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Drones: Backfiring on U.S. Strategy
Predator drones are equipped with large and powerful cameras that beam real-time images to their operators. Last February, a Predator crew operating out of Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, asked for an air strike against three vehicles with males supposed to be insurgents. An OH-58D Kiowa helicopter fired Hellfire missiles and rockets which destroyed the three vehicles. Instead of insurgents, 23 innocent men, women and children were killed and 12 more were seriously injured.
In a scathing report released on May 29, the American military blamed the "inaccurate and unprofessional reporting" by a team of Predator drone operators that led to the strikes. This episode illustrates the serious risks involved in the use of drones, which many law experts consider violate rules of war. Predator drones are extensively used in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they track and kill suspected insurgents, sometimes with their own missiles.
A report by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, makes a thorough assessment on the effect of drones, whose use has provoked significant controversy.
Drones' proponents argue that since they have significant surveillance capacity and great precision, they are able to avoid collateral civilian casualties and injuries. They also state that since drones may provide the ability to conduct aerial surveillance and to gather "pattern of life" information, they may allow operators to distinguish between peaceful civilians and those engaged in direct hostilities. The above episode is a clear demonstration of the fallacy of this argument and of the dangers to civilians of using such lethal weapons.
According to the Alston report, the main concern about drones is that they make it easier to kill without any risk to a State's forces. I believe that an even greater risk is the process of trivializing war, making it thus a deadlier, more dangerous activity since it affects not only those who are target but also those who direct the operation and for whom war becomes no more significant than a video game.
An additional complication to the use of drones is that in many cases international forces are too often uninformed of local practices, or too credulous in interpreting information, to be able to arrive at a reliable understanding of a situation, wrote Michael N. Schmitt, a Professor of International Law at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, in Germany.
According to Schmitt, precision warfare such as the one carried out by drones intersects (or has the potential to interact) with international humanitarian law in four specific areas: the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks; the principle of proportionality, the requirement to take precautions in attack; and perfidy and other misuses of protected status.
Precision attacks as carried out by drones may violate international humanitarian law's tenet of distinction, as stated in Articles 48, 51 and 52 of Additional Protocol I. As indicated by Schmitt, distinction has been cited as a "cardinal" principle of international humanitarian law by the International Court of Justice.
CIA officers are concerned that the use of drones will backfire and may help Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders recruit more militants. "Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, [the drones' program] is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces in an interview with Inter Press Service.
Presently, several countries including China, France, India, Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom either have or are seeking drones with the capability to shoot laser-guided missiles. If the use of these dangerous weapons becomes more frequent, so will the safety of innocent civilians and violations of international humanitarian law.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllMr. Chelala is absolutely correct on the insidious nature of this weapon that has become such a mainstay of Obama's policy in Afghanistan:
"I believe that an even greater risk is the process of trivializing war, making it thus a deadlier, more dangerous activity since it affects not only those who are target but also those who direct the operation and for whom war becomes no more significant than a video game."
yes, and the quote you selected is even more interesting in that it maintains the questionable notions of drones being used only for 'war', and only under human direction ('those who direct')...
more frightening is the notion of drones being used for any and all enforcement purposes, and directed by computer...no significance to life at all...to anything...
drones come in all sizes...
how do we stop this?
Yes, wasn't there a recent report of a drone patrolling the border with Mexico, or one in the works?
-"An additional complication to the use of drones is that in many cases international forces are too often uninformed of local practices, or too credulous in interpreting information,"
following recent corporate trends, I can't wait until Obama or his successor starts outsourcing the drone operator jobs to India or elsewhere:
"please hold the line, your airstrike is important to us...due to unusually high strike volume, there may be a higher than normal delay until the next drone operator becomes available..."
Or maybe Obama can totally automate it:
"press one if you want to strike Pakistan, two for Yemen...anywhere else, press the first three letters of the country followed by the pound sign..."
gee, what can you say, you had experienced soldiers in Iraq shown on the wikileaks video, that couldn't tell a reporter with a camera from a soldier with a rocket launcher. And those US soldiers where on the scene hovering above the crowd of people they shot up. Now you are going to have video game pilots in Florida, joy-sticking their model planes with bombs aroung the world...I wonder what wonderful things are going to happen?
Sioux Rose
JLOCKE: I appreciate your satire.
A few nights ago I watched a new film on HBO that tangentially put private armies (like Blackwater) under the microscope. The film probably was not censored because it ultimately did not make the Blackwater-style private army the ultimate storyline culprit. What it did manage to do was simulate congressional hearings as to what these operations do, and how a number of these entities may bid for government contracts (in their own Orwellian-style lawless matrix, a/k/a the war zones) but pretty much all represent a handful of entities.
I bring this analogy up because there are so many newly anointed billionaires these days, and since armies for hire own no national allegiance, what's to say they can't be hired by an industrial "top gun" and used to rid the world of inconvenient rivals? Any number of pretexts can be invented, thanks to the designers behind high-paid P.R.
Imagine when these contractors decide to invest in drones! We'd all wish we could get India on the line to intercede!
the military is probably already retraining its returning paraplegic vets to become drone operators.
waste not...
MSNBC is reporting today that drones just took out 39 people in a wedding party. WTF? By now it has to be obvious that such incidents are NOT accidents. It happens too often, too consistently. I am so ashamed of this country.
As a result of these wars for oil, karma has struck the Gulf of Mexico and the whole southern shore line. Talk about blowback. What is next?
In response to EKATON:
I believe that karma is not punishment delivered, but is purely the Law of Cause and Effect. Karma is the hell we extend and can never escape unless we mend our ways.
There is karma as a result of our attacks against the people of other nations, when we used 9/ll as an excuse, and other times. For that our karma is the knowing of our responsibility; destroyed lives; the trashed economy with profits for the war racketeers, and its domino effects; our moral weakness and its domino effects.
The karma in the Gulf is the result of our ecological decisions and our way of doing business. We have caused ourselves great damage, and the innocents, especially the wildlife, have to suffer.
Although maybe the wars for oil are somehow directly linked to what happened in the Gulf?
The greater the awareness of suffering caused by actions, individual or nation, the greater the karmic payback. The millions of shattered lives caused by fascist amerika will/ are bringing about the fall of the empire....heavy, but deserving karma !
I heard it was a suicide bomber. The drone story seems more likely given our history. Also, we would surely push a "suicide" story if once again our boys in Nevada were playing their usual murderous games.
War has become the ultimate coward's game. All the romantic notions about fighting with honor and dignity have all been thrown out the window. Now it's all about torturing helpless prisoners, blowing children up with drone attacks, and fighting with tanks against people on horseback. It just makes me sick.
There has never been honor or dignity in warfare. War is the ultimate obscenity.
"Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, [the drones' program] is doing more harm than good," .
Well, some CIA operators are just not good businessmen...
Drones are great for the bottom line.
"Drones are great for the bottom line."
Not really, the drones are reused while only the missiles are expendable.
Prof....consider that the business is war. Murder-by-drone incites people to fight, means more war, means more profits---great for the bottom line.
War is a business, Prof. They do what they have to do to keep it going.
Sadly, heightened killing of civilians is not a backfire, but the strategy itself.
The security threats to American hegemons is largely internal, if not to the nation, at least to the scope of their relative control. The prime military project, then is not to face high-tech and highly armed elite opponents, but to discourage or eliminate uncooperative subjects.
Both the USA and the old USSR have had problems convincing their citizens to shoot people who stood in front of them. Considerable research supports what ought to be obvious, that humans feel freer to engage in abuse when they do not confront their victims and when they do not confront public scrutiny.
Apparently American drone operators equipped to spot women and children feel free to merrily slaughter them, so much so that military review boards that have routinely passed by torture of prisoners and family members finds heart to object.
Does the US government consider this "backfiring"?
Apparently they are not terminating the program, but bringing it closer to home: the real point: when one progressively abandons democracy and rule of law, one eventually needs a military willing to fire on its own fellow citizens.
What do you expect when most drone operators are aged 18 to 20 years old chosen for their expertise of visual gaming ? This on top of the obscenity of unjust war on civilians to put pressure on their governments who mainly oppose theft of resources.