From TomDispatch: A devastating account of drone wars as our number one export of the twenty-first century and just how we’ve become a Predator nation, America as a Shining Drone Upon a Hill, On Staring Death in the Face and Not Noticing.
It was one of the great self-congratulatory speeches of our era — Obama counter-terrorism tsar John Brennan offering a full-throated defense of the administration’s “covert” drone wars. In his latest post, focusing on what author Tom Engelhardt calls his “shining drone upon a hill” speech, he considers the nature of American exceptionalism in our time and the way it blinds us to ourselves, to how we actually look to the rest of the world.
Engelhardt writes of an American dream of this country as a “shining city”: Whatever that ‘city,’ that dream, was once imagined to be, it has undergone a largely unnoticed metamorphosis in the twenty-first century. It has become — even in our dreams — an up-armored garrison encampment, just as Washington itself has become the heavily fortified bureaucratic heartland of a war state. So when Brennan spoke, what he offered was a new version of American exceptionalism: the first ‘shining drone upon a hill’ speech.
Tom Engelhardt explores his over-the-top language of self-congratulation, his fears of how others less wise, judicious, and moral than us might use drones in the future, and in the process the way a sense of American exceptionalism blinds our leaders to a changing American reality. He concludes that “What they can’t see in the haze of exceptional self-congratulation is this: they are transforming the promise of America into a promise of death. And death, visited from the skies, isn’t precise. It isn’t glorious. It isn’t judicious. It certainly isn’t a shining vision. It’s hell. And it’s a global future for which, someday, no one will thank us.”
Be sure to read the entire piece at TomDispatch. And keep a sharp eye out overhead.
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Rich Bauer said...
1Our number one export carries with it the seeds of our own destruction – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140173/Poison-drones-new-Olympic-threat-warns-Colonel-charge-keeping-London-calm.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/25/defending-against-drones.html
Jim Tuttle, the Department of Homeland Security official responsible for safeguarding America against nonnuclear weapons, downplays the idea that drones could be used against us. “What terrorist is going to have a Predator?” he scoffed at a conference last winter.
The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. ignored a dangerous flaw in its UAV technology that allowed Iraqi insurgents to tap into the planes’ video feeds using $30 software purchased over the Internet. – Black Box cutters
05/14/12 5:41 PM | Comment Link
Chris Stiebens said...
2Excellent writing by Tom. Any concerned might enjoy my drone-fear short story in Issue Two of Subtopian Magazine.
05/15/12 12:46 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
3Note: Tuttle the turtle hiding in his shell of a brain is a finalist for this year’s Blind Cassandra award, which SecState (then NSA dufus) Rice won four times for her statement, “I don’t think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile … even in retrospect there was nothing to suggest that.”
http://www.justiceblind.com/airplanes.html
05/15/12 12:51 PM | Comment Link
jim at rangeragainstwar said...
4PVB,
Yesterday on 2 1/2 men the 1/2 character enlisted in the Army.
The recruiter said- flying drones is exactly like a video game EXCEPT we kill real people.
A funny throw away line in a crummy sitcom.
jim
05/15/12 1:28 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
5When the drones get in the hands of terrorists the joke will be on US. Winning!
05/15/12 2:24 PM | Comment Link
America as a Shining Drone Upon a Hill by Tom Engelhardt « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL said...
6[…] Predator Nation (wemeantwell.com) […]
05/16/12 2:18 PM | Comment Link