...of an unmanned orbital missile. The ever-growing distance between the killer and the killed is not exclusively physical. It is a dissociation of the human on the other side to his humanity, which, some warn, will engender in drone controllers a Playstation mentality. But the inhumanity of drone killings goes beyond empathic distance as well. Where did drones come from? They are a response to the economic concerns of waging modern warfare; drones...
So far in our discussion of drone policy, started here by Urja Mittal, we have assumed that this technology is the most efficient for fighting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. By Urja’s account, the debate over drones is currently an issue of educating the public and finagling legal details. I cannot accept this as an initial premise. Before diving into this debate, I wish to make the following clear: drone technology is promising and may solve long-st...
...eason in which only necessary battles are fought. But how has his actual foreign policy compared? Within his first term, we’ve seen the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the intervention in Libya, and an ever-escalating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The arguable success of his policies has left both his supporters and detractors baffled. How can one begin to categorize these actions into the normal partisan divides? Were these wars i...
...missiles. These aircraft provide constant video feeds before and after attacks, allowing officials to count successes and casualties and evaluate the strikes’ efficacy. Today, as tensions reignite in the Afpak region and U.S. drone use escalates, the debate about whether these aircraft should be allowed has arisen once again, more pertinent than ever before. Two things are clear, though: In the current war, drone strikes are a lawful course of ac...
photo from Wikimedia Commons “As an idealist my desire is to live in a world in which there is no need for targeted killings of terrorists,” commented Brad from Arizona on last week’s high-profile and somewhat disturbing New York Times piece about Obama’s “Kill List.” But I would hope that we all, idealists and realists alike, desire to live in a world in which there is no need for targeted drone strikes in the Middle East. Understanding the de...
...tz of the Gothic Guardian at Duke University did an admirable job of covering some of this ground), but of which none of them have chosen to make their primary focus. The basic argument in this forum has been over whether our drones actually are as accurate as the CIA claims and what their inevitable place in our military should be. But some of the questions raised by John Gee of the Penn Political Review are far more important, although he still...
...aps with the postal service. Yet we approach Facebook as if this is the technology that will finally render us incapable of human connection with each other, once and for all. I see the same thing happening with discussion of drone strikes in South Asia. According to Trent Serwetz, “[t]he ever-growing distance between the killer and the killed is not exclusively physical. It is a dissociation of the human on the other side to his humanity …” What...
...t, those who follow international affairs might object that such abuses of human rights and international law are typical of powerful states: Consider the United States’ reliance on torture of captives at Guantanamo Bay or on drone strikes in unstable countries. “Might makes right,” the saying goes, and that’s just the way it is. Such objections would be valid, were it not for the fact that Chevron is not a state. Rather, it is a multinational oi...
...emanded that NATO pay a hefty $5000 per truck to reopen the route, representing a 20-fold increase from the previous price. Pakistan has reasons to be upset as well, the greatest of which is undoubtedly the repeated forays of drones into the country, which have killed hundreds of civilians. A particularly bloody drone strike last year led to the closure of the NATO equipment pipeline. Pakistan considers the drone attacks gross violations of its s...
...for the United States, and for the extremist group behind it. To believe that a heavy-handed approach can preempt the growth of these organizations is both shortsighted and subversive. The “whack-a-mole” strategy of incessant drone strikes won’t solve the problem. If anything, it will exacerbate it. Yes, the United States has been able to wage a largely successful campaign in Yemen to destabilize the historically threatening Al-Qaeda group there,...
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