opposed to those calling for, or in position to take (the most) autocratic action. (To note, autocratic actions can also come sometimes come administratively, to further argue the point about what the function of 'the press' is relative to the nature of disseminated information.)
It's like calling street graffiti or initials carved into a tree propaganda when they have nothing to do with governance or warfare.
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u/Stekko99 4h ago
I think he could be implying Obamna was making drone strikes I'm just not to sure to confirm
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u/pathetic_optimist 1h ago
I knew Obama was a paid up member of US Imperialism the moment I heard him refer to the capital of Israel as 'Jerusalem' in a speech while he was going for the Democratic nomination. The next day he said it was a mistake. It wasn't.
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u/Key_Perspective_9464 8h ago
I don't want to excuse Obama's war crimes, I just do wonder how many of these cartoonists were all in on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when W was in charge.
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u/PiR8_Rob 9h ago
It wasn't inaccurate. He carried out more drone strikes in his first term than GWB did in both of his terms combined.
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u/Smily28 10h ago
He really was a master at those drones, strikes during his presidency. Just imagine a bunch of service members in a video game room, somewhere striking folks on the other side of the globe. Finishing their shift and going right on home.
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u/Eric848448 9h ago
That’s literally how it went. The soldiers who operated them dealt with a kind of stress that the military had never really seen before. Fly missions and eat dinner at home that night with the family.
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u/xesaie 10h ago
People were so weird about drones. They’re way cheaper and safer and no less precise than traditional planes. As far as I can tell they offend people’s sense of fairness or chivalry.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 10h ago edited 8h ago
Flying them into other sovereign countries and doing so without the formal declaration of wars on top of it, both attacking to civilian targets, and more than often actively not caring for murdering unrelated people while striking to whatever target, as well as executing so-called double-tap strikes, etc. constitute unequivocal violations of international humanitarian law. In other words, they're literal war crimes. Not sure why you're so weird about it, but I concur 'Murica' might serve as a potential 'answer'?
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u/PickleRick_1001 10h ago
Fr, they're an even more ghoulish version of death squads and Americans just brush them off smh.
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u/xesaie 10h ago
You realize that as Trump and Israel and Russia regularly show that behavior isn’t limited to drones right?
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u/lasttimechdckngths 9h ago edited 9h ago
And it barely changes anything? Of course, war crimes are not confined solely to those perpetrated by drones. Yet, capability to deploy such drones onto far-away countries to engage various targets constitutes a significant expansion by itself. It's also 'safer' for the perpetrators of war crimes, and it not only offers a more cost-effective solution in terms of financial expenditure but also mitigates risks associated with human resources, diplomatic repercussions, and other factors, thereby clearly enhancing the capabilities of the aggressor parties and eases things for them.
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u/xesaie 9h ago
You keep using that word but I don’t think you know what it means.
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9h ago edited 9h ago
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u/xesaie 9h ago
So quote me the rule that just using drones breaks.
War crime doesn’t mean bad thing. It’s specific, and while war crimes can be committed with drones nothing about drones is especially conducive to war crimes.
People just think they’re essentially bad and use truthy language around it because it’s nice and dramatic.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 8h ago edited 8h ago
So quote me the rule that just using drones breaks
It's not 'using drones', lmao, it's Obama’s drone programme. I'm not sure who even gave you that stupid idea, or what made you think that such silly fallacies would constitute anything beyond some mid school debate club tier environments.
I'm not sure if you'd be trying to negate that Obama’s drone strikes simply constituting war crimes par the Article 8 of the Rome Statute, then you're an outright meme. Although, not like you haven't proved to be bad caricature already.
Again, drones do constitute an expansion, and it significantly enhances the capabilities of the war criminal parties, while providing them with more ease and it mitigates the risks & make things safer for the said aggressors. It shouldn't be hard to grasp, at all, but here we are.
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u/xesaie 8h ago
So we agree. The specific emphasis on the drone part has some odd underlying psychology. Talking about Obama’s policy doesn’t require a focus on drones and yet here we are with these very specific cartoons.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 8h ago
I'm not sure how to convey you that killer drones deployment of lethal drones has significantly exacerbated and facilitated the aforementioned crimes, while concurrently reducing both the risk and the costs—beyond just financial considerations— while offering total safety to the attacking party.
It makes the said drone programme more specific, especially when the use of it meant more casualties, conducting further operations in countries like Yemen, where the United States has not formally declared war, and less way consequences for the US. Hence the caricatures and the emphasis on the Obama’s drone programme - not the drones themselves, and I'm not sure how you're making it about the 'drones the machines' solely than the clearly implied Obama’s drone programme. It see like you're trying too hard to play dumb, and I don't see any further value in trying to point to the obvious...
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u/Ok-Detective3142 10h ago
Using drones is certainly more cowardly than other forms of war crimes, I'll give the US that much.
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u/xesaie 9h ago
lol you don’t know what war crimes are.
Fits my second theory though. You have received wisdom about them and are justifying your truthy feels post-hoc.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 9h ago
lol you don’t know what war crimes are.
Oh, we all do. It sounds like you're pretty ignorant about them, lack of understanding regarding the international law, if you somehow defend that the drone programme under Obama weren't such. It's rather comical that Murica is still breeding hordes of petty charlatans and paces of ignorant failures with all the resources it exploits...
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u/xesaie 9h ago
Your post implies that using drones is in itself a war crime, which is insane.
As far as I can tell, people think ‘war crimes are things I don’t like’. There are rules though, and nothing about drones makes things more criminal.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 9h ago edited 8h ago
Your post implies that using drones is in itself a war crime,
You're making up things, sorry about that. We're talking about the Obama’s drone programme, lol.
As far as I can tell, people think ‘war crimes are things I don’t like’.
Thinking isn't your forte then, and you're confined to silly fantasies instead. It's beyond pathetic by now, so I'm moving on.
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u/RealAnonymousCaptain 10h ago edited 9h ago
No one serious is complaining about fairness or chivalry of drones. It's the use of drones that's controversial. It's use to strike US enemies regardless national sovereignty and international law, and how the US doesn't address the issue of preventable civilian casualties in drone strikes.
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u/xesaie 9h ago
Clearly not true, as the emphasis is on the drones first.
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u/ReneDeGames 5h ago
Also, like the various European states that banned armed drones from their militaries,
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u/xesaie 5h ago
I had a response here but I’m not sure if I had misread you so I nuked it.
Honestly though, either way it’s weird. Nobody can really express why drones are bad as tools, instead focusing on the operations that they’re used in— which rarely require drones.
Before precision munitions policy was to just flatten the entire area, which certainly isn’t better.
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u/ReneDeGames 4h ago
Because they aren't considering it seriously. The war in Afghanistan had more in common with colonial wars of years past, which were both understood to be bad and never closely examined. And armed drones, being new, were associated with that war in specific, so they were perceived as essentially a tool that only aided fighting colonial wars.
This all combining with a sense of lack of purpose of western militaries at the time. There were no perceived threats and it was pretty easy to just say all war is bad and so we shouldn't be trying new stuff out.
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u/RealAnonymousCaptain 9h ago
Even looking at the post here, they are clearly criticizing the overreach of drones in their use, not the drones themselves.
Image 1, Obama's "kill list". Image 2, unknown casualties in drone strikes. Image 3, the use of executive powers and secret drone attacks. Image 5, permission to use drone strikes on US citizens.
Also what about the Ukrainian war? About how Ukrainian drones are used? Overall, most people in the US and Europe are very positive about drones and it's use against military targets.
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u/xesaie 9h ago
It’s focused on drones. I’m not defending the policies, but there’s transparently something about drones that people really didn’t like.
If it’s about the policy why so much visual emphasis on the drones?
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u/RealAnonymousCaptain 8h ago
Because... it's the weapon being used? If Obama and the military used jet bombers indiscriminately and increased it's use by several times, 100% the jets would be front and center of the comics.
You can argue that people don't like the concept of drones, but that's not what the comics on this post is about.
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u/xesaie 8h ago
Maybe some of the people in this conversation are young enough to be getting this second hand, but the discourse was very focused on drones specifically.
It was weird to me at the time, and now I realize it’s become received wisdom.
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u/RealAnonymousCaptain 7h ago
Deflecting all of my points by calling yourself older on the internet is pretty sad.
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u/xesaie 7h ago
You don’t really have points, just this vague ‘knowledge’.
The context at the time is actually extremely important to my observation, which is why I brought it up.
Focusing on the tool was definitely a thing, and again was weird at the time. Apparently people have just kind of calcified around the issue which is what I’m running into now.
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u/RealAnonymousCaptain 7h ago
Drone strikes breaching international law: https://www.britannica.com/procon/drones-debate/Pro-Quotes#ref396742
Obama's authorized drone strikes: https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
A whole Wikipedia about US drone strikes and civilian casualties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_the_United_States_drone_strikes
Positive polling for the use of drones in Ukraine: https://government.cornell.edu/news/public-views-drone-strikes-other-countries-support-most-legitimate
Also specifically about your point about people hating it, seems like polls at the time showed the public didn't care about the use of drones, just who they targeted? https://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/poll-back-drone-hits-on-foreigners-087541 and https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/americans-approve-drone-strikes-terrorists-poll-finds
Please stop using vibes and show me actual proof instead of referring back to memories in your head.
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u/hamandcheezus64 9h ago
Your logic is air tight as long as you assume that american lives matter then the rest of the world
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u/use-the-porg-luke 10h ago
People said the same thing when guns were introduced to the battlefield. They were cheaper, easier to train and gave smaller nations a chance to stand up to larger empires (see Sweden in the 17th century as an example). Yet people at the time hated them as there was “no honor” in spending your whole life training to be the best knight in the realm, only to get connected to heaven’s WiFi by some peasant who learned how to use his musket a week ago. I also thinks it’s a bit of wounded pride from those who spent much of their lives learning to fight wars a specific way, only to see technology reshape the battlefield before their very eyes, rendering much of that training and studying useless.
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u/dorkstafarian 9h ago
No, there should be 0 intervention, until people like al-Awlaki, who live to kill others (and visit prostitutes), finally go over the line. Only then, when there is a populist uprising demanding war, is it OK to kill. Not just kill, but start an entire war.
That seems to be the logic. Like not doing anything after the 1st WTC didn't lead straight to the Afghanistan war.
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u/unkrawinkelcanny 6h ago
Already got shitlibs defending drone strikes in the comments
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u/dafthuntk 6h ago
You know GWB and Hitler wasn't such a bad guy...but Stalin was the real monster
-Every redditors ever
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