The arguments about the use of military and civilian drones are getting sillier and sillier. Some of those arguments prove conclusively there is such a thing as reverse evolution. Drones will fill the world’s skies because they may represent a tipping point in warfare, and drones by the thousands will fly peacetime jobs. That is, if we ever have peacetime again. A Predator drone may find an Al Qaeda leader in a hideout in the mountains of Pakistan and blow him to Allah and martyrdom. Another may track a Cessna four-seater to a crash site in the Rockies or see weeds damaging a farmer’s crops.
   Two news stories on January 28 illustrate my point. The Pentagon announced that we are planning to place drones in many spots in “Africaistan” in order to track Al Qaeda moves in many African countries. On the same day, a North Dakota freshman legislator named Rick Becker sought his 15 minutes of fame by introducing a “drone” bill because he is so concerned about privacy rights. Law enforcement, as an example, would have to get a warrant to use drones to track criminals—and the drones could not be armed. The ignorance continues to explode.

The Rapid Development Of Drones

  A Department of Defense section named the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is responsible for developing some military weapons. DARPA is now concentrating on developing drones. We all know the capability of the Predator drone, which is used in surveillance and the majority of attacks on Al Qaeda leadership in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other hot spots. But the Predator is a Model-T compared to the latest ones developed by DARPA. The Boeing A160 Hummingbird is a vertical-takeoff craft with a forward speed of 160 mph, a range of about 3,000 miles, and the ability to fly at 30,000 feet for over 24 hours. It is 35 feet long but weighs only 6,500 pounds fully equipped and loaded.
   But the unique thing about this drone is the Autonomous Realtime Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System camera (ARGUS-IS). It can fly over territory and collect six petabytes of high-definition video every 24 hours. DARPA says that’s 79.8 years of video every day. Don’t ask how they measure that. The camera is so capable it requires two processing subsystems to control the massive data collected. ARGUS can monitor up to 36 square miles and 65 different points of reference at the same time. In other words, it can track 65 targets going 65 different directions. Three Hummingbirds will be assigned to Afghanistan this spring.
   DARPA is currently testing the X-47B drone fighter that can take off and land from a carrier by remote control. This is a bit tricky because of wind speed and carrier movement. A carrier with 40 X-47Bs could sail up and down the coast of Africa and track Al Qaeda leaders and training sites and, at the same time, dozens of pirate boats attempting to capture oil tankers for ransom in the Indian Ocean.
  DARPA is working on drones as small as six inches. They can fly through windows, doors,  rooms, and hallways and take pictures.  A 3-ft. by 3-in. model drone called Argus carries Lancet micro-missiles to destroy small targets. It can also be used to detect roadside bombs. Welcome to the tipping point in warfare.

Why Are Generals
Always Fighting
The Last War?


   Neocons such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Kristol, and a roost of warmongers convinced President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq. Dubya, a patriotic member of the Texas Air National Guard Champagne Flight, fought to keep the Viet Cong from crossing the Rio Grande. These chickenhawks are absolutely opposed to having Chuck Hagel confirmed as secretary of defense. Hagel, that wild-assed Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts, called the Iraq War the worst U.S. mistake in a hundred years. It is doubly abhorrent to the neocons, who probably hold the world record for military deferments, that Hagel and that socialist-commy-black-witch-doctor-Kenya-born President Barack Obama have similar views about war—and the role of the United States as a superpower. According to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, Obama and Hagel ended up becoming sympatico in the Senate because they had similar views.
   Hagel realized that he and Obama shared a vision when he listened to Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another—that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory... But war itself is never glorious and we must never trumpet it as such. So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths—that war is sometimes necessary and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”  
   This is the Obama-Hagel doctrine of war. So here we have a real complicated national bird: a cross-breed of hawk and dove. If we have enemies, they have to know that this cross-breed can fight or seek peace—but that war will be brought only after talk has been exhausted.
   Just for fun, I put the words “dove” and “hawk” together and mixed the letters up. I came up with a new bird named the “evokwahd.” Instead of weapons clutched in sharp talons, perhaps the evokwahd is a white and blue bird with a predator beak but duck-like feet with spurs, capable of a fight or a peace flight. It could be a good symbol for a superpower.



I Didn’t Join The Marines
To Sing “Kumbaya”

   I am not a pacifist or peacenik. I am not a warmonger. I raise evokwahds. In the last half-century, we have been in three stupid wars for 34 years so far: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Only Afghanistan was necessary for six months to send a clear message to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We should have declared victory eleven years ago and come home. There is nothing more stupid than spending $2 trillion dollars over a decade to bring “democracy” to two tribal countries when Osama bin Laden suckered us into the 14th Crusade by spending only $400,000 to hijack four passenger jets to kill 3,000 people from 80 countries who worked in the World Trade Center. These jihadists are not stupid camel drivers. He and Al Qaeda have nearly bankrupted us. In 2004 Osama bin Laden said, “All that we have to do is to send two mujahedin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written Al Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses.” We even paid for our troops to go to Iraq and Afghanistan so they were on convenient killing grounds for Al Qaeda.
   Some historians have estimated that Islam and Christianity are now conducting the 14th Crusade, indicating that the first 13 conflicts did not resolve the differences between the two religions. The 1st Crusade started in 1095 and the 13th ended sometime in the 1600s. Islamic extremists are now fighting us in the 14th Crusade by organizing terrorist groups in about 60 countries.
   I want Obama and Hagel to increase the use of drones wherever Al Qaeda is. If an Al Qaeda leader sticks his head out of his hut in Pakistan, Mali, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Mujao, Libya, Afghanistan, or 52 other countries and sees a large bird, I want him to duck and quiver in fear of having a Hellfire missile put 72 holes in him to send him to Allah, martyrdom, and his 72 virgins.

Some Lawyers Need
To Study The History
Of Warfare


   Some lawyers and pundits say that by using drones we are violating the rules of war outlined in the Geneva Convention and international treaties. Some are complaining that Obama shouldn’t order the killing of American traitors such as Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son without due process because they were American citizens. These American citizens recruited Al Qaeda groups to commit terror against U.S. citizens any place on the globe—while living in Yemen. A Predator strike ended that, and sent a clear message to other traitors. We had sufficient evidence of their treason. That’s life and death in the globalization of war these days. Any traitor should be forced to keep his eye on the sky.
   The documentary “Drones Exposed” advertises that we killed 178 children in eliminating a whole slew of Al Qaeda leaders in the Middle and Far East. We are at war with their fathers, folks. As my favorite general “Chesty” Puller used to say, “War is hell.” If Al Qaeda fathers want to protect their precious children, perhaps they should have relatives care for them while they fight us. All kinds of people get killed in war zones. War zones are global these days.
    Cyberwar and drone war is the new mode of war. New wars require new protocols. Our generals parading Marine patrols along 15,000-ft. steep mountain trails and preaching counter-insurgency in Afghanistan were using an obsolete, antiquated strategy. War has changed. World War I emphasized trench warfare. That’s why Great Britain lost 20,000 men in one day in the battle of the Somme. World War II emphasized the blitzkrieg of armor and the long-range bombers of Ploesti, Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima. That’s why 200,000 Japanese died in bright flashes at the culmination of the war. My Marines lost over 9,000 KIA and 20,000 wounded in one month taking Iwo Jima and Okinawa so that B-29 bombers could attack Tokyo and drop the big boys on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Marines had 6,000 casualties on Iwo in the first 76 hours. On D-Day in Europe, the Americans, English, and Canadians had 8,443 KIAs on Normandy Beach in about 12 hours. “War is hell,” as Chesty would say.

The Laws Of Warfare—
And When They
Are Broken

   Those lawyers and pundits who challenge the use of drones should spend some time learning about the laws of war, even those going as far back as the Old Testament. As a Marine officer, I gave required annual lectures on the Geneva Convention and international treaties to my troops. The first laws of war were in Deuteronomy 20:10-12: “When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor... If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. Female captives who marry victors shall not be sold as slaves.”
   The Geneva Convention has hundreds of requirements on how military and civilians are to be treated—and how wars are to be fought and what weapons are banned. It is still a legal document. There are literally hundreds of rules about the treatment of prisoners of war, a great interest to grunts carrying a rifle. Three rules come to mind as most important to troops: (1) “Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture is prohibited.” (2) “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment, is prohibited.” (3) “The wounded and sick must be collected and cared for.” The use of waterboarding and the treatment of prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib has prompted several countries to bring war crimes charges against George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld. Perhaps you have noticed they have not traveled widely in Europe.

   There are also dozens of rules regarding “collateral damage,” or what happens when civilians and other non-combatants get in harm’s way. When Germany “blitzed” London in WW II, thousands of civilians were killed. When we bombed Dresden we killed 25,000 in one night. When we bombed Tokyo with incendiaries near the end of WW II, we killed over 200,000 in firestorms. We won that war and the Axis lost. Consequently, we hanged 11 Germans (except for Herman Goering—he beat the hanging with cyanide) of high rank for war crimes. As a result of the Tokyo war crimes trials, we hanged seven Japanese leaders and sentenced 16 others to life imprisonment. Asian countries were not as benevolent. They charged 5,000 Japanese with war crimes, hanging 900 and sentencing more than half to life imprisonment.  
   War is hell, but keep the drones and evokwahds flying. We can’t afford to have 60 more land wars.