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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Game of Drones

The drone thing is not an easy call -- for one thing, their deployment has doubtlessly saved the lives of innumerable US service personnel who might otherwise be sent into imminently hazardous areas. (Which, yes, is where many of them are, and which is in fact their job, but we do want to minimize the hazards they face, right?) And Anwar al-Awlaki was a bastard on wheels, a traitorous little shit who incited a stateside massacre at Fort Hood, and was damned proud of it. In principle, I have little problem with turning such a person into a gooey splotch.

On the other hand, we do still believe in the concept of due process, don't we? We do try to minimize the "collateral damage" -- although, looking back at any US engagement of the past fifty years, from Iraq to Vietnam and Panama in between, human troops are just as likely to kill innocents as a drone, so that may be a wash anyway.

The most salient factor, though, and one that the current administration and especially its supporters would do well to keep in mind, is the precedent extrajudicial killings grant to future administrations. Given the propensity of large swathes of 'murkins to be bamboozled not just by plutocrat goons but the barmier ideologues who routinely ankle-bite them (and everyone else) in the name of gawwwd, they might want to think twice about granting these sorts of Robert Ludlum powers to the next Ricky Santorum.

Then again, the truly nuttier ones don't ask for legal justification in the first place. What this latest non-debate about one of our supposedly more treasured myths about ourselves shows is that the operating principle of the powerful is and always has been that it's better to (pretend to) beg forgiveness than to (pretend to) ask for permission.

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