If there is one thing in this world that bothers me almost as much as the Christian and political right wing’s declared war of cultures between them and the muslims of the world…believe me, there is nothing on this orb that distresses me more than that…it is the rise of drone warfare.
This post is based loosely on a short article I wrote about the rise of America’s use of drones in combat, and I firmly believe that this has evil ramifications far beyond the combat zones of the far-flung areas to which we send these killers. I purposely did not use the term “battlefields” to describe the areas in which we currently use these. We do no use drones in any sort of conventional battlefield. We use them in areas in which no one would expect their sudden and unwelcome arrival.
The article referenced above originally began as a rather angry reply to an author of an article in a biblical “Prophesy in the News” type of magazine called “The Philadelphia Trumpet.” The item which angered me so was written by a man of the surname Oostendarp and was entitled “In Drones We Trust.” What angered me so, was Mr. Oostendarp’s apparent lack of moral outrage toward the rise of drones in American warfare. If the article had been written for a secular journal, then I would expect some level of moral ambiguity toward the issue, but it was not. It was written for an audience of so-called Christian believers, and as such should have been an outright condemnation of any sort of warfare.
The use of drones in offensive warfare has been a concern of mine since their first reported usage, and this article so galvanized my spirit that I knew I had to write about the subject. I suppose you could consider this post a piece in my continuing series on war.
To give you an idea of how angry this article made me, I have placed a few statements, which were deleted during the editing process, directed at the author in my original letter:
“…I think you need to state your positions before God and see if you can stay off of your knees and not beg forgiveness for this article and the poison within you that drew it from you.”
“…you are apparently oblivious to all of this. Or perhaps you are not oblivious to it. Perhaps you welcome it. Perhaps you feel it hastens your “end times” fantasies and the coming of The Kingdom of Heaven…or, perhaps, hell.”
“…I’m not going to seek to advise you on your theology except to say that you might spend more time writing about the great commission of Christ than fawning and drooling over America’s preponderance of firepower in this evil world.”
Yes, I was angry with this man.
I will start with the absolute truth of the matter from a spiritual perspective: warfare of any sort, and especially its new evolution regarding the drone killer, is against the will of God. In fact, I would argue that the injection of drone warfare into the human history of mass murder for political ends is the most dangerous evolution of satan’s game ever known to man.
Armies (for my purposes, the word “army” refers to all branches of military service) always seek, out of necessity, to convince their young conscripts and volunteers that God is on their side and that the kills they notch on the butts of their rifles are righteous in His eyes. Every army does this…EVERY ARMY! This statement is as untrue of the armed forces of the United States as it was for the Waffen SS. If you feel, somehow, that armies do not do this then please explain to me in a reply to this post why German soldiers in World war II were issued belt buckles that read “Gott Mit Uns (God is with us).
It is no secret to those of us who have spent major parts of our lives studying this plague called war, that one of the major factors that has kept a lid on the wantonly violent levels to which conventional warfare will go is that commanders on the scene understand that they have to send their own soldiers into battle. In modern warfare, even under the best of circumstances, many of them will be killed. The generals want glory, they want victory, and they are willing to suffer others dying to achieve it, but invariably, when given the choice they will have their soldiers come back in one piece, or better yet, not go at all. This is called, discretion in the fog of war, and the murderous operators of the predator and reaper drones experience no fog, and lack all discretion that emerges therefrom.
Any human who has experienced the horrors of the battlefield are never quick to send people into that version of hell on earth. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of American politicians are quite eager to kill for power. The generals, unfortunately, must stand ready to do so on the best and smartest terms they can muster when ordered by the civilian authorities.
When you take warfare to the point that a couple of grunt computer geeks at NORAD can kill people in Afghanistan, then the world is in for a disaster. In terms of it’s effect on the immediate vicinity of combat; when all limitations imposed by the discretion of soldiers confronting an enemy and the personal danger they face in doing so are removed, the influences of valor, courage, discretion, and humanity are also removed from the equation. When this happens all that remains is a morbid, impersonal, half-a-world-away, fist-person-shooter-game and the violence of conventional war will inevitably spiral out of control.
Right now this spiral does not, under the limitations imposed by our current low-intensity conflict wars, entail a significant rise in the sheer tonnage of ordinance deployed over a given amount of time. There are numerous spirals of violence in war and this particular spiral envelops innocent human beings who are not soldiers nor would, under almost any circumstance, become one. Unless, of course, their mother and little brother are killed by a HARM missile fired from a predator drone miles away.
One of the most grotesque policies of the American government in its effort to add some level of validity to their drone program is to determine that any male, 18-years or older, killed in a drone attack is considered an enemy combatant (don’t even get me started on that term!) and…you guessed it…a righteous kill. Therefore, a missile fired from a reaper drone that destroys the equivalent of a city block in the United States which kills 5 suspected “terrorists” and 25 other people achieved a righteous kill total of 20. There are 10 19-year olds engaged in a small football match around the corner, and 5 old men sitting in a cafe nearby as well. The other 10 dead women and children, well, that’s what you call “collateral damage,” or, as we like to say in America: “tough shit.”
In drone warfare the suffering imposed loses its reality because it is not felt by the people responsible for the killing. When you pilot a craft with death hanging under its wings at the same time you’re chugging a diet dr. pepper and munching on a bag of cheetos, there is no manner by which you can truly connect to what you are doing. You are galaxies removed from the death your fingers cause, and the “intelligence” used to validate what is done in the name of corporate freedom is, to say the least, suspect.
The overwhelming weirdness of this entire development in warfare is that if you thought taking war to a nuclear level was scary, you just wait until we start handing it over to the drones. The common wisdom of the politicians in charge of this is: Nuclear weapons are too destructive to use, drones are too cool not to.
In terms of the effect of the rise of these machines on our domestic life, I shudder to think of the Orwellian nightmare that awaits us. Privacy will be a thing of the past, and Big Brother will watch you always…that is, if you have a credit score of less than 300…or are of any number of brownish hues.
Now, I don’t expect local police to start using predator or reaper drones to start taking out American citizens suspected of crimes; not yet anyway. However, when we have police forces across this country that now kill people on a whim (and it is growing worse every day), do any of you reading this post really think that the day will not come when they use drones to do this? The surveillance drones are already in use in certain parts of the country. The predators are next.
So my question is this: “Why would any person, especially anyone who considers themselves to be on God’s side not stand against warfare in general, and war waged with drones in particular?”
When thinking of our growth and expansion of the use of drones to kill people, I am reminded of the words of Lord Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command for The Royal Air Force in the Second World War. When offering his rationale for the bombing of German cities he said: “They have sown the wind, now let them reap the whirlwind.” I think we can all agree that the whirlwind was much more horrific than the wind, given the sheer amount of ordinance that was deployed.
I can guarantee you that if the United States continues to sow this wind we will reap a whirlwind for which none of us are ready. It will be a whirlwind which only the generals and politicians will deserve, but which the poor and innocent will suffer.
Love and Peace to all,
Niemand