drones

Droning On: America's Assassins-in-Chief

by Tom Engelhardt

Since the Bush administration, every President has used drone technology to be the nation's assassin-in-chief. In a nation increasingly tolerant of mass COVID death at home, does this even have the power to shock?

Autonomous Robot Weapons Could be More Destabilizing than Nukes

by James Dawes

"Imagine a world in which militaries, insurgent groups and international and domestic terrorists can deploy theoretically unlimited lethal force at theoretically zero risk at times and places of their choosing, with no resulting legal accountability."

How the President Became a Drone Operator

by Allegra Harpootlian

From Obama to Trump, the Escalation of Drone Warfare

Our drones kill hundreds of wedding party civilians and no one notices?

by Tom Engelhardt

This is outrageous says TomDispatch historian Tom Engelhardt.

Herman Melville’s Take on Technology Echoes in Today’s Conversation About Drones

by David A. Mindell

It takes courage and skill to fly a drone.

5 Things You Should Know about the CIA’s Covert Drone Assassination Campaign

by Brian Glyn Williams

Compared with standard bombing, the current drone campaign is far more precise than any previous bombing campaign in history.

What You Don’t Hear in the Media: A Defense of Drones

by Brian Glyn Williams

An interview with the man who ran the first covert drone program, Lt. General David Deptula USAF (Ret)

Drones and the new ethics of war

by Neve Gordon

Because drones transform warfare into a ghostly teleguided act orchestrated from a base in Nevada or Missouri, whereby soldiers no longer risk their lives, the critical attitude of citizenry towards war is also profoundly transformed.

Sure Drones Seem Like a Good Military Option Now, but If We Use Them, so Will Others

by Thomas I. Faith

That’s the lesson of chemical warfare.

Iconic Cold War Spyplane May Get A Drone Makeover

Based at times in Area 51, the U-2 spyplane tested the very limits of human endurance and Cold War technology when it first flew in 1955.

America's Love Affair With "Technowar"

by Steven Casey

American presidents have always relied on high technology to reduce U.S. casualties ... and increase enemy body counts.

“Bride and Boom!”

by Tom Engelhardt

We’re number one... in obliterating wedding parties.

The Age of the Drone

by Lloyd C. Gardner

President Obama has made it clear: even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there will still be drone strikes.

A History of the World’s First Drone War

by Brian Glyn Williams

Towards an effort to historicize a new kind of war.

Trayvon Martin and Edward Snowden

by Vicente L. Rafael

Could we say that within the particular imperial and racial nexus we find ourselves in, that Snowden, despite his obvious differences from Trayvon, might also share his fate?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Obama's Terrorism Speech

by Juan Cole

Originally posted on Informed Comment.Here are the good, the bad and the ugly things in President Obama’s important speech on counter-terrorism Thursday, and in the off-stage steps he has announced that mysteriously did not appear in the speech:The Good:

No, Sen. Graham, Domestic Drones are NOT a Good Idea

by Daniel Martin Varisco

When exactly did a terrorist act, not an attack from another country or an armed insurrection from within, define what a “battlefield” is?

The Ever-Destructive Dreams of Air Power Enthusiasts

by William J. Astore

RAF bombers over Hamburg in 1943.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com

Jonathan Zimmerman: A History Lesson on Assassinations

I taught a course last month in the United Arab Emirates, which isn’t a democracy. But according to an Emirati guy I met there, the United States isn’t much of a democracy, either.“Anyone you don’t like, you just assassinate him with a drone,” he told me. “Shoot first, ask questions later.”But now lots of people are asking questions about U.S. drone strikes, especially after the recent confirmation hearings for John O. Brennan. Nominated by President Barack Obama to direct the Central Intelligence Agency, Brennan defended the CIA’s targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere as essential to national security....

Alex Seitz-Wald: Would Lincoln Use Drones?

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter.With the nation deep in the throes of Hollywood-induced Lincoln-philia, Washington Examiner editor Mark Tapscott asked Friday what the revered president might do about one of the thorniest political questions of 2013: “Would Lincoln have droned Robert E. Lee?” His answer — an imagined conversation between Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that has the 16th president remarking “OMG” and “sheesh” — is dumb, but the question and answer are more interesting that Tapscott gives them credit.Lincoln is rightly held up as the paragon of the American presidency, so it makes sense that people would ask how he would handle a tough moral question like the use of unmanned killer drones, which has compelling arguments both for and against. WWLD? We consulted experts and the historical record to find out. The answer may surprise you.