Drones and Compassion by Robert R. Odle, Ph.D.

Drones Good Citizen of Humanity

If someone was firing drones into our country killing innocent citizens would they be considered terrorists?

If we fire drones into another country (without permission) are we considered terrorists?

Much of what I am going to say here comes from two sources:

Living under Drones, Stanford and NYU law schools, and

Discontent and Its Civilizations, Mohsin Hamid.

Pakistan is one of the countries we fire drones into.

We fire lots of drones into Pakistan, as of last year there were 367 strikes killing between 2541 and 3586 people.  Yea, about the same amount as in 9/11.

Of course, we only kill the bad guys …

Let’s look at how we define who is bad … quoting from the report above:

From the Stanford report:

IF THERE IS any misconception that the drone strikes are primarily counterterrorist in nature, aimed at key leaders of international terror networks, this can be dispensed with. The report from Stanford and NYU highlights research separately conducted by Reuters and by the New America Foundation that comes to similar conclusions: the elimination of “high-value”targets—al-Qaeda or “militant”leaders—has been exceedingly rare, fewer than fifty people, or about 2 percent of all drone deaths. Rather, “low-level insurgents”have been the main targets of drones. The US drone campaign in Pakistan is thus largely a counterinsurgency operation, targeting men presumed to be intent on fighting US forces across the border in Afghanistan. In the media, the term “militant”is often used in describing drone casualties. The report makes clear that this blurs together two legally very different groups of people. A “militant”who is a member of the Taliban, planning to attack US troops, is not the same as a “militant”who normally herds livestock, carries a rifle, and today is sitting with other members of his clan to discuss a threat to his isolated village from a neighboring clan.

Furthermore, according to the report, the “current administration’s apparent definition”holds that any male of military age who is killed in an area where militants are thought to operate (and where, therefore, drones operate) will be counted as a militant if killed. This has allowed administration officials to make wildly unrealistic claims, disputed by even the most conservative analysts of drone casualties, that civilian deaths are “extremely rare”or have even been in “single digits”since President Obama took office.

If you disregard this novel definition ..you will arrive at an estimate that some 411 to 884 civilians have died in U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan … 168 to 197 children. (From the Investigative Journalism … )

If you have any problem understanding the above let me help you….

If we kill someone with a drone and he is in an area where we think there are bad guys then the person killed is a bad guy by definition.

Bush started the drone attacks and Obama has expanded them.  97% of Pakistanians are opposed to the attacks.  (That’s surprising!)

What effect is this having on the Pakistan Government?  It is undermining the faith of the people in their country’s ability to defend and take care of them.  We are in effect destabilizing the government of a nuclear power, much more powerful than Iraq, Afghanistan or ISIS. (Great plan since we are all powerful.)

Thank or curse your Military Industrial Complex once again …

For those of you that believe we do no wrong and that military power is all that we need, despite the failures of our military over the last 40 years, no action is required.  Sit back and believe we are good, they are bad, and we are doing the right thing.

For those of you that believe our military industrial complex is not so good in so many ways, please do you own research on how our government is using drones and the lack of checks and balances in the system.  I doubt if it will be possible, but we could hope one Presidential candidate will push for accountability for our drones by an independent third party.  And, I would suggest we spread the word about what our MIC is doing and hope enough good people care to slow them down.

The Role of Compassion

Finally, I think we need some compassion for all those families that are losing family members and friends from our drone attacks.  I could have added sad stories about families destroyed by our drones, but you can research that for yourself if you care.  And for ourselves, let us hope that we are not creating thousands of new terrorists from the survivors of drone attacks on their loved ones.