Headlines abound with the humanitarian crisis in Syria, with our very own president at the forefront of denouncing the apparent human rights violations in the region.
There are no headlines for the minimum of 400 civilians, including about 200 children, killed in Pakistan alone by drones.
President Barack Obama is quick to decry others when they do wrong, but when it comes to him, there’s no wrongdoing under the guise of “national security.”
We’ve killed U.S. citizens. We’ve killed children. But how many, exactly? It’s impossible to tell.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has done an excellent job of reporting on the drone war, doesn’t even know. There is little transparency surrounding the murder of civilians.
In a democracy, transparency is critical for the electorate to make educated decisions when electing its leaders. But the Obama administration does everything not to be clear, including classifying any military-age male in a strike zone as an enemy combatant. That takes a lot of civilian casualties off the books.
There are arguments for the drone war, sure. The one I’ve heard most is that it’s safer. Safer for whom?
The U.S. conducts signature drone strikes in Pakistan, which means that if someone is suspected of being an enemy, he can be killed strictly based on his behavior. President Obama doesn’t have to know his name. But if he’s of military age, no worries — it’s written off as another militant killed, even if he was innocent.
Missiles are hardly precision weapons, and the strikes often kill civilians. Not only that, but the drone strikes — run by the CIA — use double-tap strikes. A second missile is fired moments after the first, intended to kill first responders to the carnage — an act labeled as a “possible war crime” by two U.N. investigators.
While drone operators may be physically safe from the dangers of combat, they are not mentally safe.
Researchers with the Department of Defense found that drone pilots have the same rates of mental illnesses — such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression — as pilots of manned aircrafts.
It makes sense: Drone pilots have a uniquely taxing job. They have to stare at the same piece of ground for hours at a time, looking at destruction they’ve caused. At the end of their shift, they go home and eat dinner with their families. Instead of being in the standard soldier environment — where one is deployed to fight and come back to civilian life — they live life at war.
The millions of dollars spent on predator drones and tens of thousands spent on the Hellfire missiles they fire beg the question — what good could that money be used for back home rather than the killing of innocent people?
The drone war illustrates another reason militants abroad can convert more people to radical ideology. I would, for example, want to retaliate against whoever killed my brother with a remote controlled plane I could neither see nor hear.
The solution is simple: Limit drone use as much as possible, and, when it’s necessary, be completely transparent about it.
Transparency would ensure no questions of who was killed or why. There would be clear reasons for taking out targets rather than relying on signature strikes, allowing for less civilian casualties. If the U.S. is forthcoming about their motivations when ordering strikes, extremism would decrease — populations would know a foreign government wasn’t firing indiscriminately at them.
Justin Jones is a UF journalism senior. His columns run on Thursdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 9/26/2013 under the headline "Obama: Stop using violent drone strikes"
