Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter.

Evidence

However, “projection of power” is also a euphemism that obscures the facts of wounding, killing, destroying. And to do this “without projecting vulnerability” implies that the only vulnerability will be that of the enemy, reduced to the status of a mere target. Underlying the palliative military rhetoric, as Elaine Scarry detects, the real claim is that the “successful strategy is one in which the injuring occurs only in one direction… . Thus, the original definition, which seems to posit noninjuring against injuring, instead posits one-directional injuring against two-directional injuring.” By prolonging and radicalizing preexisting tendencies, the armed drone goes to the very limit: for whoever uses such a weapon, it becomes a priori impossible to die as one kills. Warfare, from being possibly asymmetrical, becomes absolutely unilateral. What could still claim to be combat is converted into a campaign of what is, quite simply, slaughter. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 111

Categorization

• XREF: The unilateral-injury thesis connects directly to the reader’s ‘twisted logic’ of impunity for imperial combatants, and to Scarry’s work on war as injuring. — connects to: The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 544; Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones; Drones transformed from surveillance eyes into weapons almost by chance. (+9 more)

Related

• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (similarity 0.94)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.91)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.91)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.89)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.89)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.88)
• Drones transformed from surveillance eyes into weapons almost by chance. (similarity 0.88)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.87)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.87)
• Drones add the remote control’s range to the weapon’s range. (similarity 0.87)
• Drones create a crisis in military ethos by contradicting traditional warrior values. (similarity 0.87)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.87)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.86)
• Drones resolve the guerrilla problem by depriving insurgents of any target to attack. (similarity 0.86)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good #corroborates (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 453
• Drone warfare replaces combat’s duel with a hunter-prey hide-and-seek structure #expands (0.55)
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. #expands (0.45) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 575
• Drones evolved from surveillance eyes into lethal hunter-killer weapons. #expands (0.40) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 108