“Death TV” And The Patriot
By James Rothenberg
18 January, 2011
Countercurrents.org
On MLK Day, the New York Times carried a story about some modern-day burdens placed upon our military technocrats. Charged with monitoring video feeds from drones while simultaneously participating in dozens of instant-message and radio exchanges with intelligence analysts and field commanders, they sometimes succumb to “data overload” and make mistakes.
A mistake of this kind is now said to have been responsible for the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians in an American helicopter attack last February, the operator of a Predator drone failing to convey information about the gathering of people, including the known presence of children. It got lost in the shuffle. Too much data to compute.
It’s quite a stressful job, so much so that the Pentagon is funding researchers to determine the human brain’s capacity to assimilate bits of data before becoming overwhelmed by it. Military research is directed at improving technological efficiency or, in plainer words, to make the killers less blunt.
The military does not consider it good use of their time to have to defend itself in the court of public opinion. Not that public opinion could ever hold sway over it, but it is a nuisance. It would much prefer for kills to be in the “preferred” class, those that can be safely labeled “military targets”. Inevitably, kills will occur in the “non-preferred” class, namely those of innocent bystanders.
When these “non-preferred” kills occur (and come to light), the Pentagon has a range of responses commensurate with the levels of exposure and lethality. When it can no longer ignore or deny, it will reflexively exploit the situation by seizing higher ground. When forced, it will “police its own”, beginning with blaming the dead and absolving the living and ending with punishments confined to the lowest possible level. This confinement is child’s play in an organization as insular as the military.
The free admission by the military that individuals overloaded with data were responsible for preventable civilian deaths might have ramifications were if not for the fact that killing in government service is afforded protections not available to the ordinary person. For this reason we should not expect to see defendants pleading a case of “data overload” – so brain overwhelmed by bits of information that the bullet was fired by mistake.
Air traffic controllers have a stressful job also, but they are tasked with providing safety for all parties under consideration. It’s a different game these controllers are playing, providing safety for some and death for others. The Times article quotes a lieutenant at Langley Air Force Base who watches “Death TV”, the 10 televisions he monitors bringing live streams from drones above Afghanistan (Drones over Pakistan are not to be mentioned.).
We are a marvel of technological killing power, an achievement that has kept us at the top of the world heap, despite our marked decline in economic power. Further, it can be reasoned that our continued decline in economic power will be matched with increased development of this technological killing power – and not only that but an increased impetus to display and use it. It’s either that or relinquish the top, a not too desirable outcome by the ruling elite.
Those more interested in sharing the world than ruling the world figure to have their sanity go unrewarded. Had candidate Obama even hinted at a transference of this country’s priorities, away from military hyper-dominance in the service of Wall St. and toward the working class, he could expect no more support than Ralph Nader.
So who are we being patriotic toward? The invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan and Iraq? The technocrats and their technological killing machines? Wall St.? A Congress that enjoys national healthcare but denies it to all citizens? Cost cutting corporations (re-locations, layoffs, plant closings, outsourcing) with skyrocketing executive pay while workers’ pay has been stagnant for a generation or more? Or perhaps a Justice Department that signed off on torture authorized by the former Executive? Or a new Executive that didn’t want to look back and then continued the policies forward?
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