Comment Paper Three

Comment Paper 3

Richard Russell

1.11.13

The reading Do Drones Undermine Democracy? by Peter W. Singer discusses the ways that democracy is undermined by a drone program especially when there is deep bonds between the public and its wars. He specifically points out the Constitutional procedures for the declaration of war and how they have changed. Currently the Obama administration has the view that American drone operations within countries do not constitute a violation of the War Powers Resolution because they do not “involve the presence of U.S. ground troops. U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof.” However if another country was to do the same thing we do we would consider it an act of war. For example, say Canada has had one of its top 10 criminals escape to the US and we refuse to extradite that person because we know they are going to face certain death. Canada then decides to take out this person with a focused drone strike on one of our prison facilities. Our two countries would come very close to having an all-out war simply because the Canadians did not respect the sovereignty of our laws. How is the way we act within Pakistan and Yemen any different from this? If the shoe was on the other foot our government and citizens would be hysterical. The Bush administration did some of the drone strikes in sovereign countries but the Obama White House refined and extended the book on what is ethical.

To make matters worse we have set a precedent where the president only needs to ask Congress’ approval if he is going to send actual human soldiers to an area. Droids and robots simply don’t count because they wouldn’t count as casualties. Congress hasn’t exactly lied down over this. With Libya Republicans raised a lot of concerns over the legality of the President’s actions. However their position was weakened by past petty disagreements and it was generally disregarded by the American public. The American government hardly ever declares war anymore. This is a big problem because it clearly ignores the intention of the Founders in regards to separation of powers and further weakens the democratic process. Politicians found that they could avoid the technical declaration of war and its political ramifications. Now they have found an even more politically expedient way to bypass negative public pressure to avoid conflicts. I believe this could increase the amount of armed conflicts we become engaged in because of the lack of flack that politicians suffer. Anyone who says that the money it takes to participate in the conflict as a deterrent are being unrealistic. The politicians in Washington don’t care about spending a couple billion because most Americans don’t grasp that. What Americans do grasp is the sight of dead soldiers on their televisions at 7 o’clock. The lack of formal declaration of wars and the use of drones could inevitably lead to almost constant military conflicts. These conflicts would cost rather large amounts of money but result in hardly any loss of American lives, causing our government to pursue them for a much longer time.