Drones: Do I have a line in the sand?

[davidthegnome]

87. I wonder if it matters?

Does it even matter here and now... what side you or I take? If popular opinion is very much in agreement with your own, does it matter? Not if it doesn't in some way end up having something to do with the legal process - the claiming of such power, or the ultimate refusal to grant it. Who decides? Will it be put to a vote for the American public... a high percentage of which can hardly read? Or will it be decided by some of our greediest, most corrupt elected officials? Will it be determined instead by men and women crunching numbers?

There is this option that allows us to take boots off the ground. A remote control, so to speak, that enables us to kill enemies foreign - and inevitably at some future point, very much domestic. In time, robotics might very well do away with the majority of armed forces, military and police. This, I think, is something worth taking a moment to reflect upon. It is sad that we humans program these wonderful machines - that we use this great technology of ours, to come up with better ways to kill. We take something that is essentially innocent, a machine, and we tell it "Go here. Kill this person." They won't question the morality of it at all. Unlike human beings, they don't get caught up in messy moral issues.

What other things could instead be done with this drone technology? How much money in comparison is being spent in the development of medical technology that is related? Or entertainment, or something that in some way provides a benefit to humanity, rather than a danger to it.

Am I in favor of the President getting this kind of authority? No. I'm not in favor of anyone having that sort of authority - to kill pretty much anyone, anywhere, without being subject to oversight. People do it all the time, but it is easier to hold people accountable, and it is very human to question orders given and to some times refuse to obey them, particularly when it involves issues of questionable morality. Machines simply do what they're programmed to do.

All the same, I'd rather see a machine blown up than a fellow human being. I'd rather a machine do our fighting in Afghanistan or elsewhere than see boys I went to school with get blown to bits.

Eventually though, questions of morality - particularly during war - become second to accomplishing the task. We want an enemy combatant destroyed, so we send a drone. Perhaps we kill his family and his neighbors in the process. Perhaps we blow up a church or a village, killing dozens or hundreds. Yet if the target was an enemy combatant who had killed our own, some would consider that collateral damage a worthy price to pay. Unwilling sacrifices in the name of safety, of vengeance, or even of simple convenience.

I've always been a fan of video games, particularly those with swords and crossbows. In video games though, you don't have to see real blood, hear real screams, or watch real innocents suffer and die. It removes the human element. This is similar, in some way, to combat by drone.

War and combat are terrible, but I believe that they are at times necessary to put a stop to great evil. Yet I do not think that the real thing should ever become a video game. The idea of this... it enables so much destruction, so much killing, all without being present personally, all without having to lift a weapon. It doesn't require you to look into the eyes of the condemned, to hear them ask why, to hear them beg for their lives. It doesn't display the grief of weeping parents, friends or siblings.

As terrible as war is, without a human element to it it would be far more terrible.

Frankly, I think the drones should be configured into something not meant as a weapon. Or destroyed and sold for scrap metal. That won't happen though. Quite the opposite - in the future, we may not even need a human hand to kill humans. What happens when we develop this technology further and the things malfunction? When they go on rampages destroying random people? I've read a lot of sci-fi, it's true... but the truth is often stranger than fiction.