Bishop: ‘drones aren’t the murky moral subject we pretend they are’

June 07, 2013

Writing for a Washington Post blog, Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, argued that the use of drones in Pakistan “should give Americans and our leaders pause, as it suggests our usage of this technology far outstrips the amount of reflection we’ve done on the subject.”

“The Pakistan body count rivals even that of the 4,409 US troops killed in Iraq,” he contined. “Of the people killed by US drones in Pakistan (we have also used them in Yemen and Somalia), as many as 883 were civilians, including 176 children. These people probably weren’t planning imminent terror attacks. They were not living in a war zone. Are civilian casualties on this scale proportional or discriminate? Would we tolerate such drone casualties in our own nation?”

 

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Further information:

• Drones aren’t the murky moral subject we pretend they are (Washington Post)
• USCCB questions Obama administration’s use of drones (CWN, 5/22)