Attack of the Drones

The thought that no matter where you are in the world a flying machine can come and kill you is terrifying. It’s also a reality.

The proliferation of drones–unmanned surveillance/killing machines–means that people can be hunted and killed with greater ease than ever.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK non-for-profit, found that there were over 2,400 deaths as a result of drone strikes over the past five years — that’s an average of over 1.3 deaths per day! And as many reports suggest, this includes an alarming number of innocent civilians. This is, I should mention, just the U.S. drone program (there are close to 30 countries known to have operational armed drones).

Now that’s not to say that you and I are at risk of being obliterated. That honour is reserved for “terrorists”. But what constitutes a terrorist? Surely one who commits terrorist acts is a terrorist. But what about those who pledge to commit such an act? Do they deserve to die?  If Minority Report taught me anything, it’s that pre-emptively assigning guilt and administering justice is wrong. This is especially true when that justice involves lethal force.

The use of drones, or rather the way they have been used, also signals a paradigm shift in how war is conducted. Where once there were clearly defined battle lines, with one army on one side and one opposite, now the world has become a battlefield (Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield is an excellent read on the subject). This has been the mantra of the Bush and Obama administrations, the latter as evidenced by the recent decision to drop bombs within Syria’s borders, sovereignty be damned, as well as the use of drones in Yemen and Somalia.

The problem is that politicians are able to wield too much power with too little oversight.

Case in point: the New York Times reported in May 2012 that President Obama maintains a “kill list”, which one official likened to “baseball cards” for bad guys. Obama has a protocol for deciding who ends up with a death sentence but, when you’re the one making up the rules, the credibility of such a protocol is severely strained.

As technology advances, it is conceivable that drones will become faster, smaller, stronger, and more adept at avoiding detection; assassination will only get easier. And if an enemy, whether actual, alleged or imagined, can be removed with such ease, you can be sure it will happen. Now that’s a scary thought.