Collateral Damage

                                     


We now wage warfare using unmanned drones. Control rooms safely tucked away stateside contain the computer screens that operate the drones that fly over and attack suspected enemies of the state a world away. There have been great successes, top line terrorists have been "removed from the field of battle" in the words of President Obama. There have also been what's called "collateral damage", the killing of innocent civilians when the drone launched bombs and missiles land.

Bad intelligence, operator error, the fog of war, call it what you will, but in the interests of reducing our own military casualties, we chalk up collateral damage as the price we pay in the pursuit of the "War on Terror". "Fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here".

But now, something new has been added. The Dallas Police Department took out the deranged murderer of five officers by using a robot controlled bomb. The robot was apparently remotely guided to the location of the shooter and blew itself up, along with the shooter. No need for a trial now, just a clean up crew.

No one else died as a result of the deployment of this robot bomb, and no fires were started. There were no reports of much property damage, so in this case, there was no collateral damage to speak of. Except maybe to the U.S. Constitution.

You can be sure that we will see much more use of this kind of domestic crime fighting, now that police departments across the country have seen the successful use of this new modern tactic.You can also be sure that there will be many instances of collateral damage with the continued deployment of these domestic robot bombs. It won't be hard to justify the use of these weapons, all that need be done is to claim it will protect law enforcement officers.

Welcome to the 21st century.