Impersonal long-range killing is aseptic homicide rather than rational progress

Evidence

Beneath the “progress” of long-distance violence, we can now detect the barbarity of aseptic homicide. By now doubt is certainly cast upon the notion that mechanized murder and murder from behind a desk is less terrible than blood shed in passion. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 960 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Signature strikes fire blindly on pattern-of-life indicators and kill innocents; Claimed precision paradoxically expands global killing rather than limiting it; Distance killing is not morally less terrible than passionate violence — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 960 (+10 more)

Related

• Distance killing is not morally less terrible than passionate violence (similarity 0.91)
• Mechanized or desk-bound murder is not less terrible than passionate killing (similarity 0.88)
• Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good (similarity 0.85)
• Historical continuity of remote killing does not justify drones (similarity 0.85)
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem (similarity 0.84)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake (similarity 0.84)
• Zero-risk warfare implies radical inequality in the value of lives (similarity 0.83)
• Distant violence can become more graphic rather than more abstract (similarity 0.83)
• Invoking historical precedent silences objections to one-sided killing (similarity 0.83)
• Remote killing of humans drew less moral outrage than remote hunting of animals (similarity 0.83)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.82)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.82)
• Drones’ necroethics embody a nationalism of self-preservation (similarity 0.81)
• Modern artillery made killing morally irrelevant by severing aim from effect (similarity 0.81)
• Modern impersonal killing resembles a man stepping on cockroaches, not heroic combat (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Distance killing is not morally less terrible than passionate violence #corroborates (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 960
• Drone morality inverts ethics to make unendangered killing good #expands (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 453
• Drone warfare adopts assassination ethics while refusing assassination’s self-sacrifice #expands (0.80)
• Historical continuity of remote killing does not justify drones #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 337