The new issue of Time magazine promises on its cover “Essential Info for the Year Ahead.” One apparently essential report: U.S. drones are awesome.
The report–written by Mark Thompson, available to subscribers only explains that a “hot military trend” this way:
Today’s generals and admirals want weapons that are smaller, remote-controlled and bristling with intelligence. In short, more drones that can tightly target terrorists, deliver larger payloads and are some of the best spies the U.S. has ever produced, even if they occasionally get captured in Iran or crash on landing at secret bases.
And also, you know, kill innocent civilians.
There’s no time to dwell on that, because there are too many good things to say about our remote-control war. “Drones had a big year in 2011,” Thompson writes, and 2012 will be even bigger. As Time readers learn, “Unlike humans, these weapons don’t need sleep.”
And best of all, apparently, the military aren’t the only ones doing the killing:
America’s arsenal has become so small and lethal, you don’t need the U.S. Army–or any military service at all, in fact–to field and wield them. The CIA, which used to be limited to derringers and exploding cigars, is now not very secretly flying drones. With little public acknowledgment and minimal congressional oversight, these clandestine warriors have killed some 2,000 people identified as terrorists lurking in shadows around the globe since 9/11.
The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism‘s investigation of the CIA drone program in Pakistan (8/10/11) stressed less of the gee-whiz and more the real-life consequences of the attacks. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 390 to 780– including almost 200 children. U.S. officials, for the record, were once making absurd claims that no innocents were killed.
As for the apparent enthusiasm for waging a war where “you don’t need the U.S. Army” at all–that is precisely one of the criticisms of the drone program; some legal experts argue that non-military personnel are not legal combatants, and therefore killing every one of those 2,000 “people identified as terrorists” was a war crime. Others point out that employing drones outside an active combat zone could also violate international law. But none of that is “Essential Info” for 2012.
There’s a certain twisted (What else?) logic to this.
You name “The Protester” Person of the Year …
Then gush about what increasingly will be used to provide “essential info” on them.
See how nicely it fits?
Just like an orange jumpsuit.
TIME has always been a propaganda mouthpiece for the shadowy powers operating in this world. Still shocking to read this though. Mr Thompson better hope that neither he nor any of his family are classed as “terrorists” under the NDAA, or he’ll be posting a very different story …
The tragedy of war has increased a thousand-fold with the use of drones. To disconnect, even further, the horror and visceral sadness of violent death imposed on “others” by using a video game format is cowardice personified. Training our young people to kill, now REAL, and not the digital poof-of-blood represented in video game carnage, remove all humanity, responsibility, morality and human purpose. I can think of nothing more horrific than being hunted down by a machine operated by a kid in another country who is listening to heavy metal, high on drugs and having fun just like he does after hours in his bedroom. War is obsolete and drone wars should be left to Hollywood special effects. These illegal empire-oil and-power based wars have got to stop forever. Who are these mindless and soulless politicians who are inventing our future for us? OCCUPY DC and clean out the entire city. We need more humans in the seat of power.
Time magazine was so much part of the military/industrial system that I cautioned my high school students to double check every fact proclaimed by Time. Pretty amazing results. Kids learned more about truth from the fabrications and suppositions from Time than than text books–for sure.
That was two decades past. Guess Time has not changed.
Jack Gilroy
Three decades plus high school History teacher.
Maine-Endwell HS, Endwell, New York
Time and Newsweek are both trash and contain nothing but lies written to manufacture consent from people who read at a grade five education level. Privatizing education should help to that end as well. The Readers Digest is also full of spin. It´s a sad commentary on what people have done with their freedoms, and why they are losing them.
I recomend the book Less Then Human, by David Livingstone Smith. It’s about the politics of dehuminizing the “other”. Time does a great job playing that role.
Like chemical weapons that can kill indiscriminately with no repercussions to the perpetrator (and have been outlawed), drone bombs are diabolical and should similarly be forbidden instead of being further developed as they are now. With knowledge of the routines of world leaders (as Wikileaks told of U.S. ambassadors being asked to give the State Department) a Pentagon plot to rule the world would not be impossible. Too much of our resources, especially human ingenuity, is being devoted to death instead of positive solutions to sustain life on this planet; where is the candidate who can give priority to human needs above profits for the few?
Dear TIME reporter Thompson:
Wow, I guess it is kind of exciting to see all that novel and new drone technology, but don’t forget, drones kill people in that collateral damage kind of way. PLEASE look at the other side of the probability equation. IMAGINE your new life:
HUMMINGBIRD drones: Wow, no matter where you go, watch out for birds! Then too, a la Harry Potter, one of those books had an insect size spy! Wow, a bed bug tracking your life. Then of course, there was Harry’s invisibility cloak, and OMG! people are creating that now!
Your future looks bleak…no more cheating on significant others, lying ( to anyone about anything) or going somewhere where you are NOT SUPPOSED to be. Some bird or insect will be watching, and oh yes, your competition will be right behind you wearing that invisibility cloak, so don’t screw up!
I think maybe you should drop the novelty ideas, and focus on what you, and all of us in the world will be losing: Freedom, privacy and the right to be left alone, and alive!
Thanks for that, Mr. Gilroy. It’s revolting to hear Mr. Thompson gushing like a schoolgirl about drones murdering people–he’s either remarkably stupid and insensitive and ignorant or he’s a psychopath.
Of course, Dick Cheney emerged from the secret meeting during which the concept of “indefinite detention” was expanded to include Americans on American soil – if they are determined to be “connected” to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or other “terrorist organizations”. What constitutes a “connection” is not spelled out, and what determines the “terrorist” label is not mentioned. The “battlefield” has now been widened to the entire planet, including the United States, and the MILITARY is also allowed to make such captures and detentions on American soil (anyone remember Posse Comitatus?) We have already seen American citizens hunted down and killed on foreign soil without incontrovertible evidence, trial in absentia, court determination, an arrest warrant, or even the courtesy of a warning. No more presumption of innocence. Just criticizing the US (presumably inspiring others to attack us), especially as a non-Christian, is enough to warrant the launching of a drone to smite our enemies like a wrathful God. Another step on the road to tyranny.
I guess the old days of exploding cigars & curare darts & shellfish toxin-laced lasagña (& the occasional bold sniper) are gone, now… replaced by aging post-juvenile delinquents who were trained on Tetris & Grand Theft Auto. This is Progress, to our new way of thinking.
The whole idea of the propriety of the murderous “retaliatory strike” ( at the level of an individual- or car full of people, one of whom may be the “target”) and the “group assassination” modality seems to have evolved from the actions of the IDF in their pursuit of Palestinian targets. The quaint American idea that “Someone is innocent until proven guilty” was simply eroded by the relatively steady (and fairly frequent) airstrikes on West Bank targets… with the occasional foray into Iraq & Syria & Lebanon… until it has become a ‘normative’ procedure, and considered ‘unremarkable’.
The U.S. used the same model to attack Iraq… ie the “pre-emptive strike”… and it has grown into the drone modality. The concept of our own “exceptionalism”- as U.S. citizens- is heightened, on the one hand (we are deserving of better treatment than those “foreigners”) and has begun to decay, on the other (NDAA, “Citizens United”). At some point, I suppose (if this model were extended) I can foresee that the “party in power” is like the IDF; and the rest of us are like the Palestinians. ^..^
Great comments all; the best I have ever seen. The idiots producing and using drones have forgotten a rule of the universe – ‘he who uses the sword will die by it.’ I firmly believe that a horrible fate awaits the people of the U.S. empire.
Drones are force multipliers. And without a formal draft, this fills the void. However an economic based draft, added to the wide open nature of enlistment now. (Gangs of all kinds and mental levels to the lowest they will accept) keep the lists full or nearly so. Even so drones either as RPVs or as autofunction robots are growing in number, variety an ability even now. First surveillance drones only will be officially used within the USA with secret armed ones engaged. Then eventually something will happen, an “emergency” will take place an armed ones will be used on US soil against suspected (no time for niceties like the Constitution to be used) people who end up dead and condemned as evil without subjective evidence to prove it in a court of law.
Just imagine a near future US military with over half of it made up of drones an autonomous devices in all the services and augment US forces anywhere in the world and in space “policing” where ever they take a notion to. A chilling thought. Believe it it is almost here.