Droning On
The New York Times reported Friday that the Obama Administration has stepped up its Predator strike campaign in Pakistan concurrent with the announcement of a troop surge in Afghanistan. The article focuses on comparing estimates of civilian casualties from strikes and estimates of how controversial the strikes are - interestingly, the greatest blowback comes from Pakistanis who live outside of the tribal areas: many of those in the FATA presumably approve because they are worse off when the militants have free rein in the area. An Amnesty International representative is quoted as saying that regardless of civilian casualties or political support, the attacks are problematic as such:
'Anything that dehumanizes the proces makes it easier to pull the trigger.'... The political consensus in support of the drone program, its antiseptic, high-tech appeal and its secrecy have obscured just how radical it is. For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killings in a country where the US is not officially at war.
I see an important error and omission here: First, drone are not robots. They are remote-controlled weapons piloted by a human being. We should bear in mind the distinction between such weapons and truly autonomous weapons with the capacity to make independent firing decisions. As for the social distance between weapons-bearer and victim, this debate is as old as the long-bow and catapult, and is not what makes the US' drone strikes radical. The bigger issues with drone is not whether they're as surgical as we hope, but whether the mission itself is legitimate. The targets of such strikes are political leaders of a social movement / terror network / insurgency call it what you will who are, by and large, going about their business at the time they are killed. As Mary Ellen O'Connell explains at IntlLawGrrls, assassinating them rather than capturing them and putting them on trial is counter to international law. And it's important to bear this in mind as evidence begins to mount that drone strikes are effective. I'm not going to argue; they may well be. A policy can be effective and still have too many negative externalities to be worthwhile. Or, it can be worthwhile from a policy point of view and still be wrong. Ward Thomas has shown that there are good reasons why assassination is against the rules of war. If Obama is going to persist with drone warfare, I'd like to see our "multilateral President" make a solid legal argument for why this is consistent with international law, or seek to amend the law to fit the changing times. Simply violating it without a discussion reminds me too much of his predecessor.
December 8, 2009 at 15:56
Reader Comments (3)
Charli, a great post and very insightful comments. As a political science student with a background in JWT, I'm very pleased that the normative nature of the issue of predator drones is being taken seriously (though perhaps not as much by our political leaders themselves as I'd like, unfortunately).
Nevertheless I think you missed two very important points. First regards how these drone strikes affect the Pakistanis' perception of the US occupation. I don't have a link handy, but I recall a segment on NPR where the Pakistanis interviewed expressed their disgust that the US was resorting to using these robotic drones to drop bombs from miles above while the actual "pilots" themselves were comfortably controlling the strikes by remote control. To these Pakistanis, this was direct evidence of the cowardice of the American forces, which has an extremely significant impact not only on the Pakistani civilian population that we are trying to "win over," but the radical forces we are fighting who can use these drone strikes and our "cowardice" as morale boosters and important recruiting tools.
Secondly, one can't talk about the drone strikes without mentioning the role that the private military industry is playing. The reality is that private defense contractors are involved in nearly every step of the process, from selling these weapons to the US government to loading the bombs and performing repairs on the drones- only US forces are the ones who actually pull the trigger. As Jeremy Scahill notes, "Blackwater operatives are effectively running the drone bombings for both JSOC and the CIA."
While the world waits for Obama to provide a legal argument to support their use, it's also worth remembering that a precedent is being established:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/world/middleeast/01gaza.html
Charli, I think your note on the differences between drones and robots raises a potentially important point on the nature of proxy warfare. Can we claim a difference between dones that function as technological prostheses, and robots (assuming autonomy and will) that function as surrogate agents?