The Drone Wars
There has been a shift in warfare that is currently revolutionizing the air force. This shift is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones. These drones used to be strictly for surveillance and collecting intelligence; however, today the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and CIA strap bombs and laser-guided missiles to these planes. These weapon-clad drones are operated by men and women sitting behind a computer screen, oftentimes in the United States. It sounds a lot like a video game, but the fatal outcomes are all too real.
The drone program started under the Bush administration but was drastically increased and expanded under the Obama administration. The program operates with a shroud of secrecy; they release little to no information about the death and destruction caused by these bombings, and there seem to be no checks or balances to keep the program from spiraling into complete corruption. The CIA and the JSOC create "kill lists" of suspected terrorists and destroy the members of this list at-will. No proof or reasoning is needed-- all that matters is that some classified individual or the President has decided that someone is a threat -- and then they kill him or her. People such as 16-year-old soccer enthusiast Tariq Aziz regularly make the kill list and are executed without question. Just a few days before his death, Aziz became friends with a reporter from The Guardian who described Aziz as a quiet young man. Aziz and his cousin were targeted by a U.S. drone missile and killed on their way to their aunt's wedding. No evidence or justification for their deaths can be found.
The largest concern in warfare should always be civilian deaths. And since the U.S. almost always paints itself as the moral king of the world, it makes sense that our government would go to great lengths to prevent civilian deaths, right?
If you ask President Obama, he would give you golden reviews of the drone campaign's success in reducing civilian deaths. In a recent interview hosted by Google, Obama said, "I want to make sure people understand drones actually have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they've been very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates." And reports from Washington confirm that a very minimal amount of civilian deaths have taken place during these strikes. However, if one looks at independent sources and sources from inside Pakistan, where most of the strikes take place, they will hear a drastically different story.
Read more: http://www.messiahsb.com/opinions/the-drone-wars-1.2781786
