Drone Warfare.

• Author: Kutty, Faisal
• Position: Drone Warfare Killing by Remote Control

Book Review: Drone Warfare Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin (London: Verso, 2012)

"With the American public lulled by the rhetoric that calls killing terrorists a necessity for national security and ignores the cries of victims rendered silent by the chokehold of local complicity and imperial might, the drone war represents one of the greatest travesties of justice in our age." (1)

When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, he did so with a promise to de-escalate America's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also committed to rehabilitate the United States' damaged reputation abroad after the Bush-Cheney administration's egregious mishandling of its 'War on Terror.' By the end of his first term, President Obama had succeeded in reducing the number of American ground troops in the Middle East. Conversely, he had also intensified American presence in the region in another respect to a near state of omnipresence. Salvaging American reputation appears to still elude the President.

A mere three days into his administration, President Obama, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, initiated the first drone strike of his presidency. (2) That drone strike also marked the first innocent victims (politically euphemized as 'collateral damage') of an assassination program that some including the author being reviewed argues will surely come to define America's hubris as an over-reaching imperialistic power into the next decade. Malik Gulistan Khan, a tribal elder and member of a pro-government peace committee, along with four members of his family, were killed in the missile attack ostensibly meant to target suspected terrorist hideouts in Pakistan. (3) The U.S. government has made little attempt to explain why or how Malik and his family were accidentally murdered in the strike, let alone offer any form of reparations to the surviving members of his family.

Under Obama's military command, such stories have become all too common. Despite the outcry from numerous human rights groups, the United States has repeatedly made it clear that it will continue to operate its drone program with little need to justify trampling on the sovereignty of countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (4) The President's weekly 'Terror Tuesday' meetings, during which he flips through terror suspect profiles (including those of American citizens) to add to his kill list, exemplify his commitment to pushing on with this controversial program. (5) How a candidate who campaigned on promises to change America's imperialistic foreign policy ended up perpetuating international law violations similar to those of his predecessors is a question that can only be understood within the broader context of an ongoing shift of power within the military-industrial complex. To say that President Obama simply reneged on his campaign promises would be to understate the stranglehold by which the booming drone industry controls American policy. Indeed, this was a shift that was inevitable no matter which political party controlled the White House. To truly understand America's complex relationship with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), what is needed is not a mere critique of Obama's policies, but a comprehensive history of the development and implementation of drone technology.

In her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, political activist and Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin offers this more extensive treatment. While Benjamin's analysis can occasionally be sloppy in structure, prone to hyperbolic language and suffer from poor editing, she backs up her analysis with a plethora of evidence. The volume is a comprehensive and highly informative discussion that draws on data from journalist accounts, congressional papers, field interviews by peace and human rights advocates, and declassified government reports (6) on the use of drones (or UAVs). (7) She also explores the consequences and implications transcending the technology of warfare. Benjamin's account adeptly challenges the various strands of political and military thought that have commended weaponized drones as the next step in precision warfare. By tracking drones from their inception as surveillance tools used by the Israeli military through to their assimilation by the United States and ultimately to their normalization as an assassination tool, Benjamin plots the secret history of drone development. It is clear from the outset that her goal is to undermine much of the propaganda fed to the American people on this issue.

Indeed, problems that inevitably loom in the horizon for drone warfare need to be anticipated, including the exportation and proliferation of drone technology worldwide, despite the unpopularity of drones among countries outside the United States. (8) An expanding global movement interrogating the use of this technology has spawned activism among journalists, peace and human rights advocates, inter-faith groups, scholars, academics, and scientists. (9) This movement is directed against the industry that thrives on drone deployment, which is considered instrumental in eliminating real or imagined global threats to United States national security. (10)

As Benjamin documents, over the past decade, American military and intelligence agencies have been promoting drones as the most humane method of conducting warfare. They insist that such high powered precision weaponry allows for targeted attacks that can take out suspected terrorists while minimizing the number of innocent casualties. They have also claimed that drone warfare is less expensive, saves more American lives, and ultimately makes American citizens far safer than conventional warfare. Traditional warfare brings with it a number of heavy burdens, not the least of which is lives lost for both the victors and the victims. Yet, is it truly humane? Human development advocate Barbara Ehrenreich's allusion to the Iliad in her foreword for this volume foregrounds the norms of conventional warfare (11) that limit the conduct of a dignified and...