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Kate Watkins

Christologies and Politics

Utrum

Whether drone strikes should be used against non-state armed groups (such as ISIS and

Al-Qaeda).

Videtur

It seems that drone strikes should be used against non-state armed groups because such

strikes save lives on several fronts. First, the drone operator is in no real danger; even if the

drone were to be shot down, the operator, often hundreds of miles away, would be able to walk

away from his or her console with little more damage than simple annoyance. There are no pilots

to be potentially captured and tortured or killed. The drone operator is safely positioned in

friendly territory. Thus American soldiers and CIA operatives are not placed in any real physical

danger, resulting in far less loss of life and danger than if ground troops were dispatched to

accomplish the same mission.1 In this sense, drone strikes are remarkably asymmetrical; drones

have the distinct ability to eliminate enemies with no real danger to American forces.2

1 Army UAS CoE Staff, eyes of the Army U. S. Army Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems 2010-2035 (U.S.
Army UAS Center of exCellenCe), http://www-rucker.army.mil/usaace/uas/US%20Army%20UAS%20RoadMap
%202010%202035.pdf.

2 Jai C Galliott,. "VIEWPOINT ARTICLE CLOSING WITH COMPLETENESS: THE ASYMMETRIC DRONE
WARFARE DEBATE." Journal Of Military Ethics 11, no. 4 (December 2012): 353. Advanced Placement Source,
EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).
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Second, drone strikes can be used to target very specific individuals and launch very narrow

attacks, often destroying a single structure while leaving the surrounding structures untouched.

This results in dramatically less loss of life than if more traditional war techniques, such as

bombing, were used. The Bureau for Investigative Journalism estimates that for every combatant

that is killed in a drone strike, between 0.8 and 2.5 civilians are killed.3 Some would argue even

this is far too high.4 While numbers are hard to gather in any concrete sense due to the remote

location and classified nature of drone strikes, taking even the highest estimates of civilian

causalities would result in an average of three civilian deaths for each drone strike.5This is a far

better outcome than traditional war techniques; in WWII no country is estimated to have suffered

less than one civilian death for every military death, and most suffered far more civilian deaths

than military deaths.6 Many bombing campaigns in WWII reduced entire cities to ash and killed

tens of thousands of civilians in order to destroy factories or industrial centers. In light of this,

the negligible collateral damage reported by TBIJ pales.

Third, drone strikes can be used to disrupt the plans and activities of non-state armed groups by

targeting key personnel, thus potentially preventing some attacks from ever even taking place.7

Kenneth Anderson cites intercepted terrorist communications which seem to indicate that

3 Kenneth Anderson. "The Case for Drones." Commentary 135, no. 6: 14-23. Literary Reference Center,
EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6National WWII Museum, By the Numbers: World-Wide Deaths,, accessed February 23, 2016,
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/world-wide-
deaths.html.
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organizations such as Al-Qaeda have great difficult in replacing high-level operatives within

their organization after they are eliminated via drone strikes.8 Admittedly, quantifying the

number of lives saved by preventing attacks is a bit like trying to count the number of apples in

an apple seed, but it is generally argued that the disruption of non-state armed groups through the

use of drone warfare prevents large scale terrorist attacks, thus saving lives.

It is easy to how the life saving capabilities of the drones could be politically advantageous.

There are no flagged-draped coffins returning to the United States. There are no wounded and

maimed soldiers reentering society. For the most part, the deaths that take place because of drone

strikes are the deaths of combatants with whom Americans are, generally, less than sympathetic.

Furthermore, ones Christology may cause one to lean toward drone strikes as the least

objectionable war technique. If one believes that war is sometimes justified, drones seem like a

natural choice; certainly, people are killed in drone strikes, but such strikes seem to limit

collateral damage and save American lives. Thus drone strikes can make war less costly.

Sed Contra

On the other hand, drones strikes should be used against non-state armed groups because

the technology of the drone makes it far more efficient than humans beings. The primary

example of this is the ability of the drone to positively identify a target before striking, something

which a ground soldier may never get close enough to do. Because of the advanced video

7 Alex DeBerardinis. "Drone Warfare and the Attack on Nation-State Sovereignty." JUIS: Journal Of
Undergraduate International Studies 19, (Fall2015 2015): 39-48. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost
(accessed February 23, 2016).

8 Anderson 14-23.
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footage and facial recognition the drones can obtain, a target can be confirmed with very little

doubt. Footage of the target can be streamed back to the operator and then analyzed to ensure

that the drone has located the actual target. A soldier, however, may not ever get close enough to

see the whites of the enemys eyes before needing to either attack or retreat. Thus drones can lead

to fewer cases of mistaken identity.9

In addition, drones are not subject to the limitations of the human body. Drones can hover, often

entirely unseen, suspended above a target for hours until an opportune moment presents itself.

This is impossible for a human; while humans may be able to remain hidden for some time, the

mental and physical strain of this is unimaginable. The drones, however, do not tire, and the

operator can be switched out for a fresh operator as needed. Given that they can be refueled,

drones can essentially work around the clock in perpetuity until parts begin to physically fail.

Humans can do no such thing, requiring food, water, and sleep to remain functioning at even the

most basic level, let alone at a reasonable level of efficiency. Factors which may negatively

influence the performance of a soldier simply do not affect drones. Drones are not subject to

fatigue, hunger, or emotional distress.10 Because of this, it is far less likely that a mistake would

be made during a drone strike which would cost innocent lives. A drone will not become stressed

by its environment and attack a civilian, or miss an opportunity to take out an important target.

9 Amitai Etzioni. "The Great Drone Debate." Military Review 93, no. 2 (March 2013): 2-13. MasterFILE Elite,
EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

10 Ibid.
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Further still, drones are able to reach places which ground troops cannot, at least without

significant time and risk.11 It would not seem feasible to send ground troops into harsh

environments such as the Himalayan Mountains to search for combatants that have a significant

home-field advantage. Drones, however, can use an advanced array of imaging equipment to

locate the combatants, and can easily fly to the location of the combatant. This is far more

efficient than the grueling mission it would be for humans. Drones can also fly over hostile

territory to target areas that would be inaccessible without a full-scale invasion. Sending a human

being, even a soldier, into and through a foreign country can be a delicate situation. In some

cases, American soldiers are required to immigrant into the foreign country, despite being there

to fight against enemy combatants.12 Machines, however, are under no such obligation. A drone

does not have to immigrate to a foreign country, and one drone can easily do the job of an entire

squad of soldiers. Thus drones can be highly efficient in situations where diplomatic red tape

would make the deployment of ground troops tedious. Politically, the efficiency of the drone is

appealing. the cost of operating a single drone is significantly less than the cost of an equivalent

numbers of soldiers required to do the same task. Thus drones allow the military to reduce troop

numbers and potentially save money.

Responsio

I answer that drones should not be used against non-state armed groups because drones strikes

actually perpetuate anti-American sentiment and boost recruitment into hostile organizations

11 Ibid.

12 Per private conversation with former military personnel.

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such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS through a phenomenon known as blowback. Drone strikes have

been interpreted to be a sign of cowardly behavior and lack of honor. Moreover, drone strikes

erode the stability of foreign governments and turn public opinion against America, therefore

perpetuating wars rather than moving them toward conclusion.

Ergo

While drone strikes are politically advantageous in some ways, those ways are primarily

domestic and fail to take into proper account the global reaction. Drones are widely disapproved

of, and this disapproval serves to extend an already politically tenuous conflict. Regardless of US

opinion regarding drone strikes, foreign opinion is far from positive. The foreign minister of

Pakistan cites drone strikes as the top reason for anti-American sentiment in her country.13 In

fact, the outrage against drone strikes is so great in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen that the

governments of these countries are actually losing control to terrorists groups as the people

demand retaliation against the United States.When government officials are unable to stop

American drone strikes, they are seen as failing the people in very fundamental way. This in turn

leads to civil unrest and even war as the people seek to overthrow the ineffective government

officials in favor of those who promise results. Unsurprisingly, these are often combatants.14

The devastating effects of drone strikes are tangible and measurable. In areas where drones

strikes have been frequently employed, PTSD is epidemic. Those who suffer from this disorder

13 Douglas A Pryer. "The Rise of the Machines." Military Review 93, no. 2 (March 2013): 14-24. MasterFILE Elite,
EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

14 Michael J. Boyle. "The costs and consequences of drone warfare." International Affairs 89, no. 1 (January 2013):
1-29. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).
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may respond disproportionately to loud noises, have difficulty eating, and experience other

severe disruptions to his or her life.15 An American journalist who was captured by the Taliban

described how unsettling the noise of the drones hovering overhead was to the locals and the fear

that the drones caused.16 Alarmingly, the tribal nature of many communities have been all but

destroyed as individuals no longer trust one another in something akin to McCarthyism. Parents

hesitate to send their children to school for fear of the drones, and civilians stand by and watch

the victims of drone strikes suffer for fear that if they try to help, they will be targeted in a

double tap strike. This technique refers to striking a target, waiting until people rush in to help

the wounded, and then striking again. The justification for this generally stems from the idea of

guilt by association, but has led to communities that pass by the wounded and dying.17 The Good

Samaritan is made all but extinct. As Pryer argues, the use of drones does not create a lasting

peace because it causes so much psychological damage and trauma to the community that peace

becomes a foreign,and impossible, concept.18

For the people who, at first, may have support the United States, this fear and trauma leads to the

perception that the United States is the enemy, not the non-state armed groups. Rather than a

people in need of liberating, the people become tolerant, if not supportive, of attacks against

America. In fact, research seems to indicate a direct correlation between the number of drones

15 Pryer 14-24.

16 Boyle, 21

17 Ibid.

18 Pryer, 14-24.
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strikes in a community and those who felt that the United States was the real enemy; the more

drones strikes, the higher disapproval of the United States soared.19

Akbar Ahmed, an expert in Islamic Studies, points out that these drone strikes are also negatively

interpreted as cowardice, particularly by a people with a deep commitment to honor.20 Ahmed

argues that drone warfare is seen by tribespeople as dishonorable. Fighting long distance with no

real risk to oneself is a violation of ancient honor codes and considered cowardly. The natural

conclusion of Ahmeds work is that drone strikes are a violation of the fundamental code many

tribespeople live by, thus unnecessarily alienating them and making them an enemy.21 When the

United States participated bodily in wars, such as in World War II, it was seen as honorable by

tribespeople. Regardless of what side the tribespeople may have fallen on, they could respect the

honor of fighting in person. Goldstein aptly sums up the perception created by of drone strikes:

The United States emerges as a representation of modernity, ruthless and simultaneously

weak.22

This combination of trauma, outrage, fear and negative perception drive a force known as

blowback. This is essentially the tendency of drone strikes to gain new recruits to non-state

19 Pryer, 17

20 Akbar Ahmed. The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War On Terror Became a Global War On Tribal Islam.
Brookings Institution Press, 2013.

21 Ibid.

22 Cora Sol Goldstein. "Drones, Honor, and War." Military Review 95, no. 6 (November 2015): 76. MasterFILE
Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).
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armed groups, who in turn retaliate against the United States out of outrage. Drone strikes are the

top propaganda piece for recruitment to Al-Qaeda.23 Here is where the argument that drones

should be used on the basis of saved lives begins to break down. For every drone strike that

eliminates a terrorist, the resulting outrage results in the recruitment of more. Perhaps the

elimination of one target prevents an attack against the United States, but one has to wonder how

many more it causes. This the horror of blowback. It is a vast oversimplification, then, to argue

that drones save lives. The operator of the drone is safe, but the soldiers that will be targeted by

suicide and roadside bombs are not. Moreover, as the war drags on in an endless cycle as each

strike causes more blowback, the death count rises ever higher.

The blowback caused by drone strikes also challenges the argument that drones should be used

as a matter of efficiency. To be sure, drones are far more capable than humans in many ways. If

they perpetuate war and unrest rather than bringing it to a close, however, are they truly as

efficient as it first seems? The ability to precisely identify a target becomes of little value if the

technique used results in several more recruits to non-state armed groups who will, in turn,

someday become targets themselves.

Consequently, the efficiency of the drones works against them in another way. Not only

do drones create blowback, thus reducing efficiency, they also make it easier to use force. The

clean efficiency of a drone strike and the lack of short-term risk to American forces sterilizes war

and disassociates us from the true costs of war.24 The science fiction society featured in the old

TV series Star Trek, A Taste of Armageddon, may be closer than we think. In this episode, the

23 Boyle, 13.

24 Boyle 25.
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crew of the USS Enterprise encounters a society that has reduced warfare to a simulation run by

a computer. causalities are asked to report to painless death chambers. War has been sterilized,

and as such, has raged on in this society for generations. The captain, of course, destroys this

system, much to the horror of the citizens. When Captain Kirk is asked if he knows what he has

done, he responds Yes, I do. I've given you back the horrors of waryou have a real war on

your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put

an end to it. Make peace.25 When war becomes sterilized, there is far less motivation to end it.

The horror of war is a great motivation for ending it. Thus the efficiency of the drones to provide

death with mechanical precision should not, perhaps, be seen as an advancement but a loss of our

humanity.

Drone strikes may be here to stay. They are not, however, the life-saving and efficient war

machines it would appear at first. Rather, they perpetuate war and rob communities of peace and

sanity. Any peace gained with drone strikes is little more than a tense and frightened lull. Drones

foster an endless cycle of insurgents, and perhaps most of all, they rob us of our humanity by

shielding us from the bloodshed of war. Perhaps drones strikes serve to illustrate the tension in

Augustines writings. If we pursue survival and defense above all, we risk sacrificing justice and

the very values we wish to preserve.26 Does America preserve itself as an end in and of itself, a

country too big to fail, even at the expense of justice? Or does America preserve justice at the

25Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon, directed by Gene Roddenberry (Desilu Productions, 1967), www.netflix.com.

26 Williams, Rowan. "Politics and the Soul: A Reading of the City of God." Milltown Studies 19/20 (1987): 66.
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expense of its own security? Where one falls will be shaped by which city one has stronger

allegiance to: the city of God or the city of humanity.

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Bibliography

Ahmed, Akbar. The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War On Terror Became a Global War

On Tribal Islam. Brookings Institution Press, 2013.

Anderson, Kenneth. 2013. "The Case for Drones." Commentary 135, no. 6: 14-23. Literary

Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

Army UAS CoE Staff. eyes of the Army U. S. Army Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

2010-2035. U.S. Army UAS Center of excellence.

Boyle, Michael J. "The costs and consequences of drone warfare." International Affairs 89, no. 1

(January 2013): 1-29. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23,

2016).

DeBerardinis, Alex. "Drone Warfare and the Attack on Nation-State Sovereignty." JUIS: Journal

Of Undergraduate International Studies 19, (Fall2015 2015): 39-48. Academic Search

Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

Galliott, Jai C. "VIEWPOINT ARTICLE CLOSING WITH COMPLETENESS: THE

ASYMMETRIC DRONE WARFARE DEBATE." Journal Of Military Ethics 11, no. 4

(December 2012): 353. Advanced Placement Source, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23,

2016).

Goldstein, Cora Sol. "Drones, Honor, and War." Military Review 95, no. 6 (November 2015): 70-

76. MasterFILE Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

Etzioni, Amitai. "The Great Drone Debate." Military Review 93, no. 2 (March 2013): 2-13.

MasterFILE Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

 Page 13 of 13

National WWII Museum. By the Numbers: World-Wide Deaths. Accessed February 23, 2016.

http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-

the-numbers/world-wide-deaths.html.

Pryer, Douglas A. "The Rise of the Machines." Military Review 93, no. 2 (March 2013): 14-24.

MasterFILE Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed February 23, 2016).

Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon. Directed by Gene Roddenberry. Desilu Productions, 1967.

www.netflix.com.

Williams, Rowan. "Politics and the Soul: A Reading of the City of God." Milltown Studies
19/20 (1987): 55-72.