The War on Terror is being fought like none other in the history of conflict.
Bombs are dropped with surgical precision, heavily body-armored soldiers are equipped with the latest in battlefield electro-optics and unmanned drones hover above the landscape, ready to launch missiles or provide visual information in support of ground troops.
The days of the warriors romanticized in movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” taking on their enemy with only a rifle and a knapsack full of courage, have come to a close. Those images have been replaced with technology-savvy super soldiers. These advancements are considered a boon by American troops, but what is the ethical cost of fighting a war with machinery?
There are immediate benefits from using technology rather than muscle and sinew in combat situations. Machines don’t become fatigued or disorientated, feel fear or slow down after taking a hit.
Justifying the death of military personnel, especially in a situation as nebulous as the continued skirmishes in Iraq, is always difficult. By using a drone, soldiers’ lives aren’t put in harm’s way. By taking unnecessary loss of life out of the equation, the U.S. military can circumvent that problem and protect national interests with increased efficiency.
Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles have begun making headlines on a semiregular basis as the U.S. makes a push toward eliminating terrorist threats along the Pakistan border. Security officials reported Friday that at least four militants had been killed and a compound destroyed by a drone in Pakistan’s northwestern region, North Waziristan.
On Oct. 4, missiles from another drone took out at least eight militants, including at least three of German origin, in the same general area. These are just the latest in a string of designated strikes that have killed more than 150 people since Sept. 3. This is nothing new; the U.S. military has been using drones to take out high-profile targets in the Middle East for several years. The difference now is that instead of focusing on eliminating top Al-Qaeda leadership, the drones are now being used on lower-level threats as well, increasing the number of strikes and the number of casualties. This, then, is the new face of today’s military: a soulless remote aircraft, cruising in to take out terrorist targets with clinical meticulousness.
But unpleasant rumblings are beginning to be heard. The New America Foundation keeps an updated database of each U.S. drone strike, complete with designated targets and death tallies. The foundation reports that since 2004, there have been 183 confirmed strikes in northwest Pakistan. In those attacks, between 1,201 and 1,850 individuals were killed, of which 890 to 1,315 were believed militants. In other words, 311 to 535 civilians have been killed, or approximately 27 percent of the total casualties. This is an outrageously high number, especially when you consider the extent to which modern equipment has improved over the years.
Dr. David Kilcullen, a former chief counterinsurgency strategist for the U.S. State Department, has been speaking out against the growing use of drone warfare, and not just because civilian casualties are so high.
“Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased,” he wrote in the New York Times in May 2009.
Essentially, the heavy-handed usage of drones and the indiscriminate destruction they cause are creating tension and resentment among Pakistanis, and they are increasing the likelihood of wronged civilians drifting toward extremist groups.
Pakistan is not at war with the United States. Whether they unofficially house terrorists or not is a heatedly debated topic that has raised much tension between the two countries, but Pakistan is currently an officially allied nation. And yet we’re killing approximately one Pakistani civilians for every four “militants” eliminated by drone strikes. At what point does the safety of American troops warrant labeling these deaths mere collateral damage?
Our military faces a dilemma. They’re fighting a war against a foe that integrates itself with the civilian population and uses hit-and-run tactics to bamboozle allied troops. It’s rather like a lion trying to fight a swarm of ants — no matter how many times the lion swipes out and flattens a few ants, the rest scurry away through the dust and dirt and the reappear in a different location. The military’s job is to defend and protect the United States, its people and its interests, and therefore, the military needs to use any and every weapon at its disposal.
But at the same time, we can’t sacrifice the humanity that makes this country so great in order to achieve our goals in the Middle East. Indiscriminate killing to make a point is the standard operating procedure of terrorists, not the United States military.
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