Essay: Targeted drone killing

A new technology, which reduces the incidence of occupation forces and civilian casualties, extends into a gap in the continuum between law enforcement and war.

This was first published in the Dayton Review on February 20, 2013. It is scheduled for publication in Chum for Thought: Blood in the Water (2014).

Targeted drone killing

We don’t seem to have a problem with missile-armed drones here in central Iowa, but there are those among us who are worried about black helicopters coming for them in the night. However, people in villages in other places watch armed drones circling overhead every day. Somebody (and anyone else near them) is probably going to get blown to bits pretty soon. There is no safe place to hide and there is no safe place for your children to play. That has got to get on your nerves.

The rise of global terrorism has required governments to develop new policies and procedures. This is unlike any war that has ever been and it’s not easy to wrap our minds around how things are having to change. Lethal actions are no longer taken exclusively against nation states, but against widely dispersed and diverse groups and individuals.

Terrorist groups often gravitate to parts of the world that have inadequate rule of law, such as effective law enforcement and extradition treaties. Still, they may pose real dangers to the security of the United States, its citizens, and to others that have the support of the United States. Further, available technology has the capacity to multiply the massive damage that even a small terrorist organization can produce.

Historically, military responses have required

Essay: Known knowns and unknown unknowns

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Known knowns and unknown unknowns

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKeTZGNzhhdExsa1E/edit?usp=sharing

Donald #Rumsfeld on Known knowns and unknown unknowns

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Known knowns and unknown unknowns

In 2002, the press took exception to a comment by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, I think he was onto something important…

“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld – Defense Department briefing, February 12, 2002  (Federal par. 160)

This quotation has been rendered in several minor variations. They all fall short by one of exhausting the matrix of known and knowable. But, that is not critical to the point that he was making. The version (below) that I transcribed from a video of his briefing includes the sound of an audience starting to laugh. The reporters may have been anticipating questioning him sharply about unknown knowns:

“… there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know.”           
ibid (transcribed by Satterlee—italics added)

Secretary Rumsfeld was nearing the end of a protracted and confrontational news conference at the time that he made this statement. Reporters had repeatedly parsed his words and perversely tried to turn them against him. He had just defended a ludicrous challenge to the Pentagon’s attentiveness to Iraq. A questioner asserts that, “…there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.”

Rumsfeld, evidently getting testy, introduces

Essay: The thing about “Real War” – victors and vanquished

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The thing about “Real War” – victors and vanquished

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKLUY4TElYdW9IRzA/edit?usp=sharing

#military #power

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

The thing about “Real War” – victors and vanquished

Very few people now alive have had the experience of what I think of as “Real War.” Oh, we still use the word “war,” but it doesn’t seem to carry the same sense of dramatic finality that it formerly did. War, and our thinking about war, has gotten soft. Our changing values affect the way we respond to the victors and victims of war.

These days, our wars tend to earn euphemisms such as: border skirmish, police action, regime change, nation building, civil uprising, popular revolution, government standoff, and gorilla opposition. Similarly, killing becomes: targeting, eliminating, taking out, and collateral damage because the idea is too repulsive to be named as what it is without shame. We rarely see Group A attacking Group B with the intent of killing or enslaving everyone and taking all of their land and property. 

And, of course, Real War only begets more war. Yeah, Real War used to really mean something.

The incomprehensible and unconscionable violence of World War II so scared the crap out of