The following is a piece I wrote in spring 2012 that was never published but, unfortunately, remains substantively true and certainly as relevant as ever:
Among the most significant developments in the U.S. government’s so-called ‘War on Terror’ are those concerning the increased depersonalization of the killing process, as the government has chosen to shift military funding towards the creation of a robotic army. At present, the U.S. military is training more drone “pilots” than bomber and fighter pilots combined, intensifying drone activity around its sixty drone bases worldwide, and allocating a considerable proportion of Pentagon funds to the creation of a new generation of unmanned killing machines.
While many pundits have regarded the adoption of drone technology as merely part of an inevitable and inexorable push towards technological progress, such views are disturbingly shortsighted, more often than not framed in poorly conceived hypothetical terms that do not conform to reality. Such proponents of drone use suggest that drone technology will make warfare more efficient, less costly, and safer, echoing the boundless optimism of previous eras in which ‘scientific progress’ was touted as the cure-all for humanity’s ills.
Yet, the clarion call of ‘scientific progress’ continues to ring hollow.
In reality, the pursuit of drone technology has already proved to be a Pandora’s Box of sorts, as the use of unmanned killing machines has raised fundamental ethical questions concerning U.S. foreign policy, the allocation of government funds, and military accountability.
One of the most obvious issues posed by the use of “remotely piloted aircraft” and like-machines is that of transparency, especially when taking into account the U.S. military’s deplorable record of accountability. When soldiers who perpetrate the most infamous and publicized of war crimes (My Lai and Haditha Massacres) are let-off virtually scotch-free it is naive to believe that the government is going to hold transgressors of the ‘laws of war’ accountable, especially when their misdeeds are performed through the intermediary of an unmanned bomber and within the anonymity of a program currently shrouded in near-complete secrecy.
At present, the opaque nature of drone operations is made murkier by the very structuring of these operations, as their procedural framework makes government accountability near impossible. Though the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) both run drone programs, each pursues separate kill lists whose contents are classified to the extent that they are not disclosed between programs. Furthermore, the procedural guidelines for operations lack a clear chain-of-command or formal body with direct oversight over the programs. Journalists such as Joshua Foust have even suggested that the labyrinthine structure of these programs is so confused that they virtually operate outside the purview of the Director of National Intelligence.
These structural impediments to even internal accountability are in turn amplified by other issues, in particular the use of privately contracted drone operators. Approximately one-third of U.S. intelligence workers are private contractors, workers who are more able and apt to transgress rules that apply to purely government personnel. For example, private contractors who operate drones have to meet a “review quota,” or monitor a specific list of zones and implicitly achieve ‘results’ in order to keep their jobs or obtain promotion. By predicating the employment of private contractors on ‘results’ these mercenaries have an inadvertent incentive to kill or engage in other rash acts of force.
Even if one is to take at face value Washington’s assurances of oversight, the question remains as to whether the pursuit of robotic warfare can achieve its stated objectives, namely the destruction of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. Most assessments amongst intelligence analysts, however, suggest that drone operations have actually increased foreign resentment towards the U.S. and work to galvanize indigenous peoples against American influence. The regions with the highest levels of U.S. drone activity, Yemen and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border provide an excellent case-in-point.
In 2009 the U.S. military attacked the Yemenis town of al-Majalla with a cruise missile killing 46 civilians in a region not known to harbor terrorist activity. Documents later released by WikiLeaks record a conversation between U.S. General Petraeus (the recently ousted Director of the CIA) and then President Saleh in which the two agreed to cover-up the massacre, Saleh assuring Petraeus that “we’ll continue saying the bombs are ours and not yours.”
Since the U.S. has increased drone and other military activity in Yemen, the indigenous populace has grown alienated to the point that local resistance groups are forming to protect Yemenis from U.S. aggression. One of these groups, Ansar al Sharia, has even managed to oust government forces from the Zinjibar district in southern Yemen. Since the U.S. grants Yemen at least $150 million annually in foreign aid and trained the CTU, a special Yemenis force that has been used to suppress political dissent, such views appear amply justified. In fact, the U.S. has become a veritable cash-cow for Yemenis politicians, with reports of terrorists being released from prison when the government wants to squeeze the U.S. for more foreign aid.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border, another hotbed for U.S. drone operations, has experienced similarly disastrous results. It is estimated that from 2004-2012 the U.S. has engaged in at least 303 drone attacks throughout the Pakistani borderland. Though Obama repeatedly claims that drone strikes result in a negligible number of civilian casualties, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has claimed that 282-535 civilian deaths have been “credibly reported”. As in Yemen the blowback is palpable, a group called Khorasan Mujahedin having been formed specifically to deal with “U.S. informants,” or Pakistanis they suspect of aiding the U.S. military.
If anything, the use of unmanned fighting machines has engendered more hatred towards the U.S. since the only encounters most citizens in areas of drone activity have with the U.S. either involve episodes of violence or crass displays of “shock and awe.” Not exactly the most promising means of diplomacy. Furthermore, levels of al-Qaeda and other terrorist activity may be seen as directly proportional to U.S. presence in a region: when the U.S. invaded Iraq in came al-Qaeda, and when it began bombing Yemen, guess who showed up – al-Qaeda.
Of course these facts should not be at all surprising since the entire logic behind terrorism is built upon the assumption of mass retaliation by a dominant power in response to a deliberate act of provocation, or calculated terrorist attack. The logic then follows that dominant power’s consequent acts of mass retaliation will inevitably alienate the civilian population and in turn set the populace irredeemably against it. Thus, any use of violence by the dominant power merely plays into the plans of the terrorist plotters.
In truth, the best policy that the U.S. government can and should adopt is to withdraw from its 1,000-some military bases worldwide, renounce interventionist policies, and end drone (and all) warfare. History shows that whenever the military has tried to intervene in a foreign conflict or combat perceived enemies through clandestine acts of violence, the long-term result is invariably the same: unspeakable human suffering, moral atrophy, and engendering of more hatred.
One must remember that at one point the U.S. directly funded the governments of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashir Assad, and Hosni Mubarak (these decisions did not turn out well). Also, I would be remiss to leave out that many of the first members of ‘terrorist’ groups that the U.S. is currently combating in the Middle-East were initially trained and financed by the U.S. during the 1980s as part of its proxy war with the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan (for example, members of the Taliban and the precursor to contemporary al-Qaeda). Consequently, when viewed in context, the upheaval in Yemen and Pakistan is only the latest of a long history of blowback and unintended consequences sparked by the shortsightedness and imbecility of U.S. interventionists.
In closing, the decision of U.S. policymakers to pursue drone warfare and the general expansion of the already bloated military-industrial complex during a time when most Americans are struggling to cope with an acute economic crisis is indicative of several truths regarding U.S. policy in general. In an age when threats to ‘U.S. security’ are negligible to the point that the army has to literally be sent to look for them under rocks, the government has chosen to spend its people’s money manufacturing death instead of creating jobs or healing the sick. While Congress approves welfare handouts to unscrupulous armaments-makers, they speak in apocalyptic terms about a budget-crisis and the need to cut ‘nonessential’ programs that aid the widow and feed the orphan. And while the U.S. denounces dictators it once financed as ‘undemocratic’, it continues to murder countless innocent victims on the periphery of its own empire.
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