Main Topic Security Transparency

Drones Strike Western MA, Killing 2 and Wounding 13

MQ-9 Drone

Let me begin by setting the record straight. There was no drone strike in Western MA — no one was killed and no one was wounded. The headline is pure fiction, and its only purpose was to get you thinking along the lines of “what if it really happened”.

Suppose you’re in a town like Gardner, North Amherst, or Great Barrington. It’s a chilly fall day; the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the leaves are turning shades of orange, yellow, and red. You hear a slight buzzing sound overhead as a predator drone fires a salvo of missiles, leveling buildings near the center of town. There’s screaming and chaos, and everyone is gripped by feelings of horror and shock.

Unbeknownst to you, the drone was piloted by a faceless technician halfway around the world, carrying out the orders of a foreign government. The intended target was someone who sold timber on the black market, or maybe a peddler of opiates, or perhaps the leader of a local gambling ring. There’s perhaps a 10% chance that the strike killed the target operative (a “jackpot” in drone mission parlance). The outcome will be assessed by whether there’s continued activity from the target’s cellphone number, and it will be several days before the mission’s organizers can declare victory or success.

As you watch the building burn in front of you, what would you be thinking? Would you ask “why have you killed my friends, my family, and my neighbors?”. Or would you want revenge, by any means possible?

According to recent articles by the Intercept and Der Spiegel, this dystopian tale may not be far from what takes place on the other side of the world. Armed drones have become our government’s weapon of choice in a highly secretive campaign of extrajudicial assassinations, which our they prefer to call “targeted killings”. Drone strikes are carried out every few days.

These “targeted killings” aren’t terribly well targeted. 90% of people killed by US drone strikes are not the intended targets. That’s a lot of collateral damage, which most certainly includes women, children, and innocent people who just want to go about their daily lives. Of course, or military sees it differently. In their eyes, everyone in the vicinity of a strike zone is considered an enemy combatant, unless there is conclusive evidence to the contrary. That’s the problem with the “war on terror”. We’re fighting a war against people, and we kill a lot of innocent ones in the process.

Our leaders claim that drone strikes target “imminent threats”, yet their interpretation of the term defies the ordinary language meaning of the word “imminent”. It’s essentially the same mindset that the NSA used in its massive surveillance programs. As far as the NSA was concerned, everyone was a potential terrorist link, and therefore everyone needed to be subject to surveillance. Our drone warfare program is far more serious. The NSA merely violated people’s rights; drone warfare ends people’s lives.

Today, geography makes a drone strike against Western Massachusetts (or anywhere else in the United States) highly unlikely. We have friendly nations to our north and south, and large oceans to our east and west; distance keeps us safe. But UAV technology will only improve, and over time, distance will become less and less of an impediment. We are setting a very bad precedent, and someday we may be forced to live with it.

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