by Jack Lawlor
Drone warfare may reflect an anxious, fearful society deeply out of touch with its highest values, and lost in misperception.
Are we proceeding with an assumption that certain "types" do not deserve to live?
Rather than take the time and look deeply into what we are doing, who we are targeting, and providing rudiments of due process and the rule of law, we are slating growing numbers of people for assassination. Rather than question the saneness of this approach, its morality, its relationship to the rules of engagement in warfare, and how we found ourselves in need to use robot aircraft, we push ahead and set a lethal precedent for other nations.
Rather than learn from the protestations of others who protest the sudden death of so many innocent from within their territory in our pursuit of untried terrorist suspects, we purchase and accelerate the use of more and more drones, never pausing to contemplate the world we will have created once other nations have this technology within a few years.
Despite the optimism of children teaching their parents of how the Buddha met the Jetsons, and despite the pleas of Tolstoy to make what's good and what's whole possible again, our hearts are somehow hardened to the possibility of beginning anew, in wisdom and compassion.
In reliance on technology, we understand less and less, rather than more.
What are the underlying causes and conditions of our suffering, and of the suffering we inflict on others?
How did we get to this place?
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