An article I saw online from Spiegel magazine in Germany, Are Drones Creating a New Arms Race? that really sacred me. The author states “They are difficult to detect, deadly and cheap to build. Despite the dubious legality of assassinating suspected terrorists and Taliban without a trial, the market for drones is heating up around the world. With Israel and China moving into the market, are we about to see a new arms race?
When the existence of ”Killer Drones” first came to my attention with the heavy use of them by President Obama I felt some great doom and gloom, like the explosion of the first Atomic bomb, had just changed the rules of war and escalated into a new level of killing. We have move from individuals killing each other to mass killings to killing by remote control. The depersonalization of killing is scary.
I remember seeing the movie Braveheart with my wife some years ago. She thought the scenes of man to man killing were violent and gross. I thought it was a good anti-war movie. Killing by sword or by drone is still killing. Making killing easy and out of mind and sight is not a good thing.
Last summer in our Drone and Clown marches our message was simple “Drones cost money and lives.” Some people did not like us showing pictures of innocent children killed by drones. If you kill quietly I guess it is okay. By Breaking the Silence about “killer drones” we were disturbing people.
However, the people who lost family and friends to drone warfare are more deeply disturbed. A new arms race, led by the US, is frightening, not in the fun way like Halloween or a scary movie, but in the way where are brothers and sisters human beings lose lives to unmanned “Killer Drones”. Drones are messengers of death.
On this sad note I am taking some time out from posting till next Friday, Nov. 4th, when we march on Marquette University that hosts the teaching of war and senseless killing.
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