The Pros And Cons Of Drone Strikes

The United States has adopted a controversial method for tracking causalities that significantly underestimates the number of civilian deaths. According to a report in the New York Times, The United States records all males over the age of 18 as militants unless clear and convincing evidence indicates otherwise. This guilt by association approach is deeply troubling because terrorists are often embedded in the local population and surrounded by innocent people. Killing them and assuming that they are guilty violates the principle of non-combatant immunity that lies at the heart of international humanitarian law. This mentality is essentially the same as the idea of ‘shoot first ask questions later.’ Furthermore, this classification system implies

Under the idea of the panopticon, all individuals must always act as if they are being watched. With domestic aerial surveillance, this concept could force people to be obedient if they think they are being observed from above. However, with regards to drone strikes this process is fundamentally different. Instead of knowing they are being watched, people affected by drone strikes will know that they are being, sentenced to die by a mysterious foreign power. It is important to realize that drones do not just affect those directly injured, but also spread fear and suspicion throughout society in unexpected ways. Similar to a bomb, drones fall from the sky without warning, which produce among the civilian population a wave of terror that has been described by mental health professionals as ‘anticipatory anxiety.’ There is evidence that this fear has inhibited normal economic and social activities, as parents are often reluctant to send their kids to school, because they fear they might be accidentally targeted. Furthermore, the targets of drone strikes are often pinpointed with paid informants, which foster distrust among society. For an innocent civilian, I imagine that a natural byproduct of this incredible fear and disruption to everyday life is a hatred of America. This risk of creating new terrorists who otherwise wouldn’t have been is very real and prominent. Drones are now the number one

The official U.S. counterterrorism strategy identifies a number a goals, one of which involves eliminating safe havens for terrorist actors. In order to accomplish this, building partnerships with governments like Pakistan and Yeman is essential. However, drones strikes subject local governments to incredible political pressure, and increase anti-American sentiment, which makes cooperation with the United States much harder to achieve. Furthermore, they can fuel insurgency groups and undermine the social fabric needed for a government to function. All of this serves as a powerful sign of countries subservience to the United States, undermining their