7/29/2019 Drones - How Can You Resist the Age of Drones

1/3

How Can You Resist the Age of Drones?January 11, 2013 | By admin | Reply

Ken Butigan, Waging Nonviolence

Contributor

Waking Times

On Monday President Obama

nominated his counterterrorism

chief, John O. Brennan, to head the

Central Intelligence Agency.

Though some civil liberties groups

and other critics have raised

questions about Brennans

involvement in the CIAs practice of

torture during the Bush

administration, relatively less has

been said about his primarily responsibility during President Obamas first term:

accelerating and institutionalizing the U.S. drones program and its disposition matrix

as the governments sanitizing parlance puts it which has included setting weekly

drone kill lists.

Politicians and the mainstream press have generally reacted warmly to Brennans

nomination, especially in contrast to President Obamas choice for Secretary of Defe

former Senator Chuck Hagel, who is considered suspect by some in the foreign polic

establishment because he opposed the Iraq War and is said to harbor anti-war

sentiments rooted in his service during the Vietnam War.

While we will have to wait to see if Hagels reluctance to take the U.S. into war pans

there is no doubt about Brennans trajectory. As a Washington Postseries last Octob

highlighted (which I commented on here), Brennan has created a powerful new syste

that fuses drone technology, satellite surveillance and massive databases to target a

kill persons of interest globally, with the capacity to cross borders at will. An internatio

law expert at the University of Notre Dame, Mary Ellen OConnell, has urged the Sen

to vote against Brennan on the grounds that the drone program is among the most h

unlawful and immoral practices the United States has ever undertaken. By tapping

Brennan to direct the CIA, President Obama has signaled his commitment to anexpanded role for remote warfare targeted assassinations comprehensive surveilla

7/29/2019 Drones - How Can You Resist the Age of Drones

2/3

nomination is significant.

Five activists were arraigned Tuesday in federal court on charges stemming from a

peaceful demonstration at Beale Air Force Base north of Sacramento, Calif., protesti

drone warfare last October. Rev. Sharon Delgado, Jan Hartsough, David Hartsough,

Kesselman and Shirley Osgood were charged with unlawfully entering the Beale fac

protest the bases drone fleet and will be headed to trial in April. (Four others werearrested but their charges were dropped.)

This small but significant action was part of a growing movement intent on alerting,

educating and mobilizing the public to take stock of and reject the new world of

remote control surveillance and control that is rapidly coming into being. This movem

recognizes that the United States has crossed a line by institutionalizing drone-centr

warfare and, even more ominously, is well on its way to creating a global culture in w

remote aircraft will be as natural as the air we breathe. Brennans likely ascension tojob of the nations top spymaster and covert operations czar especially in a period

when the CIA has been fielding its own drones operation makes this more likely th

ever.

A drones culture is a chilling prospect. It promises to dramatically escalate a trend th

the United States has been pursuing since the inception of the national security state

the late 1940s: military superiority through surveillance beginning with U-2 flights,

SR-71 Blackbird and the NAV-STAR satellite system and land-, sea- and air-baseweapons systems. Its logic is to establish a regime of incontestable control and to cr

a comprehensive, remote and automated war-fighting capability.

This has profound geopolitical implications. But it also

threatens something even more monumental: the

increasing depersonalization and dehumanization not

only of warfare but, more generally, of social organization

and interaction. The terror of the Atomic Age was thepotential for the annihilation of life in a matter of hours or

days after a nuclear exchange. The terror of the Drone

Age is living undersystems of control over the course of

ones whole life. Such a regime could operationalize

and give factual bite to George W. Bushs pithy

declaration, You are either with us or against us. The

disposition matrix of the near future will have the capacity

to more and more finely divide us into us and them.

7/29/2019 Drones - How Can You Resist the Age of Drones

3/3

him about what he was doing, he said except when what he called CIV CAVS (ci

casualties) were involved. When that happens, he told Louie, he couldnt sleep.

Or, as another younger pilot Louie met on another occasion simply said, I cant stan

what Im doing!

Do those who order these attacks sleep at night? For that matter, do we? The dronesystem is designed to keep our sleep untroubled. But there are some among us who

have decided to wake up, like the five going to court in April, and to in turn invite us t

the same.

What if more of us wiped the sleep from our eye

and decided that we will do everything in our po

to pull back from the horrific terrain we have let

policy-makers enter? It is time to deepen andbroaden this movement for human rights. We co

become part ofDrone Watch orCode Pink. We

could read Medea Benjamins book, Drone War

Killing by Remote Control. We could put ending

disposition matrix on the agenda of our

organizations. We could ask our religious

communities to spend some of their moral capit

standing for a more ethical future, including signing onto A Call from the Faith-BaseCommunity to Stop Drone Killings. We could take action like the Beale Five who

face a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $5,000 fine when they head to

in April or like Brian Terrell, who is currently serving a prison sentence for nonviole

resisting drones.

We could also investigate and begin to resist our local connections to the drone

system. In 1988, as part of the U.S. Central America Peace Movement, the Pledge o

Resistance organized the Military Connections Campaign, which identified how locmilitary facilities and corporations were supporting this policy. We organized hundred

coordinated actions with the slogan Stopping the war starts here. It may be time to

Whats our local connection to the emerging drones culture?

There are likely many local connections, which could be the basis of a nationwide

campaign to help the nation make a decision for a world free of drones and the

dehumanizing culture they portend.