"Eye in the Sky"

By Ken Russell in All Sorts

reflections on war and peace evoked by a recent movie on drone warfare

I WAS SPOILED FOR CHOICES this Anzac Day. Not for me the dawn parade, infirmities considered and blustery inhospitable weather.
For the same reason, exit the good idea to join fellow peace-niks at the Museum Reserve peace pole. And decided to give the RSA choir a miss this year, though have always enjoyed their splendid harmonies, old soldiers dipping into deep nostalgic waters, making music out of painful memories now mercifully freed from mud, guts, and appalling losses.
Instead, opted for a movie recommended by my younger family. "Eye in the Sky." "Dad, it's your kind of movie, with Helen Mirren - but don't take Mum." It was good advice.
It's modern warfare, with drones, about as far removed from the wars remembered at Anzac Day commemorations around New Zealand as is possible to conceive. The enemy is not lying low in a trench fifty yards away - she's a radicalised British subject committed to violent jihad and she's holed up in a Kenyan house arming a teenage boy with a suicide vest capable of killing up to 80 innocents in the next shopping mall designated for destruction. And remarkably, courtesy of an amazing array of eyes in the sky, including drones the size of garden sparrows that can perch, quietly and unsuspected, in any given domestic location, everything in the Nairobi location can be seen in sharpest definition on monitors in strategic sites as far distanced as the an airforce base in the Nevada desert, CIA hq, and British Intelligence.
The plot of this movie is as captivating as it is unlikely. The Brits are
poised to destroy the target with a precision hellfire missile from a
giant unmanned drone a mile overhead when a young Kenyan girl
emerges from her nearby home and sets up her daily bread stall
immediately outside the target house. The Nevada-based "pilots" who
must fire the missile are dismayed by the girl's arrival and ask for her to
be lured away before the strike is made. Frantic efforts commence
with ground contacts to do this, but a fraught situation develops where
there is conflict between the military and political/civilian interests
involved. Morality takes centre stage. Is saving one child worth the
potential death of hundreds or should the child be written off as
collateral damage?
Of course, the movie has an entertainment component, and as it
reaches its climax the tension becomes palpable. You must go watch it
to see the result. Some terrorists die but there are no winners, and at
the end of the day the chief players in the movie, including the co-
ordinator of the operation Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) go
to their beds, their duty done, but with their various moral integrities
severely mauled and in various stages of damage control.
Not all of you would enjoy the movie, though it is masterfully made. I
said the scenario is unlikely, simply because I cannot imagine such a
moral dilemma among the war-makers playing out in the real world of
drone warfare. There is too much military professionalism involved in
the deployment of such sophisticated weapons technology, and the so-
called "war on terror" makes for hard hearts, not the soft and
compassionate ones that come to the fore in this movie.
But what this gig does do for the likes of me is provide a scary insight
into the nature of war as developed by our friend and ally, the United
States. The much-used term "boots on the ground" has become almost
an irrelevance in the conduct of this kind of war. The pilots of this huge
lethal drone never leave the ground. The day of absentee war has
come, and I can imagine the fear and loathing generated in countries
like Afghanistan, Pakistan and a host of middle eastern and northern
African nations where these silent "weapons out of no-where" have
already been deployed.
Len Brown at the Auckland dawn parade paid tribute to the "bravest of
the brave." These were men who went to war in the time-honoured
manner, prepared to fight the enemy of the day, hand to hand if
necessary. It was what the warriors of old deemed a fair fight, on what
we call today a "level playing field". The battles were bloody and the
toll was awful, but at the end of the day there was a measure of
respect for those who fought by the same rules from the other side.
Drone warfare, the warfare of choice by the Obama administration has
changed all that - but only for those with the wealth and sophistication
to wage it. And that is the huge dilemma - just the latest, I might say -
that I have with the very obvious courtship John Key and his
government are wanting to prosper with all things American. The
ability to settle any dispute, to defeat any rival, to eliminate any
enemy, anywhere in the world - simply by pressing a remote button
somewhere in the Nevada desert, sets the US apart. It makes them
more sought-after as allies, but more feared and resented as enemies.
And needless to say, will prompt more of the disenfranchised youth of
the world to embrace the only weapon available to counter such
warfare, the suicide vest.
Rod Mitchell's good news at our Anzac service was that Pope Francis
and a conclave in Rome are laying the foundations for a new Catholic
policy revising the long standing doctrine of the "just war." It's a bold
move for any pope, though some would say it is about time. Still
others would claim the excuse for a just war disappeared fifty years ago
in the rain of agent orange sprayed over the jungles of Vietnam. But be
as it may, the challenge of Francis has a context that cannot any longer
be ignored, and hopefully will quickly catch fire among peace-loving
thinkers, theologians, philosophers, ethicists, politicians and even the
military. The nuclear weapon has played a part in turning humankind
against the tyranny of war, but at huge cost. Pray God, the realisation
that the stealth of drone warfare could all too soon proliferate to
terrorise innocent people everywhere is sufficient warning to turn us all
away from the madness of war, forever. Ken Russell
Postscript: Barack Obama has authorised about 10 times as many
drone attacks as his predecessor; the death toll from drone strikes is
now higher than that of 9/11 and many of the dead have been innocent
civilians, including women and children.