COMMENT - All too many ordinary Americans are also ready to accept the use of drones as a way to increase the safety of those they love who may otherwise be in the line of fire. A friend of mine expressed this sentiment, to my shock last summer as her voice vibrated with her fear for a beloved nephew - who had chosen to return to Afghanistan several times. At the time, he was back on leave. Two months later he was dead doing the work he had chosen.
Those living there do not have a choice.
Beyond the choices of individuals remains the stark fact there is no just war in question here. We are not 'defending' ourselves from aggression, we are simply defending the profits of corporations who, we must now recognize, have hijacked our government and are manipulating us emotionally through the use of our love of country.
We, those funding this war, are being bled dry for the profit of these same corporations, Green Hills Software among them. There is no honor, no glory, no courage here, only deceit, and a growing hunger for more.
Confronting those who are guilty because of their refusal to see is essential to our survival. Some will understand, others will quit their jobs because they cannot take the truth. But every time we speak we dim the cacophony of lies which enable them to act.
The advantage of technologized warfare is also its most worrying:
The perception of decreased risk to the aggressor
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| A ground-based cockpit during a training mission flown from Syracuse, New York. (Credit: AP/Tsgt Ricky Best) |
In
the brave new world of technologized warfare, every week seems to bring a
new sci-fi-movie-worthy revelation about America’s ongoing drone
operations. This past week was no exception. From the lawyer
who first outlined White House policy on drone attacks, we learned that
the government is likely using such attacks instead of capturing
alleged terrorists, all to avoid the thorny legal issues that come with
prisoner detainment. From the United Nations,
we learned that the world may be closer to seeing its first
self-directed Terminator-style killing machines — technically called
“Lethal Autonomous Robots” — than many may have previously thought.These
kind of stories will continue for one big, if unstated, reason: robotic
warfare seems to hold the promise of making many things easier, cheaper
and less risky, at least for the countries that operate the drones. But
the operative word is “seems,” for drones involve a problematic
illusion that distorts our perception of the risks we face.
Before examining that illusion, let’s first review why drone technology seems so appealing to policymakers:
- Low cost: Because drones — unlike human soldiers — don’t need stuff like healthcare, food and pensions, they allow the Pentagon to cut its budget
while also maintaining strike capabilities. Similarly, drones’
long-range surveillance capabilities mean the Pentagon may eventually
feel it doesn’t need as many forward-deployed bases.
- Brutal
efficiency: As mentioned above, drones make it easier for the
government to simply execute terrorism suspects rather than deal with
complicated stuff like due process.
- Violence at a distance: Drones have allowed the United States to kill thousands of foreigners — many of them civilians — without having to fear that American pilots will be killed or that American ground troops will be in harm’s way.
This
latter characteristic explains the genie-out-of-the-bottle quandary in
trying to curtail the drone war. In short, once a technology purporting
to simplify and reduce risk hits a market, it is difficult to constrain
that technology because its seemingly beneficial attributes prove
irresistible.
The trouble with drones, of course, is that those
positive attributes are also their most problematic. Indeed, the
perceived risk reduction and simplicity of drone strikes ends up
removing a critical deterrent to unnecessary violence, namely, the
perceived possibility of casualties for the aggressor. Though nobody
would — or should — hope for any kind of casualties, the fact remains
that without that deterrent, drone-armed nations run the risk of seeing
robot-administered violence as the best — if not the only —
problem-solving option.
A little-noticed study
from the British government’s Ministry of Defence explained how this
works in practice. The report quotes Robert E. Lee saying, “It is well
that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.” It
then asked: “If we remove the risk of loss from the decision-makers’
calculations when considering crisis management options, do we make the
use of armed force more attractive? Will decision-makers resort to war
as a policy option far sooner than previously?”
British government
actions suggest the answer is “yes.” As the report notes, the United
Kingdom’s decision to wage war in Pakistan and Yemen came about
precisely because Britain possessed drones and could therefore prevent
British casualties.
“The use of force is totally a function of the
existence of an unmanned capability,” the report concluded. “It is
unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were
not available.”
The same principles apply to the United States’
military actions. Throughout history, the one proven check on the
unbridled militarism has not been Congress, the Constitution, foreign
casualties or unsustainable Pentagon budgets; it has been the perception
of life-and-death risk to the wider citizenry. When conscription ended
in 1973, that perceived risk for most Americans was reduced and, not
coincidentally, we’ve seen our government feel freer to engage in longer and more risky military adventures than ever, and without fear of widespread opposition.
Now
with drone warfare, the same government perceives that violence comes
with even less immediate life-and-death risk for our country, and
consequently our technologized violence is expanding. Indeed, according
to the New York Times,
the U.S. government feels so uninhibited that it has moved beyond
targeted killing to “drone attacks based on patterns of activity” —
attacks aimed at locations without actually “know(ing) the identity of
the targets.” Among the general population, it’s much the same dynamic:
With drones seeming to make war less risky, there hasn’t just been
little opposition to the drone war; polls actually show strong support for continuing the robot onslaught, even as we learn about its deplorable civilian casualties.
But
in those casualties exist the pernicious lie of drone technology, the
lie that suggests drone warfare is ultimately a consequence-free
endeavor for the drone-wielding nation.
With mounting evidence
that America’s massacre of foreign civilians is creating more
terrorists than it is neutralizing, and with terrorists citing our drone
operations as motivations for their plots
against us, there are consequences; they are just different than what
we’re accustomed to. They aren’t, say, traditional counter-volleys on a
declared battlefield. Instead, they are more like the Boston bombing,
aka asymmetrical terrorist attacks against nearly impossible-to-protect
soft targets.
Even if you are a coldhearted boor who proudly
claims not to care about dead children in faraway places, self-interest
should help you understand the problem. It’s simple: Drones are
deceiving us into believing we face no consequences to violence, even
though the principles of blowback are every bit as powerful as they ever
have been. Put another way, machines are tricking us into believing
that actions no longer generate reactions when, alas, they still do. MORE
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