As we enter year twelve of the "war on terror," drones are arguably the coolest tool in the American military arsenal. There is a breathless tone in describing these machines that loiter for hours, then fire Hellfire missiles at remote targets. But just below the gee-wiz is a simmering debate over the secrecy and legality of their strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
There is so much rhetorical action amid the dazzle and we are so busy listening to the patter that we may miss the sleight of hand under way. We are told the strikes are secret, and at the same time that they are perfect. The Pentagon and CIA refuse to acknowledge their existence and usually won't answer questions about the program, though President Obama defended the strikes in a Google Plus forum.
We know there have been more than 270 drone strikes targeting insurgents and militant leaders in Pakistan and Yemen since 2002. The U.S. has more than tripled drone strikes this year in Yemen. Anonymous sources leak the names of the militants killed. And Congress holds hearings on who leaks all this.
We are assured that the targeted killing program is legal with its legality resting firmly on three grounds.
This final assertion is the key to the drone strike debate -- the contention that drones have astonishing precision, yielding little "collateral damage" civilian killing or injury. "It's this surgical precision," Brennan has argued, "the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qaida terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it, that makes this counterterrorism tool so essential."
Obama told the Google audience that drones have "not caused a huge number" of civilian casualties. Sen. Diane Feinstein said the number of civilian casualties have gone down. Drones, we are told, dramatically reduce the danger to innocent civilians, yet neither the Bush nor Obama administrations have been precise about the numbers of civilians killed. They've said at times "fewer than 20" or "single digits."
The equation of precision with few civilian casualties is the sleight of hand. While we marvel at the technology, see reporters get rebuffed when they ask about the not-so-secret program, get assured of the strikes' legality as our system of checks and balances is derided, and even debate minutia such as whether the remote pilots of drones are really pilots, we overlook the disappearance of civilian bodies from the scene of the strikes.
Estimates of civilians killed and injured by drones vary widely. The New America Foundation and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, put it in the hundreds while Pakistani sources say as many as 2,000 civilians have may have been killed and injured since 2004 in Waziristan. The same fog exists with regard to the numbers of civilians harmed in Yemen. The conservative web site Long War Journal, counts more than 130 civilians killed in Pakistan and more than 50 Yemeni civilians killed in U.S. strikes.
But the people of Pakistan and Yemen can't lose sight of the civilian dead and wounded. The intention/assertion of distinction and proportionality is not its fact. And the cruel irony of waging a hearts-and-mind strategy which puts civilian protection at its core in Iraq and Afghanistan, while denying the harm to civilians in Pakistan and Yemen, is not lost in those countries.
In July, the U.S. Army released a new "Civilian Casualty Mitigation" manual. It argues that civilian casualties lead to "ill will," undermine U.S. legitimacy, and diminish the likelihood of military success. Among the tools to maintain and regain that legitimacy, according to the Army, is to investigate incidents of civilian harm, acknowledge when civilian casualties occur at U.S. hands, and tell the truth.
It took years for the U.S. to acknowledge that civilian casualties were not only a grave concern to Afghans and Iraqis, but were also hurting the U.S. war efforts. Generals admitted that for every civilian killed, a number of insurgents were born and attacks on U.S. soldiers grew. It is time that the U.S. apply these lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq to the not-so-secret, not-so-legal, and probably not-so-precise drone war.
Neta C. Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, was co-director of the "Cost of War" project and is author of a forthcoming book about collateral damage.
They are being used and the military and government hope is that the community, at least on the side who uses them, will buy into their use. Hey they save our lives, they're safe, safe?? and they only kill bad people, or those who we deem are bad people.
And soon we'll be presented with even more "benefits" of using this weaponry.
Robots could be the next big recruits for the military. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) debuted a new version of its pack mule robot, designed to shoulder up to 400 pounds of supplies. It can follow visual and oral commands.
The robot can currently trot at a speed of 1- to 3-mph over rocky terrain, and can right itself if tipped over. Most importantly, the bot can take orders.
DARPA also announced its Cheetah robot reached 28.3 mph running on a treadmill, making it the fastest legged robot in history.
DARPA is working on triggering genes that will make soldiers' bodies able to convert fat into energy more efficiently so they are able to go days without eating while in the warzone.
Tomorrow's soldiers could be able to run at Olympic speeds and will be able to go for days without food or sleep, if new research into gene manipulation is successful.
Is this our tomorrow President Obama? You're the right man ok, but we need answers, not soft sell.
Duh, Wars cost money and Obama is a war criminal? Is that your agenda?
This whole very post has become nothing but a haven for reactionary anti-Obama ideologues
spewing their hate filled lies and propaganda.
Gary Johnson 2012
Some of the users may even look at it as a "war game," a few extra innocent people killed, it happens. It's hard to put humanity in to drones.
I am sure we are not told the truth about the real number of deaths, it's just not the CIA' s way.
I believe, drones have had a very negative trend on attitudes of the people in the countries affected by the hits, after all they know the real number of deaths.
Some technology is not all good,
Almost as offensive and despicable as the Republicans in the Senate, last Wednesday, rejecting help for Veterans getting Jobs.
They won't respond to the question of drone attacks by other nations in America and their legality, let alone their morality, and THAT is the issue with these attacks we commit.
Easier to dance around the core of it with 'legal' justifications (always open to being overridden by the next court!) than to deal with the fact that the Constitution makes no exception for unilateral preemptive war, especially without the full War Powers of Congress being invoked.
These strikes are both illegal, and immoral.
America has ceded the high moral ground and no longer stands for what I was raised to believe this country was about.
4/21/2012
"With little public attention,
dozens of universities
and law-enforcement agencies
have been given approval by federal aviation regulators
to use unmanned aircraft known as drones...
The more than 50 institutions that received approvals to operate remotely piloted aircraft are
more varied than many outsiders and privacy experts previously knew.
They include not only agencies such as the
Department of Homeland inSecurity
but also smaller ones such as the
police departments in
North Little Rock, Ark., and
Ogden, Utah,
as well the
University of North Dakota and
Nicholls State University in Louisiana.
By the fall of 2015, Congress wants the agency to
integrate remotely piloted aircraft throughout U.S. airspace."
"Many drones are designed to carry surveillance equipment,
including video cameras,
infrared thermal imagers,
radar and
wireless network 'sniffers,' "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304331204577354331959335276.html#
if the police in North Little Rock, Ark. are deploying drones, for who knows what in that hot bed of criminal activity,
you can be certain every revenue starved police department and university is lining up at the dept of Homeland inSecurity for
drone $$$$$
to better spy on the public
the MIC is laughing all the way to the bank!