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Last week, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) gave a sort of backhanded defense of the Obama administration’s controversial targeted killing program.
“To be honest, I believe that drones are a lot more civilized than what we used to do, you know, when Sherman shelled Atlanta or when the Allies firebombed Dresden in World War II, it was all collateral damage. It was virtually all civilians. And that was the way of war until very recently,” King said on Friday’s episode of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “The drones, although there is some collateral damage, basically is a very smart artillery shell…If you put it in a context of 1,000 years of war, I think it’s actually a more humane weapon because it can be targeted to specific enemies and specific people.”
Of course, that doesn’t have much to do with drone critics’ actual arguments, and Sen. King was wise enough to point that out during his interview: “Now, I do think there’s a problem…about targeting Americans. There is this little item of the Fifth Amendment that says no person shall be denied life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
But King’s initial point is unimpeachably true: When you look at the history of warfare between 1013 A.D. and now, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that drone warfare is any more barbaric or indiscriminate than what humanity has become used to over the past ten centuries. For instance:
when the normans invaded ireland in 1169
Land was taken, the regime was changed, and much brutality was exacted with swords. Via the University of Alabama at Birmingham
When Pope Innocent III launched the tw0-decade Albigensian Crusade
It’s this particularly horrific crusade that gave birth to the phrase, “Kill them all; let God sort them out.” Via Wikimedia Commons
that time the Qing Dynasty put down the Taiping Rebellion between 1850 and 1864
20 million killed, mostly civilians. Via Wikimedia Commons
when america went to the philippines…
Click here for a rundown of American atrocities during the war. Via New York Journal
napalm
Napalm during the Vietnam War has a remarkably ugly legacy.
US-backED death squads
Memorial of the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Efrojas/Wikimedia Commons
IRAQ
Staff Sgt. Sean A. Foley/US Army
Link:
In the Context of "1,000 Years" of Warfare, Drones Are "More Humane"
