Muddy Waters

No, this isn't about American Blues singers of significance.

It is about how the entire American Information Apparatus works in concert to make what ought to be a clear issue unclear. How they work to create muddy waters.

Drones

1. We know what they are. We know what they can do. We know some are armed and some are not. We know they have incredible accuracy, albeit not infallibility.

2. The muddy comes when the technical ability and operational suitability to task of drones is conflated with the appropriateness of the decisions to actually use them in any given circumstance.

And 3, *that* gets even more muddied when one considers extrajudicial orders by a person's government to kill that person.

Points 1 and 2 can be argued and debated and ought to be argued and debated. The first point is about the use of drones over another weapon or surveillance platform. It is really a debate best suited for eggheads and weaponry nerds. For those of us who see it and go "gee-whiz" an hour show on the Discovery Channel would have all the information we'd need to get up to, maybe slightly over, the point at which eyes glaze and ears roll shut.

The second point is really an extension of the first. It is about the tactical choices a mission commander has to make in selecting the right tools to get his job done. In some cases, the drones are the right tool. I'm okay with that. There is nothing inherently different, from an ethical and/or moral perspective, between drones and satellites and smart bombs and all the other modern weapons that are operated from a distance. If one is unethical, they probably all are. And that debate can continue, but the choice of one system over another is simply a matter of a professional making a strategic choice. The matter is no weightier than that.

Even in muddy water, neither of the two preceding issues are sufficiently deep in the mud that they can't be seen. What is way down there, beyond clear view by us thanks to the (in)actions of the American Information Appartus, is the ability to kill at will our own citizens without a judicial order.

I find that enormously troubling.

I am opposed to the death penalty, but I live in a world in which I must accept that we employ it. While I want it gone, if we are going to have it, we must ensure that it is used only when absolutely necessary and then, only in a highly prescribed way with the methods and orders to do it reached in a transparent series of actions, metrics, and follow up actions.

Giving a few men the ability to kill a citizen without such prescribed lead up gets terribly close to granting a democratically elected head of state a dictatorial power. One need not be a dictator to have one or a few dictatorial powers. Look at the very word. It is the ability to dictate. Do you want American presidents to have the power to simply dictate that you, or your son or your sister or your high school chum shall be killed? That is not merely rhetoric. It is literally true. Without a prescribed series of oversight and ascent steps, and without the clear, prescribed need for an after-action report to the people or the people's representatives, the killing of American citizens, which have already occurred, have resulted in your government having killed someone you know without legal process and without your consent or knowledge and without the dead person having the ability to defend himself on a legal basis. That is nothing less than a dictatorial power.

I am very uncomfortable with that.

And you should be, too.

Meanwhile, our crack American media, covering their journalistic asses in fine style, can claim to be "reporting" the story by conflating three aspects of it and ignoring that which is most important. That is either journalistic incompetence or journalistic malpractice. In this country, on far too many occasions, it is exactly that and it is celebrated and rewarded. They sure-nuf do got their mojo workin'.

Muddy Waters.