Military Drones are not the Solution

By

Dr. Mahmoud S. Audi

In my opinion, Al Mutanabbi is one of the great poets of all times. He wrote epic poems more than thousand years ago. He was born in current day Iraq and as a professional poet he had traveled to many cities including Baghdad, Aleppo, and Cairo. Poetry had been his passion and his key to achieve his political ambitions.

Although Baghdad had been the capital of the Abbasside Caliphate, the Caliphate included prominent city states which had been governed by emirs (governors). Aleppo, currently the largest city in Syria, was one of those city states. It is located in the north west of current day Syria bordering the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor (Current day Turkey). Despite the difference in size and power of the two political entities they had frequent border skirmishes.

Saif id dawlah (the sword of the state) had been the governor of Aleppo. He had in his divan historians, poets, and other artists and professionals. The poets composed epic poems praising the governor for his generosity at home and his valor at war.

Al Mutanabbi was invited to join the staff of the governor. He accepted the invitation and started creating lengthy poems filled with vivid imagery of the governor and his deeds. Shortly afterwards he became the head poet of the divan, to the chagrin of the older poets.

In a poem describing one of the border skirmishes, he wrote about the bravery of the infantry and the cavalry of the governor. They used skillfully their swords and shields. But the forces of the enemy used shielded horses in addition to the traditional swords and shields. The shielded horse was a new war technology: It was the “military drone” of that time.

The translation of the verse which includes the shielded horse metaphor follows.

“They came to you, pushing their iron, looking like
They advanced toward you on horses without legs”

And to appreciate the musicality of the verse, the English transliteration of the same verse follows.

“Atooka yajorroon al hadeeda ka anna ma
Sa oo be jeyadin ma lahonna kawa immoo”

Drones give military advantage, to those who use them, now as much as shielded horses gave military advantage, to those who had used them.The drones, known as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UNV), have been available in many sizes, capabilities, and missions. They could be used and some have been used in many civilian and military applications. They could be used in crowd management such as in controlling riots and demonstrations; they could be used in border surveillance and security; in protecting critical infrastructure such as oil refineries, power plants, and dams; in protecting major sports and political events; and in numerous military operations. Some of the civilian use may undermine the civil liberties of a democracy.

However, like many technologies which have been developed to expand the borders of human knowledge and advance the contents of his civilization, they have dark sides. For example in the Stone Age man developed a hard stone into a knife to procure and prepare his food, but later he used the new tool to kill his fellow human; also understanding the structure of the atom helped advance the human knowledge, but it also set scientists on the road to develop the atomic bomb to kill people and destroy properties efficiently. The dark side of the drone is its recent use to assassinate people. Our government is leader in this field. It has been using drones to assassinate people in Pakistan among other sovereign countries. They destabilized these countries. In particular Pakistan which had been our major ally in South East Asia during the Cold War is now living in chaos. Unfortunately we might have started a perpetual drone war in that poor country.

Moreover, when a drone fires a missile to kill a suspect, it kills the suspect and whoever is with him or around him. That action creates more enemies than it kills. The drone is not the solution; it is the creator of more lethal problems. We must check the results of using drones to assassinate people. Imitating those who believe ruthless killing of civilians as a strategy is not acceptable. We must reclaim our status as the beacon on top of a hill for the rest of the world to emulate. Our government must think of the consequences of using these machines. We cannot live behind ever increasing walls with ever increasing heights. As the leading democracy in the world we must incessantly demonstrate our values. Our actions must not bring us hate and isolation; it must bring us respect and appreciation.

After all, the shielded horse did not protect the Byzantine Empire against the invasion of the Ottomans.