Despite practicality, high-tech killings aren’t justifiable
When he wasn’t chugging ambrosia, cheating on his wife or squabbling with his brothers, Olympian Zeus spent a lot of his time throwing errant lightning bolts at the heretical and the impious. Now, thousands of years later, we have another seemingly god-like figure who administers justice from the above the clouds.
Only this time, the sky-flung missiles tend to find the most religious people on the planet.
Okay, this is a bit much: President Barack Obama’s use of drone strikes in tribal Pakistan and other countries doesn’t exactly fit here. Obama, for instance, isn’t nearly as famous for alcoholism, philandering and fraternal scuffling.
However, a more serious point remains: Just like Zeus, Obama, through modern technology, has the power to order murder from on high without consequence.
And, even though the government has some very precise targeting mechanisms, it isn’t enough to keep innocent people out of the conflict.
The most reliable data from the Pakistani government number at least 400 civilian deaths. Independent observers, too, put the number in a similar range.
It isn’t easy to identify with this kind of misery. The victims live in a different country, speak a different language and generally have lives that we would struggle to relate with.
The only thing that we have to ground these stories in reality is personal narrative, which ties us to a common humanity. And, as of now, the most visible case is that of Nabila Rehman.
Rehman, a Pakistani citizen, was 9 years old when she saw her grandmother murdered by a drone as she was working in her field. Rehman herself suffered a shrapnel wound to the hand. Along with her family, she traveled to the U.S. in order to share her story. For a few weeks, she was able to keep the attention of the media. And then — nothing.
I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I’d be absolutely fine with drone strikes if they always found their targets. In my book, we should oblige those who “love death more than we love life” by sending them to their desired end as fast as possible.
Nevertheless, the simple fact is that as long as drones roam the skies of the Middle East, innocent people will be murdered. And the murder of civilians can’t be written off as an unfortunate byproduct of an otherwise successful operation, no matter how you look at it.
It wasn’t justified at Hiroshima. It wasn’t justified at Dresden. And it isn’t justifiable here.
In Aristophanes’ “The Clouds,” Socrates lectures a farmer on Zeus and notes that both the just and unjust alike are struck by his lightning bolts. The farmer, convinced, loses faith in a god he once trusted.
How many innocent people will continue to die before we lose faith in Obama?