The Drone Debate Drones On
Almost from the beginning that drones were announced to the public, the usual suspects (read: Liberals) have come out in full-throat against them.
For those unaware, drones are unmanned planes, operated by remote control throughout the world by the U.S. military, which deploy missiles on enemy combatants. They are very accurate and have little incident of crashing.
Admittedly, I was caught flat-footed and unknowing of why they would be against such. But now the answer is quite obvious: Liberals hate all warfare, justified or otherwise, at all costs.
So it makes sense that drones would be an unpopular weapon in America’s arsenal. After all, they are efficient and most important, not human. To wit, you will never see a funeral for a drone that has crashed nor a distraught mother of a downed drone stating her case that our military efforts should be re-evaluated, if not discontinued altogether, in a theatre of hostilities.
The anti-war wing relies heavily on the graphic nature of war to try to push through their agenda. Whether it is coffins of deceased servicemen being lowered from transport planes at Dover air-force base, correspondents walking the front lines and interviewing weary infantrymen, or bombed out buildings, the message of ending war is far easier conveyed through such images than stating the case otherwise. Thank God today’s Liberals were not around during the Civil War when Matthew Brady was publishing his war photos otherwise we’d be negotiating trade agreements with the Confederacy instead of the rest of the world and listening to the national anthem of Dixieland from across the Potomac each evening instead of being one nation.
Such tactic was exposed on the PBS Newshour show Monday night when David Cortright, director of policy studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame, discussed the matter of drones.
Mr. Cortright said “We are now at a point where it’s possible for political leaders to think that we can make war cheaply and seemingly easily…………….We can wage war without endangering our troops, at seemingly lower costs. And any development that makes war seem cheaper or easier is morally troubling.”
Mr. Cortright goes on to reveal his agenda by saying “ultimately terrorism is a political phenomenon. It must be defeated by political means, through bargaining and negotiation, through police work, law enforcement.” Sounds like an episode of Law & Order.
Yes, Mr. Cortright, war can be made cheaper and easier for us, but that does not mean it is unjustified. Let’s assume, as much as we all wish to question our government, that it thinks long and hard about who the enemy is and treats such accordingly. A logical extension of your “cheaper and easier” argument is that we use muskets or even swords so that we can appreciate the full impact of the wars we are waging, or more accurately, those being waged against us. But there is no reason to place the U.S. at some competitive warfare equilibrium (if not disadvantage), especially when we are morally justified. But that is where Mr. Cortright and his ilk part company from mainstream society: they have a major problem with U.S. policy, and perhaps the U.S., in general. They do not see us as a beacon of freedom and liberty but more as a colonial conqueror.
Mr. Cortright and Liberals should be honest and say that they do not have a problem so much with the weaponry we use than the causes we fight. Until then, they are playing the invisible (policy debate) warfare that they accuse the drone program of.
-I.M. Windee
