is the title of this powerful Washington Post op ed by Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson. Consider the opening
U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.
That is blunt:
obscene and immoral and
complicit in murder
Robinson is forceful in making his case. He acknowledges that drone attacks are efficient but immdiately notes
But efficacy is not legitimacy, and I don’t see how drone strikes can be considered a wholly legitimate way to wage war.
Nor do I.
Nor do many people and organizations in this country and around the world.
Robinson notes that even when totally accurate in targeting (which implies the rare occasion of no "collateral damage" in the death of non-combatant civilians) killing by drone is effectively a "summary execution" and asks
Is such killing morally defensible?
Please keep reading.
As is often the case with Robinson's work, the column is thorough and packed with details to support his position.
In several places he contrasts the approach Obama is taking to the apparently never-ending "war" on terrorism, and even as he can acknowledge there is something somewhat less vile about the position of the current president than that of his predecessor, that does not make it acceptable. If you do not have the Bush mentality that either one is with or against us, then what becomes the rationale, or as Robinson puts it,
It would seem the definition of “enemy” is, basically, “someone the United States decides to target.”
Then consider the following two sentences, one which ends a paragraph, the other which stands alone:
Bush’s theory of war was clear and morally indefensible. Obama’s is fuzzy and morally ambiguous.
All this is true even if the drones kill only their targets. But of course there is “collateral damage.”
Robinson offers more details, including turning to sources which attempt to ascertain the total deaths by drone attacks, and how man might be civilian, because the administration will not provide figures. He notes the administration will justify some attacks as being upon the Taliban when people on the ground insist they are not, then asks, similarly to his question about an "enemy"
When does a village cease being a village and become a “Taliban stronghold”? When we say so, apparently.
I served, albeit only stateside, during Vietnam. I have friends who saw combat, not just in my Marine Corps, but in the Army and Navy, on the ground and in the air.
We did body counts then. We were not always careful about ascertaining who was truly "the enemy" and it was not unknown to inflate counts by including dead livestock.
What was really atrocious was the creation of free-fire zones, areas where anyone was presumed to be a hostile and thus considered a legitimate target. I'm sorry, but according to the training I was given by the Marine Corps in 1965, the declaration of free-fire zones qualified then as a war crime, and I believe our current use of drones, even if the death of non-combatants is not as wide spread, is similarly a violation of whatever rules in theory still exist on how wars are to be fought.
It should not matter whether or not our opponent is a signatory to such agreements - we are, and we should be bound by them regardless of the status of our adversary, lest we become like Pogo looking at the devastation in the swamp and saying "we have met the enemy and he is us."
The "hot" issue now before the nation is, in the eyes of the media, still Obamacare. Robinson in general has been a supporter of the President. Remember those two things and then consider his final paragraph:
I believe historians will look at Obama’s second term and see the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, despite its rocky launch, as a great moral triumph. I fear they will see the drone war as a great moral failure.
I do not fully agree with the first part of that statement, because for me the ACA did not come close to going far enough, and it is morally tarnished by allowing the exclusion of undocumented aliens from its provisions, something which is not only morally not acceptable but from the standpoint of public health outright idiotic.
But I have no trouble agreeing fully with Robinson's assessment of the drone war: that it will be seen in the future as it is now by an increasing number of thoughtful people in this country and around the world, as a great moral failure.
It is now truly Obama's drone war, and it is immoral.
I will therefore not include my usual ending, because I as an American am complicit, because my tax dollars help pay for such immoral atrocities.