There’s an interesting new twitter feed called @dronestream out that is posting a few details about every documented US drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
Here’s what I found most interesting, from an article on Slate reporting on dronestream: Between 2,597 and 3,398 people have been killed, including between 473 and 889 civilians. So somewhere between 13 and 35% of the deaths are civilians.
Sounds bad, right? But more than two thirds of deaths in the Iraq war were civilians. Drones are better at avoiding civilian deaths than troops on the ground. But they’re obviously worse than not fighting. So I guess that leaves an important question, that I’m hoping someone can answer: what else would we be doing differently in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and neighboring countries if we didn’t have drones? Would we be sending more troops into Afghanistan, for example? Would we have sent troops into Yemen in lieu of drones?
If we’re going to fight, drones look like the most humane way to do it. But do we have to fight these fights?
