Opinion

The blind theology of militarism

In my years reporting on the intentional narrowing of political vernacular to guarantee specific outcomes, I have encountered no better example of Orwellian newspeak than that which now dominates the conversation about America's drone war. Given that, it's worth reviewing the situation because it is so illustrative of how militarist propaganda operates in the 21st century.

As you know if you've paid attention to recent news, drone war proponents are facing inconvenient truths. This month, for instance, they are facing a new United Nations report showing that President Obama's escalation of the Afghanistan War - which is defined, in part, by an escalation in drone air strikes - is killing hundreds of children "due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force." They are also facing news that the rise in drone strikes is accompanying a rise in al Qaeda recruits, proving that, in predictable "blowback" fashion, the attacks may be creating more terrorists than they are neutralizing.

Drone-war cheerleaders will no doubt find this news difficult to explain away on the merits. Comments by Sen. Angus King, independent-Maine, justifying the drone war earlier this month exemplify the talking points.

"Drones are a lot more civilized than what we used to do," he told a cable television audience. "I think it's actually a more humane weapon because it can be targeted to specific enemies and specific people."

Designed to obscure mounting civilian casualties, King's phrase "humane weapon" is the crux of the larger argument. The idea is that an intensifying drone war is necessary - and even humane! - because it is more surgical than violent global ground war, which is supposedly America's only other option. As one drone-war defender put it on Twitter: "Drones? 160,000 pairs of boots on the ground? Hmm."

In a country whose culture so often (wrongly) portrays bloodshed as the most effective problem solver, many Americans hear this now-ubiquitous drone-war argument and reflexively agree with its suppositions.

The failure to question such an assumption represents what can be accurately described as a fundamentalist religion.

By deliberately ignoring any other less violent option, drone-war proponents who employ choice-narrowing language are the militarist dogma's most destructive evangelists.

At a moment when we should be having a broader conversation about alternatives to permanent war, they are preventing that conversation from even starting. In the process, they are precluding America from making more prudent, informed and dispassionate national security decisions - the kind that might stop us from repeating the worst mistakes of our own history.

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