Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good

Evidence

According to this view of military morality, to kill while exposing one’s own life is bad; to take lives without ever endangering one’s own is good. That first principle of drone necroethics is, paradoxically, vitalist. And it is in accordance with this logic that the drone can be said to be a “humanitarian” weapon: the humanitarian imperative is to save lives. And the drone does indeed save our lives. It is therefore a humanitarian technology. QED. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 453

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how ‘vitalism’ becomes the rhetorical engine for a necroethics of remote killing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 453
• XREF: connects to: Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace; Drones create a crisis in military ethos by contradicting traditional warrior values. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 350; Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing (+32 more)

Related

• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties (similarity 0.94)
• Jus in bello norms applied to drones convert combat ethics into necroethics (similarity 0.90)
• Drones’ necroethics embody a nationalism of self-preservation (similarity 0.90)
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power (similarity 0.90)
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem (similarity 0.89)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.89)
• Zero-risk warfare implies radical inequality in the value of lives (similarity 0.88)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.87)
• Drone warfare deactivates the democratic critique rooted in exposable lives (similarity 0.87)
• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil (similarity 0.87)
• Feigned empathy with victims legitimizes drone homicide publicly (similarity 0.86)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.86)
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. (similarity 0.85)
• Drones create a crisis in military ethos by contradicting traditional warrior values. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• The drone exemplifies the moral hazard of acting without bearing costs #expands (0.75)
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power #expands (0.70)
• Drone warfare adopts assassination ethics while refusing assassination’s self-sacrifice #expands (0.60)
• The principle of unnecessary risk makes drone use morally obligatory #responds-to (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 455
• Risk-free drone operators morally resemble assassins, not soldiers #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 509
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 588
• Humanitarian drone justification rests on a logic of the lesser evil #complicates (0.55) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 463