the (remote controlled) war at home

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/remote-controlled-war-home-1326466035

Nearly a third of the air­craft used by the United States mil­i­tary don't carry pi­lots, ac­cord­ing to a new Con­gres­sional re­port. The air­craft are drones, and their pi­lots are often thou­sands of miles away, con­trol­ling them re­motely from bases in the United States.

One such base is the Han­cock Air Na­tional Guard Base, lo­cated near Syra­cuse, N.Y. Ed Ki­nane, who lives nearby, says that since strike drones are op­er­ated from the base, his home area of New York state is, from a moral per­spec­tive, “in the zone of war”—a re­al­ity he and other peace ac­tivists don't feel they can ig­nore.

On April 22, at the en­trance to the base, Ki­nane and 37 other ac­tivists wrapped them­selves in white cloth splat­tered with red, and staged a die-in. They were protest­ing the base’s role in op­er­at­ing drones over Afghanistan—the un­manned aer­ial ve­hi­cles are de­signed to tar­get ter­ror­ists and in­sur­gents, but they also take a heavy toll on the peace and safety of un­armed civil­ians. The pro­test­ers at­tempted to de­liver a cit­i­zen in­dict­ment for war crimes to the base, and were ar­rested on charges of dis­or­derly con­duct and dis­obey­ing a legal order.

The protest was a tac­ti­cal step-up in a se­ries of ac­tions local ac­tivists have taken since the drone op­er­a­tions began at Han­cock in 2009—demon­stra­tions, leaflet­ing, talks, op-eds and let­ters to the ed­i­tor—all aim­ing to raise aware­ness about the con­se­quences of drone op­er­a­tions.