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ABSTRACT
Lethal drones or unmanned combat aerial vehicles have been used to kill thousands of persons suspected of complicity in terrorism. Despite concerns aired by legal scholars that drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities violate international law, the US government contends that targeted killing is distinct from assassination, and has persisted in the practice to the point where it has become normalised as a standard operating procedure and taken up by other nations as well. Drone strikes have been championed by Western politicians as a “light footprint” approach to war, but the institutional apparatus of remote-control killing rests on totalitarian, not democratic principles. Secretive targeting criteria and procedures are withheld from citizens under a pretext of national security, resulting in a conflation of executive with judicial authority and an inversion of the burden of proof, undermining the very framework of universal human rights said to be championed by modern Western states. Moreover, lethal drones hovering above in the sky threaten all persons on the ground with the arbitrary termination of their lives and as such represent a form of terrorism no less than the suicide bombings of jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See Moreh (Citation2012) for insightful interviews with retired administrators and officers who worked in Israel’s targeted killing drone programme during its formative years.
2. Some of the suspects cleared for release were eventually granted their liberty, while other detainees were transferred to facilities in their country of residence. For more on the political difficulties encountered by the Obama administration vis-à-vis Guantánamo Bay prison, see Klaidman (Citation2012).
3. In Naudet and Naudet (Citation2015), an engaging Showtime documentary in the spirit of Morris (Citation2003) and Moreh (Citation2012), former CIA director George Tenet points out that John Brennan (Tenet’s employee at the time) never voiced opposition to the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, denounced in a scathing Senate report as “torture”. In his own interview in the film, Brennan claims that he opposed the Bush administration programme. It is worth point out that, before becoming Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor, Brennan was the president and CEO of The Analysis Corporation, a private firm involved in terrorist targeting analysis.
4. Obama’s new counterterrorism chief Brennan was given an office in the White House, and he orchestrated the “Terror Tuesday” meetings during which the president sat down with his advisors to consider “nominees” to the US government’s kill list. In 2013, Brennan was promoted by Obama to be the director of the CIA, thus ensuring that targeted killing would continue to dominate the Agency’s efforts.
5. Calhoun (Citation2013) and the Appendix of Calhoun (Citation2015) offer much more extensive treatments and critiques of just war theory.
6. Scholars have extensively debated the distinction between “preemption” and “prevention” but however these terms are defined, Obama, in authorising the targeted killing of suspects, followed the Bush example, albeit one missile at a time. See Calhoun (Citation2004).
7. Several scholars have argued in a special issue of Peace Review journal that human beings have a right to live in peace, without the continuous threat of death represented by lethal drones hovering above their heads. See: Peace Review, Volume 27, no. 4, 2015.
8. Obama first revealed the fact that his administration was killing people with drones in a response to a question about the efficacy of the drone programme during a Google+ Hangout conversation on 30 January 2012.
9. Predictably enough, factional rebel groups such as ISIS have already begun using drones in their jihadist efforts (O’Connor Citation2017).
10. Scahill (Citation2013) relays the disturbing chronology leading up to the execution of Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman, in 2011. The once moderate cleric transformed into an advocate of jihad in direct response to FBI harassment followed by detention without charges in Yemen for more than a year at the US government’s request.
11. According to Johnsen (Citation2013, pp. 261–3), however, the Al-Awlaki narrative was penned by John Brennan, to explain the increase in terrorist chatter coming out of Yemen. The story according to which Al-Awlaki was operationally involved in the 2009 Christmas Eve plot of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab does not explain why Al-Awlaki was targeted the day before Abdulmutallab was apprehended (Gardner Citation2013, pp. 169–70).
12. This was revealed by Wikileaks through its document dump of DNC emails.
13. Patriotic citizens may be inclined to sympathise with US administrators who have killed so many people, including obviously innocent civilians, while attempting to defend the nation. Officials such as Michael Hayden and John Brennan certainly have strong psychological and emotional reasons to convince themselves that what they have done is right – if only in order to be able to sleep at night. But before automatically applying interpretive charity to outspoken advocates for assassination, it is essential to be aware of the drone programme’s potential for profit. Upon retiring from government service, Michael Hayden, along with many other military officers, went on to serve as the principals and board members of drone programme–affiliated private companies.
14. Spencer Ackerman and Trevor Timm are two journalists who have consistently and assiduously challenged the US drone programme in the pages of the Guardian.
15. Jesse Morton’s story is relayed in Ellwood (Citation2017).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Laurie Calhoun
Laurie Calhoun is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age (2015) and War and Delusion: A Critical Examination (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), along with many essays on war, morality and politics.