W.W.J.D.?

Who Would Jesus Drone?

I'd like to think that, if American Christians actually knew how we conduct our drone wars, there would be national outrage, but I honestly don't have that much confidence in our national conscience.  I hope to be completely mistaken about that, but it's unlikely we'll ever find out, because it's not a topic that gets a lot of time on the evening news, and a lot of us don't watch the evening news anyway.

I don't claim our pilots in Missouri or Nevada just want to kill people, and I think it's great that we can keep our troops out of harm's way, to a much greater extent, with drones than more invasions (for the most part; at the same time, I worry that for most Americans, only concern over American casualties keeps us from being more war-prone than we already are).

My problem is with how the decisions to fire are made. I find it dangerous and Orwellian to call any male in the area of a drone strike a military combatant: "Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent." (http://goo.gl/WVDzb)

My problem is with our own self-assured dishonesty of how few civilians we've killed (None this year - high five! Except that's been thoroughly shown not to be true, even with very conservative methods). http://goo.gl/ojg3e

My problem is that we've used drones to kill a U.S. citizen, without trial (http://goo.gl/fM7bV), for nothing more than exercising his constitutionally enshrined right to free speech (to say reprehensible things, but the Supreme Court established, without question, that we have the right to do that, even to the point of advocating violence, in Brandenburg v. Ohio (http://goo.gl/T9hU2). Then, just two weeks later, we killed his 16 year old son (who, of course, we described as a military combatant - after all, he was killed in a drone strike), also a US citizen, which Obama's press secretary had the audacity to justify by saying, "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they're truly concerned about the well-being of their children" - that's right, it's his fault for not choosing a more responsible father (http://goo.gl/c0KW2).

I have a big problem with us using drones, strategically, to kill those who show up to help the wounded or come to attend a funeral - no risk of civilian deaths there (at least not if they're male - those are enemy combatants!) (http://goo.gl/6ZZsb). This swells the ranks of our enemies, because God has given all of us a desire to see injustice against our loved ones avenged. If a far away, faceless foreign government killed your wife, father, son or daughter, in a group, because there might be bad guys there too, are you going to tell me, with a straight face, that you wouldn't consider (or want to consider, for the cowardly or principled pacifists) joining the side that's fighting that? (Lots more details here: http://goo.gl/Ir2tt)

I'm not a pacifist, I'm not opposed to the United States as a country defending herself. But I do think, ultimately, as citizens of heaven and aliens and strangers in the United States, what we do to stay alive is an important moral question with a lot of repercussions, perhaps more important than whether we stay alive. Some may say it's dangerous for me, just a civilian, who's not privy to any classified intelligence on our drone program, to be asking these questions and making moral judgments about what we're doing; I believe it's more dangerous not to. I believe, when government demands the power to kill, it's our job to call for strict care and oversight, and while I don't think any of our military leaders, or President Obama, or President Bush, want to see civilian deaths, I don't think we're trying hard enough to avoid them.

As Christians, when we talk about these things, I think we need to consider the words of Scripture, and especially those of Christ. So I'll leave off with two verses that I think we could benefit from giving more consideration. First, Proverbs 20:7 "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." Second, Jesus said to Peter, on the night he was betrayed, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)