User:PNievs

There are many legal and ethical concerns surrounding drones, and drone warfare today. The concerns that will be addressed in the this section of the paper are the economic costs associated with drones, the amount of drone strikes taking place each year, the effectiveness of drone strikes, and the actual drone pilots themselves. The main concern associated with those flying the drone is the type and style of training that the “pilot” of the drone goes through, and just who exactly the pilot is going to be. Drones used for strike operations overseas are flown by civilians, intelligence officers and private contractors. This causes concern for several reasons. The first concern the public has is with the civilian pilots, they feel as though someone who is not actively involved in the military should not be guiding military aircrafts. In addition to that, there is also concern that there are no uniform “rules” across the board that each drone pilot must complete. Another concern that some Americans have about drones is the amount of drone strikes that the country is carrying out, especially against the Middle East. Pakistan, for example is where approximately 80% of all U.S. drone strikes are carried out. This is receiving a lot of international attention. Some people feel that even though we are engaged in a war on terror, Pakistan is unfairly targeted by drone strikes from the CIA. People believe that this might also have something to do with the fact that the CIA operates independently in Pakistan. What gives this argument validity is the fact that all final approval for drone strikes is done directly by a CIA or Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) member.  The effectiveness of US drone strikes is something that can never truly be accurately measured for many reasons, the biggest and most controversial of these being “clearance”.

The clearance, or level of information privilege the general public has, is not high enough to view more than half of drone strike targets/causalities. This has caused some Americans to become suspicious of our Nation’s government because the government does not release all, if any, of the information about their targets. Former President George W. Bush for example, signed a Memorandum of Notification that created a secret list of “High Value Targets” that the CIA was authorized to kill with drones. These targets, once on the list, would not need any further presidential approval to be killed by the CIA anywhere in the world. What made this authorization and others like it, such an ethical and legal problem is the fact that the general public is unaware of all the lives being lost to drones. Another serious ethical issue associated with drone strikes is the lack of accountability they provide. Drones distance people from the emotional consequences of killing and while this might protect servicemen, it puts them at greater risk of becoming apathetic toward those who are being killed by the drones. The biggest reason people are hesitant to support the use of a drone is because of the CIA’s “signature strikes”. These signature strikes are drone strikes utilized on targets that are not on government kill lists, but are targeted based on their lifestyle or “suspicious” daily behavior. This begs the question who determines what is and is not suspicious behavior and who gets to make that call?





