Drone Warfare as Terrorism

Abstract Chapter 5 turns to the context of armed conflict and the use of drones to surveil and attack terrorism suspects in countries including Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Despite many critiques of the drone program, few scholars, and no political leaders, have described the drone program as a form of terrorism. Yet there is compelling evidence of the devastating and long-lasting impact of drone warfare and surveillance on the communities and individuals subjected to it, who are almost exclusively nonwhite and non-Western. After discussing this evidence, the second part of the chapter turns to the question of why the terrorist nature of drone warfare has not been recognized or acknowledged by political leaders or many of the scholars who write on the ethics of drones. I argue that two dominant narratives around drone warfare—that drones are “precision” weapons, and that civilian casualties from drone attacks are nearly always “honest mistakes”—have contributed to the failure to see the terrorist nature of drone warfare and to the ongoing lack of accountability for the devastating impact of drone warfare on innocent people.