Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 79

DRONES, HONOR, AND WAR

expert David Kilcullen, who served as adviser to
Army Gen. David Petraeus, contends that “using robots from the air … looks both cowardly and weak.”6
George Monbiot, who writes for The Guardian, claims
that “with its deadly drones, the United States is
fighting a coward’s war.”7 Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Middle East Policy Dr. Andrew Exum,
a former U.S. Army officer who advised Army Gen.
Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan, explains: “There’s
something about pilotless drones that doesn’t strike
me as an honorable way of warfare.”8
The allegation seems to be that a weapon that
eliminates the possibility of personal risk for the
perpetrator is, by definition, dishonorable. Marine
Sgt. Matt Walje, writing on ethics and war, argues that
“drone strikes are a kind of ambush kill, an ambush
where the killer is invulnerable,” adding that “the
manner in which drone strikes are carried out has a
dishonorable feel, encouraging the dehumanization
of the enemy, and in this way, assisting the operators
and their leadership in assuaging the blood guilt that
follows a kill.”9 Foreign policy journalist Glenn Greenwald agrees:
Whatever one thinks of the justifiability of
drone attacks, … [attacking by drone is] one
of the least ‘brave’ or courageous modes of
warfare ever invented. It’s one thing to call it
just, but to pretend it’s ‘brave’ is Orwellian in
the extreme. Indeed, the whole point of it is
to allow large numbers of human beings to
be killed without the slightest physical risk to
those doing the killing. Killing while sheltering yourself from all risk is the definitional
opposite of bravery.10
Ed Kinane, an antidrone activist in New York, argues that aerial warfare is cowardly in general, and that
drones “raise cowardice to new heights.”11 Rev. Kenneth
Tanner, an antidrone activist from Michigan, claims
that drone violence is particularly dishonorable:
There’s something dishonorable about killing
without the risk associated with the act ….
If you must kill to defend against killers … I
believe the only honorable way to do it is to
risk your own death or the death of those you
love in the effort.12
Does killing without risk violate the warrior code of
honor and bravery?
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

Armed drones, however effective they may be
militarily, are taken by critics to reflect the frailty of the
culture that uses them. The machines are the weapons
of the weak, in this narrative, protecting the fearful
from sacrifice and danger. If the drone symbolizes the
safe, uncommitted, and even cowardly modern approach to warfare, the “traditional” emerges as the risky,
committed, and brave. German journalist Dirk Kurbjuweit expresses this sentiment clearly:
A suicide bomber needs to be 100 percent willing to sacrifice his life. With a drone pilot, on
the other hand, the risk of pilot death drops to
zero percent. … It’s a war between those who
are willing to sacrifice everything and those
who are unwilling to give up anything—a war
of sacrifice versus convenience, bodies versus
technology and risk versus safety.13
The claim is that the U.S. military is hiding behind
its technological superiority because American society
is not actually able to fight a war that necessitates commitment, sacrifice, and risk. The predator can never
be the prey, and this shows feebleness, rather than
strength. The drone, therefore, is supposed to represent
the trepidation to face death in battle, and an attempt
to bypass an ancient martial ethos.
There is also the suggestion that the post-9/11
wars have created a generation of “cubicle warriors”
that are not as courageous as the soldiers of the past,
or as the soldiers against whom they fight. Drones, the
idea is, have turned our fighters into office workers
immersed in the drudgery of the mundane.14 Instead
of showing their military strength physically, instead
of risking and sometimes sacrificing their bodies,
and instead of committing completely to war, drone
pilots are removed from harm’s way. This situation is
diametrically opposed to the romantic notion of war
as a battle of the brawn, where hand-to-hand combat,
bravery, and high risk prove physical strength and
superiority.15 The place for romantic notions of masculine heroism dissipates. Drones are a mode of killing
that cannot threaten the body of the perpetrator. This
position of tremendous power can be conceptualized
as a weakness.
An alternative to the “cubicle warrior” image has
also emerged in the antidrone discourse, and that is the
drone pilot as a “gamer.” Controlling a drone is likened
to playing a video game. The idea is that the drone
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