War has become a video game?

 I recently read this article about American protestors joining protest against drone attacks in Pakistan. The articles were interesting so I probe deeper into this issue. Drones are remotely piloted aircrafts invented by the US government, made specifically to prevent terrorism and to save the lives of American soldiers. The US government has launched the drone attack program since 2004 in order to kill Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan. This program has long been controversial because even though drones are operated by professional pilots, they can make mistakes and kill many innocent residents in the targeted countries. So several members of Code Pink, all women anti-war organization, went to Pakistan to join the protest against drone attacks.

I didn't know much about drones until I stumbled upon the article I read. So I searched more about pros and cons about the use of drones. What struck me most is the speech by John Brennan, the Obama administration's top counter-terrorism adviser. In his speech he claims that the use of drones is not only legal, but also ethical. He argues that it is legal because it's self-defense and also International law doesn't prohibit the use of unmanned combat drones. It's also ethical because it's towards "legitimate military targets."

But I still have a hard time understanding the rationale behind the use of drones. If they think it's really legal and ethical, they at least have to let their citizens know the number of casualties of innocent civilians, but they kept it as military secret. It's been said that in 2009, 7000 innocent residents were killed by drones in Pakistan, and about 95% of deaths caused by drones are civilians, not Al-Qaeda militants. They argue that they use drones to minimize the number of deaths of US soldiers. I completely understand that the use of drones is beneficial in this sense, but if they know the value of the US soldiers' lives, they should be able to appreciate the value of those people's lives in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Also they have called innocent deaths as 'collateral damage' to justify them.

Even before the development of drones, the US attacks on many countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan have met with many protests. And to make matters worse, now we have drones!
I think the invention of drones has changed the culture of science and technology. Drones make wars and killings really impersonal, because you can literally kill a person thousand miles away from you, just by sitting in a trailer. The Air Force even announced that they are developing a video game to see who's most qualified for drone piloting. That the war has become so impersonal terrified me. Should we make war "more effective"? can we just stop it? I know that it's not that simple, but the technologies are used to make war effective- certainly, this is something really terrifying.

I still can't say this is right or wrong, but I think the use of weapons that are developed based on the idea of "how to kill people effectively" should be something that we have to think about.

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You can watch the speech by John Brennan (just part of it) here.