Game of
Drones
CODEPINK’S MEDEA BENJAMIN
ON KILLING BY REMOTE CONTROL
By Camilla Mortensen
O
n Medea Benjamin’s fi rst
day visiting the Pakistan-
Afghan border in 2002,
the CodePink: Women for
Peace founder met what
the U.S. military terms
“collateral damage.”
Roya, a 13-year-old Afghan girl,
approached Benjamin on the street with
her hand outstretched and her head cocked
to one side, begging for money. Roya’s
mother and two brothers had been killed in
a U.S. drone attack, their house apparently
mistaken for part of a nearby Taliban
compound.
“When Roya’s father came home, he
carefully collected all the bits and pieces
of his pulverized family that he could fi nd,
buried them immediately according to
Islamic tradition, then sank into a severe
state of shock,” Benjamin writes in her
book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote
Control.
Roya and her two sisters fl ed with
their father to Pakistan. Formerly a street
vendor who sold the baked sweets made by
his wife, Roya’s father now sits and stares
into space, unable to function.
These are only some of the lives
destroyed, literally torn limb from limb,
by U.S. bombs that drop from modern
weaponry called unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs), unmanned aircraft systems
(UASs) or simply: drones.
Benjamin will be in Eugene July 1 at
Cozmic to talk about her book and to
discuss modern drone warfare and what
can be done to stop it. Although drones kill
remotely, in the near future their presence
may not be so remote to Oregonians.
Central Oregon is vying to become a drone-
testing area, thanks to a Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) reauthorization
bill passed earlier this year. Benjamin is
currently on a book tour to call attention to
the “growing menace of robotic warfare.”
Benjamin said in a recent interview
with EW, “People live in constant fear
because they hear the buzzing of the
drones constantly overhead. Children are
12
JUNE 28, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
frightened to death” by drone warfare.
While proponents call drone strikes
“surgical” and “precise,” Benjamin’s book
has a different story of innocent men,
women and children blown to pieces and
losing limbs as a result of drone strikes.
But those images don’t get out, she says of
the mainstream media coverage.
“We never see drone victims. We never
see the charred pieces of fl esh hanging on
trees,” Benajmin says. “It’s hard to develop
a sense of compassion when you don’t see
those pictures.”
What has fi red up some Americans
about the drone issue are reports that by
U.S.A.F.
and counties like Otter Tail, Minn., and
Herington, Kan. The Forest Service and
several universities are also listed among
the public agencies that are authorized for
drones.
Another group, called Public Intelligence,
released a map on June 12 from a U.S. Air
Force presentation that shows Portland and
Arlington, Ore., as homes to drones. Sen.
Ron Wyden has confi rmed the Portland site
as a drone storage area, and while it’s not
a launch site, Wyden says drones could be
launched from it in an emergency. Arlington
is where Boeing-subsidiary Insitu has its
test airfi eld.
the development of UAVs must be done
with a clear view of both the benefi ts and
the potential for abuse — and Congress
must be vigilant to promote the former while
aggressively combating the latter.”
Wyden’s offi ce says that UAVs could
present a new opportunity for central
Oregon’s light aviation industry hit hard
by the economic downturn.
The group Economic Development
for Central Oregon (EDCO) had been
strategizing for more than a year about
how to make Oregon one of the six
new drone testing sites before the FAA
bill gave the new sites the green light
‘We never see drone victims. We never see
the charred pieces of fl esh hanging on trees.
It’s hard to develop a sense of compassion
when you don’t see those pictures.’
Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare
2020 there could be 30,000 drones cruising
U.S. skies under the control of civilian law
enforcement. The FAA denies knowledge
of where that fi gure comes from. According
to the FAA budget bill, however, the agency
must develop regulations for the testing and
licensing of commercial drones by 2015, as
well as expedite the authorization process
for the use of drones by federal, state and
local police and other agencies.
The possibility of an swarm of drones
worries privacy advocates who warn of
the dangers of unmanned craft secretly
surveilling and recording everyday citizens.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
obtained, through a federal Freedom of
Information Act request, a list of drone-
authorized agencies. The list shows that
some larger police departments, such as
in Houston and Seattle, are authorized
for drones, as are smaller ones in cities
Jenna McCulley of the Eugene Police
Department says that unless you count
robotic devices used in the explosive
disposal unit, EPD is not currently
employing drone technology. However, if
it ever became necessary then EPD would
have access to resources via partnering
with the National Guard or federal
agencies, McCulley says.
Wyden came out strongly in favor of
expanding the number of U.S. drone testing
sites — the FAA bill calls for six more —
and the senator has called central Oregon an
ideal site for drone testing. According to his
chief-of-staff, Jennifer Hoelzer, “While Sen.
Wyden encourages the development of these
technologies, it is vital that they not be used
to violate constitutional rights or undermine
existing protections against government
intrusion on private property. As with the
internet, GPS and other new technologies,
in February. EDCO proposed the FAA
allow drone testing in already established
Military Operations Areas (MOA) in the
high desert. But within the MOAs there
exist proposed wilderness areas, BLM-
designated wildlands, wilderness study
areas and part of a national wildlife refuge.
Matt Little of the Oregon Natural Desert
Association is concerned with the effects of
drones on the natural world. According to
Little, drone testing in the high desert could
affect wildlife such as the sage grouse, a
bird species that requires large expanses
of undisturbed habitat and has been in
decline throughout the West. According to
ONDA, sage grouse are warranted to be
listed under the Endangered Species Act,
but political red tape and a backlog with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have
relegated the sage grouse to a waiting list
with more than 200 other species.
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM