Drone advocates came to believe their own claims of negligible collateral damage.

Evidence

As a result of repeatedly proclaiming that drones and other surgical strikes are so accurate that they cause no more than negligible collateral damage, supporters of that strategy seem truly to have come to believe that all serious adverse effects have been eliminated. However, the facts won’t go away, and their message is quite the opposite. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 267

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to Arendt’s political lying and the reader’s theme of the twisted logic underpinning impunity. — connects to: Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties; Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463; Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 588 (+2 more)

Related

• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil (similarity 0.87)
• The discourse of ethical drones strategically lowers the cost of using them. (similarity 0.86)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.85)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.85)
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power (similarity 0.85)
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties (similarity 0.85)
• The fewer-collateral-victims argument is false because the alternative was no strike at all. (similarity 0.85)
• Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good (similarity 0.85)
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. (similarity 0.84)
• The drone exemplifies the moral hazard of acting without bearing costs (similarity 0.84)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.83)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.83)
• Drones’ necroethics embody a nationalism of self-preservation (similarity 0.83)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.83)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Drone precision claims will fail in actual battle conditions #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 726
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. #corroborates (0.50) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 588
• The discourse of ethical drones strategically lowers the cost of using them. #corroborates (0.50) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 590
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties #corroborates (0.40)
• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil #corroborates (0.40) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463