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Why it
Matters the Dallas Police Used a Drone to Kill
Someone in America
By Peter Van
Buren
July 14,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman
who killed five officers with a tactic that is
unprecedented: it blew him up using a robot.
This
represents the first time in American history that a
drone (wheels for now, maybe wings later) was used
to kill an American citizen on American soil.
I get it, I get it.
The Dallas
sniper had killed five cops. He was prepared to kill
as many more as he could. He was in a standoff with
police, and negotiations had broken down. The
Supreme Court has made it clear that in cases such
as this, the due process clause (i.e., a trial
before execution in this instance) does not apply.
If not for the robot bomb, the Dallas police would
have eventually shot the sniper anyway. They were
fully in their legal rights to kill him. None of
those issues are in contention. I am not suggesting
in any way the cops should have invited the sniper
out for tea.
I am
suggesting we stop and realize that in 2016 the
police used a robot to send in an explosive to blow
a person up. I am unaware that such a thing has
happened in Russia, North Korea, China, Iran or
other places where the rule of law is held by the
few in power.
Weapons of War
The robot
represents a significant escalation in the tools law
enforcement use on the streets of America. Another
weapon of war has come home from the battlefields of
Iraq and Afghanistan. In the isolated case of the
sniper, dead may be dead, whether by explosive or
rifle shot. But in the precedent set on the streets
of Dallas, a very important line has been crossed.
Here’s why
this is very bad.
As in Iraq
and Afghanistan, it is clear that an escalation in
force by the police can only serve to inflame a
situation, and trigger a subsequent escalation among
those who will then seek to defend themselves
against robots sent against them. In America’s wars,
the pattern of you use a drone, I plant an IED is
all to familiar. Will person being blown up by the
cops likely soothe community tensions, or exacerbate
them? Did the use of other military weaponry calm
things in Ferguson, or encourage the anger there to
metastasize into other locations?
More Force Sooner?
And will
robots increase or decrease the likelihood cops will
employ more force sooner in a situation?
“The
further we remove the officer from the use of force
and the consequences that come with it, the easier
it becomes to use that tactic,”
said Rick Nelson, a fellow at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and a former
counterterrorism official. “It’s what we have done
with drones in warfare. Yet in war, your object is
always to kill. Law enforcement has a different
mission.”
Who
is Responsible?
With a
drone, it becomes easier to select the easier wrong
of killing over the harder right of complex
negotiations and methodical police work. Police
officers sign up accepting in some ways a higher
level of risk than soldiers, in that cops should be
exercising a much more complex level of judgement in
when and how to use force. Simply because they can
use deadly force — or can get away with it — does
not make it right. A robot removes risk, and dilutes
personal responsibility.
For
example, if an individual officer makes a decision
to use his/her personal weapon, s/he takes on full
responsibility for the outcome. In the case of a
robot, the decision is the product of a long chain
of command extending far from whomever has a finger
on the switch. The same is true for America’s drone
army abroad. The shooter and the decider are far
removed from one another.
Who is
responsible? What if we start to believe no one is?
Peter Van
Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department,
spent a year in Iraq. Following his book, We Meant
Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts
and Minds of the Iraqi People, the Department of
State began proceedings against him. Through the
efforts of the Government Accountability Project and
the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State
Department on his own terms.
His
second book,
Ghosts of Tom Joad, A Story of the #99Percent
(2014) is fiction about the social and economic
changes in America between WWII and the decline of
the blue collar middle class in the 1980’s.
Hooper’s War,
an anti-war novel, is due out in 2016. It is a tale
of moral complexity, of decisions made in the split
seconds that make up war, set in a fictional WWII
where the atomic bomb never worked, and a land
invasion of Japan took place.
http://wemeantwell.com/ |
