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Monday 31 October 2011
The American way of bombing?

The problems with remote-controlled warfare are legion. The human operator ‘is terribly remote from the consequences of his actions; he is likely to be sitting in an air-conditioned trailer, hundreds of miles from the area of battle.’ He evaluates ‘target signatures’ captured by various sensor systems that ‘no more represent human beings than the tokens in a board-type war game.’

The rise of this new ‘American way of bombing’, as it’s been called, has two particularly serious consequences. First, ‘through its isolation of the military actor from his target, automated warfare diminishes the inhibitions that could formerly be expected on the individual level in the exercise of warfare’. In short, killing is made casual. Secondly, once the risk of combat is transferred to the target, it becomes much easier for the state to go to war. Domestic audiences are disengaged from the violence waged in their name: ‘Remote-controlled warfare reduces the need for the public to confront the consequences of military action abroad.’

15 notes

  1. silas216 reblogged this from azspot
  2. section9 reblogged this from thecallus and added:
    If the threat of surface to air fire is so minute, then why go to the effort of using drones at all? If I either misread...
  3. jasencomstock reblogged this from thecallus and added:
    Maybe. Who wrote this nonsense? Couldn’t you say that a firearm ‘isolates the military actor from his target’? because...
  4. hairtrending reblogged this from azspot
  5. rewildyourmind reblogged this from azspot and added:
    Fuck drones and the people who profit from the deaths of our fellow man
  6. aballah reblogged this from azspot
  7. azspot posted this

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