The Humanity

In the War on Terror, most of 'Merica's recent attacks against the terrorists have been carried out by robots, specifically by Predator drones.  In classic fashion, the counter-strikes against terrorists have been met by counter-charges of terrorism, with the Taliban and al-Qaeda accusing the US of wantonly killing civilians.

The US claims that the drones are incredibly accurate, that they've killed 400-500 enemy combatants and only 20 civilians, and that those civilians only died because the terrorists used them as human shields to obtain public sympathy.  Meanwhile, by Pakistan's estimates, the drones have killed only 14 terrorist leaders and 700 civilians.  As a result, some scholars have questioned the ethics of using drones, saying they've distanced us from the human costs of war, and that we're sacrificing the lives of innocent foreign civilians in order to avoid risking our own men.  Many fear that the drones are so despised in Af-Pak, that they've become a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. 

In the War for Hearts and Minds, the use of drones is in large part a PR decision, and its a sticky one.  Obama (in)famously voiced concerns during the '08 campaign that we needed more troops in Afghanistan so that "we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians"; now, under his watch, drone attacks in Pakistan are four-times more frequent than under Bush.  This Reuters article says that he chose to use drones because if we went into Pakistan with troops, we'd inflame the Pakistani populace, and jeopardize our alliance with that country.  Additionally, capturing and detaining the militants might create another Gitmo or Abu Ghraib scandal, so the best strategy is to simply kill them from afar.  Meanwhile, the Pakistani government, who are forced by local politics to oppose the strikes, are secretly "providing more behind-the-scenes assistance than in the past", helping us locate terrorist targets. 


So much of this war is fought in the theatre of public opinion, and the US has to admit that weapons like the MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer have a bit of an image problem.  Looking at this picture from Slate, its easy to see why some might view them as soulless machines of indiscriminate destruction.

There's something really freaky and inhuman about the lack of windows. 

This guy was in Pan's Labyrnth.  He had no eyes on his face, and an indiscriminate appetite to devour anything he could get his hands on.  This movie was praised for the craft of it's psychological brutality.

The Cylons, even though they were fighting on behalf of robot-supremacy, had the decency to anthropomorphize their Cylon Raiders, which were arguably more sympathetic than the craggy visage of Edward James Olmos.