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January 15, 2012 Tomgram: Nick Turse, Drone Disasters
After almost two months
in abeyance and the (possibly temporary) loss of
Shamsi Air Base
for its air war, the CIA is again cranking up its drone operations in
the Pakistani tribal borderlands. The first two attacks of 2012 were
launched within 48 hours of each other, reportedly killing 10 ___s, and
wounding at least four ___s. Yes, that’s right, the U.S. is killing
___s in Pakistan. These days, the dead there are regularly identified
in press accounts as
“militants” or “
suspected militants” and often, quoting never-named Pakistani or other
“intelligence sources,”
as “foreigners” or "non-Pakistanis." They just about never have names,
and the CIA’s robots never get close enough to their charred bodies to
do whatever would be the dehumanizing techno-equivalent of
urinating on them.
It all sounds so relatively clean. Last year, there were 75 such clean attacks, 303 since 2004, killing possibly thousands of ___s in those borderlands. In fact, the world of death and destruction always tends to look clean and “precise” -- if you keep your distance, if you remain in the heavens like the implacable gods of yore or thousands of miles from your targets like the “pilots” of these robotic planes and the policymakers who dispatch them. On the ground, things are of course far messier, nastier, more disturbingly human. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has estimated that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have, over the years, killed at least 168 children. In a roiled and roiling situation in that country, with the military and the civilian government at odds, with coup rumors in the air and borders still closed to U.S. Afghan War supplies (since an “incident” in which American air strikes killed up to 26 Pakistani troops), the deeply unpopular drone attacks only heighten tensions. Whomever they may kill -- including al-Qaeda figures -- they also intensify anger and make the situation worse in the name of making it better. They are, by their nature, blowback weapons and their image of high-tech, war-winning precision here in the U.S. undoubtedly has an instant blowback effect on those who loose them. The drones can’t help but offer them a dangerous and deceptive feeling of omnipotence, a feeling that -- legality be damned -- anything is possible. If, as Nick Turse has long been arguing in his reportage on our latest wonder weapons, drones are, in the end, counterproductive tools of war, this has yet to sink in here. After all, our military planners are now projecting an investment of at least $40 billion in the burgeoning drone industry over the next decade for more than 700 medium- and large-size drones (and who knows how much is to go into smaller versions of the same). Turse's work on drones in his TomDispatch series on the changing face of empire relies on seldom noted realities hidden away in U.S. Air Force documents. He has a way of bringing the robotic planes down to earth. They are, as he has written, wonder weapons with wings of clay. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Turse discusses why drone warfare is anything but failure-proof, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom The Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare |
