The Ethics of Drone Warfare
Laura Maguire

09 September 2015

In the last six years alone, at least two and a half thousand people have been killed by US drone strikes.[1]奥巴马领导下的无人机袭击比他的前任乔治·w·布什领导下的多9倍。

攻击增加的理由是，无人机是精确、有效的武器，可以减少意外伤亡。有些人可能会觉得一个可以在数千英里外操作的杀人机器的想法令人毛骨悚然。但无人机的捍卫者说，冷漠和超然在战争中是好的。这意味着士兵可以保持冷静和冷静，而不是出于恐惧而行动。他们可以花时间打击目标，确保周围没有可能被炸死的平民。

That all sounds fine and dandy—until, that is, you look at how drones are actually used. While there’s an argument to be made that using a weapon with the potential to reduce unintended casualties in a war is morally preferable to using another kind of weapon, we should be more concerned with whatactuallyhappens in drone attacks, rather than what couldpotentiallyhappen in some alternate universe.

First, to say that drones reduce unintended casualties is misleading, at best. While US soldiers may not be in direct danger when we drone attack Pakistan, Afghanistan, or wherever it is we’re terrorizing these days, hundreds upon hundreds of civilians have been killed by drones since Obama took office. It’s hard to see how that’s “morally preferable.”

Sure, if we used less precise technology to bomb those places, there would probably be even more civilians deaths. But that’s assuming we’d bomb these targets at all, which brings me to the second point.

无人机的一个很大的道德问题是，它们让当权者很容易轰炸任何他们想轰炸的人，而不会产生太多的政治后果。派遣地面部队并将他们置于直接的危险中会带来政治后果，但如果我们远程攻击所谓的“敌人”，并且没有士兵被装在尸袋里回来，那么就不会有那么多的反弹。因此，从政治上讲，指挥官很容易下令发动袭击，而这又会导致另一方大量平民伤亡。

Of course, the number of civilian casualties from drone attacks has more to do with foreign policy and intelligence gathering practices than thetechnologyof dronesper se. If avoiding civilian casualties is not a priority for the commander in charge of a strike, we’re going to see lots of civilian casualties, regardless of the kind of weapons used. We’re told that drone attacks target high value terrorists, when, in reality, it’s also farmers, low level drug dealers, and men exercising in “suspicious looking” compounds who are targeted.[2]

It could be argued that using drones in war is still morally preferable to using other weapons, if you remove the problems that stem from poor intelligence and dubious policies. The question of whether a war is just or a target legitimate is not a question about drone technology. It’s a moral question that must be settled independently.

Butifa war is just or a target legitimate, then isn’t using drones the best way to go because it will potentially have the lowest number of unintended casualties?

That’s a very big “if” when the technology itself makes going to war far too politically easy, which leads to us fighting all sorts of unjust wars. Of course, the reverse point could also be true—maybe there are wars weshouldbe fighting but don’t when the possibility that we might incur high casualties means there’s a lack of political will to fight that war. Drones allow us to fightmorewars forjustcauses. Because, you know, that’s definitely what we need more of in the world—war.

Any defense of drones, it seems to me, has to be based on some fantasy world, where politicians never lie, wars are always just, intelligence reliably identifies terrorists and only terrorists, and innocent civilians are never just “collateral damage.”

But we can’t talk about the ethics of drones without talking about how they are actually used in the real world.

Comments(6)

Giraffe_knight's picture

Giraffe_knight

Friday, September 11, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Not to mention the implicit

更不用说无人机战争的隐性影响了。巴基斯坦人每天都生活在一种持续的恐惧之中，这一点不容忽视。即使可能有一千个人因此丧生，你也知道，在任何时候，你都有可能因为这项政策而直接死亡(当然，开车更危险，但我说的是感知到的威胁)。最终目标是什么?像蟑螂一样在全球无休止地追捕恐怖分子头目?你杀了一个，两个就会取代他，这就是事实。

focus8@telus.net's picture

focus8@telus.net

Saturday, September 12, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Very well, let's talk about

好吧，让我们谈谈无人机是如何在当前战争的“现实世界”中被使用的。联合国还没有授权美国在任何地方采取军事行动。国会还没有宣战。它们不是自卫战争。所以针对基地组织、ISIS以及总统认为是敌人的任何国家的战争都是非法的。因此，美国无人机在中东或其他任何地方杀害任何人都是谋杀。关于无人机是否比轰炸在道德上更可取的辩论在当前情况下无关紧要(当然，无人机比使用核武器或地毯式轰炸在道德上更可取;那又怎样?)。因此，美国总统犯下了终极的国际罪行，侵略，纳粹也因同样的罪行被定罪。除非你认为总统凌驾于法律之上，就像尼克松下令的那样，否则你无法避免这样的结论:奥巴马，无人机战争的总统，是一个连环杀手。
Of course, this is unthinkable and unsayable in polite company and in the mainstream media. As philosophers, however, we can think it, we can say it, and we are right.

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, September 13, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

America has always been less

美国从来都不是一个被统治者同意的国家，而是一个被统治者同意的国家。这些议员可能没有同意无人机战争，我也不确定，但他们也没有否认。因此，这是一个含糊不清的问题，因此我们的意见不能如此确定。恐怕通常的补救办法是:给你的国会议员写一封愤怒的信。事实是，没有正义的战争。也就是说，这是一直混淆这个问题的关键点，没有任何杀戮是伸张正义的行为。然而，杀戮和战争在道德上是可以原谅的。采取行动的动机足以原谅明智地使用武力，我认为在这一点上没有很多分歧。把个人的愤怒与国家的原则和法律程序混为一谈是错误的。我记得《战争权力法案》，以及它的动机。 But it is nevertheless a tool in the hands of less morally unambiguous souls than we may be. If it is not used in this case we have no procedural claim to activate that law, only a political claim to influence it. That is not the same as a legally binding judgment. But, if there is no just war, only excusable violence, and we do indeed have a recognizable excuse, it is not the weapons we choose, but the way we use them that decides whether that alibi excuses our actions. Some Americans seem to think that it is doing justice to shoot as a trespasser someone who knocks on our front door. Some courts have agreed with them. In such an atmosphere a call for justice seems lame. The question, then, is whether what we so quaintly call "rules of engagement" satisfy sufficient grounds for excusing injustice, and whether these rules are carried out faithfully. Maybe we have all seen the shocking video of the drone operators giggling like adolescents at a computer game as they brutally murdered two men in a van who turned out to be innocent. That is inexcusable. But what of avowed enemies hiding in a political regime that protects them, or, as in the case of Pakistan, that rails against us in public but clearly applauds us in private? At the time 9/11 took place I posted comments asking that we keep the response to a police status, and not as a war, but was howled down. That sentiment has not really dissipated completely in the face of atrocities. And the worst atrocities ever committed by this country were done under the auspices of a formal declaration of war. So, the issue is not so easily adjudged as we might like. Drones are just an extension of other modes of war, certainly no worse than cluster bombs, napalm, or indiscriminate use of anti-personel mines. There may be a strange advantage to drones that is overlooked in most pro-and-con discussions, and that is that since there is no pilot at risk, there is no loss of life, on our side, that can then take on a sort of sacrificial aura of a sacred duty of remembrance that clouds our judgment and promotes more of the same. A fully mechanized war? The prospect is certainly chilling, especially as adversaries develop the same technology. But maybe this is a reason to question the future of war rather than the current conduct of it. For reasons that have nothing to do with the technology of warfare, war is becoming obsolete. Not only are we too interdependent, but, because of communications, not war, technology we simply know each other too well. It's like the farm animal that has been given a name, you cannot then kill it for food. This is not a technological advancement, it's a human one.

MJA's picture

MJA

Monday, September 14, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

There is no greater example

There is no greater example of mental weakness than the idea that military technology and might is the solution to war. It is this very weakness that fuels our wars. Violence begets violence and nothing more. America has the most technologically advanced military, the most weapons of mass destruction, the largest military budget in the world. It is this might to fight that makes us the very weakest of all, the catalyst of war. And as for Obama killing the most people with drones, I think he will be remembered as President Obomba.
最强大的力量是反方向的力量。
To peace,
=

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Friday, May 25, 2018 -- 12:16 PM

I am way late on this one--

I am way late on this one---having been out of touch with things in much of 2015. I have not read all of the previous comments, so if my remark(s) is/are redundant, please forgive me. I suppose, depending on who is wearing the shoes, war is as ethical as self-defense. Drone warfare seems tawdry somehow, but if, as I have suggested, it does have ethical ends, then the ethics or lack thereof are least of our worries.

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