The Obscenity of Drones

Why is the subject of drone use in countries with whom the USA or UK are not at war not prominent in political discussion? A few blogs and internet news sources have carried good pieces on the topic of drone warfare, but only infrequently. I was heartened to see a video clip from a recent Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC where she asks a variation of that question. She frames it along the lines of "why isn't Mitt Romney bringing up the topic in his campaign speeches?" She admits to seeing the President's stance on the issue as being "hair raising" - which is as close as anyone on MSNBC is likely to get to criticising He Who Must Not be Criticised. That's why I stopped watching MSNBC.

Here's the clip from Rachel Maddow's show. For any passing reader without 7+ minutes to spare, scoot in to around the halfway point, after she stops talking about Paul Ryan.

I've looked around the net to see what others are thinking on this issue, found a Pew Poll SEE HERE which shows that in 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%).

A 62% approval?.... of exercises which result in often killing unarmed civilians and children?.... in countries with which the US or UK are not at war? So....would this 62% be willing to accept reciprocal behaviour from other countries on the US or UK?

Some comments around the net state the view that, in a nutshell, "war is dirty, people will be killed". We are not at war - that is the crux of this issue. If drones had been available during World War II (doodlebugs were their precurser I guess) well then, perhaps the use of drones would have been acceptable as a form of self defence. Had that war been lost, Nazi rule would have spread world wide. War has not been declared.

This from

http://www.pri.org/stories/world/asia/new-report-finds-u-s-drone-warfare-is-traumatizing-innocent-civilians-11581.html
.....The United States government doesn't acknowledge that civilians have been killed in drone attacks. Making matters worse, aid workers, first responders and even locals tend to wait several hours before going to the scene of a drone strike to help the wounded, for fear of a second strike following.

Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve, a nonprofit organization based in the United Kingdom that sponsored the report, said the academics visited 130 places in Pakistan, talking to survivors, to create their report.
"Drone warfare is traumatizing the entirety of Waziristan," he said. "Of the 800,000 people in Waziristan, the vast majority are not extremists. These folks have these drones flying round and round over their heads, 24 hours a day. And it's causing serious psychological trauma." Among those victims, he said, are children.

Smith said, in addition to witnesses who talk about their trauma there are doctors who are treating people for those sorts of illnesses and an "exponential increase" in the use of psychiatric drugs for treating anxiety and depression.

"We're talking common sense. My mother was in London in 1944 when there were various drones fired overhead at London. She's 85 today and she still remembers very vividly the effect of these things coming down," Smith said. "That's the same thing that's going on in Pakistan today."

Mentioned in that piece was someone who lived through the London blitz. As a young child I lived through the blitz too, not in London but in Hull, an east coast port bombed regularly by the Germans. The experience possibly helps to understand and empathise with the ordinary people of territories being drone-attacked by the US/UK . Though very young at the time of World War II, I retain clear memories and shallow-buried fears. The sound of a siren still makes my blood run cold almost 70 years after. I remember blocks of houses disappearing overnight - their occupants, including some of my little firends, blasted to kingdom come. I remember, after being evacuated to live with grandparents, watching from an upstairs window at night, the far horizon red with the fires in my parent's home city after more bombings. Young as I was, I understood that the morning could bring devastating news.

People who consider current drone use to be just and necessary ought to "walk a while in the shoes" of those civilians who live in fear because of what we in the US and UK are allowing our governments to do in our name.

What about the people actually doing the remote killing?
FROM HERE

Drone operators see their intended targets 'wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,' explains Dave, another high-tech murderer who killed from an office cockpit at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base and who now trains new recruits to the cyber-killer corps at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base.

When instructed to kill someone he has stalked from the air for a prolonged period:
"I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I have a duty, and I execute my duty." When the deed is done, he points out, nobody "in my immediate environment is aware of anything that has occurred."

Another drone operator named Will insists:
"There was a good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over."

All very heroic, isn't it? (Irony)

I'll summarise in a single sentence.
Use of drones outside of a legitimate war is obscene.