End Wars and Occupations IOT Monthly Conference Call - Progressive Democrats of America

 March 2012
sound  chat room 
 
Link to Sound File  Link to Chat Room Archive

Business of the call begins at the 3:49 minute mark. Andrea Miler explained the new set-up on the new-and-improved website. She also made a pitch for folks to sign up as recurring donors, people who can give an automatic $5, $10 or more each month.

Sandy Davies spoke on Syria. As much as Syrians are opposed to their government, they're just as opposed to receiving American assistance. There's evidence of US intervention designed to produce propaganda. The US appears to have regained control of the narrative, the storyline, after the “Arab Spring” and Libya is the sorry result of that. There is no national government in Libya, that country is controlled by hundreds of local militias.

Medea Benjamin just wrote a book on drones. Drones serve some useful, civilian purposes, but essentially, they exist for hostile, warmaking purposes. The cheaper drones are “only” $30 million, but the fact that drones crash, go rogue and have an extensive on-the-ground support group makes the actual expense much higher. Drones appear to be more effective at transferring taxpayer money into the pockets of drone producers than they are at achieving anything useful in foreign policy. In the last ten years, the number of drones has grown from a few hundred to many tens of thousands. Some drones are so small they can fit into a soldiers' backpack. There are serious concerns about the safety of remote-controlled aircraft as human-manned aircraft can still react much better to the unexpected.

There was a commenter who suggested what Neocons are already advocating, that drones could replace soldiers.*

We finished off with further talks on fundraising.


*Editorial comment from Rich: Slight problem with that is that in that drones may be useful in a conventional war capacity, where the targets are clearly defined, but guerrilla war is very heavily dependent on intel, upon knowing what's going on with the other side, and that kind of intel is only obtainable via having “boots on the ground.” No, drones will never be able to replace humans in many capacities.