Sure, attack drones are always fun to use in a game, but are they really that safe when it comes to actual warfare? Drones can have a huge impact in combat. They can make our defenses better, but sometimes they can provoke terrorist groups. Drones have made a huge impact on war since the use of drones has started, but that doesn’t mean they do the best job they are meant to. There has been a lot of talk about how the U. S. can get pass the U. N. laws that prohibit some of the attacks that they have been making.
Is it really helpful to kill a few amount of enemies to also be killing such a huge amount of innocent bystanders? With all of the drone attacks that have been going on in the world, there should be more thought out strategies on where and when these drone attacks need to be used. With all that is going on with this drone war, there are three things that can always be brought up in every situation: can doesn’t mean that we should, if we are we actually using these in the best way possible , and what the actual impact or result of the drone attacks are.
In the years to come with all of the deaths that have been adding up because of the unnecessary drone warfare, there will most likely be more laws that prohibit certain uses of these drones. Just because we have the ability of the drone attacks, doesn’t always mean that we should use them. Drone warfare is basically a loophole around international laws and policies. “Basic categories such as ‘battlefield,’ ‘combatant,’ and ‘hostilities’ no longer have a clear or stable meaning”(Stimson Center). We don’t have a clear meaning to combat since the drone warfare has started.
Although the American use of drones for targeted killing may be legal, the pervasive use of drones threatens the rule of law. President Obama stated at the National Defense University that “America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion. To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance. For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power–or risk abusing it”(Benjamin).
The majority of U. S. rone strikes have been made in secrecy and usually parts of the world that have minimal accessibility to journalist and human-rights. Even though drones can help there has been a lot of negative effects because of them. Some people wonder how are we actually using these drone attacks. The U. S. has made it very obvious that they are using drones as an attack strategy to take out the enemies they would not be able to take out with men. Even though drones are said to be precise, only 2 percent of those killed in these drone strikes have been high-level Taliban or al-Qaeda(Benjamin).
A young woman leader named Entisar Ali told Medea Benjamin that “Your government is terrifying 250,000 people in my province to get one or two individuals, who could easily be captured”(Entisar Ali). According to her, she believes that there are much easier ways to take out their targets without killing so many innocent people along the way.. Since 2004 the U. S. has hit Pakistan with more than 350 drone strikes. Since these drone strikes have started they have left a death toll of somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 people, including 200 children(Medea Benjamin).
By the U. S. oing these drone attacks and killing innocent people there has been a large increase of terrorists in al-Qaeda. Since the start of drone warfare, there has been a large increase of attacks from the U. S. and foreign countries which has increased the death toll of the innocent people that have been affected by these offensive and not well thought out strategies. The impact of all of the drone attacks that are being made by the U. S. raises the question if the U. S. really wants peace.
By doing these drone attacks on foreign grounds it disregards national sovereignties, laws of war, and the principles of U. S. and international law. As John Fabian Witt of the Yale Law School has recently written, “the categories of war and peace, which the modern world thought it had carefully separated, are collapsing into one another”(John Fabian Witt). War and peace are colliding with each other because of all of the drone attacks that are being used. By doing these unjust drone attacks, it is said that the United States have quite deliberately made itself an outlaw state. The U. S. doing these attacks shows a sign that they want war more than they want peace.
The drone attacks is just one of many other ways that the United States has used to take authority over some other small and undeveloped countries. If the U. S. keeps saying that drones can be peaceful then why are there so many bad cases of drone warfare? Drones can have a huge impact on warfare and have more negatives than positive. They can make our defenses better, but sometimes they can provoke terrorist groups and even kill innocent people that have nothing to do with the targets. This just makes the U. S. a bigger target with more and more people.
Drone warfare is just a loophole to get around international laws that protect certain areas. In the last decade, there has been a significant number of deaths that could have been avoided if drones were not used. Even though the United States says they want peace, they are really just making it much worse for themselves by making new enemies. There are many people in the world that don’t know that much about drone warfare, but if they really knew what drones did, they would not be happy. If everyone was to think of themselves in the shoes of the innocent families that are being killed, would they want to have them used on other countries?
