CodePink’s War on Drones

CodePink serves a useful function in American politics: if you want to know what the sensible political position is on any topic, just look at what CodePink opposes, and that’s what you should support. They operate as a sort of all-purpose Antipodal Political Indicator, invariably occupying the point exactly opposite the sweet spot on the political sphere.

It is therefore noteworthy that over the last couple of months CodePink has turned its rosy attentions to something unexpected: drones. Not the stingless little honeybee kind of drones, but the pilotless aircraft the military uses — and these can carry quite a nasty sting indeed.

Though it has received very little (if any) attention from the media, since November CodePink has waged an all-out anti-drone campaign, embarking on protest caravans to drone control centers, staging hunger strikes outside Creech Air Force Base in the Nevada desert from which many drones are remotely piloted, and hanging anti-drone banners off freeway overpasses in Berkeley and elsewhere.

And in one way CodePink’s assessment is correct: The U.S. military has indeed taken to using drones with ever greater frequency — and efficacy. Just today, two American drones attacked and killed 13 Islamic militants in Pakistan, possibly in retaliation for the suicide bomber who killed several CIA agents in Afghanistan last week.

Of course when I say the drones “attacked and killed” the militants, it wasn’t really the drones doing it autonomously; an Air Force pilot was undoubtedly controlling each drone, with our military command structure giving the go-ahead for each strike. The drones are just the weapon; it’s still people who are pulling the trigger.

And this recent attack is no fluke; exactly as CodePink fears, the military is amping up its development and use of drones. As reported at the Belmont Club and at Wired, the Air Force has recently completed development of and has possibly already started deploying a tiny drone that’s straight out of a futuristic novel:

The Air Force Research Laboratory set out in 2008 to build the ultimate assassination robot: a tiny, armed drone for U.S. special forces to employ in terminating “high-value targets.” The military won’t say exactly what happened to this Project Anubis, named after a jackal-headed god of the dead in Egyptian mythology. But military budget documents note that Air Force engineers were successful in “develop[ing] a Micro-Air Vehicle (MAV) with innovative seeker/tracking sensor algorithms that can engage maneuvering high-value targets.”

Special Forces already make extensive use of the Wasp drone made by AeroVironment. This is the smallest drone in service, weighing less than a pound. It has an endurance of around 45 minutes, and line-of-sight control extends to 3 miles.

It might seem limited compared to larger craft, but the Wasp excels at close-in reconnaissance. Its quiet electric motor means it can get near to targets without their ever being aware of its presence.

The Air Force’s 2008 budget plans described the planned Project Anubis as “a small UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that carries sensors, data links, and a munitions payload to engage time-sensitive fleeting targets in complex environments.” It noted that after it was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Anubis would be used by Air Force Special Operations Command. The total cost was to be just over half a million dollars.

No official announcements have been made since then, and the Air Force did not return a request to comment on this story (hardly surprising for a weapon so likely to be used covertly). But the current Air Force R&D budget does mention the effort, briefly. This newer document refers to Project Anubis as a development that has already been carried out. According to the budget, $1.75 million was spent to reach the goal.

The current state of Project Anubis is unknown. It could be one of tens of thousands of military research efforts that started, made some progress and ended without a conclusion. Or Anubis could now be in the hands of Air Force Special Operations Command.

Currently, most if not all drones are controlled by pilots safely ensconced in bases on the other side of the world, but one can easily visualize the day not far in the future when each soldier or Marine deployed in a hostile environment will have a MAV (micro-drone) kit included as part of his or her standard-issue equipment, for deployment in the field. Instead of lobbing mortars at random in the general direction of enemy positions, or firing blindly, soldiers could launch MAVs and control them in the field, targeting and taking out enemy positions with unerring accuracy — at no risk to our side.

So what, pray tell, is CodePink so upset about? The ever-smaller and ever-more-accurate new drones not only eliminate risk for U.S. forces, but they also prevent any accidental “collateral damage” on the battlefield — something which one would think would be good news to the anti-war crowd. In fact, that’s the whole reason these drones exist: so we can carefully target just the bad guys, and leave innocent bystanders unharmed. Isn’t that commendable?

No. CodePink is not satisfied. Their anti-drone manifesto declares,

We urge everyone who cares about protecting human life and the future of this planet to seriously consider how many hours a day you are willing and able to dedicate to this campaign to GROUND the DRONES.

We can NOT ignore these exponentially growing weaponry terrorizing people around the world from their bright blue skies.

We MUST end this violence against all life, this violence perpetuated by our military in our name. We must NOT tolerate this another moment.

All of our weapons of war are heinous and insufferable for any and all human beings. DRONES are not merely the newest horror:

DRONES are the most egregious component of recent war ‘toys’ and should incite public furor comparable to initial reactions against nuclear bombs.

DRONES are unmanned aircraft that are remotely controlled by US soldiers sitting at a computer console in Nevada or New York, operating a joy stick and pushing buttons that direct the DRONE to spy and kill thousands of miles away in someone else’s country.

Some DRONES are armed with bombs; some ‘only’ spy. Companies are racing to make DRONES that can drop biological and chemical weapons; utilize nuclear, lazar, microwave weapons.

Some fit into the palm of your hand; others are so big they fit into an airplane hanger on an angle. Some can be programmed to fly on their own; others are controlled by the soldier in this country while they are killing in another country.

It seems that the basis of CodePink’s antipathy toward drones as a concept is precisely the very fact that they are so efficient and accurate. Setting aside the laughable hyperbole about “biological, chemical, nuclear and lazar” weapons launched by drones, CodePink is pissed off because no U.S. troops are endangered by the operation of drones.

One might reasonably assume from this that CodePink — and the innumerable leftist groups who echo CodePink’s positions — wants U.S troops to die. But I take a more charitable view. I think CodePink and their ilk believe in the theory once expounded so convincingly on an old Star Trek episode: That if you make war bloodless and antiseptic, then the public will shrug its shoulders and allow wars to continue forever; but if you bring home the horror of war by purposely ensuring that it remains brutal, horrific and random, then mankind will rise up and banish war forever. A peacenik’s wet dream.

But the continued development of drones and other high-precision remote-controlled weaponry raises a conundrum that perhaps hasn’t occurred to the CodePinkers yet: If war evolves to become completely surgical, with essentially no casualties on our side and minimal civilian casualties in the battle zone; and if only the bad guys get killed and no one else; then what’s so horrific about this new kind of war at all? Why does it need to be banished along with our memories of trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat?

I propose to CodePink and their fellow travelers that drones and similar weapons are exactly the solution you’ve been looking for: a way to banish bloody warfare forever.

Imagine sitting in at an anti-war meeting during WWI or the Vietnam War, and someone says, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in the future, instead of having massive campaigns with tanks and guns and battleships and bombers and dead soldiers and massacred civilians and entire generations lost to violence, we could simply press a button that would kill only the warmongers automatically, thereby preventing even the need for a full-scale war in the first place?” The room would erupt in cheers.

Well, that’s exactly what drones do: Someone sitting safely at an Air Force base in Nevada presses a button and it launches a missile from a drone which takes out an Al Qaeda leader or a Taliban chieftain — the very warmongers who are causing the problem and the very ones who declared war on us.

Shouldn’t CodePink therefore be protesting in favor of drones? That would make more sense.

Then again, Antipodal Political Indicators that they are, CodePink naturally does the exact inverse of the sensible thing, even when by so doing they negate their own goals.

But I’ll take my cue from them, and from here on out become a pro-drone activist. It’s the least I can do for our soldiers, and for civilians around the globe.


This post also appears on Pajamas Media:

CodePink’s Head-Scratching War on Drones

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