The Drone Wars

Peace, peace; but there is no peace. The war in Iraq, the president tells us, is over and America "will shrink the foreign footprint in Afghanistan by 40,000" in 2012. But we are still in armed conflict in Ethiopia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and Iran. Peace is a long way off and these wars are affecting us in ways we do not recognize.

Our cyber and robotic technology is changing us as it changes everything about war. It has created an ever-expanding battlefield, redefined to include even our homes. It has separated our citizenry and even our military from the actual warfare. And we, the citizens, are not asking or being informed what the consequences of these technologies really are. The drone wars are a good example.

In 2002, the US had only 167 drones. Now there are upwards of 7000. Ever more intelligent unmanned aircraft could eventually replace every type of manned aircraft. At least 40 countries have the technology. Even Hezbollah has received 24 drones. At the unmanned aircraft industry show last year, China showed up with a surprising 24 different drones. Iran will probably share with China the technology of the US, super stealth RQ 170 drone that they somehow downed early this month.

Drones are not just weapons. They can and are amazingly useful. They are already patrolling the Canadian and Mexican borders and monitoring weather, natural disasters and industrial accidents. For the military, they are gathering electronic messages, reporting battle conditions to local commanders and doing a wide range of reconnaissance tasks.

Let's recognize that drones are a technological advance comparable to, in their day, the machine gun and even the crossbow. Are they so inhumane, like poison gas, cluster bombs and landmines, that they should be outlawed? Unlikely.

So, are remotely controlled battlefields and targeted killings an effective, legal and moral way to fight a war? Drones have been particularly effective in the targeted killing of high-ranking Taliban and Al Qaeda officials. Collateral damage, the euphemism for civilian deaths, is, however, in dispute. Some claim, absurdly, that there are no civilian deaths. Other estimates put the civilian casualties at half the level of militant casualties.

The legality of drones challenges both international humanitarian law and the principle of national self-defense. International law and conventions on war, the so-called law of armed conflict, allow lawful combatants, i.e., uniformed military, the right to attack other combatants on the battlefield. Critics claim that a civilian CIA employee piloting a drone in Afghanistan from a site in Arizona is not a "lawful combatant" nor is he on a "battlefield." The law of armed conflict doesn't make much sense in the context of a robotic war.

The principle of self-defense in regard to warfare means that a nation has the right to use deadly force both in an active combat zone as well as elsewhere to protect vital national interests. The US State Department demands "the right of a state to strike terrorists within the territory of another state where the terrorists are using that territory as a location from which to launch terrorist attacks and where the state involved has failed to respond effectively to a demand that the attacks be stopped." The US would define terrorism and decide, of course, when all those conditions are met.

This is a stretch. The governments of Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iran (or any of those countries where we have targeted and killed individuals) could target former President Bush or a CIA drone pilot, based on their definition of terrorism.

In any event, whether moral and/or legal, robotic warfare has far-reaching social and political consequences. The ugly reality of drone strikes becomes like a PlayStation game, something that American youth are already addicted to. The "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," a video wargame, had $775 million in sales in just the first five days.

Unlike the games, real people are dying in the drone-strike videos our kids see on YouTube. But Afghanis are being killed by people sitting in perfect safety in bunkers in Arizona. With our standing army of volunteers, we already exempt 99 percent of our population from military service and the real dangers of war. Remember, we stopped the draft after Vietnam because of opposition to the war by those who had to serve. What if no one has to be in danger?

A robotic, remote war will detach us even further from the horrors of war. It will mask the hard facts on which we base our opposition to war. With drones doing our dirty work, it will be easier, cheaper and more likely we will go to war.

We can't stop the drones but we can fight the consequences. We can still pray for peace this Christmas.