International political assassination and its ramifications.

The Roman emperors had to be quite careful to protect themselves from assassination. Assassination was how power politics was conducted in those days. Thanks to illustrious American technology and the glory of American foreign-policy vision, those days are back again. Of course at first assassination by drones hid in the shadows. Now it has been championed by the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter terrorism, John Brennan. In a speech that perhaps should be called the Obama doctrine Brennen presents what he considers to be an ethical justification for the use of drones in killing identified “terrorists”and others who happen to get in the way. His many arguments are at best weak and sloppy and I will not spend time here critiquing each of them. I'm sure others will do an adequate job of that. I want to however pick up on one point, that of precedent.

Brennan states “The United States is the first nation to regularly conduct strikes using remotely piloted aircraft in an armed conflict.  Other nations also possess this technology.  Many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it. . . . we are establishing precedents that other nations may follow,”

Exactly Mr. Brennan. Let us imagine that an enemy of the United States, a nation, or an organization that the United States is waging war on got a hold of this snazzy technology. Let us imagine that they followed the US precedent. Their targets would be American leaders. The president would no doubt be at the top of the list. Certainly a case could be made by such an enemy that congressional leader funding or promoting the war against them were fair targets. There is nothing in the US drone policy or practice that would prevent this if the shoe were on the other foot.

The American war machine is ugly, and I won't feel more sympathy for the loss of the lives of its American architects and perpetrators then I feel for the innocent Pakistanis or Yemenites who end up as collateral damage to American drone. In fact if drones in the hands of America's enemies ended up killing America's foreign-policy elite one could certainly see this as no more than the chickens coming home to roost. But the political elite know how to share the pain.

The first time a drone kills in America, no doubt someone will be caught unaware, probably the president, although perhaps it will be a second-level politician someone in Congress, the Secretary of State, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the head of the CIA. Then the security will begin to ramp up. If you think the patriot act is bad, imagine the legislation that will pass after an assassination of a significant American political figure. Further erosion of our civil liberties, further militarization of our society, more fear and paranoia.

Americans will pull out technology against technology, and I don't know where in this arms race will end. Perhaps we will eventually all have our own little assassin bugs that can seek out and kill anyone we wish with no way of detecting who was operating it. I for one can imagine some pretty dystopic futures based on the premise that in war assassination is legitimate and that new technology allows us to do it more precisely and efficiently.

 Okay, ultimately I take issue with the premise that any warfare is legitimate, and I have mixed feelings about efforts to make war "nice". Nonetheless we do have an option. We don't have to go down this road. Drones could be banned by international law in the same way that atomic, biological and chemical warfare has been banned. I suspect that if there were a president who could promote and achieve such a treaty it might be someone like Obama. Here is a great tragedy, because Obama is not about to push for such a treaty. He likes his robotic planes.

We need not new technology, but a new mindset.