Tag: drones

Saying no to the drone rain of terror

Posted on by kathiemm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOnOmSGvXBY

Suddenly, Big Brother is everywhere, killing as well as spying, and the arms industry boldly advertises military drones on the Internet.

Manufacturers of drones (euphemistically known as unmanned aerial vehicles) are committed to a future of perpetual profits from perpetual wars; just consider their rhetoric.

President Obama recently promised the world that military drone use would be carefully monitored and ethical. If drones can show up on public beaches, what else can go wrong?

Among the things that can go wrong are the killing of innocent civilians.

Fortunately, voices against the U.S. use of military drones are being heard around the world. Moreover, 2013 has seen many anti-drone protests within the United States– in, for example,

The basic messages of these protests include:

  •  In its drone-conducted extrajudicial targeted killings, the U.S. executive branch is acting as judge, jury, and executioner in violation of domestic and international law.
  • While the use of killer drones may seem to promote U.S. goals abroad without endangering Americans, there will be negative repercussions for all.
  • Military drone use is immoral.
  • Innocent men, women, and children are being killed and maimed by drones.
  • Drone warfare is terrorism.
  • Drone warfare creates enemies, even among our allies.

What can be done to address these concerns? What are your views?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

From Star Wars to weaponized drones

Posted on by kathiemm

In the midst of the Cold War nuclear arms race in 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed a Strategic Defense Initiative aimed at mounting defensive weapons in space to shield the United States from a Soviet nuclear attack.

Map of the fictional Stars Wars galaxy
Map of the fictional Stars Wars galaxy by W.R. van Hage. Used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Perhaps in part because of Reagan’s own publicly-stated conviction that Armageddon, as predicted in the Bible, was at hand, the proposed initiative raised anxiety levels around the world and was promptly labeled “Star Wars.”

Some of these anxieties were relieved by the signing of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in 1991 and the subsequent Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty with Russia in 2001, requiring reductions in nuclear weapons in both countries.

Despite the fact that the sanity of the nuclear arms race was challenged around the world, technological junkies and arms manufacturers have been busy on another Star Wars adventure. This time, it’s developing weaponized drones (euphemistically called unmanned aerial vehicles). [In our next post we will consider Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS).]

Nuclear weapons were terrifying in part because they were likely not only to vanquish any “enemies” almost immediately but also to leave in their wake destruction and contamination that could destroy life on earth. In contrast, weaponized drones and other modern “miracle” weapons are touted for their ability to zero in on individual bad guys.  What could be more precise? More humane?  More just?

Our own President has said that their use will be guided by just and moral principles but national and international anxiety is once again high.  A recent study indicates that drones have killed more civilians than manned aircraft in Afghanistan.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Drones: Dispensing death, destroying democracy

Posted on by kathiemm

“Drones for America!,”a brief satiric video, will chill you, horrify you, and anger you. It will make you think very carefully about our government’s drone policy, its violation of constitutional principles, and its message to victims, their families, and the rest of the world.

Combat drone
Unmanned combat drone. Image in public domain.

Some of the identified cases of drone murders should also push you to act. Consider this one.

Leaders of the military-industrial complex who profit from wars are hoping that Americans won’t make the kind of fuss about drone warfare that they did about the Vietnam War, because drone warfare does not harm American service personnel. Or does it?

The arbitrary killing of Americans and others around the world, in violation of fundamental principles in our Bill of Rights, should be felt as keenly as the horrendous bloodbaths of the two world wars.

It’s not only the number of people who die in a war that is horrifying, but also the deliberate murder of human beings, particularly of innocent civilians who are simply trying to survive.

Still, the death count from drones, while not regularly reported by the news media, is gruesomely high.

Recently leaked documents reveal that the Justice Department gives the government a rather free hand in deciding who to kill.

Will you be able to sleep at night knowing that such a policy has been approved?

Like the now-obsolete weapons that lured militaries into trying out their new “toys” in World War I, drones are the latest in a series of deadly killing machines that threaten us all.

Learn about the drone killing of an American teenager and consider what can happen if ordinary people believe that there is nothing they can do about the violence being perpetrated by the power elite and those whom they have terrified.

In this Season of Nonviolence, we can be thankful that the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Counterterrorism of the United Nations is investigating drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian territories.

If world peace is to be achieved, then all nations, without exception, must respect international conventions for human rights.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Gaza: A just war on either side?

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

We are all hoping for a cease fire in Gaza, and possibly even one that lasts for longer than it takes to clear the rubble and mourn the dead.

Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip. Photo by NASA in public domain.

Is there a just war going on here on either side?

Hamas has fired rockets into Israel and this certainly violates the principle of targeting only enemy forces. Rockets by their nature are not aimed at any particular point but are “area” weapons that can be expected to come down anywhere in the general direction to which they are pointed. Unless they are being fired at a massed military formation, rockets cannot be part of just war.

For their part, the Israelis are using drone and air strikes with what appear to be precision-guided weapons. Those weapons do hit where they are aimed–at targets, perhaps legitimate, in the middle of an extremely dense civilian population. Thus they are certain to cause casualties among innocents and they certainly have.

So far, over 150 are dead, many of whom are clearly not Hamas militants. The Israeli response is not part of just war either.

Israel claims that it faces an existential threat. Hamas’s fundamental documents do call for the abolition of Israel altogether and they are doing what they can to achieve that end by force.

Israel obviously has extraordinarily good intelligence on exactly where the Hamas leaders are located. However, they are choosing to eliminate what may be legitimate targets by methods that keep their military casualties low but raise casualties among Palestinian civilians.

Is there a just war going on here on either side? Not the way things appear.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University