Other than the politicians taking FOREVER to make a decision, the two drone operators really shouldn't be doing that job.
They have a specific job to do & should not hesitate or question the order(s) because someone innocent gets in the way.
It's their prerogative to question an order when a situation changes.
shareIn the movie yes.
Real life? ha! Think again.
By then... You need to realize it's already been questioned a million times.
It's the last thing anyone wants to do.. Kill someone... From the top down...
Trust. You have to trust your people (family), When the order is made...
You already know the details. And besides you really think it will come down to the pilot? Nope!
Your job is not to figure out why a target is a target! Your job is to watch, report, and destroy. Period!
Trust. You will destroy if the order is given and will sleep like a baby.
No, questioning orders has saved lives in the real world (and even the world itself on a few occasions), the person above you may be your superior in rank but it doesn't make them a superior person, incompetence is everywhere and because of that some jobs need blind hitmen and others need empathic soldiers.
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov
Good thing they weren't piloting the Enola Gay back in 1945.
Just how would their superiors have handled a similar situation back then?
"We're over Hiroshima/Nagasaki but we have a question!"
Not to randomly pick 'nits', I will be 'nit picking' on two points regarding japan and WWII.
1) Nagasaki was where the torpedoes were manufactured. The very same ones that did the most damage at Pearl Harbor. Yes, that was an odd joining of circumstances that the first break in the cloud cover happened over that weapon factory.
2) The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs were different designs, (one uranium, the other plutonium), and you may recall there was only one test explosion, with the bomb held on a tower. It was not known if either of the two remaining atom bombs would actually detonate properly after the airplane flight in the colder air where mechanical parts would shrink from the cold. Also, one of the bombs was so large ("fatman") it was partially dismantled to fit into the bomber, and reassembled in flight to Japan.
Yeah, yeah, it was also for safety reasons it was dismantled, so it would not go off at/near the airbase, too.
(Just in case you wondered if I knew about that...)
Yes, in real life they do.. because legally they are accountable.
shareIf anyone doubts that, just do a little research about how the "I was just following orders!" defense held up in the post WWII Nuremberg trials. BTW, the trials were for soldiers accused of war crimes.
In more recent events, I believe a large part of the troop withdrawals from Iraq were due to the fact that the government at the time refused to sign documents granting American soldiers exemption from prosecution... (I never saw, in print,
what prosecutions would have been exempted.)
Maybe the government had enough of the BlackSwampWater contractors opening fire on innocent civilians. (No, that is not the actual name of the contractor company...)
One of the early published drone strike 'oops' events was on a suspected OBL group against an unusually tall guy in a white robe, and people around him. The follow-up investigation confirmed the guy was NOT OBL, and it was a wedding event that accounted for the white robe(s).
"Sorry about that, Chief." - Maxwell Smart