RAND PAUL AND THE DRONE WARS!

I'm not a big fan of Senator Rand Paul, his father the Texas Congressman Ron Paul, or most of their ideas but I do believe Senator Paul did our country a great service by using his filibuster, of the Brennan nomination, to bring the issues surrounding the use of drones to the fore. Drone and cyber attacks are clearly the wave of the future in warfare and they are already being used by a number of nations in a semi clandestine fashion. The United States is leading the way in both of these categories with the Stuxnet Worm attack on the Iranian Nuclear program  and the prolific use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and who knows where else. This brings several problems immediately to mind:

SECRECY AND DUE PROCESS - We've already used drones to kill three Americans, that we know of. U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of plotting the so-called underwear bombing of a plane in 2009 and two others who were apparently accidents. Watch Christiane Amanpour's video on the subject:

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/12/americans-killed-by-american-drones/ 

The trouble is that the whole process is so secret that we have no oversight of it or understanding of how these decisions are made. Perhaps the most important question of all is, "when mistakes are made and innocent lives are lost, who is held accountable?" I think more transparency, accountability and a stronger legal framework needs to be built into this program.

AGGRESSIVE DRONE/CYBER WAR AND VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW - So when we are talking legal framework another important consideration is International Law. We started both our cyber and drone programs basically as intelligence gathering operations but both have now been weaponized and used in and on foreign countries, think Pakistan and Iran.  When you are violating a nation's airspace using drones to hunt some of their citizens down and assassinate them, then your actions could logically be seen as an act of war. The same could be said of cyber attacks that destroy large amounts of critical data or do real damage like destroying the Iranian centrifuges or shutting down electrical grids. As more nations follow our example by developing and aggressively deploying these type of weapons it is likely that real war will result. 

COLLATERAL DAMAGE AND BLOW BACK - If real war resulting from a nation violating another's sovereignty with cyber or drone weapons isn't enough, there are other types of collateral damage. Right now whole sections of Pakistan are being terrorized and traumatized by our drones. Contrary to the administration's claims drone attacks do kill innocent noncombatants. For each innocent mother, father or child killed how many new terrorists will be be born? When you project out ten or twenty years the blow back from our use of drones could be substantial.

NON STATE ACTORS - Drone technology is not rocket science. In it's most basic form, think radio controlled model airplanes or helicopters. If memory serves, the prototype for one our most successful drones was built by an engineer in his garage using predominately off the shelf parts. The take away, is that non state actors, like terrorists, could soon be using forms of drone technology. The same is obviously true of cyber war. As drones and robots become a bigger part of modern society new opportunities for terrorists will  present themselves. Think of the potential of Google's self driving cars, imagine self driving car bombs.

Don't get me wrong drone and cyber weapons are the future. The drones weapons of today are going to look like Model Ts in just a few years. We desperately need to start discussing the appropriate use of these weapons within our own country and throughout the world before something dreadful happens. This is why I believe that Rand Paul  and Ron Wyden, the only Democrat to join the filibuster, have done us a great service. They have begun an important dialogue on this most secret subject but it is only the start.

Update: I've just read the most interesting article on this subject. Have a look.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321?page=1?mrefid=skybox

Update: Attorney General Eric Holder has admitted, in a letter to Congress, that the U.S. has killed four Americans with drone strikes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57585776/attorney-general-holder-drones-killed-4-americans-since-2009/