Back Story: What's that I hear?

We lost a drone aircraft this week and it ended up in the hands of that evil empire, Iran. Let's face it, it was destined to happen. Send out enough drones and one of them is bound to crash and burn. Only this one didn't crash and it didn't burn. It somehow ended up in Iranian custody fully intact and will, no doubt, be shared with China and Russia for their perusal.

Eisenhower warned us more than fifty years ago about the growing military-industrial complex. But, we didn't want to listen. Especially not here in Dayton. Our economies, both national and local, rely on the development of increasingly sophisticated weaponry. The problem with that, besides the obvious, is that shortly after we develop a new weapon, the other side gets it, either by coming into possession of one and reverse engineering it, by spying, or by being forced to develop one for themselves. That's what we call escalation.

The drone that was captured happened to be used for surveillance. I can't tell you what the mechanical differences are between surveillance drones and killer drones. But, I'm willing to bet it won't be long before our own invention is turned against us and we have to come up with something bigger and better to counter it. Ironically, what the drone was spying on was another aspect of arms escalation, Iran's attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

The obvious problem with killer drones is that they kill. We have given the CIA license to hunt down and kill individuals they deem to be a threat to our national security and we have given them an unimaginable weapon to do it with. The thinking was that killer drones would be able to kill with surgical precision, without risking the lives of American pilots. But, as it turns out, that is not the case. Many more innocent civilians have been murdered than the likes of Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists. And then there is the unseemly bragging every time we do manage to assassinate a suspected terrorist in another sovereign country without due process of law.

I'm not sure if it's even possible for this country to alter its current course and base its economy on something other than war-mongering. It would take a lot more than just rooting out the Black Waters and the Halliburtons. It would take the people that live in our region to start questioning the morality of developing and piloting drones right here in our backyard, instead of blindly heralding the new jobs that such an enterprise brings.

We question CEMEX when they say their polluting factories and quarries bring jobs to the area. We question the oil companies when they talk about job creation and lower energy costs in connection with fracking. Why isn't there more of an outcry about this? Could it be because the death and destruction will not occur in our own backyard?

Wait a minute... What's that I hear? Is there something over head?

-vh