Talk:Civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2021 and 13 March 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Skyt23.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20150218080812/http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php to http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130205202313/http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/13+drones+kill+10+civilians+for+one+militant-za-09 to http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/13+drones+kill+10+civilians+for+one+militant-za-09
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110830213657/http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net:80/drones to http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones

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Civilians and militants
The article draws a clear distinction between civilians and militants. However that is not the reality or a proper distinction. Most so-called militants are in fact civilians. They may be supporters of groups that the USA is opposed to, but they are civilians. The analogy would be if Al Qaeda used a drone to kill President Obama, and said that they had killed a militant. Obama, like the people targeted by the CIA, is a civilian albeit one involved in promoting violence.Royalcourtier (talk) 01:34, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121104052227/http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/02/counting_civilian_casualties_in_cia_s_drone_war to http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/02/counting_civilian_casualties_in_cia_s_drone_war

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Questions about this page - May require to be reviewed
1) This page is exclusively available in English, which is abnormal. Shouldn't this information or topic be on the page Unmanned combat aerial vehicle[], which is multilingual.  The section on that last page pertaining to civilian deaths does not link to this page for example.

2) Discrepancies - Though it clearly mentions that often the data is lacking or secret, the data here is rather shallow and the numbers given are quite different than those given by other agencies/organizations. For example, the US government qualifies any male adult as a "combatant" which is a false conception of what is a civilian/combatant.  Other expert organizations on this topic should review this page (if this page is even necessary considering the existence of other pages on the same topic).

3) Suggested additional source - The media The Intercept published recently (May 2018) what they call The Drone Papers, summarized as being based on "a cache of secret documents detailing the inner working of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia".


 * As Wikipedia's article Drone Papers explains, The Intercept published that article in October 2015. KalHolmann (talk) 18:28, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * [ Thank you for the info. I could not find the date on their web site. - Michael ] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michaël Lessard (talk • contribs) 02:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

4) Suggestion - It may be necessary to add a sub-section about how targets are determined. What is a military target is a a major hurdle to estimating civilian causalities.  When the US government claims someone was a "targeted militant", the process is secret and extra-judiciary.  It remains to be proven that the targets, as such, were truly military or combatant.

5) Needs to be updated with more recent data. Reports claim that, in 2018, a record number of people were killed by drones. I am adding these questions to encourage current experts on the topic update/improve this page OR the page on drones per say.

Thank you, Michaël Lessard (talk) 17:28, 6 May 2018 (UTC)


 * In my view, it would be fine to merge this page with the UAV page. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Follow-up - Jan. 2022 : just a quick positive feedback that the current version of this page is much improved other the 2018 one. Michaël Lessard (talk) 03:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

RE: "Drone strikes are part of a targeted killing campaign against jihadist militants"
That's true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Drone strikes have also targeted non-jihadists, and in some cases jihadists have targeted governments using drones. See for example https://www.nytimes.com./2019/09/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-refineries-drone-attack.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.79.29.52 (talk) 03:23, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

RE: Criticism section
If there's a criticism section, there should be a section explaining why the US views drone strikes as necessary and what measures are taken to prevent or reduce civilian casualties. For example, Eliot Cohen had this to say:

“Edward Luttwak has observed that often in war, success breeds, of necessity, a certain kind of failure. In April 2015 the White House acknowledged that a drone strike that killed several al-Qaeda operatives also killed an American and an Italian relief worker who had been held prisoner for three and four years respectively. Journalists deprecated the program’s mistakes and the president apologized profusely. America’s successful scrupulousness had boomeranged upon it. No war can ever be waged with exquisite precision, and as a result, civilians, hostages, and innocents will always die. Neither President Bush nor President Obama had attempted to condition public opinion to inevitable blunders and loss of life—in part, perhaps because they themselves were seduced by the promise of perfect warfare—so such events were misunderstood and misinterpreted. The US military’s tremendous strength and skill had been turned into a vulnerability. 25”

— The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force by Eliot A. Cohen — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.79.29.52 (talk) 03:38, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Should have a better breakdown over time
Increasingly unclear if Wikipedia cares about "Why?", but the reason I was searching for information on this topic was to find trend information over time. This was one of the better 'hits' from websearch, but the main thing I've learned is that the data seems to become less clear and more muddled over time, which is the opposite of the more common trends for most topics I've researched over the years. Maybe it's just too complicated in this case because it also needs to be correlated against the evolving technical capabilities? So far all I've gotten is an impression of "Drone more, talk less." Shanen (talk) 18:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Definitely a better breakdown overtime
Why are we not starting at the beginning of drone strikes that should include all years, number of drone strikes per year and the best Intel we have on deaths per strike. Clarabelle jr (talk) 17:48, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Content from Disposition Matrix article
I removed a significant amount of material on civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes from the Disposition Matrix article because it was off-topic there. While I suspect it largely duplicates content from this article, I have not verified this, so I wanted to mention it here in case it contained content useful to this article. Daask (talk) 02:48, 20 June 2024 (UTC)