It's Official: Bipartisan Drone Warfare is Here to Stay

There was no issue addressed in this week’s presidential debate that the two candidates agreed on more fully than drone warfare. Both were steadfast in their dedication to using unmanned drones to kill “enemy combatants” across the world.

Bob Scheiffer, after noting that we already know Obama’s position on drones (he’s for ’em!), asked Romney what his take was. The would-be president said:

I believe that we should use any and all means necessary to take out people who pose a threat to us and our friends around the world. And it's widely reported that drones are being used in drone strikes, and I support that entirely and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology and believe that we should continue to use it to continue to go after the people who represent a threat to this nation and to our friends.

Elsewhere, Romney urged peace, though few, I imagine, believed him; the word sounded clumsy and malformed in his mouth, as though it was the first time he’d spoken it. But not with drones. Let’s do drones.

Bush did drones, and it was semi-controversial. Obama did drones, and shut up, THEY SAVE AMERICAN LIVES. Now Romney’s on board; Obama’s wrong about everything else, but he’s right about drones.

And so it is, with broad agreement and heads nodding in unison at an otherwise prickly and contentious debate, that Democrats and Republicans have successfully completed the task of normalizing unmanned aerial drone warfare. Prominent Democrats now defend drone warfare as routinely as they criticized Bush for unscrupulous tactics like waterboarding. Which is why the clip above, flagged by Glenn Greenwald, is so telling. It’s Joe Scarborough, a mainstream conservative Republican with a morning show, who launches a heartfelt diatribe against drones, and Joe Klein, Obama enthusiast, who defends the practice by saying, “But: the bottom line in the end is – whose 4-year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.” My emphasis.

How lovely. Drones may kill 4 year-olds, but they won’t be our 4 year-olds. How hideous. Also: that logic may seem comforting for now, when we have the most and biggest drones, but drones are relatively easy things to build. Using that logic to justify the killing of innocents begs a slippery slope future nobody should be eager to slide down.

Warrior drones have become apolitical. There are those few who oppose drone war from both the right and the left, but those complainers are relegated to the fringe by the Very Serious People in Washington. It’s the status quo, it’s what 21st century war looks like, the power brokers say. Get used to it. After all, if the Democrats should rediscover their contempt for indiscriminate warfare under, say, a Romney presidency, who would take them seriously? The trajectory is set; drones are as much a part of the modern military industrial complex as F15s and submarines. Maybe more so. There’s no turning back, now, Ike!