May 2017 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
When Noam Chomsky was asked to write about the My Lai massacre in 1969, he agreed to do so only by leaving it as a virtual footnote, focusing instead on "the horrifying atrocities carried out by folks with ties and jackets in air-conditioned offices, not what was done by some half-crazed GIs in the field who didn't know who'd be shooting at them next". Nearly half a century later, the prevalence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or drones) in our present conflicts have blurred the lines of Chomsky's paradigm. The GIs are in the air-conditioned offices, and they're not being shot at. Drone operators surveil human targets, often for months, to glean as much information as possible about their habits and schedules in order to maximize their chances for a successful strike. Along the way, operators invariably observe incidental details of their future victims' lives and families, all at a high resolution. Often it is the same drone operators who inspect the aftermath of a strike to determine if the mission in fact killed its intended target. These visceral visual encounters with violent deaths are certainly a major contributing factor in increasing levels of PTSD among drone operators, particularly when unintended people are killed. They frequently are; and they frequently are known to the operators from their previous surveillance.
Drone operators are in an unfamiliar and rather new position; the tools and practice of their trade give them an unusually detailed portrait of their victims' lives leading up to the strike. But unlike others who work in military surveillance, they are additionally involved in both deciding when to strike and in being required to observe and report on the carnage that results. A conventional pilot drops a bomb or fires a missile and learns of the results second-hand, if at all. Conventional pilots are further insulated from the psychological effects of their work by being in the company of others having a shared experience: being deployed far from home, in physical danger, confronting a common enemy, celebrating and grieving together. For drone operators, a day at work entails participating in and closely observing the intensity of heavily armed conflict, and is followed by the commute home and dinner with the family in a span of an hour or two. The jarring contrast is repeated daily.
Many conventional military pilots express disdain or derision for drone operators because their combat experience carries little risk of physical harm. The perception can't be dismissed as macho posturing; there is a clear, fundamental difference between drone warfare controlled from another country and engaging an enemy who is an active threat to you and your colleagues. The contrast hasn't been lost on ISIS, who released a list last year of 76 U.S. military personnel alleged to be involved in drone warfare. The list includes home addresses, adding yet another layer of psychological stress for drone operators by introducing the possibility of harm to their family members.
Once weaponized drones became operational, their assimilation into modern warfare could hardly be viewed as surprising. The appeal is apparent: operators are thousands of miles away from the physical battle during a time in which the public is decreasingly tolerant of U.S. casualties in the war on terror. The desire to have a simple technological solution to the problem of soldiers dying in war, though, seems to have won out over a careful consideration of the net effect. In the process, an altogether new strain of war trauma has been inflicted on those who are expected to seamlessly transition from war to civilian life on a daily basis. We devote bottomless resources and unbridled creativity to developing new and innovative ways to kill, but those tasked with carrying it out are left to wrestle with the implications on their own, alienated from the battlefield their colleagues, their families, themselves.
See Ted Beal MD’s article: ‘Living with Death, CPF February 2017 issue
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