Drones: Friend or Foe?

Modern day warfare has altered the guidelines of war and changed the way combatants fight; conflicts have been relocated from the classic battlefield location to populated urban centers amongst the daily lives of civilians. This has a tendency to blur the boundaries between being able to differentiate civilians from hostiles in a combat environment. Drone strikes have become the modus operandi for United States strategy of fighting terrorism worldwide. By infusing billions of dollars each year into the defense budget, the United States has remained on the forefront of research, design, development, and ultimately, the deployment of high-tech military weapons. This has allowed the United States military to maintain an unprecedented monopoly on these technologies.

Armed with precision-guided Hellfire missiles, drones can hover over one area for hours, days, or even weeks. All the while the intelligence operative, who is in control of the surveillance of that drone, is sitting at a desk in Langley or at a military base in the Mid-west working normal business hours. When orders are given, that operative will fire, and thousands of miles away that missile will damage everything in its path. The appeal is clear; a State can exercise targeted killings and operate remotely at nominal risk. That said, sustainment costs might be arguably low, but the human costs are regretfully high. When drone strikes are authorized, it is not only the intended target that is killed; there is always collateral damage.

When it comes to drone strike death tolls, we hear through the new channels that "the majority appear to have been militants." But how do we really know if they were ‘militants’ or better yet, how are we, as a society, defining ‘militant?’ Is a militant the 4-year-old son of the intended target? How about the housekeeper, or the nanny? How about the neighborhood grocer where he buys his food? The restaurant owner of the café he frequents? What of the taxi driver that just happened to pick him up that day because his driver was ill? All of these civilians have known ties to terrorism, but does that make them 'militants' or 'terrorists?' To say the distinction might be blurring at times is a stretch, since the distinction is never 100% clear. Clarity only arrives after the fact, when mothers, brothers, husbands, sisters, and wives are crying in the streets over the loss of their loved ones asking, "God, why us?"

We need to think on these things before we freely accept the labels being tossed around by officials and experts. I would not want to be wrongly classified as a 'militant' or 'terrorist,' would you?