Drones, also known as unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), carry weapons that can be used in drone strikes. In theory, drone strikes sound like the ideal way to carry out combat. They’re intended to minimize U.S. casualties and have the precision to eliminate terrorist targets with minimal effect on the surrounding communities, but that isn’t usually how they play out.
There’s a great deal of controversy over the civilian casualties surrounding drone strikes, as well as some moral and ethical dilemmas associated with the process. In March 2009, Israeli UAVs armed with missiles killed 48 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including two small children in a field and a group of women and girls in an otherwise empty street. In June, Human Rights Watch investigated six drone attacks that were reported to have resulted in civilian casualties, and said that Israeli forces failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians and properly identify potential threats.
The U.S. has used drones extensively in wars in the past two decades. The U.S. drone program in Pakistan has killed several dozen civilians accidentally. In 2009, the Brookings Institution reported that in the US-led drone attacks in Pakistan, ten civilians died for every militant killed. A Pakistani website reported 1,065 civilian deaths between 2004 and 2010, and according to American sources around 550-850 of the thousand estimated killed were militants.
There’s a lot of debate over whether drone strikes weigh more or less heavily on the consciences of pilots than on-the-ground combat. Some drone pilots experience PTSD, usually because of the stark detail they witness as a result of their actions. The pilots watch their victims for days before and after, and usually watch the carnage in graphic detail. The intense training that US drone operators undergo "works to dehumanise the ‘enemy’ people below whilst glorifying and celebrating the killing process." Others argue that pilots may experience the opposite effect. Keith Shurtleff, an army chaplain at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, worries "that as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide." Human empathy and hesitation is something that leaders usually try and eliminate in war, and drones allow soldiers to move even farther from it.
In terms of citizens on the ground, the presence of drones takes a high toll on people. In Yemen, 92% of the population sampled suffered from PTSD, and children were most significantly affected. There’s a whole generation of Gazan children with deep psychological trauma because of the continual exposure to the buzzing sounds of drones high above that threaten their and their families’ lives. Civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan are reluctant to help those hit by the first strikes because rescuers themselves have often been killed by follow-on drone strikes. Beyond the psychological and physical effects on these communities, socially things come to a halt as citizens are forced to constantly stay indoors: children aren’t going to school, and no one gathers in visible places.
It’s under debate whether or not these drone strikes are eliminating legitimate threats. With Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda on the run, many question whether the terrorists now killed by drones can really be linked to those original attacks. The administration justifies today's strikes by interpreting the AUMF to include "associated forces," though that phrase doesn't actually appear in the resolution that was set to justify the attacks in the first place. In order to keep the U.S. “safe” from these terrorist threats, the U.S. has become a serious terrorist threat to powerless communities. Is it just to use our extensive military power in this way? Are these measures necessary?
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Although drone strikes can be useful for swiftly taking out terrorists, I think their detriments outweigh their benefits. In a documentary I watched in CWI sophomore year, we saw that every time we do a drone strike, the Taliban hosts a rally encouraging people whose friends and family have been killed to join. This means that as we’re trying to crush our opposition, we’re actually just increasing it. I also find it scary how drones reduce the reality of war. It’s one thing to blow up something on the screen, like a video game, and another to look someone in the eyes and physically kill them. This makes it easier for pilots to accept civilian casualties because they’re just pixels, not real people.
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