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The Rise of the Drones

Mary Ann McGivern, Board Member, Peace Economy Project

In 1972, the American Friends Service Committee made a slide show, The
Automated Air War. My office, the St. Louis Economic Conversion Project (now
the Peace Economy Project), bought the slide show. I showed it to peace groups,
college classes, and political clubs. It made the compelling case that automation
divorced our human sensibilities from the act of killing other humans.
But we went on doing it.
Drones have become a part of the national zeitgeist. Today theres a play at the
Public Theater off Broadway starring Anne Hathaway, Grounded, about a
pregnant fighter pilot who has been demoted to conducting drone warfare. Drone
Street Theater performs on the streets of Washington, DC. Cirque de Soleil uses
drones in their performances. Two years ago, Martha Roster displayed photos
and montages of drones in a Theater of Drones public banner installation in
Charlottesville, VA. This month the New York City Drone Film Festival celebrates
not the killing power but the soaring photographic prowess of drones. In St. Louis,
where I live, our Peace Economy Project is part of a coalition trying to prevent
the police department from acquiring drones.
This mix of art, surveillance and remote killing makes the moral issues even
more difficult to hold in our consciousness.

In February, the Kernel published The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Drone

Pilot, a lengthy and thorough exploration of why pilots dont want to fly drones.
Drones are how we go to war, according to author Aaron Sankin. He quotes data
from the New America Foundation reporting that weve killed 3,500 people in
Pakistan and a thousand in Yemen in addition to those weve killed in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Conor Friedersdorf, who writes for the Atlantic, says the New America
Foundation lowballs the number of civilians killed (about 500) and counts only the
drone strikes that make the news. His articles include The Fear of an Unknown
Drone, (2/24/15); Distant Death: The Case for a Moratorium on Drone Strikes,
(11/14/13); and Lets Make Drone Strikes Safe, Legal and Rare, (3/27/13).
In the Kernel article, writer Aaron Sankin features lonely, long-distance drone
pilot Bruce Black, who before his retirement piloted drones at Creech Air Force
Base, near his home in Las Vegas, NV. He says pilots watch people live their
lives carrying water, herding sheep, cooking meals for thousands of hours.
Its boring, he says. Even watching troops move across territory is boring. At the
same time, it affects the pilots profoundly. From what Ive read, I think some of
the point of Grounded at the Public Theater is how disturbing it is to fly an armed
drone. The pilot watches ordinary people, determines a threat, drops a bomb,
and then surveys the destruction.
In 2013 the Pentagon attempted to award a new medal for outstanding
technological service to drone pilotsthe Distinguished Warfare Medalbut the
medal was withdrawn when other troops complained. Drone pilot Bruce Black
says the medal was not a good idea. Instead, he said, promote me. But drone
pilots are not being promoted, at least not to flying fighter planes. The need for
drone pilots is too great.
As a country, weve never had the discussion about the moral dimensions of
using drones. The New York Times story, Reigning in the Drones, calls for
better controls and public accountability with regards to drone warfare. The
Times refers to a 77-page report by the Stimson Center about the risks of
creating more opposition through drone warfare. Sting of the Drone by Richard A.
Clarke posits that drones could be used on us at home in the U.S. Ackbar Ahmed,
author of The Thistle and the Drone, states that recent Taliban bombings of
Christian churches are not anti-Christian, but regarded as the best way to gain
global publicity. The churches are targeted in retaliation to drone strikes and
serve as an expression of the rage these strikes continue to provoke.
The New York Times (7/22/12) addressed the Moral Hazard of Drones. Its a
consideration of Plato, likening drones to a magic ring and addressing the
slippery slope were on when we use the tool of invisibility.

The most important thing about the Times article is that it actually raises the
ethical dilemma of killer drones. In this authors opinion, drone strikes are
immoral. They destroy the rule of law as well as kill people, andno matter how
confident the intelligence services are that the person targeted has done wrong
according to our Constitution and our values, that person is entitled to a trial.
Although the targeted individual/s may be seen as a threat to the United States,
the threat to our democratic values is far greater.
Consider our history of military intervention. Over and over, weapons use only
gets us into trouble. We must change our behavior. As the only superpower on
this planet, we must act first to preserve our values and our humanity.