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With Its Deadly Drones, the US is Fighting a Coward's War
As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will become bloodier – and less accountable
The ancient Greeks, unlike the Jews or the Christians, invested their gods with human failings. Divine judgment, they believed, was neither flawless nor dispassionate; it was warped by lust, vengeance and self-interest. In the hands of Zeus, the thunderbolt was both an instrument of justice and a weapon of jealousy and revenge.
(Illustration by Daniel Pudles)
Those now dispensing judgment from on high are not gods, though they must feel like it. The people striking mortals down with drones are doubtless as capable as anyone else of self-deception, denial and cognitive illusions. More so, perhaps, as the eminent fictions of the Bush years and the growing delusions of the current president suggest.
Barack Obama began last week's state of the union address by claiming that the troops who had fought the Iraq war had "made the United States safer and more respected around the world". Like Bush, like the gods, he has begun to create the world he wants to inhabit.
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfill one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporize their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance. That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash.
As a report last year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism showed, of some 2,300 people killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004 until August 2011, between 392 and 781 appear to have been civilians; 175 were children. In the period about which the CIA and Brennan made their claims, at least 45 civilians have been killed. As soon as an agency claims "we never make mistakes", you know that it has lost its moorings, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested in his story of that title. Feeling no obligation to apologize or explain, count bodies or answer for its crimes, it becomes a danger to humanity.
It may be true, as the US air force says, that because a drone can circle and study a target for hours before it strikes, its missiles are less likely to kill civilians than those launched from a piloted plane. (The air force has yet to explain how it reconciles this with its boast that drones "greatly shorten decision time".) But it must also be true that the easier and less risky a deployment is, the more likely it is to happen.
This danger is acknowledged in a remarkably candid assessment published by the UK's Ministry of Defense, which also deploys drones, and has also used them to kill civilians. It maintains that the undeclared air war in Pakistan and Yemen "is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available". Citing the German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, it warns that the brutality of war seldom escalates to its absolute form, partly because of the risk faced by one's own forces. Without risk, there's less restraint. With these unmanned craft, governments can fight a coward's war, a god's war, harming only the unnamed.
The danger is likely to escalate as drone warfare becomes more automated and the lines of accountability less clear. Last week the US navy unveiled a drone that can land on an aircraft carrier without even a remote pilot. The Los Angeles Times warned that "it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently". The British assessment suggests that within a few years drones assisted by artificial intelligence could make their own decisions about whom to kill and whom to spare. Sorry sir, computer says yes.
"Some would say one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist," George HW Bush opined on when he was vice-president. "I reject this notion. The philosophical differences are stark and fundamental." Perhaps they are, but no US administration has convincingly defined them or consistently recognized them. In Latin America, south-east Asia, Africa and the Middle East, successive presidents have thwarted freedom and assisted state terrorism. Drones grant governments new opportunities to snuff out opposition of any kind, terrorist or democrat. The US might already be making use of them.
In October last year, a 16-year-old called Tariq Aziz was traveling through North Waziristan in Pakistan with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. Their car was hit by a missile from a US drone. As always, their deaths made them guilty: if we killed them, they must be terrorists. But they weren't. Tariq was about to start work with the human rights group Reprieve, taking pictures of the aftermath of drone strikes. A mistake? Possibly. But it is also possible that he was murdered out of self-interest. If you have such powers, if you are not held to account by Congress, the media or the American people, why not use them?
The danger to democracy, and not just in Pakistan but one day perhaps everywhere, should be evident. Yet, as fatalistic as the ancient Greeks, we drift into this with scarcely a murmur of debate, leaving the gods to decide.
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53 Comments so far
Show All"a drone can circle and study a target for hours before it strikes"
Only because the people down below lack anti-aircraft weapons (a pretty good sign that they are actually civilians).
Or, if not civilians, then no threat whatsoever to US citizens minding their own business within their borders.
Yes, it's always been hard for me to imagine how some tribesman in Waziristan could possibly be a threat to me or my country. People who vote to take away my rights however, are a clear and present danger.
The Americans have been fighting cowardly wars ever since the end of world war 11. They only go after poor third world countries dropping their bombs from on high on innocent civilians. I remember their massive slaughter of the Vietnamese using napalm and cluster bombs. They are so vicious and dumb that killing poor people that have done nothing against them makes them feel good and they hate foreigners so much they don't even bother to count the number they kill because it might remind people how uneven their wars are.
Amerikans/ Europeans have been slaughtering/ carrying out terrorist atrocities, aka wars; since 1492 ! Manifest Destiny, amerikan imperialism, terrorism, all deadly semantics; all have come Full Circle.....the fascist amerikan empire IS sliding into the abyss !!!
It started a long time before 1492. The Germans had a history of expanding east. The English had a history of conquering all of the British Isles and ruling over the Welsh, Cornish, Scots or Irish. The Spanish had been driving out the Moors for Centuries. Meanwhile Normans had roamed and conquered from France to Sicily to Constantinople. Don't forget the Crusades. The foundations of Western Europe were the imperial projects of the Franks and the bloodthirsty sense of a manifest destiny of the Anglo Saxons to take over Roman Britain. But then what do you expect when the fore runners were the imperialistic Romans and the raiding Goths and Huns?
In complete agreement except for the timeline. I suggest you read "Rethinking the Good War" and you will find that WWII was about the same old sh*t as all the others. We've been slaughtering innocents for hundreds of years.
"The ancient Greeks, unlike the Jews or the Christians, invested their gods with human failings. Divine judgment, they believed, was neither flawless nor dispassionate; it was warped by lust, vengeance and self-interest. In the hands of Zeus, the thunderbolt was both an instrument of justice and a weapon of jealousy and revenge."--George Monbiot
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"unlike the jews or christians"? i find that curious, george, because somewhere in the old testament we learn that g_d is a jealous g_d.
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"Yet, as fatalistic as the ancient Greeks, we drift into this with scarcely a murmur of debate, leaving the gods to decide."--George Monbiot
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good point! i find it amazing that people continue to expect the elect of mount olympus d.c. to solve all problems. we might blame that "faith" in the ruling class on the greeks, too. plato, realising that certain humans among us have such extraordinary qualities of leadership, intellectually wise and morally superior that they most naturally should be entrusted to manage all our affairs. why to even the landed gentry, is tantamount to questioning the gods themselves!
plato went on to say that these most exalted ones know best which sciences a government supports and which sciences waste time and money. the sciences which lead to more magnificent weaponry should get the lion's share for should another society attempt to wrest the g_d given (*see divine right of kings) land always makes weaponry top priority. we immoral, mortal commoners who glory in our leader's success must see their altruism for what it is. they protect and manage the wealth for all of us.
The first, the original, meaning of "jealous" was "watchful" or "careful." This is the sense in which the translators of the King James Bible used it.
Since you raise the point, Rainborowe, I've often wondered why the term "jealous" has gotten muddled in popular usage.
In addition to the synonyms you present, the original pejorative sense of jealous meant, and still sometimes means, "protective" or "possessive" (to a fault). But in modern usage it's also a synonym for "envious" or "covetous", which isn't really the same thing.
'Tis a semantic puzzle.
What was the Hebrew word, if you know. I've studied their alphabet and far too many letters are strickingly similar, little tails on em here and there, change letter, which has to make writing/reading errors common. It's a bitcth to write, 2-3 strokes/letter +.
Jealousy of the "Green eyed monster" variety has never seemed "god-like",imo.
When I read that I thought, "The Greeks consciously gave their Gods and Goddesses human failings. Us Jews and Christians did it unconsciously."
"god bless america.....and nobody else!"
“patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels!” --dr. samuel johnson
When was the last time the U.S. actually won a war?
Reminds me of the late Bill Hicks' view on the first Gulf slaughter;
"War? Well, a war is when *two* armies are fighting."
When a war "ends", so does the revenue stream for the banksters and their military industrial complex. No US war will ever end as long as the banksters own the US Government.
This is drivel, for two reasons:
Using drones is no more dastardly than using suicide bombers - both are indiscriminate and presume 'collateral' damage.
In the larger picture, all war is a crime. attempting to parse discrete levels of culpability is absurd prima facie.
Except suicide-bombing arises only as a desperate measure by a vastly out-gunned people trying futilely to defend themselves against an invader and occupier. Stop the invasions and occupations and the suicide-bombings will stop. Alternatvely, if the defenders were given the same advanced weaponry as the invader, they would discard their inaccurate suicide bombs too.
Also, with all the atrocities being done in our name by our governent, which are precipitating the suicide bombings to begin with, and all the work to be done resisting them, I frankly don't have the indignation left to invest in the suicide bomber's actions. So, the symmetry you are trying to draw is no quite correct. There is no symmetry between effect and casue - at the macroscopic non-quantum level anyway.
What is really absurd is failure to distinguish between the culpability of those who seek to impose imperial tyranny and those who attempt to defend their homes and families against it.
Or to suggest that a suicide bomber is as cowardly as the joystick operator of a drone.
As some Palestinian once said, give us planes and tanks so we don't have to use suicide/human bombers.
I appreciate Mr. Monbiot's use of Greek mythology. His initial point was to show that the deities of Olympus have critical flaws unlike the premise of a more perfect God, one alone who is flawless, and governs our world as the sovereign ruler.
I take issue, however, with Mr. Monbiot's conclusion:
"Yet, as fatalistic as the ancient Greeks, we drift into this with scarcely a murmur of debate, leaving the gods to decide. "
The MIC acts like a stand-in for Divine authority as it sees no need to take input from citizens. It is this Luciferic force, masquerading as a god of indiscriminate death, that makes the decisions that eliminate all debate. It is not the citizenry, particularly those who advocate FOR world peace and see through the law-defying rationales of the "War on Terror," who choose these outcomes!
WE is a dangerous notion when decisions are taken by a few (very damaged souls) on alleged behalf of all others.
this guy monbiot is an odd guy - i saw him last month "debating" helen calddicott about nuclear energy - he was shilling for the industry and his disrespect for this world renown expert was offensive
he's one of these guys who says a little radiation is "good" for you - it ain't
as far as the drones go - trying to make this sound like a man up situation is very macho on his part but i'll bet 20 bucks he has never been under fire
as much as i hate our current military situation around the world i don't want to see another one of our men or women injured or killed, not even one more
4800 dead - hundreds of thousands wounded emotionally and physically is quite enough
we need to stand down the war machine manned and unmanned and stop all this killing
our soldiers are not cowards but the likes of obummer, cheney, bush baby and mittens oromney who put them in harm's way - they are truly cowards and when it was time for them to serve they had "other priorities" as cowards often do...
I really think you need some lessons in civility in the way you write your posts. You write like an arrogant asshole.
Monbiot, as I do, regard the catastrophic consequences of AGW to be a far more dire issue than nuclear power plant safety issues - which are manifestly exaggerated by oppnents compared to any other industrial process - especially the mining and burning of coal. The facts are, when a nuclear power plant is closed, it is replaced with a coal-burning one. And even if it were replaced with renewables, it means that a coal power plant somewhere could have, but will not, be replaced with renewables. As Monbiot has noted, this is madness.
i think that shilling for nuclear power exposes your ignorance of the dangers of nuclear energy its either willful ignorance or you work in the industry
go and live near one and count the days until your tumors arrive
death count from chernobyl - 1 million
fuskushima: well that is being written - the prefecture where that monstrosity sits is now uninhabitable for the half life of the isotopes being released - around 30,000 years or so
3 mile island - oh yeah we didn't even measure that one
shill on bro - ignorant one - each to his own
If nuclear power plants are safe, let the commerical insurance industry insure them - they don't and won't and for good reason
shill on bro shill on
Regarding Mr. Monbiot, I believe he was against nuclear power before he was for it. He now displays the passion of a convert.
medmedude,
I think your posts are usually right on point and quite eye opening. Thanks for your info on this shill.
Man, If you don’t wear metaphorical boots while posting on this site, one is likely to step in a pile of dung. PJD is lecturing med on civility at the same time calling him or her an “arrogant asshole.” (Pot calling the Kettle black.)
Since when did CD establish etiquette laws?
But having a bunch of limp-wristed gays in the military now makes it okay for us to be cowardly and wimpish in the way we fight our manly wars of aggression. ;~)
Border
n. 2. Archaic A line separating two political or geographical areas, esp. countries.
"With Its Deadly Drones, the US is Fighting a Coward's War"
"With these unmanned craft, governments can fight a coward's war, a god's war, harming only the unnamed."
________________________
I get the point, but I think conceptualizing technobarbaric warfare as "cowardly" is unfortunate in one respect: it's susceptible to the inference that manunkind was better off when warmongers initiated good old-fashioned brave, heroic, glorious wars-- wars against "named" targets, give or take a bunch of innocent bystanders.
You know, a MANLY war.
I had the same reaction to the use of the term "cowardly". The reference to the ancient Greek gods is curious. The great Greek epic, the Iliad, shows the Gods acting as George describes and the human warfare is all personal and hardly cowardly. Do we still read this work because it was from a better time? Hardly. It has survived for something like 3,000 years because it is actually an anti-war epic, brought home at the end by the scene of Priam and Achilles sitting together and crying for the deaths of those they loved and the damn meaninglessness of it all.
Monboit hits the nail on the head with regards drone strikes on non combatants.
His thesis is to compare the indiscriminate use of drone strikes by those in power as an act of cowardice. No doubt that the apologia class who troll the site will render their obfuscations to divert attention away from this compelling characterization. But Monboit's insightful description certainly fits Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Obama, and all his his cronies all too well. Cowards all!
In fact, a better characterization might be ‘sniveling cowards.’
Against the backdrop of the State of the Union speech, Obama reminded me of Bush dressed in his flight jacket and standing on the Aircraft Carrier with the Mission Accomplished sign visible in the background. As Obama spoke about the daring raids by Navy Seals one could almost see his pectorials swell with pride and devotion. Never mind that Obama – like Bush – never actually served in war.
Amazing how these comments always pivot on changing the subject, diverting their impact, and/or looking to deconstruct the argumentsl or turn them back into personal attacks if the narratives don’t fit one’s ideology.
Even more stunning is the antiseptic view of human life by some people who argue on behalf of these anti humanitarian attacks on children and other innocents by calling into question some personal trait of the author. It reminds me of a saying I once read on a wall: KILL ONE PERSON AND IT IS CALLED MURDER: KILL A HUNDRED THOUSAND, AND IT IS FOREIGN POLICY. Or so the apologists would have you believe.
All bullies are cowards. America is a bully. America is a nation of cowards, run by cowards. Our leaders are chickenhawks and draft dodgers, or POW's who capitulated with their captors. The only brave souls I see today are the Occupiers who face police brutality in the name of freedom and justice. When will we, as a nation, stand up and declare that we are not afraid, that America is strong and need not bomb the weak and defenseless? Or perhaps we are not a strong nation, perhaps we are weak and in order to hide our vulnerability need to terrorize to compete. Maybe we are just a nation of cowards. I will stand with the Occupiers. Truth, Justice, Freedom. Anything else is to accept slavery to the money cartels. Our leaders may be for sale, but I will stand with Occupy.
Well said, I agree.
Having unmanned drones bomb and kill innocent civilians abroad, especially in third-world countries, is cowardly and sneaky, to boot. This:
Barack Obama began last week's state of the union address by claiming that the troops who had fought the Iraq war had "made the United States safer and more respected around the world".
is absolute bullshit, plain and simple. Not only hasn't the United States been respected around the world since the end of World War II, but our more recent invasion(s) of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Libya and Yemen have not made the United States any safer, nor are Americans any safer when they travel abroad, either.
Fear is not respect. Ask any American who has travelled abroad recently how "respected" we are. This lie only flies with people who have never lived outside our borders--which is most Americans, which is why President Wall Street can get away with these lies. Stupid monkeys. Go show your face in Sirte and see how respected we are.
This:
"Fear is not respect. Ask any American who has travelled abroad recently how "respected" we are."
states my whole point, in a nutshell, downtownwalker. Americans are hated and feared throughout the world, not respected.
I was abroad in Europe this year and I never had a hint of anyone being disrespectful of me. I have been going abroad for 30 years in a lot of places and simply have not had problems ever except once in Mozambique for about 45 minutes at the end of which the soldiers started bombarding me with questions about the US and what it was like to live there. Not saying it isn't out there, but questioning how prevalent and how important it is. Also how new it is. I don't really see any change is my point and don't see much impact of it. Just me.
you must walk around with rose colored glasses and with your ears closed...That is typical of the likes of you.
With you on that.
Traveling to London/Europe or the Bahamas as typical Amerikans do does not count.
In 2005 I was in Saigon, many there are not fans of the USA. Big surprise. Parts of Latin America, Peru, Costa Rica not fans. Read the graffito outside the tourist zones calling our leaders assassins and murders. Visit small cafes in Asia, Prague or Ecuador and be surprised how well informed the locals are. Much more so than the average American.
Persons outside the USA experience our policies on a daily basis. They are not happy about it.
"As technology allows machines to make their own decisions, warfare will become bloodier – and less accountable"
I must disagree - nothing can be bloodier than our military not even a machine.
Machines don't have sadistic proclivities.
Conservatives live in fear:
A new study issued Thursday in the journal Current Biology, using a series of brain scans, found that liberals have more gray matter in the part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while conservatives have a increased gray matter in the section of the related to processing fear.
http://www.huliq.com/3257/scans-show-conservative-brains-larger-area-connected-processing-fear
I think people are are much more complex than the labels :conservative" or "liberal' offer. Another way of looking at "more gray matter in understand complexity" is that so called liberals get lost in a maze of gray-matter complications and don't fully grasp what they are doing in the (material) world. If they fully understood what they saw, did and facilitated (such as wonderful technology that kills)--they might be a little more fearful and less glib and ready to label someone.
Many conservatives are also anti-science
It works the other way around. Anti-science people are targeted with one sales pitch - called "conservative" - pro-science people with another pitch - called "liberal." The product being sold is, however, the same. That has been made quite clear by the behavior of the current crop of Democratic party office holders, and by the actions of the administration.
"Liberals" and "conservatives" are not separate species, people are not born as one or the other. They are demographic groups, roughly sorted into two camps for marketing purposes.
There are astrological components, far more nuanced than the subject of sun signs alone, that factor into why and how it is that some gravitate towards "the control group," and/or authoritarian models, while others rebel in a wish to truly grow without any external limits placed on them by some alleged authority figure.
I mean, noting that the sign of Aquarius, next up as a 2200 year phase, happens to equate with rebels, rabble-rousers, inventors, and iconoclasts... it's no wonder that church authorities reflect such disgusting behavior as child sexual abuse, when not pushing FOR war; and secular leaders show a complete abject disregard for their own citizens in the priorities on display through what it is they put OUR money on (and into).
In a sense, an adolescent humanity led by the idiocy of much of Amerika, is awakening to the fact that its parents are hardly great role models. Interesting, too, that so much of what's making the ground move under the foundations of the old oligarchs (via the worldwide OWS movement) is YOUTH!
Who has most to lose but those with all their allotted years ahead of them? And how can they make viable lives if the Natural world is being so brutally murdered as to make sustainability impossible? How to earn incomes when the monetary systems are as diseased as a virus, destroying eveything in their path? And the leaders just play Monopoly while so much of the planet's people sink into despair.
OTHER is being born from the ashes of such senseless depravity. And like all animate things, its origins (added to the trajectory of its ultimate course) are shaped by cosmic forces.
"As above, so below."
Interesting analysis. Thanks.
There are two different sales and marketing pitches, one called conservative and the other called liberal, for selling the same product. They are geared to different demographics. That is why we find differences between self-described conservatives and self-described liberals - they each represent a different target group and are targeted with different appeals.
"Liberal" is the advertising program used to sell empire and Capitalism to the more educated and artistic demographic, as well as people of color, while "conservative" is the advertising program used to sell empire and Capitalism to the blue collar, rural and overtly racist white people.
Perhaps we could discover that people who buy GMC trucks, perhaps, are on average more intelligent then people who buy Ford trucks as a result of the different sales and advertising approaches the two companies use, the demographic each company is targeting. We would not then use that to say that one of the trucks is better than the other, would we?
Of course there are many differences between liberals and conservatives. They have been sorted into different demographics with different characteristics for the purpose of effective marketing, for targeting purposes.
The Amygdala, or Fear Center is enlarged;Cowards who fear everything and must therefore control everything. Hate is well known to them; love is a word they say in church sometimes, then Amen, sins forgiven it's back to the cowardly joy stick. These people are virtually incapable of love as fear rules them, breeds psychosis.