Drone Strikes: An Analysis Of Sky's Eye In The Sky

Article One: Dainel Byman, in his article Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s weapon of Choice in an August 2013 article in the Brookings Institute, identifies the positive impact of US drone strikes. Byman contends that US drone strikes are extremely efficient, at little financial cost to the government, and protect the lives of American soldiers. For these reasons, Byman believes that US drone strikes are necessary to the war on terror.

The “Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars” is a documentary that discusses more in depth what are the effects of drone strikes on the society, victims and their families. It shows a story of killing innocent children like Tariq and his younger cousin who were hit by a drone strike on their way to a soccer match. In Tariq’s case there was an

The world has always been filled with fighting and always will be. There are a lot of factors that determine who comes out on top. Technology is always the deciding factor. With that technology, there are many conflicts. The U.S. Military using drones has been one of the most highly debated topics. Even through the doubt, Military drones have proven time and time again to work. Drones are being constantly updated and fixing any flaws that they have at the moment. In the future, drone warfare is unavoidable. When drones were first invented, of course, they did not work amazing. Throughout the years that drones have been around, they shown that they are becoming a more advanced and needed machine. The world is becoming increasingly

The war on terror is a never-ending battle. The United States has been in many wars since the day our country was founded. There has been an estimated 651,008 deaths in war battle, 1.2 million deaths during war. An estimated 42 million service men and women have joined the armed forces in protecting our country (Science Line). Every day our state and policy makers are finding new ways to protect the 42 million service men and women. In the early 1990s’ the U.S created the Predator Program (Woods). This program allows air force men and women to fly unoccupied aircrafts in remote locations for intelligence gathering as well as executing high profile terrorist networks. This program protects thousands of service

The military’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are able to fly in the airspace for up to 17 hours providing Soldiers, Marines, and Sailors on the ground real-time images of the enemy for 24-hours 7 days a week. They were engineered for precision and power in order to eliminate the enemy without the need of endangering friendly forces. The technological advancement of the drone has furthered America’s military agenda in multiple ways for the better, however, hundreds of civilian lives have been caught in the blast zone of these military drones. Today’s society and engineers have deemed the use of drones as morally good, but what makes killing the enemy from a remote, safe location any different than chemical warfare, especially if civilian lives

As a young child my brother joined the armed forces, searching for a sense of purpose in life. He went off with dignity, with great dreams of coming home covered in medals and scars. He used to carry a little diary, with a crimson cover and a cracked spine, and on the inside of the cover was a handwritten quote, of which it read “Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.” After fourteen months of close encounters and hard fought battles in the withered, war ridden southern Pakistan, he returned, not only with new medals and scars, but a new quote in his little, crimson cracked book. Beneath the previous crossed out quote, was a new quote, of which

How do you feel about the military using drones? Does it make you uncomfortable? Or does it make you feel safe? Drone use isn’t the best. Why you may ask. Because drone usage causes additional terrorists than killing. If a drone was utilized in a strike attack against a group of terrorist. I believe and it has been shown that this act makes them enraged and to strike back at the United States. I do not need our military to use drones, I feel sheltered that they don’t. When the military uses drones not only does it make the terrorists mad, but also kills innocent people who had nothing to do with it. According to a meta - study about drones “eight to seventeen percent of all people are killed in drone strikes are civilians” (Singh 5). Plus,

Though military personnel lives are safer with the presence of drones, many who oppose military drones claim that they have increased the death of civilians and do not create safer environments for civilians (Terrill 22). However, drones have been proved to decrease the deaths of civilians due to the technology that allows them to pinpoint their target and strike at that specific target rather than bomb an area that the target is in. For example, in Yemen where many drone strikes have occurred, “civilian death figures… are ‘in the single digits’” (Terrill 22). Drones are claimed to have less collateral damage than the collateral damage caused by manned aerial vehicles. “They strike quickly, and the missile can be diverted from its original target in an unintentional miss” (Hazelton 30). In the drone strikes in Yemen, even President Hadi admits that there are accidental civilian deaths (Terrill 22). But whether ground troops are used, whether manned aerial vehicles are used, or whether drones are used, there will always be a possibility for collateral damage and civilian deaths. However, President Hadi also admits that “Yemen’s air force cannot bomb accurately at night, but US drones do not have any problems doing so” (Terrill 22).

“Dozens of highly skilled al Qaeda commanders, trainers, bomb makers and operatives have been taken off the battlefield. Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted international aviation, US transit systems, European cities, and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put, these strikes have saved lives” (Gerdau 1). These are the words of President Obama as he spoke on the effective use of the United States drone program. Drone operations have been in effect since our nation was targeted by al Qaeda in 2001. Anything that threatens American lives is undesirable; therefore, drone strikes against terrorists should continue to be utilized by the American government. In today’s society, our nation is threatened by foreign and domestic attacks from anti-American terrorist organizations. The government’s use of drones has drastically reduced this threat by decimating terrorist cells abroad.

My highest match in the quiz was Hillary Clinton. The three biggest issues that meant the most to me were same sex marriage, equal pay for both sexes and drone strikes. I think the reason these issues mean a lot to me is because they are all issues of the 21st century. For same sex marriage I voted yes and for equal wages I also put yes. The question that struck me the most was “do you support drone strikes for suspected terrorists?” to this I answered not to kill suspected terrorist, but to gather intelligence. I did some research on the topics and what I found was interesting. In 2013 female fulltime workers in almost every field of work made seventy-eight cents for every dollar that their male counter parts which is a gap of twenty percent.

The general argument made by Natalie Dalziel in her 2014 article “Drone Strikes: Ethics and Strategy” is that U.S. drone strikes have many “strategic consequences” (6). More specifically, she argues that drone strikes “incite” terrorist attacks by “targeting the symptom of the problem rather than the cause” (Dalziel 6). She writes that U.S. drone strikes destabilize and “undermine the legitimacy of governments” where drone strikes occur by turning people to groups like al Qaeda “out of anger” over their government's failure to prevent drone strikes (Dalziel 5).  In addition, she writes that methods like the “signature strike and double-tap” increase the number of civilian casualties which leads to more “retaliation for the strikes” (Dalziel

Unlike drone attacks, using ground troops can result in less unnecessary casualties. When a bomb is dropped it kills not only the target but the people around them. Lives of innocent people can be saved if we had a more accurate point of view. Within 5 months, “nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.”(Cite #1) Sending soldiers can significantly lower the percentage of innocents killed. When “a drone strike kills more than one person, there is no guarantee that those persons deserved their fate. … So it’s a phenomenal gamble.”(Cite #1) Right now, American soldiers are safe flying drones from thousands of miles away. Sending troops risks American blood but fewer accidental deaths that leave families

Drones are an effective counter insurgency tool deployed extensively throughout the world, especially by clandestine intelligence organizations often with the help of the country’s respective Air Force. Not only do they serve as an effective weapon, they minimize human

[Chapter four deals with the paradoxes of casualties, irony of errors, USA’s response to victims, who is accountable for attacks, advantages and disadvantages of drone attacks.]

Strawser has plunged into the debate by arguing "It's all upside. There's no downside. Both ethically and normatively, there's a tremendous value," he says. "You're not risking the pilot. The pilot is safe. And all the empirical evidence shows that drones tend to be more accurate. We need to shift the burden of the argument to the other side. Why not do this? The positive reasons are overwhelming at this point. This is the future of all air warfare. At least for the US."