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drones

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    9/28/2021

    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?

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    9/29/2021

    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."

  • SOURCE: Special to HNN
    1-23-15

    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.

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    12-20-13

    “Bride and Boom!”

    by Tom Engelhardt

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

  • 11-4-13

    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.

  • 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:

  • SOURCE: Omaha World-Herald
    2-18-13

    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....

  • SOURCE: Salon
    2-11-13

    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.