Georgina Kilborn- Entry No. 5 (Gregory)

In the context of the ‘war on terror’, an era where the state’s primary focus is the implementation of effective security measures and counterterrorism initiatives, Gregory’s, From a View to Kill: Drones and Late Modern War questions the virtues of drones deployed as instruments in this ‘virtual’ war. At issue in the drone debate, is not the matter of remoteness but the feeling of proximity achieved through new ways of ‘seeing’. As such, transparency is another conceptual issue traversing Gregory’s work, as well as a significant concern raised in public debate.

The time-space compression of video feeds from UAVs creates a dangerous sense of intimacy which risks converting “civilians into combatants”, warns Gregory. Gregory suggests that new visibilities in the form of reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence are restrictive. He asserts that such “constructed visibility” achieves a unique closeness whose repercussions are more lethal than those of distance.  Such proximity, he claims, “consistently privileges the view of the hunter-killer”. ‘Seeing’ through high-resolution imagery is not exclusively technical in nature, but also has its place in a “techno-cultural” system. While the distinction between ‘our’ space and that of the ‘other’ continues to be reinforced, our increasing proximity to their space creates a dangerous sense of familiarity.  Thus, rather than detachment, Gregory point to visibility and proximity as the main point of departure in analysing the implications of drone technology.

So, in this techno-cultural arena, where seeing is inclined to become believing, transparency, or rather the lack of, becomes a pertinent issue. Transparency is at issue in the unclear legal delineation of the  ‘global’ airspace in which drones are being deployed. This lack of clarity in the global battle space resembles what Agamben terms the ‘state of exception’; where the law is suspended in order to protect itself, by creating a zone of exclusion. The lines of war continue to be elastersized and this zone of exemption thus permits unaccountability for civilian casualties incurred in UAV warfare.

Accordingly, the visibility within the ‘battlespace’ remains unclear despite advancements in technology, rendering distinctions between combatants and civilians problematic. Further, the American Air Force deploys this absence of transparency to their advantage. Collateral damage remains covert by identifying a ‘grey zone’- an area lacking in clarity between innocent and non-innocent civilians and thereby rendering this inaccuracy of extra-judicial killing, justifiable. The issue of ‘just war’ is here raised. No more is there a presumption of innocence but rather preventative killing takes its place. This draws parallels to Foucault’s construction of ‘biopower’, which functions by distinguishing those who must live from those who must die (Mbembe 2003).

Transparency is also at issue in what is exposed by the media. What is revealed has been carefully selected and is limited in the sense that the narrative of the target is always underexposed. The public is faced only with the dominant narrative in which clean and ‘surgically precise’ UAVs deliver effective counterterrorism results. Nothing is heard of the counter narrative; that of civilian’s experiences in which drones, instruments of surveillance, constitute a form of terror. Within the space of the target, those who live beneath the fear inducing instruments, terror is bread and fear engrained. Thus, forms of surveillance and security can function to promote anxiety. 

However, this dilemma of transparency is not unique to the covert drone program. The intelligence gathering and surveillance measures of the NSA, when exposed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden created a hostile rapport between the state and the civilian. If law is an instrument aiding state crime, what may be the role of law in redressing state crime? Currently, these legal and bureaucratic oversights in the form of drone surveillance risk a new manifestation of terror, a perpetuation of the cycle of violence.