Drone warfare triggers many compelling questions.
Among them: What are the martial and moral implications of remote killing? Does imperfect precision create enemies faster than they are eliminated? Does the fact that drone use reduces risk for U.S. troops justify their use? And, because no nation maintains a monopoly on weapons technology, is proliferation inevitable — including to terrorist groups currently in the cross hairs?
One would expect these and other ethical and efficacy questions to be debated on the campaign trail. But so far, slogans and sound bites seem to suffice for policy positions.
Hard questions are being asked at the cineplex, where"Eye in the Sky," a riveting film released Friday, examines the drone dilemma.
The film's taut plot is built around how a drone attack on would-be suicide bombers in Kenya is weighed against the likelihood of killing civilians.
While the film is fictional, it seems cinema verite. Especially when the themes reflect real drone dynamics, including the depiction of how legal, military, diplomatic, public-relations and ethical decisions (or buck-passing indecisions) are made, and how the film seems to foreshadow news like last week's drone strike in Somalia that killed up to 150 Al-Shabab terrorists allegedly plotting an attack.
In some cases, drones are a "necessary evil," said Michael O'Hanlon, co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution. "If you are not sure of your safety, and don't want to tip off your potential target, and you only have a fairly limited window of time when you can see them, then the drones often have huge advantages." And, added O'Hanlon: "For the most part, they've helped us make our application of lethal force much more precise and much less likely to cause civilian casualties."
But drones aren't that discreet, argues Andrew Cockburn, author of "Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins." The U.S. military, Cockburn believes, is "so locked into their technology and the apparent precision that they won't admit even to themselves that they make mistakes."