Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 77

DRONES, HONOR, AND WAR

An MQ-9 Reaper takes off March 2009 at Balad Air Base, Iraq.

the use of armed drones, and the classical conception of
honor and courage in war. In this context, both academic literature and popular media tend to portray the
drone as a symbol of America’s cultural disintegration.
What emerges in the antidrone discourse is a critique
of modernity, and a melancholic longing for imagined
traditions of bravery and honor.

A Weapon of Cowards?

In The Thistle and the Drone, Akbar Ahmed, chair
of Islamic studies at American University, and a former
senior fellow with the Project on U.S. Relations with the
Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, suggests that
the drone is far more than “the twenty-first century’s
most advanced kill technology.”2 He sees weaponized
drones as the symbol of the cultural clash between
the United States and the tribal Muslim societies in
the “periphery.” According to Ahmed, who studied
the Pashtuns, Yemenis, Somalis, and Kurds, the use of
drones represents America’s new reliance on a martial
ethos that is no longer about traditional military values.
The American use of drones, Ahmed claims, shows
that the United States does not abide by the same rules
of honor as ancient cultures. Instead, it embraces a
modern philosophy that is alien to the people it attacks.
Therefore, Ahmed explains, Muslim tribesmen see
drone warfare as “dishonorable” and “blasphemous.”3
Tribal societies, Ahmed contends, are deeply rooted
in tradition, making sense of the present through their
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air Force)

understanding of shared experience. Men in these
societies, Ahmed contends, live by an ancient code of
honor passed on through generations by the actions
and oral narratives of a community’s elders. The tribal
lineage system is characterized by its martial tradition,
and the ancient code of honor and revenge. The claim is
that the essence of tribal societies is a tapestry of courage and pride, and a sense of egalitarianism, and that
these features have remained remarkably unchanged
through time.
In the novella Hadji Murad, Leo Tolstoy writes
about the strength of a Muslim tribal leader facing
imperial Russia, and a century later Ahmed detects the
same fortitude in the tribal societies he studies. Ahmed
argues that, coming from this stable tradition, tribesmen do not respect the new ways in which Americans
fight. The drone comes to represent American power,
overwhelming and, by definition of its very modernity,
unfair, unjust, and unnatural. Honor is equated with
the traditional, while dishonor with the modern. It is
not only ideology that defines what is or is not honorable but also the techniques or modes of warfare.
Ahmed remarks that Americans can fight bravely, and they have proven to be brave, in past battles.
There is a sense of nostalgia in this argument. Ahmed
turns to World War II to pinpoint a historical moment that he claims showcases American bravery in
combat. In the past, he argues, the American soldier
could win battles through hand-to-hand fighting that
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