For each drone kill, the “home of the brave” might become more vulnerable.

I refer to Karen J. Greenberg’s review of Grégoire Chamayou’s “A theory of the drone”, Washington Post’s Outlook of March 22.

In it Greenberg writes: “Drones are the opposite of warfare… a warrior culture in which readiness to kill has been inseparable from the willingness to die. With drones the ethics of warrior cultures have been superseded, and the warriors have turned into invulnerable, cold-hearted executioners.”

As to “invulnerable”, I am not sure. For each drone kill, as opposed to a combat kill, the executioner distances himself more and more from the real world, and so becomes perhaps more and more vulnerable to it. What we already so often hear about “not wishing boots on the ground” might be just an appetizer of things to come.

Currently many kids, by the web, walk the whole world, but rarely set their feet out in the real world. Others have no access to the web, but keep on learning how to fight it out on the streets. When push comes to shove, who are going to prevail… those handy with drones, or those handy with pliers able to cut the power lines off?

@PerKurowski

PS. My father would never have been liberated without corageous boots on the ground

A letter not published L