Artichoke Annie has a post up about the immorality of killing with drones. I think drone-killing is utterly disgusting and I'm ashamed that the US does this. But it does -- every day. Just think of those brave men and women, pushing buttons to kill people they've never met. What heroes. Their mothers must be so proud.
Anyway, I left this comment on Annie's post:
Anyway, I left this comment on Annie's post:
The definition of evil is pushing a button to make a drone kill people. It is so far removed from the basics of war -- where you're fighting someone who can also kill you. Drone-killing would be more equitable if one in ten button-pushes resulted in the button-pusher's death. And you'd never know which push would kill you. With some skin in the game, perhaps we'd be less prone to, you know, MURDER people.
And then I thought a bit more about it. Let's add a finishing touch to the new drone system: Every 25 pushes of the "kill" button should be performed by a Senator, member of the House of Representatives, the president, vice-president or chief of staff. They should all have to rotate in, without exception. The responsibility for every 25th push of the button would fall to them -- and no one would know when a push would result in electrocuting the pusher. (A random number generator chooses when to electrocute, and it's primed to do so with approximately every tenth push. No human would know which push would kill.)
Let's see how war-happy our congress and the president are with such a system in place. Something tells me there would be a lot less killing.
If you're going to kill, you must have skin in the game. It's the only "moral" way to do it.
