Not long ago, I ended up in a debate defending our US military drone programs. The individual I was debating with was dead-set against them, claiming they were not fair and contributed to terrible atrocities, friendly fire, and collateral damage. I disagree, and yet, he wouldn’t hear of my debating points, and just kept repeating the talking points from the other point of view. Let’s talk and let me explain why UAVs in the US Military are a great idea.
First, our UAVs with a human in the loop provide both tactical advantage and alleviate unnecessary collateral damage – far better than indiscriminate bombs, or terrorist attempts to kill innocent people, for instance, the Spain Train Bombings, Embassy Bombings, Ferry attacks, night club attacks, Taj attack, NYC Twin Towers. If we take the human out of the loop then we have complete autonomous robotic killing to which no one currently can stomach.
My debating acquaintance then pointed to military drones a UAV pilot who had misgivings and claimed PTSD after firing upon his targets. Still, I say, having a drone pilot in the loop is the right thing to do. A drone pilot who can’t handle that or won’t do his job shouldn’t be there, and if they don’t believe in the cause to fight terrorists they shouldn’t join. Further, the enemy purposely uses human shields, so that blood is on their hands not ours and no drone pilot should be so ignorant not to see that – because they are up close and personal with the high-tech video feeds.
Our so-called “psychological” problems of soldiers is way over played, it’s become a trick to get disability, costly to Veteran Hospitals, and used by the anti-war leftists and enhanced by socialist and communist propaganda media – this particular individual has sided with the enemy in taking this public, I am sure he can write a book too someday, but I am not buying it nor am I going to entertain attacks on my character as some sort of warmonger, I am not.
You see, I am a realist. And there are those who really hate America and are willing to die in jihad to attack us or our interests, fine, remove them from said planet in the most efficient way possible in the quickest time frame – thus, we use drones, and I use my mind to consider better ways to improve upon them. Tell the jihadists to keep looking skyward as we turn the tables and terrorize them for a while, like scared little field rats. That airman needs to deal with it, he should do his job, or ask for re-assignment, we have a volunteer military. Please consider all this and think on it.