Another One Down
Wars are no longer fought with swords and axes, catapults and boiling cauldrons of oil over parapets that the enemy attempts to scale. Nor are they as much fought in hand-to-hand combat, much less with howitzers raining down on army units. They are fought now with IEDs, with suicide bombers, with well-planned guerrilla raids not on a battlefield but in well secured and protected urban areas, surprising the victims, both civilian and military with the suddenness of their attacks.That kind of war remains a horror of close-enough combat, but a newer kind is emerging with costly, state-of-the-art technologies that carefully target the 'enemy' from a distance. Not the distance of a helicopter hovering above, contacting troops on the ground or artillery, to alert them where the action is taking place, although that too was not all that long ago considered state-of-the-art. There is still a face-to-face encounter potential there.
But the emerging deployment in greater numbers of armed, unmanned drones has made another kind of warfare of attrition possible, one where the enemy is as real as the figures appearing on a video screen in a game of violent combat. The technician who zeroes in on the target sees a target, not a living, breathing human, much the way a game-player sees a target and, concluding the game, blasting the target into shards of flesh, walks away from the console.
Except there is the fact that the operator of the computer console that connects electronically to a drone watches, on his video screen, for hours daily, the quotidian exercises of a day in the life of his target. The target does not necessarily spend his time among others labelled terrorists, but rather with his family, his wife and his children, all engaged in the everyday matters of everyday living arrangements.
So there does occur a conjunction of recognition: "I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer", explained one such drone operator. "I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy", he says, though, "I have a duty, and I execute the duty." And once he has 'executed the duty', triggered the drone to dispatch the target, his work is over for the day.
He has no need to emerge from the cockpit of a F-15 fighter plane, or trudge through a jungle back to barracks, or drive along a pitted highway, anxiously observing for signs of disturbance that might signal an ambush ahead, or possibly a few roadside bombs at the ready to disrupt his life. As a drone pilot and a sensor operator who manipulate the drone, all it takes is the timely decision, then an exit from the dark control room and the terminal.
Then it's a drive home, through suburban highways lined with suburban big-box retail establishments, and remaining alert to the need to ensure that there are no residual doubts left behind, because you've executed your duty. The man you've observed for hours, making mental notes about his habits and timing, and the absence of interference with plans because the wife and children have gone to the market - has been dispatched.
The U.S. Air Force has over 1,300 drone pilots, and has a requirement for hundreds more to be stationed at the thirteen bases across the United States currently in operation to fly the unmanned aircraft now used mostly in Afghanistan. The CIA has its own drones which strike targets in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The Pentagon projects the Air Force will have a requirement for over 2,000 combat drone pilots for 24-hr-a-day operation worldwide by 2015.
Another one down.
Labels: Afghanistan, Political Realities, Traditions, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 06, 2012
<< Home