In 1997, Barbara Ehrenreich went after the human attraction to violence in her book Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. Now, in an updated, adapted version of an afterword, she turns from the origins of war to its endpoint.
Technically, drone technology has been around for quite a long time, going back to the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. It is only in the last two decades when drones have been weaponized with guns, bombs, and missiles.
Almost half a century of fighting brought the country to its nadir, and there is no clear way out of the misery.
Journalists pay the price when they report the truth
For the last two decades, the United States has been conducting an undeclared war across much of the globe. It has taken pains to normalize the use of drone warfare outside established war zones.
Drones criss-crossing the skies and hunting for high-value targets create a distraction from actual crises afflicting people in Afghanistan. U.S. drone surveillance potentially sets the stage for criminal assassination.
Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?
Withdrawing even some of the U.S. troops, planes, drones and bombers from Afghanistan will reduce the killing.
Everything we thought we knew about drone warfare -- and America’s wars more broadly -- is about to be thrown out the window. Under the circumstances, one thing is predictable: ever more civilians are going to die in America’s wars.
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