The Drone Goes On

There are those who think we've been re-inventing modern warfare since the September 11 attacks. Actually, modern warfare took a decisive turn, for better or worse, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Apparently, two atomic bombs were enough, luckily, to start some political re-thinking and soul searching about the direction of aggression in future military conflict. President Harry S. Truman rejected the use of a third nuclear weapon in the Korean conflict, and he summarily fired his military commanders who were in favor of that strategy.

Time was, we feared the Pentagon zealots, the military-industrial complex, for its rapid development as the world's preeminent nuclear-military power. Our power seemed to outrun our imagination, the technological cart was leading the horse, the war horse. We feared, and still do, the loose-canon at the Pentagon or the C.I.A. with his finger on the button, and Iraq showed us that we could still fool some of the people, some of the time. At least enough to get us into a war.

Fast-forward: 2012-2013. Now the loose-canons are in the Senate and the House. The very whackos we've elected, not appointed. Drone-strike warfare, robotic, life-sparing military applications have become the cause celebre for the right-wing, neo-con fringe. Go figure. A life-saving technology that makes surgical attacks on a very different enemy in a very different time on a very different battlefield. And please don't whine about Americans in the line-of-fire, collateral damage, or civilian deaths. That's why its called war. The idea is, and always has been, about killing others with the least number of dead and injured to our side.

But the fillibuster comes from the computer-game generation, the conservative, lets-nuke-em back-to-the-stone-age, Republican hawks. Politicians who, get this, are fearful of government abuse, of drones being used domestically for surveillance and quick-strike crime-stopper capability. Speeding on the Interstate? Watch out! A State Police drone might zap your car, shutting the engine down, paralyizing the family dog, maybe the kids too. Hey! Collateral damage. The paranoid fringe of Tea Party operatives in Washington can whip up enough frenzy among the anti-government survivalists, a group known to inhale government conspiracy the way Rachel Ray pours Extra Virgin olive oil, EVOO. Sen. John McCain is correct, it is wholesale fear-mongering by elected officials with no basis in truth. Our government, our president, cannot use drones domestically, over our own cities unless they, in Congress, approve. You may remember the courts approved the Bush administration's domestic surveillance, wire taps, after 9/11. The Congress did not object. Any debate was mute.

Fall back a bit: Ronald Reagan is president and the neo-con complex, the conservative think tanks, and cold war conspiracists are all swooning over Reagan's Star Wars program. It's a defensive space-borne system of anti-incoming-missile technology, a shield they call it, that will simply circle the earth, innocuously, with the other weather and communications satellites and will protect all of us in the USA. Of course, some believed it was protective, not proactive. Incoming aggression, only. But, how do we know? Of course we trusted our government and the man with his hand on the button. Extreme technology, in the 1980's, and the band wagon was full of enthusiasts on at least one side of the Congressional asile. Of course, it would be above, over our cities and all cities on the globe, over all countries on the planet and our country, over all people and our American citizens.

Ask the soldiers who sat in the turet guns of our WWII bombers. Ask the re-con up-front intel guys who must go out first so that others willl be safe(er). Ask the tank crew if they might not like a robotic tank coursing down blind alleys in deadly war zones to send back info, or to make first strikes in some instances. What is wrong with a more intelligent method for waging war? What is un-American about saving more military lives with the use of un-manned weapons? Our problem is a human one, not a technology. Politicians who embrace paranoia, instead of common sense.