Barack Obama’s rumored nominations of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense and John Brennan as Director of the CIA remind me that German physicists’ debates about science and warfare during World War I resonate in our own time. McCormach’s account of the director of the physical institute’s -- the Geheimrath’s -- visit to the old professor reveals an intimate moment in a long-running controversy. According to the Geheimrath, “the war should leave Germany dominant on the continent... [and] assure the future of the monarchy and empire.” The old professor objects that “we live in daily fear of a catastrophic breakthrough in the West.... The future of Germany doesn’t depend on influence in Turkey or a piece of Belgium. It depends on character, on spirit, on idealism--on, among other things, science!” But then the novelist opens up the reader’s perspective on the larger debate about science in wartime. The old professor goes to bed with the war; he worries about it all day; he must confront endless demands that he support the war in word and deed. At a recent public meeting at the physical institute, the tensions broke out in a public row about U-boats. The Geheimrath has declared something about “how they had taught people the meaning of technical progress,” to which a member of the faculty yelled that “I can’t believe that anyone still puts his trust in U-bats.... Militarily, they have been disastrous, bringing America into the war, and, humanely speaking, they are the worst violation yet of civilized restraint. To sink ships on sight without warning and without means for saving survivors is worse than bombing undefended towns or using poison gas and exploding bullets.” (pp. 6-7)
Drones are our own U-boats. John Brennan, for instance, in an official address in 2011, argued that the US drone program has unprecedented ability to “distinguish … effectively between an al Qaeda terrorist and innocent civilians,” and touted its missile-armed drones as capable of conducting strikes with “astonishing” and “surgical” precision. Even though civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians. In public statements, the US states that there have been “no” or “single digit” civilian casualties.” It is difficult to obtain data on strike casualties because of US efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability, compounded by the obstacles to independent investigation of strikes in North Waziristan. The best currently available public data on drone strikes are provided by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), an independent journalist organization. TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. This report includes the harrowing narratives of many survivors, witnesses, and family members who provided evidence of civilian injuries and deaths in drone strikes to our research team. It also presents detailed accounts of three separate strikes, for which there is evidence of civilian deaths and injuries, including a March 2011 strike on a meeting of tribal elders that killed some 40 individuals.
In the face of this evidence, how do we best understand this new technology of warfare? I think that the old professor’s resistance to official claims for the U-boat’s effectiveness, and his colleagues’ public opposition, helps us begin to grapple with a new and wrongheaded confidence in drones.
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