One wonders if drone pilot Col. D. Scott Brenton listens to Louis Armstrong in the suburban Air National Guard Base in Syracuse from which he murders people 7,000 miles away.
“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Brenton tells the New York Times. Drone operators see their intended targets “wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” explains Dave, another high-tech murderer who killed from an office cockpit at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base and who now trains new recruits to the cyber-killer corps at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base.
When instructed to kill someone he has stalked from the air for a prolonged period, “I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,” Brenton insists. I have a duty, and I execute my duty.” When the deed is done, he points out, nobody “in my immediate environment is aware of anything that has occurred.”
“There was a good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over,” insists another drone operator named Will, who — like Dave — served a deskbound “combat” tour at Creech and now trains others to do likewise at Holloman Air Base.
Like the soldier Bates in Henry V, it’s sufficient for Will — and others of his ilk — to render obedience to their Leader, confident that “if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.” The more concise and notorious formula, of course, is: We are only obeying orders. Besides, drone operators (who insist on being called “combat pilots”) are carrying out an indispensable function by picking off Afghan “militants” — or at least those “suspected” of such tendencies — who unreasonably resent the presence of foreign military personnel in their country.
The New York Times profile is part of a campaign by the state-aligned media to “humanize” the state functionaries who murder by remote control — and to normalize this mode of mass murder as drones become part of the domestic apparatus of surveillance, regimentation, and repression. Readers are invited to share the anguish of these conflicted people, who for reasons of duty have to do terrible but necessary things.
In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt offered a glimpse into the mindset of SS personnel who were given a somewhat similar assignment. To carry out their killing errand, she explained, something had to be done "to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering."
"The trick used by Himmler ... was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self," Arendt recounted. "So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!"
Not everybody attached to the Regime’s Cyber-Killing Corps is haunted by the horrors he has inflicted on defenseless people halfway around the world. In a 2009 U.S. Naval Academy lecture, Dr. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution made reference to what he called "predator porn" — footage of drone attacks proudly circulated by the people who committed those acts. In a typical offering, Dr. Singer relates, "A Hellfire missile drops, goes in, and hits the target, followed by an explosion and bodies tossed into the air." Singer described one clip of that kind, sent to him by a joystick-wielding assassin, that "was set to music, the pop song 'I Just Want to Fly' by the band Sugar Ray.”
"It's like a videogame," one deskbound drone jockey told Singer. "It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it's f****g cool."
Singer describes asking a drone pilot "what it was like to fight insurgents in Iraq while based in Nevada. He said, 'You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car and you drive home. And within 20 minutes, you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework." Meanwhile, somewhere in Iraq (or Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, or another country yet to be identified), other families are desperately looking through the rubble of their own homes in search of survivors.
Although drone strikes occur daily, most Americans pay little heed to them — beyond occasionally taking inconsolable offense when a dissident publicly describes them as acts of murder, and insults the Dear Leader by daring to compare him to less prolific killers.
This may change soon: As the Times points out, the Pentagon — driven by “a near insatiable demand for drones” — is training hundreds of operators to join the corps of more than 1,300 currently stationed at more than a dozen bases across the country. Surveillance drones operated by domestic police agencies are already plying the skies above us. Those robot aircraft can be upgraded to airborne weapons platforms, and they soon will. The people being trained to feel “no emotional attachment” to foreigners designated enemies of the state will feel no particular burden when ordered to kill fellow Americans on that list. I’m sure that the “combat pilots” who murdered U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman would testify to that fact — that is, if the “heroes” who committed those acts were man enough to acknowledge their deeds in public.
A kid in China just killed 9 with a knife - do you plan on banning them too?
As to your "cannon" meme, it just shows how ignorant you are. Many DID own them as anyone COULD, and mortars as well. They could also own what amounted to battleships - ships designed and built to do nothing but carry a hundred or so cannon and fire them at other ships to give them the choice of sinking or surrendering.
In times of conflict, CONgress could and did issue letters of marque and reprisal which allowed such owners to go after any ships flying the enemy's flag and keep the proceeds for their own profit.
Then there's the subject of the Constitution. It is ultimately the supreme law of the land, and as long as it's ignored we are in a situation where there simply is NO RULE OF LAW!
If you don't like what it says, then AMEND IT - the process is clear-cut and has been done more than 20 times now! Ignoring it however is quite simply *NOT* an option!
Lastly, I'll be blunt: how many of us are you willing to kill to get to your "gun-free utopia"?
A hundred?
A thousand?
A million?
Three million?
Ten million?
The fact is that there are a LARGE number of us out here with the historical literacy to understand that tyranny is a natural product of power - and that a disarmed citizenry is unable to keep the tyrants in check.
We'd rather die than forfeit our birthright of citizenship and our G*d-given rights to self-defense.
To be even more blunt, those willing to die for a principle are also generally willing to help others do so as well - and most I know would be more than capable of seeing that they take a few of their enemies with them.
Even if only three percent of Americans were to refuse to submit, that's ten million people you'll have to kill to implement your "utopia." Even if it's only three percent of gun-owners that's still something close to four million - and most of them aren't going to die alone!
Somehow a hot civil war and at least 8-10 million dead doesn't sound very good to me - but then I'm one of Dear Reader's "bitter clingers" you lot love to hate so much so...
One final question: After you've finished your civil war and buried millions of dead that result, how are you going to stop the average "handy" man or woman from building more guns?
Even the most basic internet search would show you film of Urdu tribesman in Pakistan working in CAVES, with hand-tools, making firearms out of scrap-metal that are pretty much indistinguishable from "the real thing."
Even the most basic combination of some bits of pipe, a 2x4, a nail and a rubber-band can easily yield a rudimentary shotgun that's more than adequate for the task, and full-auto submachine guns are only a bit more complex but still within the power of most real men using only basic hand-tools and parts available at any well-stocked hardware store.
Search for "expedient homemade firearms" for some eye-opening education!
The simple reality is that the occasional nutjob is the price we pay for LIBERTY. A truly FREE society is *NOT* a truly SAFE one - but then old Ben Franklin warned us centuries ago that "those who trade their essential liberty for a little illusion of safety deserve and will have neither."
If that's what you want, we won't stand in your way - but don't try to take our Liberty from us!
If you don't want a gun, don't buy one -- but you'd damn well better leave MINE alone!
August 3, 2012 1:30:00 PM EDT