The Writer's Notebook

The American people are tired of war, particularly the “boots on the ground” kind where Americans are killed. However, they seem content to conduct war by other means, i.e. drones. One poll shows that eight out of ten Americans support the use of lethal drones. That’s because drones have been posed as a cheap alternative for killing our enemies that puts no American lives at risk and only hits the “bad guys.” In reality, they are not all that cheap (especially since they are constantly crashing), they kill lots of innocent people, and while they don’t put pilots at risk, they stir up anti-American sentiment and provoke new attacks against us. Drones may seem like “war made easy,” but that’s precisely the problem. War should not be easy, and drone attacks just guarantee that we will keep making new enemies faster than we can kill them.