Development of modern drone technologies will never eliminate civilian collateral damage in conflict deployment, Michael Raddie, antiwar activist told RT, arguing that investing in drones makes warfare more acceptable for general public.
RT:A Downing Street source has told the
Independent that drones are an essential piece of equipment for
the military. Well they are, aren’t they?
Michael Raddie: If the military is all about
killing the civilians, then I guess they are. But the real
essence of drone tech is really about just carrying on giving
subsidies to the industrial military complex, the likes of BAE,
the likes of Rolls Royce, Thales UK, these are all the companies
that are going to benefit from this joint-drone program. In fact
it’s not going to be just with the French. I think the British
are talking to the Italians and the Swedes and who knows who
else.
But the program is likely to continue, the Reaper drones in
Afghanistan are likely to be redeployed into Africa, again to
assist the French, maybe in Mali, Central African Republic and
possibly back into Libya to quell the pro-Gaddafi green uprising
that is happening there in the south of the country.
RT:But the drones just don’t kill
civilians, the whole point of this move by the British and the
French is to build their own drones to make their own country
safe, as well as obviously to use them in the overseas campaign
where they are deemed necessary….
MR: This is the problem with the politics of
drone warfare. It becomes very easy to sell a war based on drones
to the domestic audience, because there’s no soldiers, there’s no
airmen, there’s no pilots putting their lives at risk. This makes
drone warfare fairly acceptable to most countries. It is very
popular in the US, again for those reasons I’ve mentioned. It’s
become popular in the UK, because we don’t have boots on the
ground, we don’t have soldiers losing their lives. But what is to
stop China and Russia and other states taking part in drone
warfare.
Effectively, if you use drones in another country, you have
invaded a sovereign state, you have violated the sovereignty of
that foreign country. That is against the law, that is a breach
of international law right there. It seems to me that the current
agreement that’s going to be signed tomorrow… The French and the
British, at the moment, they kind of make strange bedfellows,
because we have a socialist government in France, we have a
far-right, Tory government in the UK, they differ very much on
the economic policy, and there has been a political spat about
that.
In fact, this conference tomorrow, this summit tomorrow, was
originally going to be held in Blenheim Palace. Now this just
highlights the diplomatic insensitiveness of British. Blenheim
Palace was named after a famous baron in the 19th century when
the British slaughtered 30,000 French soldiers. It was moved at
the last minute over to Brize Norton, just to avoid this
embarrassment. Just the idea of that plan going ahead is just
incredible.
So I think the long-term goal, certainly in the next 10-15 years,
is to continue the drone program. It’s going to escalate and it’s
going to reach parts of Africa that we have not been to thus far.
RT:Will drones become far more effective
and accurate in the future, thus lowering the amount of civilian
casualties?
MR: I don’t really see this happening, to be honest. The
CIA drone program is pretty reckless and has the most civilian
casualties associate with it. But then the CIA instead of getting
most of its intelligence from Pakistan, places like Somalia,
countries like Afghanistan, all of their intelligence is coming
from the NSA and the GCHQ. So they are basing their missile
strikes on intelligence that is not even being gathered on the
ground, it’s gathered several thousand miles away. For one, it’s
not going to be very accurate. In terms of collateral damage, yes
we do have missiles that do kill those in the surrounding area
and I do not think even the British military take much care, if
they need to take out what they consider as an insurgent, if it
is in a crowd of people, I think, they will carry on doing it
anyway. Certainly the CIA drone attacks have been known to do
that.
But even when there is only one person in the vicinity, we have
managed to kill one person and as it turns out later, they
happened to be civilians. There is a court case going on in the
UK at the moment, brought out by the Afghan civilians because
their family members were killed while farming. We also have
drone pilots that have gone on the record and have said that from
their images they can’t tell if someone is carrying a gun or a
spade. So what the advice to the Afghan population would be? Stop
gardening, stop farming, stop digging crops in the field, because
these drones above your head can’t distinguish what you are
carrying?
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.