Drones over the Olympics: A more ‘moral’ means of warfare? via STWC, Britain.
Along with 16,000 British Army troops, surface-to-air missiles on the roof-tops of people’s homes, and gunboats in the River Thames, pilotless drone planes are being deployed to "protect" the London Olympics. (See London militarised lockdown: what happened to the Olympic ideal of promoting peace? by Seumas Milne: http://bit.ly/N0MIPe)
Drones are now the favoured weapon for the United States, which has 7,000 and is now ordering more of them than conventional fighter planes. The trend is being followed across the globe as almost every country aims to shift the balance in their military arsenal to killing machines that remove all risk from those who are doing the killing.
And now we have the case being made by both generals and media commentators that drones are a more "moral" means of killing, because, in the words of the New York Times, "drones kill fewer civilians than other modes of warfare." (See The morality of pushing buttons that incinerate people we do not know half a world away: http://bit.ly/OgzQmK)
Barack Obama claims that the drone strikes are so accurate that civilian casualties are minimal. How then to explain the dozens of families in Pakistan who are taking the United States to court for the killing of their relatives by drone attacks? (See http://bit.ly/NDSh4d)
Drones over the Olympics: A more ‘moral’ means of warfare? via STWC, Britain.
Along with 16,000 British Army troops, surface-to-air missiles on the roof-tops of people’s homes, and gunboats in the River Thames, pilotless drone planes are being deployed to "protect" the London Olympics. (See London militarised lockdown: what happened to the Olympic ideal of promoting peace? by Seumas Milne: http://bit.ly/N0MIPe)
Drones are now the favoured weapon for the United States, which has 7,000 and is now ordering more of them than conventional fighter planes. The trend is being followed across the globe as almost every country aims to shift the balance in their military arsenal to killing machines that remove all risk from those who are doing the killing.
And now we have the case being made by both generals and media commentators that drones are a more "moral" means of killing, because, in the words of the New York Times, "drones kill fewer civilians than other modes of warfare." (See The morality of pushing buttons that incinerate people we do not know half a world away: http://bit.ly/OgzQmK)
Barack Obama claims that the drone strikes are so accurate that civilian casualties are minimal. How then to explain the dozens of families in Pakistan who are taking the United States to court for the killing of their relatives by drone attacks? (See http://bit.ly/NDSh4d)
Drone warfare has now become a key issue for the anti-war movement. For the most authoritative source of information about the use of drones and the true level of civilian casualty figures, see the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: http://bit.ly/QjQBA7
