The drone, the unmanned airplane with astonishingly precise, deadly capabilities, has taken robotic warfare to new heights, having become the weapon of choice in the United States’ war against terrorism.
This has been the case since Sept. 11, 2001, the day Arab terrorists crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Shattered by 9/11, the United States developed the drone into a highly sophisticated weapon of war.
To John Brennan, the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the drone has been indispensable in taking the fight to the enemy, whether in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Somalia. “It’s an essential tool,” he says. Mark Mazzetti, a journalist, points out that drones are the long arm of the United States. “It’s never been easier for the U.S. to carry out killing operations around the world.”
To critics, however, drones have snuffed out scores of innocent lives and violated international law and national borders.
These clashing points of view are presented in Tonje Hessen Schei’s film, Drone, which will screened at the Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs) Festival in Toronto on April 24, April 25 and May 2. Although both sides have their say, Drone comes down on the side of the opponents. It’s clearly a movie with an agenda.
Schei parades a galaxy of ex-drone operators, human rights lawyers, authors and former government officials, among others, to make his argument — namely that innocent civilians have been killed by drone strikes. Hardly a word of criticism is levelled against Al Qaeda terrorists, and this imbalance mars Drone.
American drones have admittedly eliminated a bevy of Al Qaeda leaders, but they’ve also caused “collateral damage,” having killed ordinary people who’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Clive Stafford Smith and Shazad Akbar, who are respectively British and Pakistani lawyers, explain why they’re opposed to this form of warfare.
Imram Khan, a Pakistani politician, claims that the United States has committed crimes in drone attacks. Schei introduces us to Zubair Rehman, a young Pakistani man who was wounded in one such strike which killed his grandmother.
U.S. drones are operated by air force personnel under a program run by the CIA. The operators are young men who work 12-hour shifts in a secluded military base in Nevada. Brandon Bryant and Michael Haas were two such “pilots” who now regret what they did.
“It was horrible to kill,” recalls Bryant as the screen fills with images of Pakistanis in Waziristan whose lives hang in the balance. He compares himself to a Peeping Tom who engaged in war by distance, his targets having been thousands of miles away from the computer screen where he sat.
“How do we know that all the people we killed were bad guys?” he asks rhetorically. Now convinced that many of his victims were not associated with terrorism, he describes himself as “a worthless piece of shit.” Like Stafford Smith, he wants to bring accountability and transparency to the U.S. drone program.
Likening a drone operator to a video gamer, Haas observes, “You never knew who you were killing.
P.W. Singer, the author of Wired for War, explains that the video industry has been an enormous source of inspiration for the U.S. military. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls the spread of this technology alarming.
Andy von Flatow disagrees, having sold drones to the U.S. government. “War is an opportunity to do business,” he says coldly.
Whether we like it or not, the drone is here to stay. Eighty seven countries have incorporated them into their armed forces, as one journalist says in this informative film.