Friday, March 08, 2013

"...we are all mortal." John Kennedy

It would seem to be true, but, in the year 2013 facing technology as a greater evil than originally conceived, the words should be "...we are all mortal...until we are not."

I firmly believe the drone program is a blight on the USA. It's reputation and it's dignity. It removes humanity from national defense and opens the possibility of making our citizens enemies by the sheer fact it exists.

At the time of Iraq, there was a remembrance of a philosopher named Voltaire. He stated, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

The statement was a good balance to the reality that our own government was about to do and was doing the unthinkable.

We have been here before. Diluted in to thinking everything is going to be, okay. It is not. It is not today and it won't be tomorrow.

It was not so long ago that Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

We are at that precipice. If we hand over our lives to technology to carry out atrocities we are no better than the technology that kills. Osama bin Laden's life was rightfully ended, but, it was not in a drone attack. It was through intelligence and a deliberate act of war that left no doubt to his death. That is where our dignity as a nation lies. 

Using technology to fight our wars is not dignified. It has no cost and it will commit atrocities. We have witnessed them already, apologized for them, but, yet they continue.

I have no doubt the drone program works and is considered successful and in that reality lies the problem.

We don't need drone warfare.

We never did.