The Temptations of Drone Warfare
Killing at a distance, in complete safety, is dangerously seductive
Eleven years ago, I wrote the following article for Truthout. It captures important truths, I think, about the new American way of war. I thought of it today as I was reading comments at this site (and I read all the comments, always). I hope it stimulates thought and reflection on the horrors of war, and how Americans are insulated or isolated from them.
August 6, 2012. Originally at Truthout.
A famous utterance attributed to General Robert E. Lee during the U.S. Civil War is, “It is well that war is so terrible – lest we should grow too fond of it.” His words capture the idea that war is an elemental thing – and also a seductive one. Much like a storm-tossed ocean, war is relentless, implacable, and unsparing. It is chaotic, arbitrary, and deadly. It is not to be bargained with; only to be endured.
Given its ferocity, its rapacity, the enormity of its waste and devastation, war is best to be avoided, especially since war itself has its appeals, especially since war itself can be intoxicating, as the quotation from Lee suggests, and as the title of Anthony Loyd’s fine book on the war in Bosnia, My War Gone By, I Miss It So (1999), indicates.
What happens when we decouple war’s terrible nature from its intoxicating force? What happens when one side can kill with impunity in complete safety? Lee’s words suggest that a nation that decouples war from its terrors will likely grow too fond of it. The temptation to use deadly force will no longer be restrained by knowledge of the horrors unleashed by the same.
Such thoughts darken the reality of America’s growing fondness for drone warfare. Our land-based drone pilots patrol the skies of foreign lands like Afghanistan in complete safety. They unleash appropriately named Hellfire missiles to smite our enemies. The pilots see a video feed of the carnage they inflict; the American people see and experience nothing. In rare cases when ordinary Americans see drone footage on television, what they witness is something akin to a “Call of Duty” video game combined with a snuff film. War porn, if you will.
Many Americans seem happy that we can smite foreign “militants” at no risk to ourselves. They trust that our military (and the CIA) rarely misidentifies a terrorist, and that “collateral damage,” that mind-numbing euphemism that obscures the reality of innocent men, women, and children obliterated by missiles, is the regrettable price of keeping America safe.
But the reality is that sloppy intelligence and the fog and friction of war combine to make seemingly antiseptic drone warfare much like all other forms of war: bloody, wasteful, and terrible. Terrible, that is, for those on the receiving end of American firepower. Not terrible for us.
There is a real danger that today’s drone warfare has become the equivalent to the Dark Side of the Force as described by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back: a quicker, easier, more seductive form of terror. It is indeed seductive to deploy the technological equivalent of Darth Vader’s throat-constricting powers at a safe distance. We may even applaud ourselves for our prowess while doing so. We tell ourselves that we are killing only the bad people, and that the few innocents caught in the crosshairs constitute an accidental but nonetheless unavoidable price of keeping America safe.
In light of America’s growing affection for drone warfare combined with a disassociation from its terrible results, I submit to you a modified version of General Lee’s sentiment:
It is not well that war grows less terrible for us – for we are growing much too fond of it.
When you can see the people you're about to kill -- truly see them -- and when you can discern they are not the enemy, sometimes men of conscience refuse orders to kill, as I wrote about here:
https://bracingviews.com/2021/08/02/destroying-the-village-in-vietnam/
The problem is that drone operators think they can see, but, as the saying goes, you're peering through a straw from 20 or 30 thousand feet. You don't have full "situational awareness." A wedding party may look like a small company of "terrorists."
The missiles may be precise, but our so-called intelligence is often tragically imprecise.
A couple of the earlier comments touch on the topic of how such remote-control warfare does, or doesn’t, affect the people conducting it.
One of the more grimly hopeful things I remember reading during the Global War on Terror years, was an article about how drone operators (“pilots”) in Nevada, I believe it was, who were flying missions over Afghanistan, were falling apart mentally. One could take away the message that something in human nature was just rebelling against this total mechanization of killing – that these airmen had been so far removed from the reality of battle that they suffered from a whole new sort of trauma as they vaporized their targets half a world away.
Still, I don’t really believe it is so. The Air Force was probably just abusing them with overlong shifts, or ignoring their circadian rhythms, or something, nothing that couldn’t be got around if any commanders cared enough to figure it out.
I remember reading the obituaries in the NY Times over the years as the crew members of the two A-bomb missions over Japan died of old age. I was struck that not a single man of them, as far as I could tell, ever evinced the least pang of conscience or doubt over what they participated in. I feel simultaneous respect for and despair at the military’s success in selecting men who would carry out such a mission without ever – ever – letting a spark of humanity get in the way.