7-Day Drone Poll

[joshcryer]

55. I passed for one simple reason.

Being anti-authoritarian, it is clear that states will use whatever means that they will have at their disposal against belligerents. With that knowledge the only consistent position you can take is "states don't like belligerents."

If you say, "I do not believe the state I live within should protect itself from belligerents," then you are effectively saying "I do not believe the state I live within should be a state." Since, clearly, if states do not protect themselves from belligerents they will fall into disarray and no longer be states. Such a position is untenable, and indeed, ridiculous.

No state on the planet will give up its sovereign right to protect itself from belligerents.

The first proposition supposes states shouldn't use certain technologies to protect themselves. This is all well and good, but it is not a scenario that exists in reality. Even the most anti-American of states are building nukes, and the very same people who might say that we shouldn't use drones would come off as pro-proliferation when it comes anti-American states having nuclear warheads! A truly diabolical proposition!

The second proposition supposes that the drone war is a war on a declared state. It is not. It is a war against those not recognized by a state. For good reason. If a state recognized the belligerents, then they would defacto be responsible for the actions of the belligerents, and themselves would be a target, and not drone strikes, but actions far more sinister such as a ground invasion.

The third through eighth propositions are basically not that different except they make silly exceptions for whether one is American or not or whether one resides in America or not. All of those scenarios ignore that no state on the planet will give up its sovereign right to protect itself from belligerents. So they are untenable, they simply aren't reality. Adding law enforcement into the mix ups the ante but it's also not very different.

So when I'm asked, "Do you support targeted assassination or military strikes with drones?" my answer is clearly no. But I'm not naive to believe that there exist any other possibility when states are concerned and therefore cannot vote "other" because there simply exist no other possibility. They will be increasingly used, and they will be used within the United States. It's inevitable.