I normally reserve this space for state, regional and local issues. There’s more than enough pundit spew on bigger stuff. This week, though, the thing bothering me most isn’t local at all.
What I can’t get off my mind is the voice of an earnest Obama administration oft cial on the radio, talking about how responsible the administration is when it uses remote-controlled drones to assassinate people.
I should be relieved the government is talking about this at all. Drone strikes aren’t exactly secret. We’ve killed some very nasty folks, and I’m not a fellow who’s easily bothered by such things. I’m one of those unenlightened types who believe there are people dangerous enoughto deserve the ultimate sanction. I don’t have a problem in principle with the death penalty, war or anything in between. All I want are good reasons.
Drone killings bother me because the ability to kill just about anybody just about anywhere is real power. It’s the kind of power B-52s never gave anybody.
Sure, bombers can fl atten Baghdad, but there will be immediate consequences.
Overkill has limits on its value and eff ectiveness.
Killing one person with a precise strike? That’s diff erent. Burning Hamburg didn’t end World War II in Europe. Killing Hitler, then Himmler, then Goebbels and then Goring? That mighthave had more of an eff ect.
Knocking off top-level Nazis would have been a good thing - a very good thing. You could have made the same argument for killing Mao Zedong, especially in hindsight. No amount of American aid available in 1946 was going to save Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Drones might have.
So with some grotesque irony, I’m admitting here killing modern-day Mao might not bother me as much as saving a modernday Chiang, the kind of man who killed plenty of his own enemies in more old-fashioned ways. Would any tinhorn dictator we ever backed have fallen if we’d had drones? Would the Arab Spring have happened if those governments had gotten drones airborne?
What would have happened in Libya, Tunisia or Egypt?
What would be happening in Syria? One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fi ghter.
Many years ago, the laser sight for guns was invented.
One of the first groups to use them was guards in towers at prisons. When angry mobs gathered, they gathered knowing the guards in the towers had guns. Everybody was willingto take risks. When the laser sight was invented, though, guards noticed something.
Put a little red dot on somebody and he jumped back. The risk of getting shot wasn’t a shared risk anymore. It was personal. So all you had to do was sweep an area and watch the mob melt wherever that little red dot went.
Such is the power of being able to make anyone a target.
Back to the present: The earnest oft cial talked about all the policies and procedures they have in place to make sure this power is not abused. Then he talked about how the United States must set the example of how this technology should be used. Other countries are developing this power, he said. Both a transcript and a recording of the remarks areat wilsoncenter.org.
Two things.
First, no policy or procedure ever ensured good behavior. Neither the Ten Commandments nor the Gospel cured sin. The only thing that ever stopped the abuse of power was accountability. You look at lists of who got killed and whether each case was justified. Between the secrecy and the low value we seem to put on life for people who live outside of this country, and some of the people in it, I’m not confident at all that the needed scrutiny’s there.
After all, we didn’t even keep track of civilian deaths in Iraq.
Second, what are we going to do when China uses a drone to kill some hermit on a mountainside in Tibet? The answer to thatis obvious: nothing. Setting precedents and being responsible isn’t going to sway them. We’ll be lucky if we can follow our own goodexample for any length of time, assuming we still are.
I don’t have a solution. I’m just bothered.
As I’ve said already, I’mnot easily bothered.
DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.
Opinion, Pages 16 on 05/06/2012