The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Series 2 – March 26, 2013
A Series of Lectures for People Who Prefer Pondering to Pandering
Long ago, which is to say 50+ years ago or so, a drone was a male bee which hung around the hive for a while and didn’t do much. Then he had the decency to die off, along with all the other drones, in a kind of mass suicide pact. Apparently it is an apiary necessity. Later, drones became pilot-less planes operated by radio signals which the Air Force or Navy shot down with piloted planes or guides missiles to practice their technological marksmanship.
Now drones have taken on a whole new meaning in contemporary life. Little ones are sophisticated toys which people fly by using signals which determine their flight pattern. Other little ones are used by fire departments to fly into buildings that are burning to see if anyone in the building needs to be rescued. Still others are used by a few law enforcement agencies around the country for surveillance of suspicious people or activities. Later I will speak briefly about that latter use of drones.
However, it is drones which have become weapons platforms by which to seek out and to destroy people or installations which are deemed by our government to be enemies or enemy targets that will be the major focus of this lecture. I shall be talking mainly about Predator and Reaper drones, the kind that carry high-explosive, very accurate laser-guided bombs and missiles that can be aimed at a target as small as a window or a walking man from 50,000 feet in the air and a few miles away, sending the building or the man into oblivion in a bright flash of explosive power.
High-altitude surveillance has been used by our government for over 60 years. The U2 is still flying, after having first been put into service in the 1950s. The SR71 Blackbird is our other major surveillance plane. It operates at 90,000 feet. The new Predator and Reaper drones fly at 25,000 to 50,000 feet. They carry cameras which can survey an entire medium-sized city, and clearly observe objects only six inches wide. The Air Force is training more drone pilots than pilots for airplanes, and the process takes half as long for the drone pilots. Air warfare has changed dramatically in the last decade, and we Americans are scarcely seem to be aware of it.
Drones have been used overtly only in Afghanistan. That is, the Afghan government knew and approved it. But they have been used covertly in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and perhaps elsewhere, and we did not inform their governments that our drones were flying over their sovereign territory. Because of a technical malfunction, an American drone came down in Iran by accident, and the Iranians have been able to glean whatever technological information from it they could successfully gather. Drones are currently being flown or developed by 75 different countries. That number has nearly doubled in only seven years. As an example, the Switchblade drone is shot out of a tube, and sprouts wings. It is only 18 inches long, and can kill people, although I was not able to learn specifically how it can accomplish its lethal mission.
Each Reaper or Predator requires a ground crew of 180 people to maintain, pilot, operate its sensors, and analyze the data they collect. We have 7,000 drones, and they fly more hours than manned aircraft. Early Predators cost $8 million apiece, and the latest Reapers cost $40 million apiece. But that is a mere trifle compared to F-35s, our newest fighter planes, which cost about $200 million each, and are still not fully reliable aircraft. Predators have a range of 675 miles, Reapers 1150 miles, and the Global Hawk can fly 15,525 miles. Therefore we want Predators and Reapers to take off close to targets they are given, but the Global Hawk can operate out of bases in the USA or our close allies.
As you no doubt will remember, John Brennan’s appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was held up for a while because he was President Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser. It was he who suggested many of our drone attacks against terrorists. In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he said that our drone strikes “are conducted in full compliance with the law,” following “rigorous standards.” That may be so, but what is the law, and what are the standards? We have not been told. Sen. Diane Feinstein, the chairman of the committee, says that the number of civilians killed in drone attacks is in the single digits annually. If so, that is a far lower rate of civilian casualties than by conventional warfare, which is surely a good thing.
It was George W. Bush who popularized the idea of “The War on Terror,” but it is Barack Obama who has used far more drone attacks in the prosecution of that misnamed conflict. In his first term, Mr. Obama ordered eight times as many drone strikes on terrorists as Mr. Bush did in two terms. However, our current President has far more drones at his disposal than did his predecessor. Specifically, there have been over 400 armed attacks under Pres. Obama, and many of them have been in Pakistan, whose government has strongly, or at least publicly, objected to them. For example, last year the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda in Pakistan was killed by bombs fired from drones. Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan beheaded six mechanics whom they suspected of planting GPS devices in Taliban vehicles which were being serviced.
Three days after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Congress quickly passed what was called “the Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF). The 395 words of the act gave power to the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks. President Obama has reluctantly admitted that he is using the AUMF act as the authority to order drone strikes, even though few of these attacks have anything to do with 9/11. Surely no one in Congress thought that the law they passed on Sept. 14, 2001 would be utilized in 2013 to launch weapons from drones, but that is what, apparently, is happening.
It is obvious that sending troops, even Special Forces, to do what drones do instantaneously and very effectively would result in far more deaths, both of American or allied soldiers and foreign civilians. So far as we know, only terrorists have been targets, not enemy government officials or military installations. We are told there has been a five-fold drop in the number of civilians killed as “collateral damage” from when we first began to employ drones as weapons. Furthermore, conventional air strikes are less likely to succeed in killing the targeted individual terrorists than are drone strikes, and more civilians are likely to be killed when larger bombs are used.
Under present circumstances, the President himself apparently gives the order for many, if not all, of the drone strikes. We will come back to that concept later. Sen. Feinstein proposes that legislation establish a special court which would approve the strikes, rather than the President using his own authority. Politically as well as legally, that seems like an excellent idea. At least it would give official legal sanctions to these air attacks, instead of the secret decisions which are currently being made.
Many people in the CIA prefer our intelligence to come from agents who are literally “on the ground” rather than from cameras operating within drones. Joshua Foust is a former senior intelligence analyst for the US military and a political analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Yemen. He believes we should rely more on human intelligence rather than technological intelligence. Other intelligence officials think we should physically try to capture terrorists if we can, rather than to kill them. Previously that was the much preferred method. When terrorists are dead, all the information they have dies with them, but if we can interrogate captured terrorists, we may learn more about their operations.
These disputes within the intelligence community are not new. They have been going on for as long as governments have created intelligence-gathering sources. The primary difference now from before is that drones can be employed --- using CIA terminology --- “to terminate with extreme prejudice” instantly and with surgical precision. Incidentally, the CIA operates its own “drone air force” independently of the military. If there is a fault, it is not with drones per se; it is with those who choose to use drones in pursuit of their secretive goals.
Wanting to ease the burden of the USA being the primary drone force in the world, the Obama Administration has sought to sell drones to our allies in Europe and elsewhere. Some Members of Congress have expressed reservations about this, fearing that our technological superiority may be lost by such sales. Even within the Administration, the CIA and the State Department have disagreed on what our policies should be. And if we sell drones to our friends, would we approve of everything for which they might use them? The Turks, for instance, want to employ drones to keep an eye on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. Is that acceptable to us?
Are you beginning to understand the complexity of this issue? Has the US allowed a new and little-understood genie to escape from the bottle? We did that in 1945 with nuclear bombs; are we doing it again in the early 21st century with drones? And if we use drones against others, might drones also be used against us at some point in the future?
Paddy Ashdown is a retired British Member of Parliament. He wrote an editorial in The Times of London which made some cogent points about drones. First of all, he properly pointed out that they are not technically a weapon, but are instead a delivery system for specific weapons. In fact, he said, they deliver extraordinarily “smart” bombs which are uniquely accurate in hitting their targets. If we want to outlaw smart bombs, then we should do that, he said, but drones in themselves are not the problem.
However, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, formerly merely Paddy, puts his finger squarely on one of the major problems in the US usage of drone attacks, and perhaps the major problem. He writes, “It is said that every week President Obama sits down with his advisers and personally decides how drones will be used in the week ahead. Can we imagine what that must be like for a democratically elected politician? No taking shelter behind a command chain that reaches down to the judgment of the poor bloody soldier on the ground. This time the President is personally involved – personally accountable; perhaps even in a way that could, theoretically at least, be open to challenge before an international court of law.”
Is it only non-Americans who can discern the problem in the way Americans are now using drones as weapons platforms? I have no idea how the President decided this is the way to conduct drone warfare, with himself making every single decision (if truly he does that), but it seems clear to me that is political suicide for the American chief executive. Might he be hailed before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for assuming this extraordinary authority? Besides, surely Mr. Obama has other things to do with his time, doesn’t he? Ought he to be selecting targets to terminate with extreme prejudice? Would it be better to have someone in the CIA or Defense Department or State Department or a combination of all three to make those awesome and terrible judgments, if such judgments must be made?
No one in the current Administration has made clear what are the rules for drone usage against terrorists. Human rights law requires the capture of enemies if possible, but we do not even attempt that in most instances. Further, the Geneva Convention allows only the targeting of declared combatants. Legally, are terrorists technically combatants, if they have sworn allegiance to no government or nation-state military? In Article 51 of the UN Charter, a nation is entitled to stop an imminent threat, but we have often taken action simply because someone in the secrecy of our intelligence forces has claimed there is an imminent threat. Is there, or isn’t there? Who knows?
A New Yorker cartoon: Ben Franklin is talking to a couple other members of the Constitutional Convention. He says as an afterthought, “Oh, and give the executive the right to rain down fire from on high.”
The President has selected a very slippery slope upon which to exercise what he supposes is Presidential authority. It seems to me to be very bad policy for the President by himself ever to decide on a drone target. He has more than enough ways to put his foot in it than to reserve yet another means for inserting his size 12 into matters far more wisely left to others.
As most of you know, Mr. Obama gave the order for a drone to attack and kill Anwar al-Awlaki. He was an American-born US citizen who as a leader in the Al Qaeda operation in Yemen. Several members of Congress, on both the political left and right, have faulted him for ordering an American killed without legal charges brought against him and putting him on trial. Those are certainly issues, but they are not the central issue I am addressing in this lecture. Nor am I primarily concerned here about the legal ramifications of a few police departments or other government agencies using drones for surveillance purposes to keep an eye on bad guys, speeders, and so on, whether or not they are US citizens. Those certainly are questions worth discussing. But our primary focus is on the use of drones as platforms for launching weapons, and the results of such strikes. For example, it has been claimed that over 2000 people have been killed in drone attacks since 2004, some of whom were civilians. However, there is no way of independently confirming any of that, because the very information is classified.
Another ethical concern is prompted by this new form of warfare. If a highly trained drone pilot in California or Colorado sends the signal to a drone flying over Afghanistan or Yemen or Somalia to bomb a person or a car or a building, does he see himself as the pilot of a lethal weapons system, or does he see himself as a technician merely doing what he has been trained to do? Does he see himself to be a warrior, or is he simply a techno-nerd? Does a trained killer who himself does not risk being killed conceptualize himself differently from an aircraft pilot who might be hit at any moment by an anti-aircraft missile when flying over enemy airspace?
Air Force Capt. Nicholas “Hammer”Helms was a fighter pilot who is now a drone pilot. He guides Reaper drones over Afghanistan from Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas. He dismisses the ethical concern I am raising. In a newspaper interview with a reporter from the London Times, he said, “Journalists…are antagonized by that geographical distance, but the warriors that are executing with the system are right there in the battle.” Then Capt. Helms explained in greater detail what it is he does. “When you are watching a mother, 7000 miles away, corralling her kids to get them off to bed, and you can see the restlessness of the four-year-old …who doesn’t want to go to bed because he’s excited – this is an intimacy that makes you absolutely want to make the right decision when it comes time to deliver a combat effect, with a hellfire missile or a bomb.”
What is a “combat effect,” for heaven’s sake”? What kind of language usage is that? If you were doing what Capt. Helms does, would you refer to his work as “combat effects”? Does that military-speak somehow lessen the effect of “combat effects”? No doubt if you can see what he says he sees, with that much detail, indeed you would “absolutely want to make the right decision.” But what if that mother is married to someone we have classified as a terrorist, and we mean to hit him when the bomb flies, but not to hit the members of his family? And what if he isn’t a terrorist at all, but simply a Pakistani peasant, whom surveillance drones happened to see walk past real terrorists a couple of times in a village market? When warfare is that “up-close and personal,” does it still feel like war?
Three days after attending a tribal meeting held in northwest Pakistan to discuss drones, two boys, 16 and 12, were killed by a drone. It is speculated the CIA had informants at the meeting, and they told the CIA about the boys, who had no connection with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Were they killed simply because they made the mistake of attending that meeting to learn more about drones? A poll indicated that 90% of Pakistanis oppose the use of drones to deliver weapons. The Pakistani government officially opposes the use of drone attacks, but in fact they may surreptitiously approve them. It is alleged that drone attacks in Yemen have caused the ranks of Al Qaeda to swell. Might that be true? Is there something about drones that enrages people more than other kinds of weapons delivery systems?
Some people believe that hackers have somehow managed to break into the guidance systems of drones. If so, no one in the American government, or any of the fifty other governments currently using drones, is going to admit it. But if it can be done, and it can’t be prevented, is it worth it to continue using drones? For a thousand dollars, researchers at the University of Texas devised what they call “a GPS Spoofer.” It can break into the guidance system of drones, which rely on the Global Positioning System to tell very specifically where the drones are. If this can be done at such low cost, might such devices be used by our enemies to get into our own drones and turn them against us as targets? The Iranians claim that the American drone which came down inside Iran was brought down by some sort of spoofer. Such an hilarious spoof that would be - - - yes?
When we have used drones to kill suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists, are we any different from the Israeli Mossad sending agents into other countries to assassinate Hamas or Hezbollah terrorists? Killing unsuspecting people with guided missiles or bombs is assassination. Is it ethical to do so, even if they are known terrorists? And aside from those moral niceties, what happens when Iran or Syria get drones?
Jimmy Carter has become the Unofficial American Scold in recent years. He excoriated Pres. Obama for using drones. “It means you assassinate people without bringing charges, without finding them guilty, and in the process inadvertently causing collateral damage, that is, the killing of completely innocent people who might be in the neighborhood.” Strong words. Strong denunciation. Accurate, or not? And why did I read Pres. Carter’s thoughts only in The Times of London, and in no American publication?
James Russell Lowell was one of our nation’s best-known poets. The lead-up to the Mexican War was a great ethical dilemma for many people, including Lowell. In one of his poems he wrote, “New occasions teach new duties/ Time makes ancient good uncouth.” We have long since concluded that bombs are a necessary evil in pursuit of a larger good. But are bombs launched in complete safety from thousands of miles away in the same category?
In January the United Nations began an investigation of the use of American drones for targeted assassinations. Ben Emmerson is an expert on counterterrorism and human rights. He said in the UN hearing, “The exponential rise in the use of drone technology in a variety of military contexts represents a real challenge to the framework of international law.” Ought there to be a serious international conference on drones, as in the past there have been such conferences on chemical warfare or biological warfare or nuclear warfare? Although thus far drones represent very limited destruction as compared to mass destruction, the astonishing accuracy of their attacks raises ethical issues regarding their usage, does it not?
For years many people have expressed grave reservations about using the words “the war on terrorism.” The terrorists whom we are attacking do not represent any governments anywhere. They are self-styled combatants without uniforms. We are certainly in a very long struggle with terrorists, but we are not in a war with them, because no government has declared war, nor shall they. Terrorists by their very nature are extra-governmental soldiers, who represent no one other than themselves. But aside from all that, when shall this struggle end? Do we continue to do battle as long as the threat continues to exist? Most assuredly we shall do so. Some, a few, may oppose that, but the struggle shall go on for as long as necessary, which probably means for as long as any of us shall live. But will we continue to use drones as part of our counterterrorism arsenal? And if we are going to use them, ought we at the very least to get the consent of the nations where the strikes hit?
No one will forget that Navy SEALs invaded deep into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Presumably the Pakistani government did not give prior approval for that raid, and if they had been asked, which presumably they were not, they would have said no. So we did it anyway. Is that any different from killing Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen by means of a drone? If international law or the international community were to say drones are different, would we accept that verdict, or would we continue to employ them? When any place on earth can be a target for terrorists, can terrorists be targets anywhere on earth they can be found?
One of the most salient objections to drones is that the American people, for whose defense they presumably are utilized, know very little about their usage. Almost everything is done in secret. The little the Obama Administration has told us is deliberately enveloped in ambivalence. Do we want to be part of a weapons system whose lethal realities are kept strictly under wraps?
When he was being examined by a Senate committee as the President’s nominee to become the new director of the CIA, John Brennan was asked many questions about drones, since it was he who headed the CIA drone program. Mr. Brennan declared, “These strikes are conducted in full compliance with the law,” and that “rigorous standards” are applied whenever a drone attack is ordered. What laws, either domestic or international, govern drones? Are there any? If not, should there be? If so, what are they, so that we, the people, may become familiar with them? Does saying something is legitimate make it legitimate?
Many civil libertarians and common garden-variety libertarians are worried about drone usage in the USA. There is great concern among some that, as George Orwell declared in 1984, “Big Brother Is Watching You.” In an Orwellian sense, that could indeed be worrisome. But now we are almost thirty years beyond 1984, both literally and literarily, and the American government as well as most other democratically-elected governments are a far cry from being Big Brother. Bumbling Brother, maybe, but Big Brother, no.
Sometimes I think that people who are more concerned about civil rights than anything else are devoted far more to perceived personal freedoms than to the good of the larger society. I would guess that the thousands of self-styled militiamen who are armed to the teeth are vehemently opposed to drone technology, because they fear, rightly I hope, that drones might be used against them. People who are up to no good are, by definition, up to no good. If drones can keep an eye on them, so much the better. Drones away, says I.
Furthermore, the beneficial use of drones has barely been addressed. I have referred to drones being used by fire fighters to go into burning buildings to see if there are people trapped inside. Drones could do traffic studies at far less cost than people doing the same thing. In Mesa County, Colorado, currently drones are sent out to search for lost hikers. They do it much more quickly and cheaply than people on foot or spotter airplanes can do. Many state and local governments have passed laws to restrict or outlaw drones altogether, but probably they are the same places that guarantee citizens the right to own practically every gun ever invented.
So that no one is uncertain of what I am trying to say here, I severely doubt that it is ethical to use drones for technological assassinations, which is what we know most about their use, but there are other uses of drones which are surely very beneficial. It isn’t drones per se which prompt the ethical questions of this lecture; it is the use of drones as weapons platforms to kill specific people on the ground which is the main question.
There is also another related question. Has the American public been told enough of exactly how and under what conditions our drones are being utilized? I don’t think so. The whole clandestine effort is cloaked in secrecy. “Clandestine,” “cloaked,” and “secrecy” all imply the same thing, but with three-fold usage, it heightens the issue being addressed. Should a democracy be engaged in constant secret military operations? Does that speak well, either of our democracy or of our military? Furthermore, is the CIA an arm of the military or the civilian side of our government? Are the techno-jockeys in various Air Force bases working for the Air Force, or for the Defense Intelligence Agency? Or who else?
The Defense Department has just come up with a new medal. It is called the “Distinguished Warfare Medal.” It is for drone pilots who perform with extraordinary skill. None of them is about to get killed when doing his job, so they can’t get the Distinguished Flying Cross or the Congressional Medal of Honor, or any such award. But drone pilots or other computer experts who design defenses against cyber-attacks or who write code against our enemies can qualify for this new medal.
According to the Pew Center, which conducts polls on various political questions, 62% of Americans approve drone strikes. Further to clarify the matter by political party, 74% of Republicans approve, and 58% of Democrats.
Be that as it may, it is utterly unacceptable for the President of the United States, any President, to participate in the “Terror Tuesdays” in which, so it is reported, Barack Obama engages on a regular basis. And it is utterly unacceptable that he should insist on having the last word on every drone strike, if in fact he has demanded that prerogative. It absurdly diminishes the office of the presidency. But who knows; it is all veiled in the greatest secrecy, isn’t it? Covert warfare is the most worrisome warfare, and we the people are giving far too little thought to our newest worst means of firing covert weapons.
But here, as they say on television, is some breaking news. Ten days ago in The New York Times, Bill Keller wrote about a new development in drones, namely, autonomous drones. And what, you ask, might that be? Well, it’s a drone which makes its own decisions regarding targets. It doesn’t take orders from anybody; it just acts on its own initiative. New occasions teach new duties, don’t you know. It is bad enough to trust a human to tell a drone what to do, but it is ethically and politically inconceivable to allow the drone itself to choose what it should do. Bill Keller said that next month human rights and arms control groups will meet in London to promoter a ban on autonomous drones. I would hope so! We may be living in a brave new world, but surely it is not a completely foolhardy world.
Mr. Keller reported that some robotics experts doubt a computer in a drone could ever adequately distinguish between an enemy and an innocent, let alone judge how large an explosion should he utilized to terminate the supposed enemy with extreme prejudice. Further, he raised the issue of accountability, were autonomous drones to be employed. In the event of a mistake being made, who is responsible: the soldier in the field who directs the drone to attack a purported enemy? His commander? The manufacturer? The inventor? And I would add, the Commander-in-Chief? Where should the line be drawn, asked Mr. Keller.
In this peroration I have raised far more questions than I have provided definitive answers. Being thus on an interrogatory roll, let me ask a few more. Is the essential nature of warfare permanently altered if drone warfare depends more on technology than on human judgment to determine its outcome? Does drone warfare become so de-personalized that its consequences inevitably become diminished in the minds of those who must wage it? War has always been inhuman, but is drone warfare so completely de-humanized that it invariably dehumanizes all of us?
New technologies have created new kinds of warfare for centuries. When firearms came into use, it changed warfare dramatically. Ironclad ships and submarines were first used in the American Civil War. Airplanes, tanks and chemical weapons were first used in World War I. Land mines were first used widely in World War II. Nuclear bombs also were first used in that war. As such, nuclear weapons have been employed only by the USA, which should shock us, but probably does not.
Thus far, the US has made use of drones far more than any other nation. These airborne war machines have created new dilemmas for warfare such as have never before been faced in human history. There are no Geneva Convention regulations, at least not yet, to govern this kind of clandestine carnage, no rules adopted by international bodies of law or government. For the time being, whatever nations have drones shall apparently utilize them as they alone see fit. But “doing what they see fit” is what terrorists do anyway, and so far drones have been used only against terrorists. But what happens when someone sells drones to terrorists? And what will happen when the first nation selects targets in another nation, and the target is not terrorists but military or government installations? Shouldn’t there be international laws and agreements governing that before it occurs?
Sometimes it has been for the better and sometimes for the worse, but the fact is that most major military technological breakthroughs in the past century and a half have been developed in the United States of America. Reasoned morality requires that we must lead the effort to limit or to outlaw this new means of warfare before it gets totally out of control. That is a colossal irony, and an ethical effrontery. But if we don’t do it, who will?