Warheads on Foreheads

During my brief stint in the Air Force ROTC I experienced many things that I wouldn’t have experienced had I not joined the program. For example, peak physical fitness, a powerful sense of brotherhood (whether this was due to Stockholm Syndrome or not is beside the point…for now), and feelings of accomplishment gained from poorly executed salutes given by civilians are all unique experiences gained from ROTC. Granted, there were trials and tribulations particular to ROTC as well, but, overall, ROTC kept me out of more trouble than it got me into

Yet, when I look back on those times, which I often do, one aspect of my foray into military life troubles me. I’m referring here to the nonchalance towards, and sometimes glorification of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, or, more simply, drones.

There was a Captain in my ROTC division, Captain Stout, who was particularly proud of military technology. Every Wednesday, we would have what is called “Leadership Lab” where various powerpoints were presented on various subjects by various cadets. Afterwards, one of the Cadre (active duty directors) would come up and give a brief pep-talk and send us on our way. Captain Stout gave interesting pep-talks. On more than one occasion, he played us YouTube videos of F-16s and Apache helicopters unloading their arsenals on American deserts and Middle Eastern mountains while AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” roared in the background. Another speech consisted of him expressing his amazement at the technology behind drones: “We have pilots now-days that just sit in front of computer screens all day moving joysticks. They’re controlling jets halfway across the world! Isn’t that amazing?! They can blow up an enemy’s military base just like a normal pilot, but they don’t have to piss themselves like a normal pilot because there’s a bathroom right down the hall! And what’s more, they get to go home to their family when the day is over. They can have a nice meal, watch TV and play with their kids. It’s the dream job. And those soldiers do ten times as much damage as a foot soldier can do.” Whenever Captain Stout would give his speeches, he would close with the same catchphrase. “Warheads on Foreheads!” he would yell. “Warheads on Foreheads!” we would yell back. It was a more expressive ‘Hoorah’, if you will; a celebration of the progressive technology and mighty strength of the United States Air Force.

Every semester there was a ceremony for the graduating cadets where their future positions in the Air Force were announced. After the last job title was announced, the whole graduating class would be attacked with water guns and then everyone has cake. RPA Pilot slots were especially competitive and earned special congratulations from the crowd. I remember one cadet who was awarded such a coveted position. She was an Asian-American and not a millimeter over 5’2″. She was a member of a sweet Christian sorority and attended church every Sunday. She had plump cheeks and a contagious laugh. We all clapped when she added pilot of a one-eyed war machine equipped with missiles and GPS targeting to her list of traits.

While in that culture, I never thought twice about the morality of drone strikes. I never doubted the reliability of drones to hit their specified target. In fact, to my eternal dismay, I laughed when Captain Stout belted out his favorite catchphrase. I was proud of our nation’s position as the most dominant military

power in the world. I remember discussing the subject with a friend on a drunken Saturday night downtown; “No one can fuck with us!” I exalted.

As fate would have it, I left the Air Force ROTC after my second semester in the program. Six months later I found myself at a different university discussing drones in an English class. We were on the subject of drones because there was news that the Los Angeles PD was reportedly using them in their hunt for Christopher Dorner, the ex-LAPD officer turned cop killer. The discussion began with Sophocles’ Antigone; we had been working our way through the three Theban plays. A comparison was made by our intellectual professor between Polynices and Dorner. Both men fight against a system that betrayed them and are subsequently labeled as traitors, leaving the nation to decided how they will be remembered. Do they receive a proper burial? Was their fight just? It was a brilliant discussion that eventually, through the aforementioned tangent, led us to the subject of drones.

There was no consensus as to whether it was deemed acceptable for the LAPD to use drones to hunt down someone who had yet to be convicted. However, the subject instilled a pondering fear into the classroom. Should a mere municipality such as Los Angeles be able to use drones for reconnaissance? If so, what does that free the national government to do? (As we’ve seen from the Snowden N.S.A. leaks, they’re free to do quite a bit.)

This fear then instilled in me another query. If drones sometimes being used for non-lethal surveillance missions scares us, what must it be like for the people in areas such as the Mexican-American border and the Middle East where drones are an ever present reality? Communities in said areas have grown so accustomed to these armed pestilent creatures they have nicknames for them, like “el mosco” (mosquito) in Mexico and the more potent “bangana” (wasp) in Pashto-speaking areas. While these names could be seen as belittling, I think it would be naive to dismiss the psychological effects of perpetual drone surveillance on a community.

The issue becomes infinitely more troublesome when innocent civilians are the victims of drone strikes on supposed terrorist encampments. However, due to the way victims are categorized, it’s hard to know when an international civilian has been killed by an American drone. In a New York Times article dated almost a year ago, Jo Becker and Scott Shane had this to say about the collateral damage of drone strikes:

“Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

“Counter-terrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.”

Not only is the U.S. drone program trespassing over international borders as if it were a free-willed hippie traipsing through a field of flowers, it’s haphazard in the execution of its’ missions. It’s this behavior that led to the death of the American Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, and what should have led to a Trayvon Martin-esque public outrage.

One last qualm I have with drones is that they are leading to the dehumanization of war. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. Instead of using humans to fight our battles, we now have robots. But it’s this same attitude that could propel us into skirmishes, battles, or all-out wars with much less reservation. If we have nothing to lose but a really expensive toy, why not make the effort to help out a struggling ally? Why wouldn’t we overthrow an unwanted dictatorship? What’s the worse that could happen? Some taxpayers get upset that we’re wasting their money? So what?

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist from MIT, gave a Ted Talk in 2009 that dealt with the predictability of irrational behavior. One of the examples he used to demonstrate our collective irrationality was cheating. After explaining the experiments he performed on students, Ariely summarized the results:

“So, what have we learned from this about cheating? We’ve learned that a lot of people can cheat. They cheat just by a little bit. When we remind people about their morality, they cheat less. When we get [a] bigger distance from cheating, from the object of money, for example, people cheat more. And when we see cheating around us, particularly if it’s a part of our in-group, cheating goes up.“

Ariely applies his results to the stock market in an attempt to explain one reason for its crash in 2008. I would like to apply the same concept to the relationship between drones and warfare. When we get a bigger distance from death, that is, the more technology we have between a soldier and the battlefield, the more we will war. And the more we war, the more others in our in-group, democratic countries, for example, will war. Perhaps it’s time to remind our military of it’s morality.

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One article on the subject of drones I found particularly enlightening can be found here.