These are tumultuous times in Droneland. Some bewildered United States drones are actually mired in second thoughts about their god-given mission -- as expressed in detail to author and blogger David Swanson. [1] They even founded their own awareness group -- DAWN (Drones Against War Now).
Others, meanwhile, remain downright defiant. Like this hunter/killer Predator, equipped with Hellfire missiles and sat-guided bombs who, on a strategic partnership visit to Paris, escaped to the chic cabinet of renowned Lacanian master Dr. Bernard-Henri Puant in Saint Germain, not far from the Cafe de Flore of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir fame, where they engaged in an impromptu psychoanalytic session.
Now Dr. Puant may claim a world first; he managed to put a drone on the divan. No one would ever be aware of the contents of their sensitive conversation had the Central Intelligence Agency -- which had Dr Puant under surveillance -- not intervened. But then the file was conveniently leaked to Medialand as an effort by the embattled Nicolas Sarkozy campaign to discredit the heavily politicized drone. The tactic may yet backfire.
What follows is a rough transcript.
Dr Puant: -- Relax and drone downstream. What's on your mind?
Drone patient: -- Doc, I'm swingin', big time. I'm a lean, mean, killing machine, the Almighty Predator, unleashing the Will of the Lord from on high. I got 10 million likes in my Facebook page -- and counting. Check my infrared, my radar, my thermal ... Nowhere to hide, baby! Enemy insurgents, beware, 'cause I'm coming to get ya! All over. Even in the good ol' United States of America.
We got 63 secret, well, now not so secret, sites already -- and counting. We are already one in every three US warplanes; by 2020 we will be an army of 30,000! We are a $30 billion-a-year industry -- and counting. No less than 56 government agencies -- and counting -- depend on us.
Lobbying is swell -- we got our 507 corporate members of the Association for Unmanned Vehicles International raising major hell. Congress set up a caucus especially for us! Congress opened up all US airspace to us!
And my steel brothers, wow! Catwalk pros, Doc Shadowhawk's outfit now sports grenade launcher or shotgun, not to mention tear gas and rubber buckshot. Soon we will be nuclear! So everybody out there, better behave -- and keep your eyes on the skies!
Dr Puant: But there must be a problem, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
Drone patient: That's right, Doc. And that concerns all those miscreants saying we're sort of, like, illegal killers. C'mon, we are model workers! We never complain. We never sleep. We don't engage in commie protests. These people don't seem to have listened to my mentor Mr Brennan [White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan]. [2]
He said that war is hell, and that, I quote, "Sometimes you have to take life to save lives."
C'mon Doc, we're good, clean, law-abiding citizens serving a higher purpose. If these people could just find some time to hang out with us, we could all share some trust and understanding. No beers, no, I don't drink.
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