Candace

Talmadge

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January 7, 2008

With Robot Soldiers, Peace Will Become Impossible

Robot troops in Iraq instead of flesh-and-blood soldiers? If this proposition sounds like a far-future science fiction tale, think again.

An Associated Press story about the U.S. military’s soaring use of aerial drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a chance remark in an email from a federal judge familiar with military issues, lead to this horrifying conclusion.

Drones are unmanned aircraft equipped with any combination of cameras, bombs, rockets or missiles. They spy on, target and kill human beings and/or destroy property or munitions without putting their remote human operators at risk of life or limb. The AP reports that use of drones by various U.S. military branches more than doubled between January and October of 2007 and is on pace to double again this year.

Robot-troops are “coming sooner than folks think,” the judge writes. “Very soon, in fact.”

We can already buy a robot to sweep our floors for us. Japanese multinational Honda Motor Company, Ltd., has even advertised ASIMO, a human-like robot for which Honda is now developing technology to enable multiple ASIMOs to work together. As in divisions, brigades, platoons and squadrons of robots on combat duty.

The prospect of relegating actual killing entirely to remote-controlled drones or non-human troops should scare the living daylights out of all of us who value and work for peace.

With aerial drones, war devolves into a real-life video game that involves no risk or consequences to the human pilots controlling the machines from a safe distance. With robots, there will be no more military funerals or limbless soldiers in wheelchairs or veterans’ benefits to pay.

Once that happens, peace will be impossible.

Once the price of war no longer involves death and bloodshed (at least for our side), then too many Americans will be willing to pay it, ignoring or not caring about the carnage on the other side.

This has happened to some extent already. As Slate reported last year, U.S. public opinion turned against Bush’s handling of the Iraq war for the first time in November 2003 after insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter, killing 16 U.S. troops and wounding more than 20 others.

Yet in January 2006, when a U.S. drone fired laser-guided missiles into a house in northwest Pakistan, missing Al Qaeda deputy honcho Ayman al Zawahiri while killing as many as 18 civilians, including women and children, U.S. opinion polls showed no change.

In other words, as long as technology spares U.S. lives and blood, then Americans don’t seem to mind endless war.

Certainly, if Vice President Dick Cheney already had robot troops to call on, this country would have invaded just about any and every nation listing oil among its natural resources. What’s next – the Imperial U.S.A. Death Star?

The United States, of course, will not be the only country that turns robots into killing machines for delusions of conquest and dominion. In fact, since the capitalists who control this nation’s manufacturing sector have seen fit to move such capacity overseas, China, India and Russia are just as likely to wind up with robot troops as this country.

And who will save us from others’ missile-packing drones and gun-wielding ‘droids when they hit Main Street?

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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